Posts by Chris Waugh
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Capture: Better Food Photography, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Thanks.
Unfortunately, the weekend has been moved to create a long weekend on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for Qingming/Tomb Sweeping Day. So my wife and I have to work. Her maternal grandma will make sure the rural Chinese customs are fulfilled during the day - noodles to represent our wishes for a long life. My wife will get a cake on the way home from work. But a party really would've been nice. At the very least I'll make sure to get her some strawberries on the way home.
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Capture: Better Food Photography, in reply to Hebe,
Ah, excellent idea, and one I can certainly manage with current equipment. I'll have to try that. Thanks!
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Dunno, can't see it. Youtube is blocked. The Firefox add on I installed because it was supposed to get me over (or through or under) the Great Firewall doesn't bloody work. I'll have to try and find some more effective way over the GFW. Hopefully without having to spend money on a VPN.
But I'll take your word for it.
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I hated How Bizarre when it first came out. Then when I was living in Taiyuan, the only Kiwi in the city (trust me. The expat population was tiny. Friends would tell me, "Hey, I met an Aussie. Want me to introduce you?"). I walked into my favourite little pirated CD store*, a place where as soon as they saw a new face, they'd ask, "So you like punk**?. I found OMC's album, instantly bought it, loved it, just for that sweet nostalgia for a far away home.
I think music is largely about context. Even ABBA can sound good in the right time and place.
*Actually, many of their CDs and cassettes were the spiked variety. Excess stock that the US companies would either ram a spike through or cut a slit in to make them 'unuseable' then dump. They found their way to China, where many people relied on them for anything and everything beyond the bubblegum Mandopop and similarly bland Western pop. At most, if a CD had a slit cut in, the slit only went far enough into the CD that you lost the last track of the album, but the rest was fine. If it was spiked, the spike was run through the centre, but the cracks radiating out from the hole very rarely made the CD unplayable. Spiked cassettes were unplayable, but what people did was unscrew the cassette, take out the tape, unscrew an intact blank or Mandopop cassette, put the tape from the spiked cassette inside, screw the cassette back together. Good as gold.
**For them there, 'punk' meant anything that wasn't Mandopop, Cantopop, Kenny G, Celine Dion, Richard Marx, or the Carpenters. It included some unfortunate methods of making recording companies money like Metallica. Nevermind, I still got me lots of good music.
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Capture: Better Food Photography, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Ooh, yummy. My daughter loves her strawberries. I'll have to find me a recipe for strawberry muffins when I get my baking gear.
Oh, and she'll be 1 tomorrow. Pity I don't have any muffin trays now, they'd be a great birthday present.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to James Butler,
The first rule of being pretentious is to have the chops to back it up
Absolutely. That's why I now loathe Pearl Jam.
And it would've been fairer to say that Radiohead worked for me at a stage in my life that happened to coincide with them being good. But that takes the fun out of discussions like this.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to philipmatthews,
They’re like the Radiohead of metal
Constantly whining?
I liked (edited because I caught myself making the same mistake with tense I'm always on at my students about. Gah!) Radiohead back in The Day - as in, when I was also a whiny teenager. Then in Tianjin I had constant arguments with a colleague who was into... ummm... that even whinier Radiohead copycat... Oh joy! I've even forgotten their name! I decided to have another listen to Radiohead for old time's sake, never again will that long whinge pollute any CD player, computer, or other device capable of playing music of mine.
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I dunno, maybe some of you will be geoblocked for coming from IP addresses in IPR-respecting countries.... But if Youku will let you see this, I think Song Zuying's 《爱我中华》 (I love China) is a pretty good example of sonic torture. I had to hit pause before the music started to avoid developing the urge to tip concentrated sulfuric acid into my ears, or my mother in law deciding to sing along.
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And Youtube being blocked means I can't subject myself to all your musical tastes or distastes.
Back when I first came to China in '99 Celine Dion's This Song Will Go On and On and On was on endless repeat everywhere. Her and the Carpenters, Kenny G, Richard Marx...
And Jay Chou. Partly because he seems to spend more time advertising junk than actually making music, but mostly because he's pompous and self-important and so painfully cool, almost rivalling Bono.
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to JacksonP,
but there appears to be a directionality in the approach of businesses in China towards greater transparency.
Yep. A few too many food safety scandals or chemical plants planned for very close to and upwind of residential areas, among other things. Technology seems to be helping - what with SMS and Twitter (now banned, but we've still got Weibo and other copycats) there was no hiding the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake like they did with Tangshan back in '76. There's a long long ways to go, though.