Author: Christopher-Dorset

Good evening, good morning. It is time to announce the winner of the photography contest. Thank you all who submitted pictures.

Janus: the one who started the ball rolling. A lovely picture of a beautiful Danish country house.

Araminta: a rare sunny day in England with an appealing church scene.

Gazoopi: Southern Charm at its finest.

LW: simple, but pleasant.

Soutie: cutting-edge and modern, but not without merit.

The two finalists are: Araminta and Gazoopi. As there can only be one winner, the prize — be it gold or a white elephant — will go to Araminta. There is something about an English church, be it in the English countryside or near Hong Kong Central, that touches me.

In the process of writing my thesis I found a commentary on the difference between 19th century life in northern and southern Korea. It struck me as amusing and something that you might get a proper chuckle out of:

“the traveller is impressed in the North by the independent, manly spirit of many of the mountain people. A man seems to be more of a man in the North than in the South. In looking for causes of this I find it in the marked absence of the so-called “gentleman” class. In the South the independent middle class is apt to be crushed out between the upper and the nether mill stones, between the strutting, conceited “yangban” and the obsequious, cringing serf. The North is brighter with hope because of the predominance of an independent middle class, who have to work for their own living, and as a result have more muscle and more brains.” William Baird, 1894.

Cherished comrades:

I would just like to remind everyone that the deadline for submitting pictures to the photograph competition is Tuesday, 4 March at midnight, GMT.

I decided on my way back from work today to launch a coup. No, not a coup d’état or even a chicken coup. This is a photo contest coup. As our cherished lupine colleague is otherwise pre-occupied for all the best reasons, I have gathered some Dutch courage and propose serving as a judge for a photo contest.

The revolutionary photo contest committee has elected to propose a topic of aesthetically pleasing buildings. Large or small, old or new — so long as the photographer finds the building attractive, it counts. The deadline is 4 March at midnight, GMT.

I am curious about the use of the word “privilege”. I have always assumed that it was a noun but frequently hear it used as a verb. Could someone please clarify this?

As the sun slowly rises over England it is pitch black in Minnesota, -15 with strong winds and snow drifts.

My apologies for the poor fidelity. This is the only version of the official video I could find with English translations.

Kaohsiung is often described as the “anti-Taipei” in much the same way as Osaka is the anti-Tokyo or Marseille is the anti-Paris. This view is very much true. In practical matters it holds true as much as it does in abstract. Kaohsiung is connected to its airport by its underground system. Taipei is connected to its airport by bus and only bus. I am not especially fond of buses and avoid them whenever possible preferring trams, trains and subways. There is something uncivilised about buses. Perhaps it is the tendency of peasants to use them as a favoured means of transport? But that is not relevant to this topic, so I will digress. After a long morning of walking about Taipei I took the bus to the airport to fly to Osaka. The security check was fast and pleasant. No aggro, no hassle. Everything was scanned, the metal detector did not sound as I went through and an exit stamp was duly affixed to my passport. Continue reading “Japan”

Time did not favour me when I landed in Taipei. Two large aeroplanes full of passengers, many from mainland China, arrived before my large – and full – flight. Passport control took the better part of an hour to clear, although the officer was very efficient with me. It seems as if Hong Kong citizens have a few extra things they have to do before they can be let through the Taiwanese border, mainland Chinese a few dozen things more – including having a fair amount of paperwork filled in and many forms ready for inspection. After 15 minutes waiting in queue the woman in front of me and I started to talk. She was from Australia and we had a few good laughs at the expense of the Kevin and Juliar Show as well as Mad Monk the Budgie Smuggler with his underwhelming show. Merkel, however, she took seriously and respected – albeit with more polish than the Macanese tour guide who referred to her as “the little fat woman in the suit”. We both concluded that the less said about the USA and its derangements and delusions the better. Continue reading “Taiwan.”

I finished packing the night before. Early morning rushes never amused me, especially since I tend to remember things only when I’m halfway to the airport. The taxi I requested the night before arrived a few minutes early, the driver was an upper-middle aged woman with a desire to have a job but a lack of ambition to train for anything else. Fair enough, not everyone can reasonably be expected to claw his or her way to the top of society. We chatted for a few minutes as we drove to main bus centre in Saint Cloud – it’s possible, albeit slightly inconvenient at times, to live there without a car. The bus and train journeys were predictable. Quiet, comfortable – but underwhelming. The flights to San Francisco were somewhat more interesting, but only in how revealing they were about the collapse in service standards. One flight was on time, but the air host clearly hated his job and wished to make everyone have as unpleasant a flight as possible. The second flight was delayed by over an hour and all customer inquiries were handled by a woman who preferred prattling on incessantly about how much she worked with one of her colleagues and could only be bothered to pay scant attention to customers needing to know when their children could meet them at airport or if they should began preparing for their funeral arrangements as information came so slowly risk of death caused by old age was a real possibility for anyone over 15. The flight to San Francisco finally departed, half-full, with an assigned air hostess who neither listened nor cared to pay attention to anyone or anything. I asked for water without ice, that is, water with no ice put into it. For someone reason she thought that meant I wanted ice with a little bit of water in it – and for her to throw it at me like a Ryan Air check-in employee realising that she could not charge over-weight/over-size fees returning a bag. These experiences reminded me once again why I do not travel more than I absolutely have to in the USA – this was one of the USA’s better airlines for customer service. Continue reading “To the Pearl River Delta.”

Germany has voted and Germany has voted to keep Merkel chancellor. This should come as no surprise to anyone who is not an embittered troll on the Tellygraff’s comment sections. Roughly 70pc of Germans approve of Merkel’s performance, and the Union — the name given to her party, the CDU, and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU came within 3 votes of securing a majority on its own. The Free Democrats for the first time since the establishment of the Federal Republic failed to make it into parliament, hardly a surprise. They were only marginally successful so long as they had little to say and thus never had to deliver anything. After they were given a strong voice following the 2009 federal election, they disappointed all and according to one poll 90pc of voters said that their main source of disgust was their ability to promise many things, but deliver nothing. This incompetence was not helped by the inept Westerwelle’s replacement by the equally inept Rösler who seemingly saw racism in every critique of his political abilities.

Not having secured an all-out majority Merkel will more likely than not seek to form a coalition with either a much-reduced Social Democratic opposition or a weakened Green party. While the SPD have shown little interest, the Greens even less and as both have ruled out forming a coalition with die Linke, one or the other will have to swallow bitterness and become truly a junior coalition partner. What cannot be forgotten in this election is that the results came as a response to Merkel’s popularity, not the popularity of her party — and that other than Merkel Germany lacks credible leaders.