myrick

BACK IN SHANGHAI

Myrick, now a married man, has returned to Shanghai. I'm more active on AsiaPundit, and I encourage  everyone to visit, but I will try to keep this site active with at least one post a week. I warn you though, all posts here will be self-indulgent crap.

While I was back in Canada, people often said things like this to me: "You're a foreign correspondent? In Shanghai? Wow, that must be pretty exciting!"

Indeed, it is. My life is filled with excitement and danger.

But there is also "glamor and glitz." For instance, I'll be spending tomorrow evening with a Star. Or at least a former star.

Ha! Aren't you all jealous? I'm going to meet Jeremy Miller! This guy knows Alan Thicke!

It should be a fun evening. It's an open secret that all former child stars are party animals.

As Doogie Howser said in Harold and Kumar.. Laaap Daaance!

LIGHTS, CAMERA, NOSE HAIR

I've been in the country less than a fortnight and I've probably been more photographed in that time than than in any other two-week period. Chinese journalists keep trying to interview me and I'm constantly photographed whenever I enter the Hall of the Great People.

Yesterday I had a CCTV camera filming me for at least six minutes... at close range. It wasn't just a zoom shot. No, the darn camera was about two feet away from my frickin' head.

It's only normal that they would film me while I ask a question. I expect that.

But, bloody hell, they kept the camera on me while I was taking notes.

More accurately, they kept filming me while I was 'trying' to take notes. I don''t deal well with being photographed, so It was hard to concentrate on what the guy was saying while I had a camera 24 inches away from my skull.

I just kept thinking, things like: "shit, they're so close they can count my nose hairs ... Crap! Lisa told me to trim those!"

And it's not just me that they were filming. They're taking pictures of my stuff!?!

Early in the presser they spent about three minutes filming my iPod. I have it fit with a microphone. Using it as a tool helps me justify the money I spent on it while I was still, in a legal sense, unemployed.

It is cool gear. It works brilliantly. There's crystal-clear sound, none of the annoying background noise that you get from the gears in a micro-cassette recorder, days of recording time and its a much, much easier to fast search for a quote.

Best of all, you can listen to punk rock music in the cab back to the office. At least you could if you had the time, I was too busy trying to figure out what the finance minister was saying while I had that freakin' camera up my nose.

Other than that, thus far, I'm really liking the new job.

And, yeah, they will be using some forex reserves to bail out the banks.