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James Bell

👋 Theatre director. Recovering IT professional. Named after a Starship captain. Saved the world from Y2K, and has since been detained at Hong Kong airport for suspected money laundering and appeared in a Chinese public service training video.

  • Christmas and Lights Tour – Part One

    Shanghai

    It’s currently 2:15am in Munich and I am wide awake. But I do have a reliable internet connection and both Gmail and Facebook work fine – unlike in China.

    My trip to date has involved a lot walking and a lot of time sitting down on planes. Both flights were uneventful, but I can confirm that the Lufthansa A340-600 is nicer than the Air NZ 787-9 (quieter and better service too)

    While in Shanghai I walked a total of 32 kms over two days. I largely kept to “The Bund” area of Shanghai were my hotel was.

    On Wednesday I walked to the river and then down along East Nanjing Road (a very long pedestrian shopping area). I bought a cable for my iPad which I’d left at home and found a Costa Coffee store that served tea in a large dessert glass but had free Wifi and comfy chairs.

    Everyone in Shanghai has a phone and is glued to it. It’s interesting that anything to do with Facebook or Google is blocked, but my Microsoft work email and Apple FaceTime worked fine. Clearly some companies are more willing to comply with censorship than others.

    I returned to the waterfront to try and photograph the lights but it was cold and not very dark so I went back to the hotel.

    On Thursday I walked the other direction and found the shopping area without the tourists. It was still very “western” but was catering to a local market. I walked through a few shopping malls which all seem to be both empty and under construction – its as if everyone has decided to get into the mall business, but there aren’t yet enough shops (or customers) to go around.

    I waked across to the People’s Park which was nice, but followed in the Chinese tradition of having nice grass you aren’t allowed to walk on. Then I caught a hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus to take me around the bits of the city I had not seen.

    Unfortunately the commentary was broken but it went over the river into the newer city which was interesting to see.

    Shanghai is very modern and ‘young’ – it could very easily have been London or New York. Almost everyone on the metro was in their 20’s or 30’s – I saw very few older people or anyone who looks remotely poor – but then it’s a big city. Skyscrapers stretch on for miles and there is construction everywhere.

    I made my way to the airport via Metro and Maglev train. The Maglev travels up to 300km/hr during the nine minute trip from the city to the airport – its pretty impressive.

    Munich

    I arrived in Munich at 5:00am and took the train to the central train station. The hotel was a short walk around the corner. While offical check in isn’t until 2:00pm, the night manager must have taken pity on my as I sat in reception warming up, because she found me a room after only about half an hour. I decided today would be a “rest day” so I could relax and catch up on sleep.

    After a bit of a rest I walked around the block, bought some food from the local Aldi supermarket and lunch from McDonalds and returned back inside for a nice long nap. It was -2 today and there is still a bit of snow on the roof of the building across the road.

    Germany’s oldest theatre is also across the road – Beauty and the Beast is currently performing with both dialogue and songs in German. Tickets are quite expensive tough – up to 79 Euro ($130) for the best seats

    Tomorrow I’m going to try and find a department store to get a jacket and a hat and then join my tour at 6:00pm

  • Discovering Jean-Michel Jarre

    I was introduced to Jean-Michel Jarre at one of the first Laser Tag arenas in New Zealand, possibly the world.

    It was called “Futron” and was in a large warehouse next to a popular theme park in West Auckland.

    It was multi-level, filled with fog machines and lasers and Star Trek style doors that opened when you shot them, and Jean-Michel Jarre played as a constant soundtrack.

    I remember there were TV screens giving instructions to each team, and we have to successfully tag four pyramid “flags” throughout the playing area.

    It was truely magical for a space-and-sci-fi obsessed preteen.

    My friends and I only went a couple of times before it turned into paintball, which wasn’t as much fun for 11yr olds!

    As a direct results of Futon, Jarre’s Rendez-vous was one of the first vinyls I ever bought and I remember playing it over and over again on weekend mornings when my parents were still in bed, happily drumming along on the sofa.

    Fourth Rendez-Vous was my favourite, but by coincidence, Jarre also featured on New Zealand TV with Equinoxe, Pt. 4 used as at the theme for a popular wildlife show, Our World.

    Hearing it now still gives me late 80’s family TV night flashbacks.

  • If you unscrew your belly button, your bottom will fall off; and other things my Dad taught me.

    My Dad, with glasses and a beard, sticking his tongue out at the camera in front of a brick wall.

    My Dad died on 5 December 2021.

    My earliest memory is sitting on his shoulders watching a Guy Fawkes bonfire on one of several visits to the UK as a child.

    An electrical engineer by trade, he worked on some of the early mainframes before moving to New Zealand to marry my mum. He loved teaching my brother, cousins, grandchildren and I about anything scientific, the ancient Lancastrian martial art of Ecky Thump and stories of building a canon and blowing a hole in the neighbours garage – but refusing to let my brother and I make anything similar!

    I hope he has found my mum, who he missed dearly, and the rest of his welcoming party, at the great ISO9000 audit conference in the sky.

    Below are some important life lessons he taught me over the years:

    If you unscrew your belly button, your bottom will fall off.

    This, along with the “lying still game” and many other “games” ensured hours of peace and quiet for adults trying to talk after dinner or at any family occasion.

    Don’t play “knuckles” with my Dad. You have been warned.

    Your friends and acquaintances follow you everywhere you go

    It didn’t matter where we were – traveling around the country, at a hospital appointment with Mum, or a hotel in Hong Kong, Dad would suddenly strike up a conversation with a seemingly random person and it would turn out they knew each other in some obscure way.

    Even the Chaplin who blessed Dad’s body at the hospital after he passed knew him from his time on the local school Board of Trustees – even in death, still finding people he knows.

    Your neighbours will indulge the craziest of schemes

    We were gifted a very old and very heavy piano. To get it inside required moving it from a neighbouring house to our house, and going up a considerable flight of stairs.

    Rather than spend money on professional piano movers, somehow Dad convinced every abled-bodied person in our street to pitch in and help carry the piano up the stairs, which they did willingly.

    At some point my friends and I collected aluminium cans to raise funds to build a clubhouse.

    We didn’t collect enough to buy plywood for the walls, so we came up with the plan to cover the neighbour’s old hen-house with black polythene.

    I don’t know what Mr McGregor thought when Dad turned up one afternoon with a large sheet of polythene and a staple gun but he let him cover the old hen-house with it without question.

    Black polythene isn’t a great material for building clubhouses, by the way.

    Delegate

    Dad and I went for one practice driving lesson.

    Rumour is that I rolled into the car in front of us at an intersection.

    From that point on, Mum was in charge of driving lessons.

    People often talk about carrying secrets to the grave. I am about to reveal one of Dad’s recent secrets.

    How to troll your cousin

    One of the side effects of being an engineer is the irresistible urge to take things apart.

    Mum like collecting cheap outdoor solar lights that often broke (or got crushed by cars). Dad salvaged a particular light with a green LED, took it apart, and hung the still-working electrics in the dining room window.

    Every night at dusk the little green light would come on.

    Our cousin Maureen has been visiting for many years now, and would stay with my parents over Christmas. This particular year, she noticed the little green light hanging in the window.

    “What’s that light?” she asked.

    Quick as a flash, Dad explained that it was a new Auckland Council initiative to remind elderly people to close their curtains when it got dark. They had people driving round to check and if they saw the light, you got a fine.

    Maureen must have been skeptical, but Mum immediately backed up Dad’s story.

    For the three years that followed, Maureen would jump up as soon as the light came on to close the curtains, determined to avoid a fine.

    Sadly the little LED light stopped working and was thrown away.

    Maureen queried where it was the following year, and Dad explained the scheme had ended after complaints and the elderly were left to control their own curtain closing once more.

    In Summary

    • Figure out a way to make children keep quiet and call it a game
    • Make enough friends so they’ll always be someone around who you know, and they’ll help with your crazy projects
    • You can convince anyone to believe a good story
    • Delegate the really dangerous jobs to your wife.

Earlier posts