Chinese Music

Apparantly, the 'Chinese music scene is really vibrant' right now. After being on a bus from Guangzhou to Zhuhai for over 2 hours yesterday with the most sickeningly sweet, soporific pop-muzak I've ever heard blaring from the bus stereo system, I beg to differ. But what do I know? So please, if there's contemporary Chinese music I should be listening to, let me know.

I got back last night from a very quick trip to Guangzhou. Missing the last express train from Hong Kong, which is at an absurdly early time of 7pm, I was forced to get a slower train, change at Shenzen then onto Guangzhou. All sounds pretty easy, but despite being generally quite comfortable with foreign travel, I hate travelling in China. It must surely be the most difficult country in the world to travel for an Englishman. Picture this: the only word I knew how to say was Guangzhou. Without pointing or inventive gesticulating it's impossible to know: the time the train leaves, which platform it leaves on, what time it arrives, or even *when* you've arrived, because everything is in Chinese even the sign at station telling you you're in Guangzhou.

I've been lucky with my Chinese travels to date, nothing has gone wrong. But when and if it does go wrong I'll be up shit-creek. My lack of language skills makes it impossilble to improvise and nobody speaks English. [BTW, I'm not complaining - I have no right to expect they speak English. OK, maybe I am complaining, but not at the Chinese. Although it'd be nice if they ate a little more quietly.]

I know you all hate it when I talk football, but I have to get a couple of things off my chest:

Michael Owen. Why isn't everybody chomping at the bit to get him back to England? They're all mad I tell you. With the exception of Henry and Van Nistleroy there isn't any player anywhere near him in the English league. Benitez: sign him up now.

All this talk of an uncompetitive Premiership is a complete red-herring. Although Chelsea are clearly doing their best to buy their the title (which incidentally, will all end in tears as soon as Abramovich gets bored and moves on), when was the last time you can remember 4 teams (ok, 3 teams and Liverpool) all having genuine title ambitions?

BTW, have you ever got the feeling the person you're chatting with someone who isn't really who they say they are. I was chatting with my mate Isabelle on MSN last night and then I began to think, for some reason, 'What if this isn't Isabelle?' and I probably wouldn't want to be saying the stuff I'm saying to 'Isabelle' to any other person. Believe me, you don't want to go down this route, pretty soon I'll be questioning the Earth's sphericity (that Lucretius fella was a right thickie, eh?). And then what? Isabelle, please send me a warm, cuddly note reassuring me that it was you and that really, there's nothing that wrong with it and that, in fact, it's quite normal behaviour amongst some tribes in Africa.