homoLudens

William Gibson opens Pattern Recognition with this reflection on
jetlag: “??? her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on
some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought
her here??? Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and
must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”

The Neuromancer master is appropriate reading for a first visit to Shanghai. Granting that bus, boat and observation
tower do no city justice, from those perspectives, China’s Paris is
grey, polluted, noisy, crowded and  pointless: an admumbration of
an overpopulated planet’s future. It reminds me of Taipei in the
70’s.  Skyscrapers rise everywhere, abuting then
overwhelming piles of ruble and sinking islands of
single story family compounds. Last night, we boat-toured the Huangpu
River’s old western and new eastern river fronts. The entire
group fell soundly asleep before we docked. Jet lag, bus-blared
announcements of structural and financial and population statistics,
too much food, and too little caffeine have exhausted us all. Today,
it’s suggested, we’ll meet teachers and students.

A request for IM etiquette, friends: use
your “away” flags. On a 24K dial up modem flowing at a cost per minute
equivalent to that of a gallon of California gasoline, your
international chat pals will appreciate being warned off. (And BTW
Silvie, thanks for hello. It is true that god I hate raising pompously
meaningful conversationsal topics with precocious adolescents, but only
because they make me feel so genuinely unnecessary. The LOL’s, though,
are much appreciated.)

but it works. Pictures later. Shanghai is muggy, overcast, crowded and
crowded and crowded. Three schools on the visit list for tomorrow and
everybody is talking international exchange through technology. It’ll
be interesting to see what is meant by technology.