I’m not even going to try and convince you that the very pretty poetic sentence above was composed by me. No, its real author was 李白. It was one of the last poems he wrote about the Yangtze River (which, incidentally, is an incorrect translation of 长江 that has slid into common usage). Apparently Mr Li wrote this upon being freed from 白帝城 along the 长江, where he’d been held captive by some emperor. The rather exuberant language mirrors his elation upon returning to civilian life. Here he fantasises about journeying down the 长江 to reach home in only a day (hence 一日还).
The full poem:
朝辞白帝彩云间，千里江陵一日还。
两岸猿声啼不住，轻舟已过万重山。
Ok that’s enough preamble. This post begins, rather stereotypically, with a nice photograph.
Lotus lake in Mui Ne, Phan Thiet
So I am back from my hiatus, which you may unfortunately have mistaken for a regular blogging interval (given the frequency at which I post stuff). No, it is decidedly a hiatus. I have been to the land of no-Facebook, Youtube and Google (hence the title of this post), and I am back!
I’m still transferring my photos, so let’s talk about fruits. I find they are the greater evil of the two sources of fibrous fetidity (its lesser twin being vegetables). Ms Dass tells me that in an argument I should define terms, so for simplicity let us consider fruits that are usually served cooked, vegetables. Hence, long beans and eggplants are vegetables. Tomato is still a fruit. Peas exist woefully in a superposition of states and may either turn out to be vegetably or fruitily polarised — but one cannot predict which it is before they are served.
Vegetables strike me as somewhat harmless packages of nutrients bursting with friendly greenness, so I shall not comment on them. Fruits I find rather disagreeable. Fruits are laden with booby traps. How many times have you sunk your teeth into a grape only to find out, with an earth-shattering crunch, that you’ve bitten into a seed? Or had your orange-eating endeavours hampered because you had to pause to remove the rind from between your teeth? Fruits also have the annoying habit of varying in sweetness. It is quite impossible to tell apart a normal papaya slice from one that smells of decaying flesh – given, of course, that you have a blocked nose.
On the whole I find honeydew quite tolerable, and would like to mention it here as a shining example for all other fruits to aspire to. Honeydew is usually reasonably sweet. Also, when served sliced there are no seeds or nasty bits that suddenly pop out and say ‘GOTCHA!’
Oh, I see that my photos have finished loading. Let’s see…
Try and make out the author's name! Answer at the bottom of this post.
Yay! I knew my handwriting was not the worst in the world. From these two (actually one) data points, let us draw the conclusion that people with horrible handwriting are great leaders and thinkers!!
Obligatory photo of mountains looming over a jade-green lake in Fengdu
View of Chang Jiang and Chongqing from E Ling park
Answer to riddle: 毛泽东
Anyway I only have the photos from the last three days of the trip (长江cruise + 重庆), which were not very interesting compared to the breathtaking scenery and minority cultures of 张家界!! My father the usurper has usurped my earlier photos into his computer. I may upload them. 
