Hotel Bathroom Rules

Just back from a few days in Beijing for sightseeing. Pictures soon. In the meantime just a couple of thoughts about hotels.

After checking in and famished I sat down to some cheese and crackers. I dropped a piece of cheese on the carpet and automatically simultaneously reached for it and began calculating whether the 1-second or the 5-second rule applied in this case. But before my fingers could even reach the runaway cheese I decided that we need a new rule for hotel floors - and that would be the 12-inch rule. If an article of food comes within 12-inches of a hotel carpet or bedspread it is no longer considered food and must be thrown in the garbage can using tongs. The tongs must be supplied by the hotel.

The other new rule I developed on the same day is the contractors' bathroom test rule. The contractors that design and install hotel bathrooms must actually set on the toilet before they install anything. As it is now, I think contractors liven up their otherwise dull lives by figuring out new and novel ways of putting hotel guests through contortions the human body was not designed for. In the bathroom of the otherwise excellent hotel we stayed in the toilet paper dispenser was actually located behind the toilet and four inches off the floor. I'm not kidding. To grab paper one has to bend and twist in a way that is not pretty. To top it off they had placed a wall-mounted phone next to the toilet in just such a position as to put ones shoulder up against the dial pad. So every time someone uses the toilet they automatically dial the front desk - who I imagine thoroughly enjoy listening to their guests curse indignantly every time they reach for the toilet paper.

What's the Deliverable Here?

Bureaucratese, the language of bureaucrats and corporats, is alive and well despite the current economic woes. The lingo is insidious in the way it works itself into our minds and becomes resident without our conscious awareness. If we aren’t careful we all slip into using the telltale words that mark us as having been assimilated. But, contrary to what the Borg collective says, resistance is not futile.

Last week I was sitting in on a conference call and listening comfortably when I experienced a sudden “paradigm shift” - an out-of-bureaucrat-experience that allowed me to listen in as if I were a normal, pre-assimilated, plain-spoken human. Words like “deliverables”, “take-aways”, and “readout” were being bandied about as if they were English. As in “I’m not sure what the deliverables were supposed to be but my take-away from the meeting was that Hector was to be the POC. What was your readout?” (translation: I don't know what that meeting was supposed to be about but the way I heard it, Hector wants to call the shots. What did you think?)

Most disconcertingly, I understood what they were talking about. That’s ok, as long as I don’t start talking that way. If I ever do, please organize an intervention.

For the time being we can all amuse ourselves with this website and online dictionary of bureaucratese at: http://home.earthlink.net/~skilton/dictionary.html One of my favorite words from this dictionary is:

adometer;
n., An instrument designed to measure just how much ado is being made over a particular nothing.
(engl.: ado + meter)

I’m going to rig one of these up and bring it to the next conference call I’m on.

Quality Control and Territorial Waters

For the first time in weeks the weather today was comfortable - dry, sunny and not bitter cold. I headed off for the disappearing old neighborhoods around Xintiandi, camera in hand. S headed for the fabric market to manage the creation of some coats and suits for G-man and I. I say manage because it's never as easy as just ordering and picking up. Each article of clothing has to be redone two or three times before it is done correctly. And it takes an experienced eye to know whether it has been sewn correctly. Because of these difficulties it is rare for tourists just passing through Shanghai to get custom-made clothes that live up to their expectations. If you are just passing through I recommend you shop in Hong Kong - it's pricier but quality is more reliable.

Meanwhile, on the high seas China and the U.S. are testing each others definitions of territorial waters. Last week an unarmed US Navy surveillance ship was harassed by five Chinese ships while it was sailing 75 miles south of Hainan Island. The US protested the harassment but the two sides have a fundamental disagreement with what is territorial waters. The international standard is 12 miles from the coast. The Chinese believe it is 200 miles. The US says it is coming back with its surveillance ship but this time it will have a destroyer escort. I hope things don't get too hairy while we are here.

Music Street

This afternoon we went in search of a guitar for G-man so we naturally headed for Jinling Road or "music street in downtown Shanghai. In China, as in Japan and Korea, stores of a given type are often concentrated in certain districts or streets. If one is looking for books or stationery in Shanghai you'd go to Fuzhou Street. For trendy clothes you go to Huaihai Street. For musical instruments it's Jinling Street. Only trouble was, I only had a rough idea where Jinling Street was because I had walked up the street only once and over two years ago and the map I had with me didn't list the names of all the streets - including Jinling Street.


We walked up and down and right and left in a grid east of Peoples Square and south of Nanjing Pedestrian Street without luck. We stopped off at a Wagas for a refueling lunch before setting off again for one last try - this time south of Yanan Street. And there it was, Jinling Street running west and east and crammed with musical instrument shops specialising in everything from pianos to Chinese folk instruments like the pipa. In the second shop we found a helpful young fellow that sold us a beginner's guitar for 300 rmb. The price tag on the guitar said 350 rmb but he came down easily to 300. We could have pressed for more but I wasn't in the mood - after all, he was friendly and helpful and not pushy. That alone deserves a reward. Now I look forward to listening to guitar sounds coming out of the room next door for a couple of years or so.

Searching for JG Ballard

After I recently found out that dystopian fiction writer JG Ballard was born and raised in Shanghai I went in search of his boyhood home. I had the address of the lane he used to live on - not far from Xujiahui - just a couple of miles from where I live. In case you aren't familiar with Ballard he is most well known for his book "The Empire of the Sun" , a loose retelling of his time spent in a Japanese internment camp at Longhua - which is now part of Shanghai. The book was turned into a movie in the 80s.

But before setting out for Xujiahui I made G-man a lunch of pork fried rice that came frozen and with instructions to "heat with a conflagration". I didn't think that heating the contents with an intense and uncontrolled fire would be such a good idea so I opted for a minute in the microwave instead.

I then took a taxi to Xinhua Street and found Lane 119 and walked to the end of the tree-lined lane where I found a wall and the top of a house visible on the other side of it. This was the writer-to-be's home some 80 or so years ago. Back down the lane to Xinhua Street (Amherst St.) and north to the Hello Kitty Studio - a Disneyesque retreat from the surrounding construction and loud traffic.

We only welcome a minority