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The MOST EXPENSIVE FIREWORKS EVER and other small things

I saw the Expo fireworks (back when they were on, not recently). Not sure I saw the same show as the rest of the world…

They weren’t high, didn’t go on that long, and were underwhelming in general. That or the Shanghai skyline is sooooo huge you can’t see the night sky anymore. It is a possibility.

Chinese jeans are a small thing(s). XL is about 4 inches too small for my fat western legs.

Good, super awesome things that clean all your clothes without you asking, tidy away the empty beer and make sure you have drinking water, these things come in small friendly packages. My cleaning lady is one of those.

Things that have gone in my belly.

Tepenyake (?) = Big table, big hot plate, big chef, big food. All you can eat, and all you can drink. Awesome tasty varied awesomeness. Sushi, beef, seafood - whatever.

I ate all I could, and some of what other people couldn’t as well. It was good. So good all I can do is say is, “Do it”. DO. IT. Please.

Chicken Foot.

As per Dr. Howie’s request I have indeed devoured a chicken foot (although I dont have any pictures, SORRY GUYS). It was like eating something that was bony, awkward and had been stomping around in shit all it’s days.

IT DIDN’T TASTE BAD. My chinese teacher showed me how to each it: You bite off the nails, spit em out, and then do that for each bone, all the while sucking off the tasty meat! That is how The Chinese sell it anyway.

I ate a whole foot (as in a singular foot, not one foot of chicken feet :/ ), it was a lot of effort.

I am still none the wiser as to why anyone would bother to eat it as opposed to KFC or something.

Fuck Sake

As well as tepanyake I accidentally went to an elaborate Japanese restaurant ‘thing’. Seven courses of stuff, one of which was some kind of seafood, so rare and crazy you only get one piece the size of a ten pence piece. It was so rare and crazy it tasted just like it had come from the sea! Can you believe it?

Also this dinner turned out to be a sake tasting affair. I got lectured on sake, and what makes it so tasty and awesome and have five kinds where they waste, like, most of the rice, or something. What it all came down to was that sake should be cold, that it is expensive but not as expensive as wine, and that it all tastes THE SAME (like something you only drink because someone else has bought it for you).

P.S.

I think I had my funniest Facebook wall ever.

To come back home and check the ole’ facehook, to see only, “HAHAHAHAHAHA”, it is an impressive sight :P

So guys. After blogging last time I have done lots. I have written about it less because of the lots.

So you get some kind of crazy desperate blog, full of half remembered things, that don’t make much sense even to the trained ear. And that even leaves me confused.

This is a fitting analogy to where my Chinese is at.

FRIDAY.

Friday was a gig day. The gig was Peaches. Peaches fucked the pain away, good and proper. She did this in a crazy club called the ‘Mao Livehouse’, which was nice, big and awesome. As such the chinese are apparently going to tear it down, because anything that isn’t a high-rise CANNOT SURVIVE HERE.*

This is beside the point. Peaches was fun, I touched her bum. Her vagina flashed a strobe light (as they do) and I drank beer.

Q. What more can you ask for?

A. KARAOKE (oh and some modelling)

The day after a wonderfully elegant Friday, I was roped into doing a fashion show for a friend of a firend who needed male models.

I say roped in: perhaps more persuaded by the chance of being ‘discovered’ and the overall flattery of someone desperately needing a white guy to wear some clothes.

The modelling went over like a tonne of meh. A tonne of oddly dressed meh in the middle of a lot of super skinny Chinese models, with some guy at the side pissing himself laughing at me. But aside from him, it was all GOOD. (I even convinced someone that I was doing it professionally. HA. fool!)

After doing this, it was time for Karaoke.

It was a pals birthday so of course this involved a) drinking and b) singing. Normally not a good combination. BUT IN CHINA!?!??! Still not a great combo; aside from The Chinese themselves, who can all sing like the the fucking birds (often well, but high pitched and somewhat gratingly at the same time).

But me? My singing was much more about enthusiasm and swearing. General rules for life, really.

Perudo

After singing my tiny lungs out, we went to a club so I could practice my Chinese and my lying.

Unfortunately both are somewhat rusty, so when the order of the evening is to play Chinese Drinking Perudo (liar dice), a Josh may start to unravel quickly. Numbers are hard here, lying is hard when you can’t really say anything. Thusly a hangover ensued.

Ends.

I can now count. I have chewed a chicken foot. I have mastered the art of getting a taxi via waving only.
*Everything here is massive. If it is in anyway cool, so far as I have heard, they have plans to tear it down and make houses. BOOOooo.