I've got some spare time this afternoon, and am in the mood for a bit of blogging; except that I'm feeling too lazy to go to all the bother of constructing a proper post.

So instead of that, ask me some questions in the comments box. Every question I get for the next hour and a half WILL be answered.

By the way, I'm still one judge short for Post Of The Week.

Go!

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Sarah asks:

1. When is the next podcast coming out?

Good question. I've been meaning to record another podcast for many weeks, but am forever procrastinating. This week would have been ideal, as I was home alone while K was at a conference in Florida, but sadly the thought never occurred to me.

Incidentally, K and I were joyfully reunited this morning, after a separation which dragged on for four weeks. (As I returned from China, so he flew out to Florida, in a sort of global cat-and-mouse game. Most frustrating.)

Back to the podcast qusetion. I'll try and get one recorded before the end of the month, OK? Erm, that's a sort-of promise.

2. What is the best Christmas gift you received/gave?

Best gift received: The tricycle which my parents gave me in 1966. To this day, it is the only vehicle which I have successfully mastered.

Best gift given: I'm very pleased with my mother's present this year: an amateur watercolour of Belfield House in Wyke Regis (on the outskirts of Weymouth), painted in 1907 by the niece of the occupants. This is the house which my mother grew up in, from the age of six to sixteen. I have recently been transcribing her memories of life in Belfield House on her own blog - and while doing so, a speculative Google search took me to an active eBay auction for the painting. I'll be picking it up from the picture-framers tomorrow.

3. If my husband and I were transferred to a city in England called Birmingham next year, would I be miserable?

No, not at all. Birmingham gets far worse press than it deserves. Brummies are a largely friendly bunch, with a delightfully dry, laconic wit, and the city is culturally rich in just about every way. It may not be the most beautiful city in the world, but the city centre is much improved, and there's an essential warmth to the place which the last fifty years of crap town planning has failed to extinguish. Oh, and it's handy for the countryside as well.

(Ben? Chig? Pete? Do you agree?)

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"Satisfied customer" asks:

I have been trying to find good internet radio and podcasts to subscribe to, but am somewhat baffled by what's available, at least on i-tunes, which seems:
1) overwhelmingly American
2) unburdened by any system of ordering
3) somewhat too copious to go at hit or miss

Any recommendations?

Oh dear. This might surprise some of you, but I don't actually subscribe to any podcasts. (No, not even the Ricky Gervais/Guardian podcasts, as I didn't think much of the first one.) The reason is that I already consume an abnormally large amount of new music, and there aren't enough spare hours in my listening day to take a punt on someone else's taste. However, if someone else would like to suggest some good podcasts, then please do so.

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Ellie asks:

Hypothetically speaking, if someone slapped you in the face and generally intimidated you during the course of a drunken argument but then couldn't remember it in the morning - should you never speak to that person again, or would you forgive and forget?

Neither. I would raise the issue with them within the next couple of days, calmly and clearly explaining what they had said/done, and how it made me feel. If suitably sincere apologies were forthcoming, then forgiveness could ensue. As for the forgetting: I've got too retentive a memory for that ever to be much of a possibility, but the forgiveness would do a good job of keeping a lid on the memory.

If the apology was not sincere, or over-qualified with dubious self-justifications, or turned back against me as somehow being my fault, then I would have to consider my position further. The same would hold true if the slapping/intimidation had become habitual.

There's also the question of how much the drunken behaviour either magnified or masked the true character beneath. When I get drunk, I do still stay recognisably in character, even if some elements might become magnified at the expense of others. However, I do know of a few people who undergo complete Jeckyll & Hyde personality changes after their alcoholic consumption has passed a certain limit, and that can be even scarier for them than it can for me. My reaction to drunken bad behaviour can therefore vary considerably according to the personality involved.

Yikes, and I'm flat out of time. That was fun. Thanks to those who asked.

A friend of mine works in the IT department of a large company. This company has a high public profile, and provides a service to millions of personal customers.

Recently, my friend sent a short personal e-mail, using his company's e-mail account. This e-mail contained the word "shit".

Or rather, it didn't contain the word "shit", as my friend had prudently replaced the letter "i" with an asterisk. Like so: sh*t.

Shortly after sending the e-mail, my friend received a phone call from the head of his company's security team, who informed him that the e-mail had been intercepted and blocked, and that using an asterisk in the middle of a word was not enough to stop it from being censored.

I was going to describe this as "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut", but I fear my friend might never forgive me if I did. However, if - laying any privacy issues to one side - you can supply a sound business case justification, then I for one would be fascinated to hear it.

Mike: So, are we seeing Brokeback Mountain tomorrow night?

JP: Yes, definitely. Er, you do know it's quite sad, don't you?

Mike: Is it? Well, that's fine. I have plenty of moral resilience.

JP: Huh?

Mike: Oh, did I say moral? I meant emotional. Emotional resilience.

JP: Now I understand.

Mike: I got my emotions and my morals confused. Not for the first time, either.

JP: Always dangerous when that happens.

Mike: Tell me about it...

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Update: How strange. I left the cinema last night dry of eye, distinctly underwhelmed, and cursing my over-heightened expectations; and yet today, I can't shake the damned film out of my head. Meanwhile, two people I know have already been to see it twice, one of them claiming that it's the best film he has ever seen.

I shall file this one under Slow Burner. Perhaps because it has taken a little while for my perspective to pull back from the particular (a gay "issue" flick) to the universal (a meditation upon missed opportunities) - but also because of the lingering quality of the individual performances: the looks, the pauses, the things left unsaid.

I'd do a longer review, but Tom Coates and Lubin Odana have already done such excellent jobs that there scarcely seems to be any point. Go read them instead. They nail it.

Via Ian Penman's newly re-activated blog The Pill Box, here's a great selection of hit-and-miss (but-mostly-hit) bootleg mash-ups, from an outfit called fuTuRo. I particularly recommend:

• Stoned Floyed - The Supremes & Pink Floyd
• She Tracks My Tears - Smokey Robinson & The La's
• What's Going On (Unfinished) - Marvin Gaye & Massive Attack
• Float On Ms. Jackson - Outkast & The Floaters
• Rock Your Bird - Annie Lennox & George McCrae
• Miss U Any Further - Everything But The Girl & Dennis Edwards
• Let's Get The Love - The Black Eyed Peas & Marvin Gaye

(Speaking of returned bloggers, look who else is back.)

OK, so picking up where we left off before Christmas...

Post of the Week nominations have steadily been accumulating over the past few weeks, and judging will take place over this weekend.

However, as there are so many posts to consider, I shall be making things a little easier this time round.

This week's nominations will close earlier than usual, at midday on Friday (UK time). I will then select a shortlist of twelve posts for judging, and will e-mail this list to my two fellow judges within the next few hours. (The contents of this shortlist will not be made public, as I don't want there to be tears before bedtime.)

The judges will have until Sunday night to make their decisions, and results will be posted by Monday morning.

Next week, we shall revert to the usual way of doing things.

Now, all we need are a couple of judges! If you'd like to take part, then please e-mail me at mikejla@btinternet.com. Previous judges are welcome to re-apply.

For the sake of completeness, here is the full list of nominees. To make your own nomination, please use the comments box below. Rules of engagement are here.

...then might I direct you towards the pull-out Business section in today's Nottingham Evening Post? I've written a "Business Diary" piece for them, which traces my second week in Hangzhou, from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day. Inevitably, it covers much of the same ground as some of my recent blog postings - but with more of a business-orientated slant to it, as befits its target audience. Demographically versatile, that's me.

Update: They've given me a nice splash on Page 7; over half a page, with a colour photo of downtown Hangzhou. The less said about the photo of me, the better; let's just say that I seem to have developed a jawline to rival Bruce Forsyth and Will Young.

Still, none of this can compare to today's front page story: BURGLAR HID HAUL INSIDE HIS FALSE LEG: Amputee admits 51 raids. Consider me comprehensively out-scooped.

Now, don't get too excited; I'm a reluctant photographer, to put it mildly. One of those people who doesn't like to interrupt the flow of their real life/real time experiences, stepping back from them in order to compose a shot, and thus somehow placing them at one remove. If a picture paints a thousand words, then give me the thousand words every time.

However, I did force myself to take the odd few snaps here and there. As usual, click on each thumbnail for a larger version.





This was my (and later J's) apartment, in the Zigui Gardens complex on Wenxing Lu. Acceptably contemporary, wouldn't you say?



Left: one of the strange group of ceramics that hung above the telly in the sitting room.

Right: me and some old stone geezer, at the tomb of General Yue Fei.

  

Stone Buddhas, carved into the rock at the base of Feilai Peak.





Views of the amazing Lingyin Temple.

  

Left: view over the West Lake.
Right: Lovely Puff!



Left: window cleaners on a Shanghai tower block.
Right: the Jingmao building, Pudong district, Shanghai. I think this is currently the city's tallest building. The Hyatt Hotel starts on the 54th floor; J and I had a coffee up there.




The amazing cake shop on Wensan Lu, snapped just in the nick of time before I was asked to move on. They must have thought I was a spy from a rival cake shop.

Labels: hangzhoudiary