In which Mr Bamboo breaks his land speed record

The train was so fast that it was in bed pleasuring my wife half an hour before I was.

Grey, gloomy Shanghai

I went to Shanghai yesterday for a workshop on IB assessment. As the picture shows, the view from the window was magnificently grey. It rained a little, but was mostly just dull and cold.

Some boy insisted on his mother sitting with him in the seat beside mine, and then knocked a plastic bag containing some horrible sticky drink off the tray table, causing it to go all over the floor of the carriage. It could’ve been worse. It might’ve been Shit 皇帝 from Guangzhou.

I was wondering what the speed of the train was, glanced up, and saw the display said 272kph. Before the end of the journey we’d hit 300kph, which is almost certainly the fastest I’ve ever travelled on land. I had no feeling that the train was going so fast, and even looking out of the window didn’t betray the actual speed. It could just as easily have been going at 80kph.

I see the recently famous nail house has gone. It’s demise seems to have been much more rapid than other instances of the same thing. We have one on the land on which the school wants to build a swimming pool, but no one seems to be in any rush to do anything about the situation. Perhaps someone had a word with the headmaster and explained how much swimming pools cost, and the impact that would have on his cut of the swag.

There have also been quite a few stories going around about the unhealthy condition of the nation’s youth. As I’ve said before, I always tell my lot to go and play outside, but very few of them move. Morning exercises are, by and large, a joke. In Fuzhou the students flopped about, but when it’s somewhere in the mid-thirties at 9.30am, flopping is about all anyone would want to do.

I also wonder how some of them stand up since they look like the poster boys for excruciating skinniness. In the days when I used to frequent school dining halls I noticed a lot of girls would perhaps eat a spoonful or two of something and abandon the rest. Mind you, they had probably also been scoffing nutrition-free snacks between classes.

Right, time to get on with my half-weekend.