Silly Billy

Well, hello there! In honour of Silly Billy's recent relocation from China to the United States, I thought I'd make this run-down of why life is so very much easier around here. In no particular order - apart from number one, which is number one - here are my 66 reasons why it's better to live on Route 66 than Liyang Jie.

1. Decent brewed coffee is widely and deliciously available.
2. Chairs and tables are designed for people of average Western height and size.
3. The range of edible fast food extends beyond McDonalds.
4. The range of inedible fast food extends beyond KFC.
5. When you want something midway through a meal out, the server will probably come over unheeded and ask if everything's all right. (In China, you have to crane your neck in every direction before screaming 'Foo-yennnnn!' at the top of your voice.)
6. Splashing water on your face does not require bending the knees
7. The toilets don't look like this:

8. Using a public computer does not necessitate getting pernicious adware.
9. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Blogger are accessible at any time.
10. Cinemas show movies in English.
11. Taxis have seatbelts.
12. Supermarkets don't sell live birds.
13. Opening the kitchen window will not result in a new pet bat.
14. Apartment complexes have lifts.
15. Nobody says 'at last' when they mean 'in the end'.
16. Rubbish bins don't look like this:

17. Coffee at the airport does not cost $12.88
18. Buying takeaway meatball soup does not result in convulsive vomiting.
19. Convulsive vomiting over a sink does not result in a broken rib.
20. Showering is in a stall or bathtub, not over the floor
21. The internet works during the midday heat.
22. There are no bars without beer on tap.
23. Babies do their business in nappies, not on the street.
24. Cooking herbs don't come via international mail.
25. Headache tablets don't come via international mail.
26. DVDs don't come with Mandarin subtitles burnt on, and usually feature accessible menus.
27. Drinkable wine is widely and deliciously available.
28. Cheese is less than a 90-minute train ride away.
29. Popcorn doesn't have sugar.
30. Fruit salad doesn't have mayonnaise.
31. Pasta doesn't have ketchup, and is served warm.
32. You can buy things online with a foreign credit card.
33. You can buy a cup of coffee with a credit card.
34. Overheard music sometimes sounds good.
35. Ham is savoury, not sweet.
36. Nobody drinks red wine with ice.
37. Sofas are comfortable.
38. Buses don't make your insides rattle.
39. Toilets have toilet paper.
40. Most streets can be walked in sandals.
41. Haircuts don't come with painful knuckle 'massages'
42. Crisps generally don't have added mint flavour.
43. Christmas is widely celebrated.
44. Visiting an internet café does not require a passport.
45. A man of average height can walk through doorways unimpeded:

46. Gizzards are discarded.
47. Lunch is generally served later than 11:05am.
48. Local currency can be exchanged overseas.
49. Irregular bowel movements are just that - irregular.
50. Television's worth watching, at least some of the time.
51. English-language bookstores are not a phenomenon exclusive to megalopolises.
52. Westlife aren't popular.
53. Red meat never smells like dirt.
54. You never see anyone take a dump.
55. The number of rooms in your house does not depend on the season.
56. Notice is usually given before professional or social appointments.
57. Chances are somebody else will have already devised an English-language map for your town and you won't have to make one yourself.
58. Personal bags can come to the supermarket.
59. Lighters can come on the plane in your luggage.
60. No matter how incomprehensible you are, ordering a beer will never result in lime Bacardi Breezer.
61. Video games, for those that play them, are more thrilling than your average taxi ride.
62. Milk is less than a taxi ride away.
63. The dimmest child won't think New York is in Africa.
64. Limes exist.
65. Water can be ingested safely.
66. Pigs don't fly:

There are plenty more reasons I could add to this strange list I'm sure, although stranger still was the slight feeling of nostalgia I had while writing it. Until next time, dear readers, suffice to say life is complicated in China. :-)

With the rising of the sun comes a rising of every color in the rainbow. It's October in Albuquerque, and the International Balloon Fiesta is delighting locals and visitors alike with a combined lift-off of hot air balloons the rest of the world can only imagine.

The famous festival draws thousands of people each year to see its magical moments of a clear blue sky knitted with a patchwork of color. Giant buzzing bees, super-size pints of beer and massive cows were some of the unusual shapes we saw floating across the horizon.

And this is not a festival to just stand behind a barrier and watch - from any vantage point at the Fiesta Park, you can see hot air balloons unloaded, stretched out, inflated and launched right before your eyes.

The early start is perhaps not for the faint hearted - we were on the road before 6am to squeeze in the drive, park n' ride and breakfast burrito with coffee before sun-up. The balloons can't go up or stay up in the full heat of the day, hence the dawn rush. But the amazing views mean it is surely worth the effort - I'm told it is the most photographed event in the world.

To that end, here follows a series of snaps I took at the fiesta. Let's look at the experience of one of the hundreds of balloons, named Moonshine. It arrives in a truck like this:

then gets inflated to this...

Last minute addition of crew member...

...quick TV interview...

...and then off it goes! More photos from the day in this blog's Photo Gallery or on my Picasa Gallery, which you can get to via the Favourite Links on the right of the page or through my website. Until next time, dear readers, here's to a similarly rapid rise for Silly Billy on his new adventure in the USA :-)

Months ago Ciarán, friend and delightful obscurantist, alerted me to an interesting upcoming event: a total solar eclipse. It would only be visible over a certain arc of Asia, a curve which happened to sit just a few hundred kilometres above Lishui.

Ahead of time we weren't even sure we would be in China on the day, but that all worked out and so on 22 July we were out on the balcony in our PJs buoyed by eclipse excitement.

Our frequently unseen neighbours, a mix of teachers of all ages and their kids, were out in force too.

These guys, not seen since they were watching us barbecue like they were seeing a bizarre exotic ritual, even had eclipse glasses for the occasion!

Another block over, meanwhile, a lady and her son had gotten hold of what looked like a piece of glass doused in black ink and were determinedly using it.

This Chinese girl, age unknown (they look the same from 11 to 35!) spent most of the time on either her house phone or mobile, and then went running off down the hill right in the middle of the eclipse for some reason.

As for ourselves, well I discovered you could look askance at the eclipse with two pairs of shades on without going blind. I realise this is not medically sound, but was a working solution for a lazy observer! We really only got the 85% version of what they had in the actual path of totality - the sun still had a tiny sliver of moon-like presence.

It still looked really cool - the campus was cloaked in semi-darkness of an unnatural kind, while the inside of the apartment was as dark as the middle of the night. Made me think of the eerie, tinted vision of U2's 'Last Night On Earth' video. Mere minutes later, the sun came back out and normal 30-plus scorching service resumed as if nothing untoward had occurred.

So it's at this point, as the eclipse fever starts to fade, that you start realise the hype behind an event like this is considerable. 'The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st Century', not to be outdone in anybody's lifetime we're told but only in the year 2132. You believe it without realising you're just being sold a different superlative each time.

Credit must go to BBC News for at least partially dispelling this myth: the next total solar eclipse is not an unreachable 123 years away, it's next summer. That's right, for two minutes or so on 11 July 2010, be in Argentina or be square. Until next time dear readers, consider that if the sun being blocked out is supposed to be the amazing part, why does anyone but the geekiest scientist care that it's a few minutes shorter?