tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32693225624145607152012-01-26T09:08:31.397-08:00Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.comBlogger571100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-62353571462034383792012-01-26T06:42:00.000-08:002012-01-26T07:46:25.044-08:00

And....There was T, a 19 year old kid from Texas - who claimed he was there to learn Spanish and then study medicine, making use of the free education offered in Argentina. However he only ever showed interest in smoking weed and mixing dub-step beats. He made Marijuana butter in the kitchen and famously then fried up some ´green´eggs. This brought back for me childhood memories of Dr. Seus and ´

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-62465958929061087132012-01-24T07:13:00.001-08:002012-01-25T12:44:31.015-08:00

Working at the hostel in Buenos Aires, despite being 32 years of age will be, probably when time fades the bad parts, something I look back on as one the best times of my life.Now I can really appreciate it as I sit at Starbucks at Morumbi mall São Paulo - a Gringo English teacher surrounded by office workers from international companies. I´m waiting around several hours till my next class, Its

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-69924706350780083152012-01-21T13:36:00.000-08:002012-01-25T12:46:21.199-08:00

Put your headphones on and go to a corner bar2 beers and listening still to YOUR musicI salute you as a fellow person who doesn't want to shareThe Internet in my dreams, dreamt I was reading a webpageJZ lost 20 Kgs by giving up caffeineanxiety about not having a coffee19 people a day become millionaires hereWhen you´re depressed you don't washUnder the motorway they can´tThe elevated motorway

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-64476941737990669862011-01-23T00:07:00.000-08:002011-01-23T00:09:03.373-08:00

How did I become a banker making a 6 figure salary, sterling that is, here in London??? Im sure the golf and Chardonay will take my mind off it tmw!!

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-14106388481593133292009-01-27T00:16:00.000-08:002009-01-27T00:25:09.596-08:00

Her spot was outside the convenience store on the corner of YueYang Road, just up from The Eager Beaver, or opposite, by Abbey Road Bar. The first time I saw her, through the window of the Beaver, I thought she was another westernised girlfriend of some dopey ex-pat. I think it was late summer at that stage – before she got into the all encompassing winter coat – so I could see she had a hot

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-51608688647735367082009-01-26T00:27:00.000-08:002009-01-27T00:17:27.920-08:00

When I´ve set a class an activity, and they are working away happily, I am usually too caffeined-up to sit down, I begin to pace as much as the confines of the class allow – no one seems to mind. I go back and forth, back and forth, much like two Polar Bears I remember in the Wellington Zoo. They did it down to the same swing of the head on each turn. Funny, some twenty years later and I´m living

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-79486736958835781422009-01-24T17:13:00.000-08:002009-01-29T02:00:53.982-08:00

In an effort to save money I´m renting a room sub-let to me by a nice Christian boy. I´ve been here since December and will be out in February when the lease is up. The guys who rented this place signed for a year, somehow forgetting they would want to go back home once the Uni holidays began. And so all but one of the six rooms are now being sub-let. Thing is the landlord is unaware of all this

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-6851443409816730492009-01-22T00:37:00.000-08:002009-01-27T00:18:11.197-08:00

Dinner last night consisted of four eggs (which I thought conservative) microwaved with grated cheese, eaten from an old ice cream punnet. Several spices, including oregano were added. The night before was an 8 pack of precooked sausages. He ate seven of them, the eighth is still in his room on a plate beside the bed.This is my flatmate, a 21 year old from Invercargil. The South of the South

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-49176553135419455292009-01-18T15:40:00.000-08:002012-01-25T06:52:41.303-08:00

Take this whole thing as a joke, but the day which really ended it for me, was the one we went to the fish market. It was the hottest day of that summer, which while a simple fact, certainly didn´t help the situation. Nobody had said the fish market would be worth a look, it was my idea to go, I had to drag him out of bed, throw him into the shower etc. The market was near a temple district, one

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-70080883015767676322008-12-04T01:47:00.000-08:002008-12-04T02:11:00.619-08:00

My mind has been completely blank of late, and I have to tell you it´s a delicious state to be in. In fact I hope that you may have such happiness.I´ve just been listening to Brian Eno´s ´Music For Airports´ as I´m sick of rock and reggae (not to mention electronica), am I about to discover classical music?I´m no great fan of the concept album, but this is a good practical one, I wonder if any

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-50608978969017189762008-10-26T19:48:00.000-07:002008-10-26T23:27:47.347-07:00

And I hereby humbly ask others to put forward their own choices of preferred colleagues. No offence to those who are now my colleagues, but we are a bigger, better, faster trade-in species.Anthony BurgessThat crusty Brit who created Enderby, the man who wrote poetry on the toilet. In ´The Clockwork Testament´ Enderby does a stint as an English Professor at ´The University of Manhattan´ in New

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-90456560850776945012008-10-19T01:56:00.000-07:002008-10-19T02:14:39.905-07:00

I´m afraid this is an awfully disjointed affair...I´m training polling place workers for the next two weeks. I hope Rip Van Winkle, the man who´s been asleep for twenty years, doesn´t turn up and ask what all this MMP (mixed member proportional) you get two votes nonsense is. Yes my friends we no longer follow the FFP (first past the post) system, we have proportional representation in this

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-53248358100230315042008-10-18T22:33:00.000-07:002008-10-19T03:06:22.098-07:00

Harvested on the west coast of Washington state and British Columbia, mainly for the Asian Market – Geoduck clams (象拔蚌 elephant trunk clams in Chinese), are one of the delicacies on show at Shanghai´s Tongchuan market (do check it out if you´re in Shanghai) that I could never bring myself to try. Burying themselves in the sand to feed on plankton, the geoducks take quite some digging out, and

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-23269697723045539322008-10-08T02:24:00.000-07:002008-10-10T19:48:37.459-07:00

Said it before, Wellington is a bit of a Teflon city. Exercise nuts and cafe society. It was a real joy then to work two days out in Porirua this week. Was out there on governmental duty, not teaching. Sat in a Vietnamese run bakery around 8am, you could get a greasy breakfast for 8 bucks. The blackboard menu stated specifically that you could not substitute your eggs, sausages or bacon for salad

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-26322321194495123042008-10-06T19:55:00.000-07:002008-10-18T18:16:08.549-07:00

At the restaurant we were given a table on the second floor. The deal was 40 Yuan for all you could eat and drink. As we walked in there was many a wildly exited local greeting us with their wife-beaters rolled up to their chests. They made a pretty picture smoking cigarettes out the corner of their mouths, dropping ash on their exposed bellies, while gambei’ing the hell out of the local beer. In

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-37126327988114545552008-09-23T02:44:00.000-07:002008-10-10T19:49:10.552-07:00

Bear with me, this is not another alcohol fueled travel tale. I briefly stood in the French Cultural Consular´s (I think that is the correct title) office at 5 this evening. There was a magnificent view of Wellington harbour, the compact toy city nestled in the gentler slopes leading down to the water. My home city suddenly reminded me of Zurich, a place I once got stuck in for three days, and

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-19629918289196254852008-09-21T04:17:00.000-07:002008-09-21T23:13:35.702-07:00

It came to me as awoke on the train and looked out the window...down, down into the lush valleys of Javanese jungle, which made me feel like the train was suspended in thin air - racing haphazardly between massive green cliffs...I had met a very interesting character in Jakarta.I then promptly fell back asleep and missed some of what is, from what I saw, one of the most amazing train rides in the

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-47248672251584596882008-09-19T05:16:00.001-07:002008-09-21T04:00:10.488-07:00

At a recent Professional Development session I was handed an article dealing with vocabulary aquisition written by an academic at the local Universiy, a world renowned expert no less. Being the kind of person I am, I promptly lost the article - I basically resent PD sessions for cutting into my prep and coffee drinking time.But this article was a reminder of the academic hierarchy of TEFl

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-49251641056986819212008-09-15T02:59:00.000-07:002008-09-15T03:09:21.303-07:00

Life brings a ray of hope, a welcome castle in the air - as I was on the phone to California talking business last Friday. Grand fantasies have ensued.The elections here bring a thin ripple of exitement to the sport obsessed populace and some extra work for me....I'm a bit worried about coping with the responsibility.Meanwhile...Why don't you take your jacket off?shy bodyWhat were you doing

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-60224879937672117332008-09-11T15:01:00.000-07:002008-09-21T04:00:48.765-07:00

The first of these gruesome tales comes from the pen Zheng Yi, the book is called "Scarlet Memorials" and it's about cannibalism in Guangxi province, China during Mao's Cultural Revolution. There is some debate on Amazon as to whether the book is a hoax or not. My feelings are it is a serious historical work. Here are some outtakes, amazing stuff...This first outtake might as well be taken from

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-83526278628285202722008-08-28T03:17:00.000-07:002008-08-29T19:42:42.020-07:00

City of Lost Souls 漂流街 Takashi Miike 2000Starts off with a shoot out somewhere in Brazil during a dust storm, then switches to a bus of immigrants in the Japanese (not American) desert. A Chinese girl on the bus named Kei (played by the Macanese Michelle Reis), is saved from deportation by her Japanese Brazilian boyfriend, Mario, who blazes in, jumping out of a hijacked helicopter. Mario is the

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-63604672754090595802008-08-15T02:42:00.000-07:002008-09-18T00:20:11.436-07:00

"When I should have been producing obscure volumes of verse entitled the Triumph of Humpty Dumpty or the Nose with the Luminous Dong! Or at best, like Clare, “weaving fearful vision” … A frustrated poet in every man. Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one’s great work on “Secret Knowledge,” then one can always say when it never comes

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-68326078401872153472008-08-13T04:40:00.000-07:002008-08-13T04:54:46.569-07:00

Probably the most famous person here in Wellington, judge for yourself...

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-45343802656189038472008-08-13T02:37:00.000-07:002008-09-22T00:34:03.715-07:00

Last year work required me to go repeatedly to two rather deliverancesque cities: Yixing in Jiansu province, a three hour bus ride from Shanghai, and Chuzhou in Anhui, a six hour train trip from the great metropolis. Man, those two towns! places where it felt like McDonald's or KFC was the best place to be - although this is not in fact true, at least for Chuzhou, which has a nice Buddhist

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-71917809934442448582008-08-11T00:12:00.000-07:002008-08-13T02:00:56.135-07:00

Brewman your computer's been down.I read on the weekend by the national library, across from the ugliest cathedral in the world. It's pink concrete - the first stone cast by Lizzy back in 195?. But if you want urban architecture, the national library and the cathedral opposite - up from the parliament buildings, only place to go round here.Lizzy you never had any taste.I don't remember which Brit

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-9223569960920152192008-07-27T03:08:00.000-07:002008-08-02T18:15:15.492-07:00

I'm gonna do a couple of days work with a government department this week, and so I'm pinning my hopes that this may lead to a path out of teaching (I've thought this before, my official job title last year in Shanghai was 'Management Consultant' wank wank, but the job sure seemed to involve quite a bit of teaching). Anyway, in response to MC Ward, here are some things TEFL has going for it:1. If

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-57323274214386367302008-07-25T05:52:00.000-07:002008-08-11T02:52:47.439-07:00

‘Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper Is Expensive’ (which is unfortunately not on Youtube) is one of those movies you insist friends watch, so convinced you are of its life changing qualities. After watching they call it off-beat, fucked up and (if I may use the term) plotless. The movie, directed by Wayne Wong, is a fairly half-baked triad flick take-off, featuring a wealth of odd-ball characters

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-70206499201613138012008-07-12T19:31:00.000-07:002008-08-11T00:05:42.603-07:00

I’ve just been watching a video of Ingrid Betancourt’s first speech after she was rescued from the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionadas de Colombia). It’s brought to mind some thoughts on elitism, image, nationality and really being the real deal.There is also an interesting video of Ingrid meeting with the FARC as part of her 2002 presidential campaign. She appears as a fit and elegant woman

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-42718265111993000662008-07-10T22:28:00.000-07:002008-07-11T01:37:56.986-07:00

A career that wasn’t:After finishing University I got a job working for a landscape gardener in Queenstown. The owner of the landscaping business, my boss, was a Dutch guy called Rudd. Rudd later tragically died, struck by a truck after leaving a local council meeting.A lot of the work was fairly simple stuff: mowing lawns, felling trees and scrub cutting. Now, I probably wasn’t the right guy for

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-29397563593759685252008-07-06T04:33:00.000-07:002008-07-06T04:53:20.621-07:00

I'll shoot straight with yea: I'm trying to write a comic story about a fat guy who muddles through a number of labouring jobs - and eventually goes nuts, while his partner in crime - a country boy who sleeps with the ugliest women in the world - ends up as a famous yet terrible poet. I already have a number of his bad poems, on the nature of hard yakka and the anitpodean landscape, mapped out. I

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-28874492993790851422008-06-30T05:01:00.001-07:002008-06-30T05:30:02.378-07:00

I was on a road trip up the coast over the weekend, it wasn’t great weather for getting out of the car, but the winter scenery was pleasant enough. The road wound through bush covered hills and water-logged farmland. The only deciduous trees on display, a kind of introduced beech I think, contrasted starkly with the natives: tall dead European skeletons in front of dripping moss-covered

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-52108109902416190022008-06-19T08:08:00.000-07:002008-06-20T18:11:18.611-07:00

I have a 'one on two' class with a German couple doing Master of Law degrees here in NZ. They want rules man, rules! And expect my brain to be computer: 'in how many sentences out of ten do the adverbs accidentally and coincidentally mean the same thing' etc. I am quite capable of fighting back and staving off their questions with such gems as 'Why can meat be rotten but not cheese?' 'Meat is

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-20737561137671781092008-06-17T04:42:00.000-07:002008-06-17T05:37:31.431-07:00

He was from South Carolina or Louisiana – somewhere like that. He was tall, ponderous and a bit stupid. He told me he had a degree in agronomy, which at the time I’d never heard of (as much as I hate to admit it). He travelled from Tianjin to Dalian during the summer of ’01 and that’s where I met him; I can’t say the conversation was good, but he went through the ever interesting motions like

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-54340644322263860322008-06-16T02:22:00.000-07:002008-08-11T02:53:33.492-07:00

I'm hoping to write less about drinking, nationalities and China (already broken a former resolution) in the future. Not sure if I'll then have much else to say.I just read the best piece of horror writing ever, by John Vidal, in the Guardian UK newspaper, about Komodo dragons eating a buffalo. Inspired by that, and giving myself licence to be silly with only a couple of hours to go before I turn

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-33150099143437133102008-06-13T00:27:00.000-07:002008-06-15T00:42:15.759-07:00

Edit: not that anybody will come across this, I still think it best to change a few names here2002 Shanghai, I was a barman. I worked for Uncle Stan, at Uncle Stan's bar (which was in actual fact owned by his Shanghainese wife).Uncle Stan was quite a well known figure around Shanghai, and hardly secretive about some of the murkier aspects of his career. And in light of this, I'm pretty sure he

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-38994618522386823152008-06-07T22:32:00.000-07:002008-06-08T00:50:13.095-07:00

Here is a low-quality offering.The Culture Smart New Zealand customs and etiquette guidebook, a resource from that place nefariously called ‘work’, has had me in stitches lately, especially when I read excerpts from it to try provoke reactions from my compatriots and or colleagues.The book is written by a Brit – and it is none too sycophantic – but generally fair. The comparisons need to be held

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-63122941231261352422008-05-26T00:05:00.000-07:002008-05-30T02:53:47.433-07:00

I have read with great amusement lately some of the satires from 'notes from the tefl graveyard' which portray the TEFL teacher (in the form of a young MC Ward) as a rakishly drunk Bohemian - a speaker of many languages, a lover of foreign woman - and, no doubt, a political activist with the better interest of his brother man at heart.However, as the satires point out, once you actually hit the

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-63086065173211023992008-05-25T01:52:00.000-07:002008-05-27T04:19:23.034-07:00

“Look for camels in their preferred areas first i.e. near salt lakes, in areas of new plant growth, around the edges of clay pans (preferred sleeping areas and first areas for new plant growth) and in lightly wooded areas. Don't exclude the tops of hills or ranges as camels are adept climbers.”www.camelaust.comI’ve had vague thoughts of celebrating my thirtieth in sober fashion, in fact, I

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-55111477149959109442008-05-08T04:45:00.000-07:002008-05-08T17:04:12.583-07:00

Feeling a little delusional, not the best day on the job....the dynamic of a class which has Brazilians, Belgians, Koreans and a Swiss doing my head in. But check this one out for fun, probably only make sense to those who have had Confucian culture shock:I remember eons ago, 1997 in fact, sitting as an 18 year old lad in an elementary Spanish class. The teacher started to cry midway through the

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-83475699022126159322008-05-07T00:35:00.000-07:002008-05-08T01:25:57.986-07:00

Now then, here, I’d like to focus on what I really enjoyed about China (simple things really), and also admit a few sins from my time there. I was in China off and on between May 2001 and Jan 2008. The total time I spent in country was just over three years. I was by no means the best behaved foreigner, and by no means the worst. I made a valiant attempt to learn the language (although I’m no Da

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-52947846695649238712008-05-06T01:53:00.000-07:002008-05-06T04:39:13.141-07:00

With the war of the cyber-sphere still continuing over China, Tibet, CNN, The French and the Olympics, I feel its time for me to get away from posting about China. I have been once again drawn into reading about the 'war' through two new developments of late: the Chinese having an ugly nationalist march in Auckland, and a Chinese student interviewing the Dalai Lama. But what more can one man, one

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-68918779833205983112008-05-04T02:11:00.000-07:002008-06-01T00:46:05.386-07:00

...unfortunately, it's got me all creative like. Been resting my bruised head by reading Solzhenitzhyn's prose poetry and then tried to have a crack myself:At The Start of the DayAt sunrise thirty young people ran out into the clearing; they fanned out, their faces turned toward the sun, and began to bend down, to drop to their knees, to bow, to lie flat on their faces, to stretch out their arms,

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-35293501176044315742008-05-03T16:29:00.000-07:002008-05-09T07:12:01.152-07:00

I got bashed early Saturday morning. I was alone and rather drunk, but these were people looking for someone to prey on. This kind of senseless violence is not uncommon in NZ.I was recently reading an article in the Guardian about how alcohol dulls the brain and makes you less aware of danger. This was certainly the case, my survival instincts took a while to kick in. I went to a dinner party of

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-6106759302157169422008-04-27T16:30:00.000-07:002008-05-04T03:32:00.046-07:00

Shanghai seems to be a swish place for expats these days: flash clubs, company accounts and villa complexes. Many of the expats are also quite tragic though – or those coming into the bar I worked at certainly were. Like many English teachers with a lot of time to themselves, I’ve recorded various scenes and moods from the world of odd bods I move in. The TEFL world is a basket case, and well,

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-52386711153832130852008-04-26T22:09:00.000-07:002008-05-12T03:35:38.888-07:00

Henry!...One Chinese lad still has a Frenchman as his hero (taken at Tongchuan market Shanghai). I have a gig teaching at the French embassy, Wellington, NZ. Starting last week, I teach the secretary, the consul and the visa officer every Tuesday. The secretary is a well-groomed woman of about 29, who wants to work on phrasal verbs. Her English is good, but abrupt, she has questions like: “what

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-17551963957604457572008-04-24T20:57:00.000-07:002008-11-09T01:55:04.455-08:00

As I entered a hostel kitchen in Buenos Aires one evening, I came across a white-haired Argentine man of about sixty.‘Would you like to have a drink with me? He asked, even before I could get to the fridge. He seemed to find no other form of introduction necessary.‘Sure’, I said.He produced a half full litre bottle of Quilmes, the very same beer that I‘d come to retrieve.I later found out that

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-37349307835714781632008-04-14T19:39:00.000-07:002008-05-04T03:33:06.445-07:00

Different cities have different underbellies, different sights to be seen wandering the streets after dark. Stray dogs are common to many places, but never have I seen so many dogs chasing cars as in Santiago, Chile. Many of these dogs had lovely personalities, but when a car went by they turned completely savage, hurtling down the road in pursuit of the offending vehicle. They did not just chase

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-71947176910627802022008-04-11T18:42:00.000-07:002008-05-04T03:33:30.647-07:00

I have been reading, basically as light entertainment, William S Burroughs's 'The Western Lands'. One of the book's many fragmented dialogues deals with what happens when the public finds out the medical establishment has been suppressing the cure for cancer: 'And mutiny in the ranks: Doctor X a respected oncologist practising in a Midwestern city asks that his name be withheld: "I have seen it

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-68634459165870816022008-04-01T14:59:00.001-07:002008-04-12T18:33:24.458-07:00

I plan to talk a bit more about this in a future post, but last December I flew to Budapest for a whirlwind visit. On the Saturday morning, having completed the business that had brought me to Hungary, I caught a taxi to Astoria Square and walked up Rakoczi Avenue to a hostel I knew from a previous visit.Walking into a dormitory around 11am, I was struck by the smell of stale sweat. I checked my

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-71404818491862405192008-03-31T20:00:00.000-07:002008-05-04T03:33:56.409-07:00

I am proud to announce that Wellington has a bum problem. Aro Park in the inner-city suburb of Te Aro has always had a pretty hippy rep, what with the community centre next door and the wool and tie-die lot who sit round the park. Awhile ago some hippy kid yelled out to me asking for LSD as he sat round with his mates: harmless of course, but completely gormless and full of affectation. Anyway,

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-18661475131477827102008-03-28T18:28:00.000-07:002008-05-04T06:09:24.944-07:00

This memorial to communists killed by the nationalists in the Chinese Civil war is a little creepy. If you go to Nanjing you’ll probably skip it and take in Sun Yat Sen’s mausoleum up on Purple Mountain, which provides, to be honest, a more satisfying day of sightseeing. In the museum of the martyrs there is a hologram display in which KMT guards/soldiers whip and beat their communist prisoners,

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-39513365204543197942008-03-02T15:45:00.000-08:002008-05-04T03:34:58.354-07:00

`BUT YOU can't do it, you know,' friends said, to whom I applied for assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of London. `You had better see the police for a guide,' they added, on second thought, painfully endeavoring to adjust themselves to the psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better credentials than brains.`But I don't want to see the

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-48766002675164038382008-02-26T15:33:00.000-08:002008-05-04T03:35:24.283-07:00

Life in China is hard for the masses: unpaid migrant workers, prostitutes, overtaxed farmers, cancer-ridden smokers. These issues aren't talked about much though: the government controlled press sticks to economic figures and the Olympics. When I think about the underbelly of China - I think of what I've seen of the turtles there:In a teashop a turtle in a small glass bowl constantly climbs the

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-87563408020898602902008-02-25T16:50:00.001-08:002008-05-04T03:35:49.480-07:00

This pic gives a good accurate impression of the Shanghai skyline: blurry, grey and viewed across some undoubtedly loud, dusty and downright massive construction site. The photo was taken from somewhere in the old western side of the city (Puxi) and looks across to the ultra-modern skyscrapers of the new (post 1990) eastern side (Pudong). The building second from the left is actually a lot closer

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-55611560296295571222008-02-24T12:59:00.001-08:002008-05-04T03:36:09.369-07:00

Chilean Subculture 1: Goths and Brit-pop fansWhy the fuck do Chilean youngsters like Goth and Brit-pop so much? OK I can understand the Goth thing, Chileans have a rep as the English of South America - introverted, a bit depressed living in the polluted relative grimness of urban Santiago. But Brit-pop? They have Erasure and Human League nights down at Blondie disco, Suede, Pulp and Depeche Mode

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-83267648343980607282008-02-24T12:57:00.000-08:002008-05-04T03:36:36.397-07:00

Special Brew, I understand, is the strong stuff drunk by British tramps. In New Zealand it's not available, much to the distress of the large British man of Caribbean extraction, who was a nightly visitor to the now defunct Henty's Wines and Spirits, Grey Lynn, Auckland. He had to content himself with Carlsberg Elephant beer, which is 7.5 percent.My own stint at Henty's finished when a man came

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3269322562414560715.post-58636003025077392162008-01-11T00:04:00.000-08:002008-08-11T00:21:55.946-07:00

Felix awakes to find his wife sitting up on the side of the bed rubbing her eyes. She makes him ill; the carefully chosen linen, the flower-patterned wallpaper: the entire bedroom on her side, not his. His jaw slightly clenched, he sourly goes through his morning ablutions in the on-suite bathroom. He tries to wipe away the fallen stubble in the sink with a tissue, knowing he will still leave

Special Brew Manhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123755129522724579noreply@blogger.com0