I’ve been travelling a lot lately, so haven’t had much time or energy to post anything in awhile. So I’m going to take the lazy route here and send you to an article in That’s Shanghai written by a friend of mine. It’s called "Aural Sculpture." Here’s the teaser……..
Not so very long ago, I was sitting in a Chinese railway station
awaiting my train, which like the first snowfall, the Second Coming and
Godot, was taking its sweet old time. Worse still, I was experiencing a
throbbing headache. Then suddenly an announcement came over the
loudspeaker system: “Miffle babble gribble, mao mao mao, glizzzbo
hemmat.” I strained, along with my fellow travelers, to understand what
the announcer was saying. I asked a local man sitting next to me if he
understood it, but – like me – he found it near incomprehensible.
Nevertheless, he was able to catch something about the train to
“Miffle” being slightly “glizzzbo.” Meanwhile the buzz and screech of
the station’s public address system seemed to me like the opening
ceremonies of the Migraine Olympics getting underway in my skull.
