Om nom Chomsky*

I'm looking at a copy of a book which is more than a book. It used to belong to E and, when she decided she didn't want it anymore, she gave it to me.  It's about 400 pages long and a large style paperback but one of those really dense ones, a book with some literal - as well as metaphorical - weight.  But it's more than just a book; it means something. I'm looking at a copy of a book which is, actually, a symbol. 

Lots of things in our lives are symbolic; this one is symbolic of the difference between the person I am and the person I would like to be.  To explain that, perhaps I should tell you that the book is called The Chomsky Reader: edited by James Peck, it's a collection of some of Noam Chomsky's published and unpublished essays and as soon as I found that E was getting rid of it, I wanted it.

Not just because it looks lovely - it's a cliché but true that physical books have a beauty that e-books will never have - but because of what it would look like on my bookshelf.  It's got Chomsky written in bold font on the spine and it really stands out. Anyone who knew what they were looking for would see it and be impressed.  Hey, they would think to themselves - this guy reads Chomsky.

The trouble is, this guy doesn't.  I mean, I want to - I think.  By which I probably mean I might like to but I've picked the book up and put it down a dozen times without ever having actually read any of it.  It's probably really interesting and would more than likely be what used to be called an improving read; it's just that I... well, I really can't be bothered.  Whenever I flick through it my eye is caught by phrases like "the secular priesthood" and "the responsibility of intellectuals" and "objectivity and liberal scholarship" and I feel like a little part of me dies.  There always seems to be something better to read. By which I probably mean something easier and, frankly, more entertaining.

And that's why it's symbolic.  When I acquired it, I probably did have the sincere belief that I'd read it and perhaps one day I will.  But really, subconsciously, I think I probably got it as window-dressing.  It's a prop - a symbol of who I'd like to be: a guy smart enough to read Chomsky.  Of course, it isn't just that: it's also a symbol of who I am - a guy who sometimes acquires things because of what it might say about him to other people.  

I'm not going to be hard on myself for that - we all do it, even you.  We choose one brand of phone over another, one type of car over another, wear clothes of one particular style over another because this is part of the way in which we present ourselves to the world.  It's just a part of life.  So there the book sits, unread but not unloved. Waiting for the day when I decide that I'll change from being the type of guy who owns books by Noam Chomsky to the type of guy who actually reads them. Until that day, it's a lovely prop but don't let it fool you.

*the title doesn't really mean anything but when I thought of it, it made me chuckle so I thought I'd share it. 
 

The national symbol of China

Over the last few days, I've spent a lot of time staring out of train windows. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, except that for me it is a little unusual. Normally, I end up travelling during the night and I travel by train infrequently. Reverse those two things - put me on a train during the day - and staring out of the window becomes irresistible.

What I see out of those windows isn't particularly inspiring - towns and cities never present their best side to the railway tracks - but it is interesting. The route, from Kowloon to Guangzhou and back takes you through a lot of cities, including Shenzhen, where the device you're reading this on was probably made. People going about incomprehensible lives, millions of them. Skyscrapers and apartment blocks marching into the haze of pollution on the horizon. A dozen kites. Adverts the size of tennis courts for iPads. Red neon signs and the red flag.

And building works: green netting clad colossi rising from the countryside. See one, a cluster of half a dozen or so skyscrapers emerging from the ground and it's remarkable. And then, five miles lat, you see another bunch. Then another and another and another. And it's not remarkable anymore, until you realise how remarkable that is. Who is building all these things? Who will live in them? What will they do? Where will they come from? The scale; the incredible scale of it beggers the mind.

The national bird of Japan, I believe, is the crane. The national symbol of China is the same.

Cold War

We've been to the cinema this afternoon - with a much better behaved crowd than were present on our last trip. I only had to tell one person off for having a telephone conversation while the film was playing, which seemed to surprise him especially as I did it in Cantonese.

We saw Cold War, a locally made movie which has been trailed in HK for at least the last six months or so. Aside from the strange thrill of seeing where you live and work on the silver screen, the movie made absolutely no sense whatsoever but was still worth watching. If you imagine a 100 minute episode of CSI: Miami you won't be too far wrong: total nonsense but very pretty to look at.

Speaking of very pretty to look at, the biggest thing Cold War had going for it was the absurdly handsome Aaron Kwok:

Aaron Kwok, smouldering yesterday

I think the best way to describe Kwok is an Asian George Clooney - except Kowk started off as a dancer and Mando/Cantopop star, becoming one of what were known as the Cantopop Four Heavenly Kings. Coincidentally, one of the other Heavenly Kings, Andy Lau, was also in the movie, an in-joke that everyone in the cinema got, except me.

Aaron Kwok smouldering in his younger days, and showing a lamentable taste in knitware, in my opinion.

Kwok moved into acting, building a pretty respectable reputation, first on TV and then in the movies. I've written about this sort of thing before, so you'll know that there's more to Kwok than just being, in the words of Zoolander, "really, really good looking" - he also races cars, and participated once in a Ferrari race at the Macau GP.

Aaron Kwok, smouldering earlier today, complete with special Aaron Kwok chair.

I found out from S today that Cold War is only the second Chinese/HK movie she's been to see at the cinema.  The other one - by what can surely only be a wild coincidence - also starred Kwok.  She also described, at great length and in alarming detail, a concert that Kwok did a few years ago at a nearby shopping mall...

 Actually, I'm beginning to think it might be more than a coincidence but, to be honest, I don't really blame her!
  

 

 

Kyoto des.

There are some places that have always been on my "must go to" list. Istanbul (went a couple of years ago, loved it); St Petersburg (not been yet but one day, I hope); Florence (went and for a while convinced me that I should have been born Italian). At the top of that list has always been Japan and finally, this week, I got to go.

Hong Kong is so conveniently situated that it's just a three and a half hour flight from Japan - about the distance from Heathrow to the south of France. So, to celebrate Scarlet's birthday, we packed our bags and headed for somewhere that's always been on the top of her list, too - Kyoto.

I'm not sure how to describe Kyoto - and Japan - without lapsing into cliché. Let me start by saying it's a fabulous place: if you're at all interested in Japan, I highly recommend it. It's very easy to get around, highly walkable, and the people are incredibly helpful. Special thanks to the man who showed us how to use the ticket machines in the subway (and was going to pay for our tickets, too, until we showed him we had money) and to the man at the noodle stand who saw that we were a bit lost in a sea of kanji and, with some very limited English, helped us order a delicious bowl of soba and tempura.

We saw temples, shrines and an awful lot of maple leaves - turning a brilliant red as Autumn arrives in Japan. We walked for hours, through corridors of Torii, through city streets and through covered night markets. The weather was as kind as the people, the fierce cold we'd been expecting didn't materialize, so we were able to do without coats most of the time, which was a relief.

Some tips, should you find yourself in Kyoto:

Kyoto doesn't have its own airport - the nearest one is Osaka. You can get from one to the other via the very convenient Kansai Airport Express, which takes about ninety minutes. There are two type of seats available - reserved and non-reserved. As you'd probably guess, reserved guarantees you a seat, with non-reserved you take pot-luck. There's roughly a twenty pound difference between the two, so you pays your money and takes your choice, as my dad says. General consensus from the guidebooks and my experience is that the train is rarely full, so you can probably save a bit of money and safely get a non-reserved ticket.

The express takes you to Kyoto station, which is a vast, cavernous space with some shopping malls attached to it. To get to the subway, venture into one of those malls (The Cube) and follow the signs.

The subway is really easy - there are only two underground lines, forming a big cross under the city. When you buy tickets from the machine, the map above the machine will show you the adult and child fare to each station. Plug the money into the machine, tell it how many tickets you want and it'll do the rest. Put the money in first, though. The rest of the city and the surrounding area is serviced by an overground rail network that does the same job as the MTR in Hong Kong or the Underground in London. Fares are really cheap, too - it's a great way to travel.

When you get out of the station, for your own health don't assume that you're safe on the pavement. Kyoto is largely flat and locals are very attached to their bikes, which they ride on the pavement at breakneck (yours, not theirs) speed. This is especially disconcerting at night. There is a special section of the pavement for bikes but, as far as I can tell, no one takes a blind bit of notice of that. 

I can't let this post pass without lapsing in the cliché I was trying to avoid, though, so here are my fragmented impressions of Kyoto, as I wrote them down during the journey:

• Industrial: lots of wires, railings, fences, girders, pipes; lots of grey.
• Narrow streets with no pavements.
• Baseball diamonds.
• The countryside we passed on the airport express looks like the kind of place where bodies are dumped.
• Ticket inspector on the airport express turned and bowed to us before leaving the carriage. 
• Giggling Japanese schoolgirls/sexualised schoolgirls/AKB48.
• Thigh high boots; thigh high socks; thighs.
• Happy train arriving song and the regretful train leaving song.
• Green tea. Everywhere.
• Pedestrian crossings that chirrup to each other like birds.
• Soba noodles, udon noodles, instant noodles.
• Hello Kitty.
• Kawaii.
• High tech bathrooms; bathrooms everywhere. 

 Thank you, Kyoto - we'll be back.
 

Skyfall

When I was in my early teenage years, I first discovered James Bond.  Not the films, you understand - the books. In Swindon, where I grew up, there was a second-hand bookshop run buy a guy called Spike.  Spike was probably in his forties and seemed a lot older and a lot seedier but he let my friend and I sneak into the adult section, so he was okay with us. I remember one year that my sister didn't know what to get me for Christmas and so, taking the pound that she gave me (this was a while ago), I went to Spike and bought most of the Bond books in tatty old paperback.

To a teenage boy, they were fantastic and I became obsessed with all things Bond.  I knew his brand of cigarettes (Moreland) and his favourite breakfast (scrambled eggs with black coffee). I looked for pictures of Hoagy Carmichael.  I knew the original James Bond was an American ornithologist and a million other things that were of no interest to anyone other than me.

I loved the books and, as so often was the case, the films always seemed like a bit of a let-down.  I liked Dr No and From Russia With Love (for a long time my favourite) and always enjoyed putting my battered VHS copy of Goldfinger on.  I liked On Her Majesty's Secret Service a lot but disliked every Roger Moore Bond film.  I was excited when Timothy Dalton got the role and really liked The Living Daylights but lost interest again, as did a lot of people, when Peirce Brosnan took over.

Which brings us to Daniel Craig.  Who is, let's be honest, brilliant.  No, he doesn't look like Hoagy; yes, he's kind of blond.  But has there been an actor since Connery who's looked more like the "blunt instrument" that Fleming described? Has there been an actor since Connery that's looked like he could do the things Bond is supposed to do? Casino Royale was brilliant, Quantum of Solace was... disappointing and after hearing all the hype, I was very much looking forward to Skyfall.

Don't get me wrong; it's not a bad film. Craig is, as ever, excellent.  Judi Dench is a great M.  Ralph Fiennes (who was a candidate for Bond at one point, I seem to remember) is good value as ever. I even liked Ben Whishaw's Q, which is not a sentence that I ever expected to type.  It's just that, as a film, the whole thing is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Let's start with Javier Bardem. Good actor, nice performace but completely wrong for the film, uncutting any sense of tension.  Are we really supposed to believe that he is some kind of evil super-genius? Are we really supposed to believe that he amasses an immense fortune and then puts in place an elaborate plot, purely for the purposes of killing M? Bardem plays him like a cross between Hannibal Lector and Graham Norton, which is fun to watch but completely destroys any menace.

And the plot doesn't make any sense, either.  To put that scheme together (which presumably involves stealing the list of agents) must've taken years. The point I threw my hands up was when Bond catches up with Silva in the underground and Silva explodes a bomb, crashing an underground train. Great sequence, impressive to look at, total and utter nonsense. How did Silva know Bond (or anyone) would catch him? How did he know Bond (or anyone) would catch him at that location, so he could place a bomb there in advance? And catch him at precisely the right time for a train to be coming? 

But leaving plot logic to one side, the whole film is baggy anyway; the bit at the end, where Bond takes M to Scotland (there are spoilers ahead, by the way) to save her feels like a tagged on ending that drags on interminably.  The whole film is about twenty minutes too long and I found myself checking my watch, wondering when it was going to end.  When it does end, the film ends badly; the whole film is about Bond trying to save M from Silva and he fails; indirectly, Silva kills her. Which is fine - I'm all for a downbeat ending; I loved The Mist, remember? They don't come much more downbeat than that! - but it's out of character with the rest of the film. There's little emotional resonance. She just dies, Bond cries a bit and then goes back to work. M is a long-running character: I supposed to care that she dies but the film doesn't give me any reason to.

And while I'm talking about the end, as nice as it was to see the DB5 again, that just did not make any sense at all. The DB5 was introduced in Goldfinger, which was released in 1964.  It's obviously the same car as it features the same gadgets (ho ho, Bond thinks about ejecting M).  Are we supposed to think that the Bond from Goldfinger is the same man as in Skyfall?  But what about the establishing scenes in Casino Royale, where we see Bond earn his Double-0 license?

To me, the Aston Martin was symbolic of the whole film. It looked okay, on the surface, but if you think too much about it, the whole thing falls apart.  I don't mind that in a film, so long as that thinking takes place after the film.  When your fridge logic moment starts taking place during the film, you know the film has problems - the narrative hasn't taken you along with it.  As I said earlier on in this (much longer than I expected) piece, I didn't dislike the film - it's just not very good.  It's like the Adele theme song - okay but not quite there; a sort of ersatz Shirley Bassey number that tries hard but doesn't quite hit the notes it strives for. Disappointing.