Monday was Tracy’s birthday, and we spent the morning wandering through the Yu Gardens and Market. It was in the Yu Gardens that we suddenly saw all the foreigners and tourists that had been conspicuously absent in our previous wanderings around the city. As the Lonely Planet book opined, the Yu Gardens presented sort of…
In all my experiences of international travel, I’ve been able to get by in English without too much difficulty, and where I’ve had trouble with English I’ve generally been met with very accommodating, apologetic service. And so, as a native English speaker, it’s hard to walk through the world without a little cultural arrogance. A…
We saw nothing interesting about the architecture as we walked through the French Concession district of Shanghai, and our language issues persisted. There’s literally an English-speaking façade here in the sense that storefronts, billboards and even highway signs display messages in both English and Chinese. You might see a place called (in English) “Such-and-Such Tea…
Shanghai has not felt warm since we arrived, in any sense of the word. It was 5° C last night, and I woke up to a bomb blast. Well, not literally. Just before I went to sleep last night, I was flipping through the TV channels. On one of them was some kind of hotel…
“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think,…
From the booking process on the Singapore Airlines web site. I only wish I’d seen this in time for Tracy and I to travel as Earl and Countess or perhaps simply Professors Smith and Cohen.
I haven’t watched a lot of tv in Singapore, but the other night I saw the end of an episode of Singapore Idol, and it was interesting to note that all the voiceovers – mostly naming sponsors – were spoken by an American. Everything else on the show (except for the, well, entire concept) seemed…
The other night a small group of us went to see a play called “godeatgod” by local playrwright, Haresh Sharma. On our first or second day here, Tracy handed me an eye-catching post card, and ever since then I’d been spotting them around town. post cards for godeatgod The cards quote a review from the…
By way of Brett, whose friend Nathan Piazza has authored an eloquent primer for honing the rhetoric of the left… “As I contemplated the depressing outcome of last night’s election, one thought kept bugging me. How incompetent can the Democrats be when it comes to the cutting edge of political manipulation? Throughout the Clinton presidency…
Just in time for Halloween, the scariest costumes for 2004. So wrong it hurts. Thanks Rebecca! Ralph Nader Put the fear of God in John Kerry and his Democratic supporters with this easy approximation of Green Party leader/Democratic ticket spoiler Ralph Nader. With just hand-me-down Sunday-best clothes and Grandma’s old cocktail wig, you’ve got yourself…