We few, we happy few

Crazy Chris e-mailed me the other day to check how things were going in The Jing without him. He commented that the place had already been beginning to feel pretty deserted when he left a couple of weeks ago, and wondered if things were even worse now.

Well......

The other day, when The Choirboy and I breezed into Room 101 to meet up with The Bengali after our traditional Sunday evening chuanr fest, we were the only customers they'd seen all night. A trio of our journo chums showed up shortly afterwards, but they really were just having 'the one' on their way home from a busy day of news-manufacturing up at the Olympic Village.

The Pool Bar was not that much livelier: only a handful of the diehard regulars, the quietest Sunday evening I've seen in there for a long time.

Friday and Saturday were very quiet too. And the main bar district of Sanlitun seemed extremely subdued on Friday - although admittedly I only passed through briefly, and relatively early.

Yep, our wonderful government really has done a pretty good job of purging the city of 'undesirable elements' - like foreign barflies. Things haven't been this quiet since SARS.

Hark, is that the rustle of a tumbleweed skittering down the street?

Traffic Report - the blog stats for July

There were 54 posts and around 16,500 words over on Froogville last month.

There were 41 posts and just over 9,000 words here on the Barstool.

I discern no particular variation (much less increase) in the traffic figures, and commenting has been disappointingly scarce (all of my one-time 'regulars' - with the exception of the ever-faithful British Cowboy - seem to have deserted me, or at least to have reverted to 'lurking'). However, there was a HUGE - inexplicable! - spike in visits to both blogs on Friday the 11th of July. I wonder what that was all about.

We also welcomed new readers from Sweden, Finland, Malaysia, and the Philippines. And I now have a fan in Kosovo.

Thanks for reading. I hope I'll find something entertaining to say during the upcoming craziness of the Olympics.

Bon mot for the week

"Falling in love is like getting drunk. A relationship is the hangover."

Froog

(OK, I've used this one before, kind of; but it bears repeating.)

A new favourite text message

"I am going to Room 101. Soon. And for the rest of my life."

I think I'm going to keep this stored on my phone, for regular use.

Yes, such is the way I salve my misery and despair. After all, if you're going to have your mid-life crisis in a strange and under-developed country, thousands of miles away from most of the people who care about you..... you might as well have it in a bar.

Claude reigns!

Or indeed, Clawed Reins. (Hmmm, a Possible Band Name?? That reminds me......)

Yes, I am a broken-hearted punster.

Beware

This oddity was turned up by my old Oxford pal and Websurfer extraordinaire, 'Keith Tolstoy', some time ago. I assume it's a road sign advising of the hazards of 'concealed entrances' opening on to the main road. Well, what else could it be? A wonderfully warped warning!

Of course, for me it suggests something else entirely. And the caution is timely.

The Eternal Pursuit

Here is a story I've cherished for years (probably apocryphal, but what the heck?).

When Charles de Gaulle finally stood down as President of France, he and his wife met the foreign press corps to answer questions. Neither of them had outstanding English, but they did their best.

When Mme de Gaulle was asked what her hopes were for their years in retirement together, it is said that she responded:

"What I want now is ze same sing I 'ave alwayz wanted. All I want is a penis."

The assembled journalists, of course, were momentarily stunned into silence.

Luckily, the General intervened promptly, and so saved his wife from the awkward follow-up questions that were looming:

"My dear," he said. "I sink it is pronounced 'appiness."

My favourite mispronunciation story, ever.

(I've always wondered, though: did the General simply mean to correct his wife's faulty stress pattern, without twigging what she'd actually said? Probably we will never know. Well, it's probably not a true story anyway.....)

Anyway, once again the hour of happiness is almost upon us. Or perhaps I should say the hour of a penis......

The long goodbye

Wednesday night was a more-than-usually strange one for me in my local, Room 101. I was stuck there on my sad old lonesome for a couple of hours at the start of the evening, with only the prospect of a game of Chinese chess with the barman to distract me.

Then, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of my friends turned up, and we had quite a jolly time for a couple of hours or so. But then they all abruptly left again.

But then a whole bunch of other people I knew appeared. It was getting on for midnight by now, so I was trying to extract myself, but...... well, it just took me so long to say hello & goodbye to these three or four separate acquaintances, probably a good 20 minutes or so. And I'd finished my last drink before I embarked on this farewell tour of the bar. As soon as I finally hit the night air, I realised that I was by now furiously thirsty again, and I'd only made it a few yards up the street before I turned automatically on my heel and strode back into the bar to order one final glass of Stella.

Well, it might have been two. And then the boss bought me another one...... just as everyone was finally about to leave; so I found myself chugging my last beer, once again all alone, just as I had been for my first few.

Strange indeed, but mostly fun.

Anyway, I can't recall ever before having realised that I haven't finished drinking for the night seconds after departing for home - hence this week's haiku.

HBH 91

The siren call tempts,
Making it so hard to leave:
Always one more drink.

Another way to get yourself arrested next month

Try improvising satirical ditties about the Olympics, and singing them lustily as you stagger home through the hutongs at midnight.

My first effort (to the tune of Pink Floyd's 'We Don't Need No Education', of course):

We don't need no 'Green' Olympics
We don't need no smog control
No short-term measures from Zhongnanhai
Hey, Leaders! Leave our Jing alone!

All in all, it's all just become such a bore

A riddle

What do SARS and the Olympics have in common?

Answer: They're both disastrous for my 'love life'.

80% of the foreigners leave town. And that 80%, unfortunately, seems to encompass 100% of the women that I fancy.

In 2003, I had spent 2 or 3 months vainly pursuing a strikingly pretty young Englishwoman who showed no sign of reciprocating my interest whatsoever (sound familiar?). I only finally admitted defeat when she fled the city in the early summer. Soon after, I found unexpected consolation in a very nice drunken smooch with a charming American I'd just met; it was a major bummer to discover that she was booked on a plane out a week later.

I quipped at the time that of all the strange catastrophes that have thwarted my romantic designs over the years, this was the first time that all the women I liked had simultaneously left town because of an impending epidemic. (Ah, but then I started getting 'previous life' flashbacks about that time in Minsk in the 1850s when I was just about to get it on with Shirley MacLaine - and the cholera struck!)

This Olympic summer has taken on a similarly deserted feel. Of my present 'Targets', A and B left some time ago, and C is leaving soon. I had recently added a Target D - but she got airborne about an hour ago.

Two more classic text messages

Around 7pm last night the Bengali quizzed me by SMS as to where I was.

I replied, self-mockingly: "I'm in Room 101. With my girlfriend, Stella."

That would be Ms Artois, of course, a full-figured blonde Belgian lass.

I think he missed the reference, at first. Then he ribbed me for starting so early in the evening.

My justification: "The hour of happiness is upon us."

(The latter is one I've had saved in my phone for a while now. I used to use it as a Friday night call-to-arms for Crazy Chris.)

Taking a month off!

I have no more work until....... well, after the dratted Olympics, probably.

Not quite true: I am wrapping up the final class of the only teaching I have on at the moment tomorrow, I have one or two meetings about possibly fixing up something similar for later in the year, there are some loose ends on a teacher recruitment project to be dealt with, I have a long-ish but fairly straightforward writing task to polish off by the end of next week, there are a few outstanding fees to be chased up, and - doubtless - many, many e-mails to write on this and that. But this is all fairly low-grade, undemanding stuff compared to what I've been putting myself through over the last 3 or 4 months.

Today was the last day on which I had any significant work scheduled - this month, or for the foreseeable future.

It also just happens to be 5kuai shots night in my reliable local, Room 101. "Why, good evening, Mr Beam. It's so nice to make your acquaintance again."

Xiangqi revisited, rediscovered

For the uninitiated, Xiangqi is Chinese chess.

It's basically similar to the chess we know in the West, but with a few fascinating little kinks, the most appealing of which being that it is played on a slightly bigger board, but with fewer pawns, and the pawns can't take diagonally to bolster each other; in fact, there are great gaps between them, so you can get your big pieces rolling into the action right from the get-go, rather than faffing around for ages building up defensive pawn positions. It's a much more direct and vigorous game than Western chess, and it's usually over much, much more quickly.

It's also far more social than Western chess. You see people playing in public everywhere in this country, in parks and squares and just squatting on the sidewalk. And almost always the players will attract a knot of intent onlookers, who will point and mutter and jeer and make occasional interjections of unsolicited advice.

And no-one seems to have heard of that if-you've-touched-it-you've-got-to-move-it bollocks.

All in all, I just find it much more fun than regular chess.

It was quite an obsession of mine when I first came here. I played every chance I could get, and even took to carrying a small set around with me in my coat pocket during the long cold winter we suffered that year, so that I could always challenge my dining or drinking companions of the evening. And I never missed a chance to take 5 or 10 minutes out to watch a street game. As I have recounted before, it was Chen Feng, the young chef at the restaurant where I hung out nightly during my impoverished first year in Beijing, who really taught me how to play the game. Alas, as migrant workers like him tend to do, after a few months he went back home "to get married". There were a few friends and teaching colleagues who were also eager to try to learn the game in that first year, so I had other regular opponents too - but, as tends to happen in Beijing, they all left. I soon found myself without anyone to play against, and my interest in the game was relegated to the back burner.

Until last night........

The goofily amiable young barman at my habitual early evening (and sometimes late evening) hangout, Room 101, generally gives the impression of being one of the least sharp tools in the box, and his bartending skills leave almost everything to be desired, but...... damn, he knows his way around a xiangqi board pretty well.

Of course, I whinge that I am rusty at the game. And I am convinced that he got a double move in on me at one point. And I did blunder away a crucial piece through not realising which point his piece was on (we were playing with a tiny set, with a ruckled plastic mat for a board, and pieces were easily displaced so as to lodge ambiguously between two points - in Chinese chess, you play on the intersections of the lines rather than on the squares themselves).

Nevertheless, he did me good and proper. It was a very elegant end-game, painfully relentless.

I'm relieved I managed to hold my own for so long. But I really must learn how to mobilise my pieces more effectively (I had two chariots - rooks - on the same file for almost the whole game, and did nothing with them!).

I can see this becoming a regular ritual, at least on the quieter nights (of which they have many). But I think I need to get him a bigger chess set........

IPD - the mystery of love explained (maybe)

It could be the secret that Mankind has been searching for all these years - the ultimate key to understanding physical attraction.

I know this guy, The Younger Dr P (junior sibling of my oldest friend, The Egregious Dr P), an eye specialist, who has hatched this theory that the most important component of attractiveness (at least in women.... at least in women that he fancies) is the IPD. That's the Inter-Pupillary Distance, the space between the centre of your left eye and the centre of your right.

Now, of course, we all know that proportion is a crucial element of aesthetics. So, I had initially supposed that the good doctor's theory would be based on identifying an ideal ratio between the IPD and the width of the face, or the width of the eye, or the height of the forehead (or some complex and subtle combination of these measurements, and perhaps others too).

"No!" he corrected me, with a 'mad scientist' gleam in his eye. "It's a constant."

He has a figure in mind, a precise number of millimetres between the centres of the pupils that corresponds to perfect pulchritude. I think he told me what it was once, but I can't now recall. It's probably just as well: such potent knowledge should be kept from the general public - or we'd all be going around with calipers in our pockets, ready to size up potential dates on the basis of exactly how far apart their eyes were.

I confess, I am more than a little sceptical of the doctor's conclusion. I suspect that he has merely found that there is a consistent IPD to which he is attracted; and that this just happens to conform to a certain size of woman and size of face that he is also attracted to, so the proportionality is also perfect. I have fancied women of many different shapes, heights, and head sizes, and I'm sure some of them would have looked, well, funny, if they'd all had the exact same IPD.

Furthermore, I doubt if this can be an objective truth. If there is value in the 'constant IPD' theory of attractiveness, I think it must be in recognising that there is an ideal IPD for each of us (perhaps the same as our own? or do we like girls whose eyes are slightly closer together than ours?), rather than that there's a single standard for the whole of humanity.

It's an intriguing notion, though, eh?

And I can find some consolation in it: Madame X's eyes, alas, are set just a little wider apart than I really care for (although I think it's a matter of proportion, rather than absolute distance). I must try to focus on this fact. Despite managing (almost) to go cold turkey on her since the start of the year, I find that 6 months on I have still not quite shaken off my unfortunate fixation. Sigh.

This week's bon mot

"Alcohol is like love: the first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that, you just take the girl's clothes off."

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

[Well, in fact, I think Marlowe says it in The Long Goodbye.]

Great Love Songs (8)

This is the closing song from Fairground Attraction's 'First Of A Million Kisses' album, Hallelujah, sung by the lovely Eddi Reader. This is a live performance taped for Australian TV in a nightclub in Sydney. (It's terrifying to reflect that this album came out nearly 20 years ago: I am uncomfortably reminded of my advancing senility.)

"Fun" or "No Fun"?

I've been having a bit of a joust with fellow bar-blogger Jim Boyce (well, our blogs really have very little in common: he's mostly ploddingly earnest, reporting openings, closures, and special events on the bar & restaurant scene with much thoroughness, whereas I..... well, I'm just amusing myself.....) over his recent post criticising the foreign media for a spate of stories about "The 'No Fun' Olympics".

I see where he's coming from. He feels these media stories have been exaggerating the impact of measures taken against certain bars and restaurants. He interprets that 'No Fun' banner as suggesting that it will be impossible to have any fun at the Olympics next month. He counters by pointing out that only a relatively small number of entertainment venues have had to close, and suggests that visitors are going to be far less bothered by that than us whingeing resident expats. He also reminds us how many other wonderful things there are to do in Beijing. And he ventures that there are "legitimate security concerns" behind some of the venue closures. So, yeah, pretty much the full Xinhua propaganda package.

His take on the 'No Fun' headline is bollocks - this slogan doesn't suggest that all fun will be impossible, it simply highlights the fact that the government here is taking steps to try to stop people (especially Westerners) having fun.

His representation of the range of 'anti-fun' measures goes to the opposite extreme from the media stories he complains of, and he is guilty of some radical understatement and inaccuracy.

That "legitimate security concerns" line is, I think, arrant nonsense. (One of the things that disturbs me most about some of these measures being taken is that it suggests that the authorities here haven't got a clue about how to ensure real security during the Games, and are just running around madly trying to look busy.)

Worst of all, I am irritated by his complete failure to consider the political motivations underlying these measures. I'm afraid I just found this post glib and facetious - and I told him so. It was also (though probably inadvertently) a riot of arse-kissing Communist Party propaganda.

To my mind, this is not a story to be made light of. (And quite probably, much of the media coverage which Boyce was mocking has itself been far too glib and facetious about this.) If even one bar or restaurant or concert gets closed down supposedly on the grounds of Olympic security concerns, it is too many.

In fact, I think we're well above a dozen now, and it may rise further. Of course, yes, it is just a drop in the ocean of Beijing's diverse nightlife scene - but it's the principle of the thing. It is appalling that this kind of thing is happening. And it would, I'm quite sure, be far worse, if the IOC weren't exercising some restraining influence.

And it really has nothing to do with security. I favour the slogan 'The Mafan Olympics'.

HBH 90 (The Chairman's Mojo - it's all in the tactics)

Six straight victories,
Young challengers confounded:
Chairman finds his form!

It still wasn't quite his best. It didn't quite develop into one of the infamous 'Chairmanizings' of the past, where he spanks all comers for the entire evening. He blundered away a fairly straightforward chance on the black to continue his winning run and face me again (I had surrendered far too easily the first time round!). But the guy who took him was very, very good. And The Chairman had seen off 5 other very decent players between me and him. I think the Chairman's mojo is finally on the way back. His form has been woeful for a while now (though, even when he's playing badly, he's still not easy to beat!), but last night's performance, I think, signalled a turning-point.

I had been trying to get the other most formidable laowai player I know, New Dad, to come out as well, but, alas, he was leaving on a short break from the city. He bestowed on The Chairman a new pool-playing nickname, sending us the text message: "Give my best to Tony the Tactician."

"Well, New Dad doesn't need tactics because his potting's so darned good," sighed His Chairmanliness ruefully.

It was a good line, so I passed it on to His New Dadness. "Tony doesn't need potting because his tactics are so good," he responded even more ruefully.

Actually, when he's fully mojo-ed up, The Chairman has both elements to his game (as does New Dad, come to that). But The Chairman's tactics can be really evil......... And they so often look accidental, which makes it even worse to be on the receiving end of.

My latest PARTY idea

My favourite music bar, 2 Kolegas, has started stocking 'Tibet' beer.

An exciting novelty. Alas, I have to report that it is not a particularly nice drink. The label describes it as a 'Green Barley Beer' - to my mind, 'green' is not a colour that should ever be used in connection with a beer (I don't even like it as a colour for beer bottles; brown or black - or even blue - is much better). As my friend Ben observed, the flavour is uncomfortably suggestive of lu cha (highly sweetened green tea, a favourite cold soft drink out here). Perhaps that perception was misleadingly implanted in our minds by that dratted word 'green' on the label. Or perhaps it just really does taste...... er, not quite as a beer should.

But, you know, anything makes a pleasant change from bloody Tsingtao. And I rather like the idea of buying a few cases of this stuff for my next party - and just giving it away. I think that will make a very enticing slogan for the flyer, don't you?

I think you know what I'm saying........

Bon Voyage

So, farewell then, Crazy Chris.

He was only in China for 9 or 10 months (and only 'on the scene', or on my patch, for 7 or 8 months - having taken a while to start finding his way around), but he left a deep impression. The MP3 playlists at Room 101 and the Pool Bar are enormously improved through his input. And the Live Underwear conversation will inevitably live long in the memory of anyone who was exposed to it.

And yet, entertaining as he could sometimes be, I am not exactly bereft at his departure. He was around just a little too much for comfort: I found it was becoming slightly oppressive, the realisation that it was next to impossible to go to 101 or the Pool Bar without him being there (or, on those rare occasions when he wasn't, without immediately being asked if I knew where he was). Yes, dammit, he had usurped my position as the most loyal customer, the most permanent bar fixture in these places - and I was just a tad resentful of the fact. I'm now rather looking forward to being unchallenged in the position of Customer No. 1 once again (although I fear I'm going to have to endure at least 2 or 3 months of "Where's Chris?").

This is one of the drawbacks of any intimate relationship: the loss of autonomy, the erosion of self, becoming defined primarily as part of a joint entity. For most of this year - in the eyes of most of my bar comrades - I've no longer been just Froog but a part of the Chris & Froog double-act.

Now..... I am reborn. It's a little lonely and disorienting, but I think I'm going to enjoy it.....

Wipeout

Today I was late for work.

Rather badly late.

This is only the the third or fourth time I have overslept like this in China, and the first for quite a few years. The first time ever, I think, that I have inconvenienced my recording studio employers (and my recording partner, Dishy Debs) in this way.

Considering my wild lifestyle, I suppose one might expect it to be a more regular hazard; but in fact, I am a good early riser. Indeed, I am somewhat plagued by the compulsion to leap out of bed at 7am, no matter how late and drunk I may have retired the night before. The tiredness tends to ambush me later in the day - 4pm: instant coma.

On Monday night, I went to bed before 1am (a fact I wasn't quite confident of, but was able to verify by checking the receipt from my taxi ride home). I slept like a log until 10am. I was supposed to have been in the studio by 9.30am. Worrying.

Then again, I had suffered a minor insomniac episode the night before, and got hardly any sleep at all. And I had gone to bed at 2am or 3am on each of the previous four or five nights (and got up again before 8am each day!). I suppose it catches up with you.

This week, I think, I must treat myself to a few 'early nights'.

This week's bon mot

"When the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much - to stun myself."

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

A new 'game' for everyone - please contribute

Earlier this week I started a new thread, inviting readers to share with me their favourite misheard song lyrics. I know, such things are easily overlooked amid the morass of other stuff I've posted, so I thought I would highlight it again.

My friend The British Cowboy refers me to a website called KissThisGuy, which specialises in recording amusingly misheard lyrics. So..... you can go there to find some inspiration, if you like; but really, I'd far rather you shared your own experiences with me.

However, I thought this might help to get your ideas kick-started (cross-posted from Froogville) - a brilliant analysis of the lyrics to Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" (thanks to my blog-buddy 'Tolstoy' for finding this gem!), created by Annie Varner.

Annie (I think I'm in love!) has another similarly wonderful video here - a song apparently called "Silver and Cold" (should that be "Silver and Gold"??) by a band called AFI. This one includes such delights as "O my pitiful wombat" (presumably for "O my beautiful woman"), and "I'll beg her for Guinness" (I was, of course, reminded at once of my bar buddy, The Bookseller).

Enjoy.

Don't feel you have to top this. But do please share your own favourite Misheard Lyrics with me here.

Bat-shit crazy???

My buddy, The British Cowboy, is having a barbecue this weekend. His rib sauce is the talk of Alexandria, Va. At RibFest '07, the police were summoned to restore serenity to the neighbourhood, but meekly beat a retreat when they discovered the place was full of lawyers (although The Cowboy public-spiritedly offered to discontinue the Johnny Cash element of the entertainment).

This year's event will doubtless be a fine affair too.

I responded to his E-Vite by saying that I might just up sticks and come along on a last-minute impulse if I suddenly went bat-shit crazy and couldn't stand to stay in Beijing one second longer. Well......

It's been a mighty close call. Today has again dawned bleak and drizzly. Yet again. And I was to have been earning US$100 or so for about an hour's recording work this afternoon, but it just got cancelled (apparently the client belatedly decided they'd prefer an American - there's no accounting for taste!).

So, yes, I am deeply, deeply disaffected with The Jing at the moment; and I'd far rather be in Alexandria, Va.; but I fear I've left it too late.

I am already building my plans around RibFest 2009.......

Have a great time, Cowboy!

(Of course, The Cowboy's flyer said 'There Will Be Ribs'...... but I guess 'Here Will Be Ribs' works too. I wanted to clip his name and address off the bottom before posting it, but, for some strange reason, my version of Photoshop has become maddeningly glitchy about what it will and will not let you crop. Another reason for my current state of fume.)