The Police - Disc 2

The Police – Disc 2

As most if our friends know, we are cutting edge on some technologies and Luddites on others. Email in the 80's, home wireless in 2000; but first CD player in 1995 and first mobile phone in 2005; never an MP3 player nor iPod.

When we came to China in 2005 we brought about 40 CDs from our modest collection: Neil Young and The Clash for John, Sting and the Police for Sun-Ling, along with REM, The Who, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Pretenders, Mana, Lucinda Williams, Miles Davis and others.

The audiovisual equipment in our apartment (aside from our 3 laptops) consists of a DVD/CD player, TV, and a set of 5.1 speakers. We are in the habit of putting one CD in the player and playing it repeatedly until we get tired of it. Some CDs last but one listening. Others are played over and over again. In fact, we played disc 2 of The Police box set Message in Box about 50 times in a row - before, during and after the Chinese New Year holidays; some days we listened to it 3 or 4 times - before I swapped it out for disc 3. We never actually got tired of disc 2. It was just getting strange. ;-)

Other CD’s that recently yielded repeated listenings: Beggar’s Banquet, London Calling (currently in the player and getting better with each repeat), disc 4 of the Buffalo Springfield Box Set, Time Fades Away, and Who’s Next. In contrast, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks only survived only a single repeat.

Final word: my old friend and music buddy Dave sent me a CD of some of his older stuff which I played about 10 times in row. "Buy My Book" – Excellent!

Qingming - Qingtuan

April 4 was Qingming Festival or Tomb Sweeping Day. The traditional food for Qingming is qingtuan and we have eaten our way through several packages of these tasty green dumplings with red bean paste inside.



And here's the view from our apartment window earlier this evening.

Another one bites the dust

My team decided to go bowling for our Q1 team event. And thus the streak that started so quietly on September 21, 1957 came to an end on March 9, 2007 with my second visit to the Shanghai International Bowling Resort; but this time I could not opt out and so bowled for the first time in my life. I think I bowled an 83 and an 87. It's over. My epitaph can no longer be "He never bowled."

Here's a blurry photo of the sad event.


I also got in about 30 minutes of badminton doubles which I greatly enjoyed.