Articles from the original happyjelyfish.com website

Good Old Aluminium Man

Yesterday we finished shooting In A Whorehouse – The Sequel, so soon there will be a brand new Canto extravaganza on YouTube. About time, some would say, as the last one, ‘Romeo and Juliet – and Anus’ was made more than a year ago. But then I have made two two-hour DVDs plus 14 other films in the meantime.

Anyway, thought I’d reconnect with an old favourite: Aluminium Man! Criminally overlooked of course, but then so is all my stuff on YouTube. To succeed there, you need either: An Animal, or A Person falling down the stairs. And for ultimate exposure: Film yourself falling down the stairs holding a hedgehog. Then you’ll see.

Native Canto Speaker Berated For Bad Mando

I never – EVER – thought I’d say this, but I want to say something in defence of the Donald, our chief executive. And that is that I was appalled to read the paper today and see that he had been harangued in Beijing, at that city’s most famous university no less, for speaking bad Mandarin.

That’s right, old Donald had gone all the way up there to give some speeches on stuff like the internationalisation of the renminbi (China’s currency) and all in those mando-brethrens’ own language, er, Mando. Which was jolly decent and good sport-like of him I thought. Give them face by speaking their language and that. Mind you, Donald is prostrating himself so hard in front of the mando-brethren that it’s doubtful if he has any face left after rubbing it so hard in the mud and for so long. Still, good sport.

But what does he get after the speech, in the question and answer-session? Instead of the usual scripted “have Hong Kong people become more patriotic” and “Hong Kong and the mainland are like lips and teeth, right?” the students at the Peking University berate him for speaking crap Mando and not only that, they tell him – tell him! – to start “promoting” (i.e. forcing people to speak) Mando in Hong Kong, so that next time they deign to visit, they’ll be able to (presumably) shop with greater ease.

The bloody nerve! Who the hell do they think they are? I agree that Donald shouldn’t be respected just because he’s a Donald, but he is supposed to be a kind of dignitary visiting the university. It’s just not good form.

And here my hitherto never seen fit of defending Donald ends, because instead of telling those rude fuckers where to get off, he apologised for his bad mandarin!!!!, promising to try harder etc.

So brace yourself, people. The edict has come from on high and there’ll be a renewed putsch for mando like you’ve never seen. 7 eleven workers will greet you with binty shrieks of Ni Hao and Xie Xie. Mark my words. Donald will be seen even less in public; now he’ll be working on his mando six and a half days a week instead of the normal five.

And people scoff at me when I say Mando is an imperialist language?

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Back In The Filming Saddle! (Camera Dies During Filming of Mexican Wedding)

Woo-hooo. My last message was pretty depressed. I talked about how I have the least job satisfaction in the entire world, yea, even less than people whose job is warning people about the dangers of

Job Satisfaction

While having lunch (or was it cocktails? Yes! Cocktails!) with my friend Jo in Tibet northern Yunnan the other day, I suddenly realised that few people in the world has less job satisfaction than me.

Learn Cantonese in 2016

No… that can’t be three years ago? But the calendar says it is. It’s just that it feels like a few weeks since we stood outside the railway station in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province,

Lao Wai

The new year celebrations were hard for everyone this year, even man-sized teddies. This sad corpse was lying outside my hotel in Kunming, I’m guessing thrown angrily away by some girl who had expected diamonds

Opulent Chair Sitting – Almost!

If there’s one thing I missed during this Christmas and New Year’s Yunnan Extravaganza, it was the chance to do some serious Opulent Chair (or Sofa)- Sitting. How strange; Guangdong province is replete with ultra-opulent

Well and Truly 2016

It’s well and truly next year! First I thought, I can’t wait for 2015 to be over, but then I stopped myself. The faster next year comes, the sooner I’ll be in the grave. So

Happy New Canto Year!

Greetings from Shangri-la, formerly a fictitious “idyllic settlement high in the mountains of Tibet” of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon fame, now a city in China. In this photo, however, we’re a few hours further south,

Dali: Where Christmas is not Only Santa

Jesus hovering over the Great Wall? Why not. Jesus is everywhere so why not the Great Wall? It just looked so incongruous to see the cross in the middle of Dali’s old city as we

On the Spray to Shenzhen

Last week my glorious sister Beate came to spend Christmas in Hong Kong which she did and how. But no trip to Hong Kong is complete without a trip to Shenzhen. Is it? No, it

Ingredients: Buy Foodstuffs in Cantonese

Today I wanted to write a well-researched rant about Cantonese NOT being a dialect, a kind of sub-division, an inferior sub-division, of Mandarin. But I have to cook for 13 in a couple of hours,

Learn By Doing

Here is Peter (ah-Dak) who’s been taking Canto lessons with me for some months now. When we went on our first trip to Guangdong province together at the end of last year, he immediately went

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