DE JA BRUGGE

I’m watching “A Fistful of Dollars” and the Americano who is quick on the draw just mowed down four bad dudes with his six shooter. Street justice western stylin’!

Anyway, despite promising myself that I would never return to Brugge that’s exactly where I ended up for the August long weekend. We roamed the streets eating pots of mussels, drinking Belgian beer that would knock your socks off and photographing anything that moved like a pack of Japanese tourists.

Bloody tourist!

This lane is all that remains of the old red light district. Now the only boobies you'll see are made out of chocolate.

SHANGHAI - JINGAN TEMPLE

In a country where belief in a higher power other than Mao power has been frowned upon it's nice to see there are still places where you can go to burn incense and pray for that new Gucci handbag.

SHANGHAI - HELLO SAILOR!

I thought long and hard about whether to post this photo but the world has to know. Massive night at Guandi’s for Eugene and James birthday. Too much green tea & scotch and I end up sitting in Ronald McDonald’s lap.

SHANGHAI - I WANNA GO TO YU YUAN GARDENS

HONG KONG - THE SEVENS

SHANGHAI - THE PAD!

This is the magnificent view from my apartment in Luban Lu. From my balcony I can spend hours, martini in hand marveling over the post modern industrial architecture that Shanghai is well known for. Sometimes when I leave the balcony doors open, a fine layer of industrial dust settles over the orange leather couch, Disney paraphernalia and faithfully replicated Michelangelo’s “Creation of David”.

I am now sterile and impotent and require the assistance of hand pump.

SHANGHAI - TAXI MANDARIN

I’ve decided to give up on Mandarin lessons as they were getting in the way of my hangovers. Besides, I have mastered the art of taxi mandarin. This enables me to get around town with little fuss unless I have the misfortune of getting in a taxi driven by some poor country bumpkin whose village is now at the bottom of the Yangtze River because of some new dam thingy who can’t seem to understand my impeccable Chinese.

The Art of Taxi Mandarin

Luban Lu tao di – Down the end of Luban Lu. Probably not very helpful unless you live at the end of Luban Lu but this got me home plenty of times when plastered.

Ting bu dong – I don’t understand. Combine this with blank look of incomprehension normally in response to something the taxi driver is saying to you like……Do you want to take the elevated road?

Zhe li ting – STOP!

SHANGHAI - SHITDIGGER!

I am writing to you at Oxford Dictionary to request that your next edition includes the following word.

Shitdigger (noun) – a woman who dates someone who has no money or is poor.

I can assure you that it is already in general use in Shanghai. Eug’s girlfriend uses it constantly. Despite her rudimentary command of the English language she takes great glee in calling herself a shitdigger.

SHANGHAI – GOD DAMN CHINESE IS FUN

I made a major break through in Mandarin today while walking down Nanjing Xi Lu, my first chinese sentence. After just a few lessons, I had finally constructed my first understandable phrase. I felt a joy that only a mother could feel as their child babbles their first words.

Ni xihuan wo de xiao di di ma? Do you like my willy?

Shirley was suitably embarrassed as I shouted it out load as we walked down the street jam packed with shoppers.

MEMOIRS OF A KOREAN GEISHA

I’m at home on a Saturday night nursing a hangover that could incapacitate a small pony with equine influenza or so I like to tell myself. So I thought I might post some entries and pictures from my time spent in China last year as I seem to have done nothing for the last two months or at least nothing worth blogging about. I did turn thirty in Bangkok but that’s another story.