almost witty

As anyone who’s tried to learn a language will know, the conversations in language books tend to be extremely dull, anodyne and bear little resemblance to reality.

For a twist, how about having a Norwegian woman with a false moustache and breastplate,
talking to herself in Cantonese about getting to a whorehouse (and ordering chicken)…

(spotted via british-chinese.blogspot.com)

A work blogger I respect recently made a joke about their local Chinese takeaway mixing their Ls and their Rs when making a mythical dish. The in-house work magazine recently pointed out a menu slip-up meaning that a dish was described as “Lice” instead of rice, not noting that the two letters are very very far apart on the keyboard.

Naturally, that’s immediately raised my hackles and slightly offended me, but I can’t decide if it’s racist or not. On one hand, people do impersonations of Polish or Birmingham accents all the time. On the other hand, said jokes wouldn’t work if you were attributing them to a Turkish takeaway.

Then again, my native-Chinese mandarin teacher habitually mixes up her Ls and her Rs, which rather rankles with me internally. Oh, and the cartoon illustrations in the textbook she uses helpfully distinguish Chinese people by giving them slanted eyes.

*sigh* Oh it’s so confusing. But I definitely feel a whiff of genuine offence.

A friend of mine is planning a visit to Cardiff, and asked me what there was to do there. And despite living there for five years, I couldn’t think of anything in Cardiff beyond the Castle, the Wales Millennium Centre, and Cardiff Bay (which is just a glorified upper-class entertainment mall) that was great and unique to Cardiff. So all I could suggest was the BBC Doctor Who Locations Guide (I made that!).

Have you got any suggestions?

While we’re on the subject, see what happens when a Chinese chef and a Welsh chef decide to make beautiful food together. Although I’m wondering what they CAN come up with…

To recap, the Spanish basketball team pose for a pre-Olympic-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures in one of Spain’s major newspapers. Freelance Madrid-based journalist Sid Lowe points this out in the Guardian, spreading the story everywhere else with predictable outrage in English-speaking media.

To which the Spanish wonder what the fuss is about. The Spanish-language paper El Mundo debates whether the advert was racist, and accuses the British press of trying to smear Spain’s good name. One Spanish basketballer apologises, saying “It’s wrong to interpret it as racist.”, while the head coach says “I don’t think it was offensive”.

Now, brilliantly, the original journalist who filed the report has filed a piece defending himself against accusations that he had a hidden agenda, pointing out that he never said it was racist. Of course, if you see someone carrying an umbrella, you don’t wonder if it’s raining or not.

Oh, and here’s the Spanish tennis team making a similar gesture. Interestingly, a random sampling of Chinese people in Beijing suggests they aren’t that bothered - but then they don’t have the history of racial harassment.

During the media hullabaloo about Chinese bodyguards over-zealously protecting the Olympic flame in London against Tibet protestors, I managed to keep my mouth shut. I agree the Chinese government is treating Tibet in a disgusting way indeed - but you know what? Name me a country that’s hosted the Olympics that has a lily-white human rights record. Aside from Canada. But I’m not expecting to see Iraqi/Iranian/Irish protestors trying to blow out the Olympic torch when it arrives in London in 2012. Why not?

The media hype and protests seemed to die down in the wake of the Chinese earthquakes in May (disappointingly named in the American fashion - 05/12 - but that’s another blog post), and as the Olympics hype machine gets into full swing (by dragging up painful memories from my past), these protests seem to have been quietly forgotten. Which I think is reasonable - everyone’s had their say, can we please now get on with the illusion of world peace through sportsmanlike competition?

But no. I spent my Saturday night reinstalling Vista (hey, the next three summer weekends will be spent drowning myself in alcohol in a theatre, a wedding in a castle and a park) and reinstalling software programs. Except when I came to using my usual text editor of choice and got told instead to Boycott Beijing, on the grounds of their suppression of the rights of cyber-journalists. Which is all fine, well and good - except I’m pretty sure the rights of journalists are being suppressed everywhere - even in the United States.

Besides, how can one person who wants to use a text editor Boycott Beijing? By not watching it on TV? By ignoring one of the few occasions when the world does genuinely get together?

So I’m doing my own, equally pointless bit of politicization - by boycotting Notepad++ because they’re telling me to do something. What next? Google advising people to give up smoking?