Posts by Charles Mabbett
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The thing that got me when I went to China was just how ordinary and normal everything seemed. I had penetrated the bamboo curtain and it was full of people doing ordinary everyday things like driving taxis and shopping and going to work. Quelle surprise!
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How's this for outdated perceptions of China. It's by Keith Quinn who is a venerable old thing in NZ broadcasting. But this is a real clanger (taken from his blog on the TVNZ website):
"Now come on! Who of us in our wildest breadth of imagination would have ever thought the outside world would have ever been invited in behind the previously impenetrable bamboo curtain to see such a sight? I feel privileged to be part of the team here seeing that sort of stuff unfold."
THE IMPENETRABLE BAMBOO CURTAIN??!!
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The man-bra! I love it. Diabolical isn't it? What were they thinking?
And the blue shell suits the Aussie athletes were wearing on Friday night have been described by some as 'sucked popsicles'.
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Phew! did anyone else think the Australian uniform sucked at the opening ceremony? it seems to be universally unpopular among the Aussie public too.
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Wow! that's a spectacularly stupid gesture by the Spanish basketballers!
It is worse than the blunder committed by the four US cyclists that got off a flight at Beijing airport in their masks.
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Ummm, is this the safe 'it's okay to just talk about the sport' zone? What a relief!
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Thanks Emma. I think that's help clarify many of the points that have been discussed on this thread. How about another blog soon?
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I'll shut up now.
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Peter Darlington - I completely agree!
Brazil looked very routine and New Zealand looked awful! It depresses me the way they can't keep possession for more than two or three passes.
As a mad soccer fan, i actually also agree football shouldn't be at the Olympics and get the horse events and board sailing and tennis. The horse events and board sailing are boring. So is shooting. Tennis and football have their own global showcases.
And another rule of thumb could be sex appeal - if it hasn't got sex appeal, dump it.
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I accept that but technically, the first language Indonesians learn at home as children before they go to school would be their first language - whether it is Javanese, Balinese or Bahasa. English is a language accretion that comes a little later. I lived in Indonesia as a child so I know what you are saying but I suspect that social scientists tend to be quite technical about the first language definition. Mind you the statistics probably don't accommodate people who grew up speaking two or more languages concurrently. But I'm being pedantic. Still there may be a PhD in there for some budding linguist.