Arty-farty

Here are a few more paintings I've recently spewed out in fits of creative purging:


Hidden Buddha, Acrylic on canvas, 75x100cm


Shanghai Skyline, Acrylic on canvas, 80x60cm


Forest of Skyscrapers, Acrylic on canvas, 102x76cm


Bubbles, Acrylic on canvas, 75x100cm

More at my art website, www.loudcreations.com

While the cat's away....

While the cat's away, the mouse will watch Chick-flicks.

Phil is away on a shoot in Japan for the next three days, and I should really take the opportunity to watch some chick flicks without dialogue/plot criticism from his end of the couch.

But now that it has come down to it, I can't think of any I really want to watch, though I can get almost anything on DVD here for a dollar or two.

So, tell me: what are your greatest all-time chick-flicks?

Happy Birthday Munchkin!

Another birthday, this time my neice Laura is turning two today.

Seriously, have you ever seen a child that looked more like a living, breathing Cabbage Patch Kid?




Happy Birthday Munchkin,
Love Aunty Lou

"Teach in China- handcuffs supplied"

This report from the AP is a very interesting story about dodgy English schools in China.

I have heard these and many other horror stories about teaching in China before. Up until now I have only taught at very good schools. However when I decided to leave my full-time teaching position at one school in January, the school kept most of my last month's salary. Even though I did everything by the book according to my contract, I had to resign myself to losing RMB10,000 (US$1,250, AU$1,650), in return for my employers losing face over my departure. As much as I needed that money, the loss of money sure is better than the loss of my life.

I'm not saying that all English schools in China are bad, but they are certainly getting a (not unfounded) reputation as being as dodgy as a greasy used-car salesman.

The following report is long, but well worth reading in it's entirety

A twist on sweatshops: Foreign English teachers
complain of abuse at Chinese language schools

Associated Press, Aug. 2, 2006, 12:06AM

BEIJING — Tanya Davis fled Jizhou No. 1 Middle School
one winter morning in March before the sun rose over
the surrounding cotton fields covered with stubble
from last fall's crop.

In the nine months Davis and her boyfriend had taught
English at the school in rural north China, they had
endured extra work hours, unpaid salaries and frigid
temperatures without heating and, on many days,
electricity.

Hearts pounding and worried their employer would find
a pretext to stop them leaving, the couple lugged
their backpacks, suitcase, books and guitar past a
sleeping guard and into a taxi.

As they drove away, "the sense of relief was immense,"
said Davis, a petite, soft-spoken 23-year-old from
Wales. "I felt like we had crossed our last hurdle and
everything was going to be OK."

It's a new twist on globalization: For decades,
Chinese made their way to the West, often illegally,
to end up doing dangerous, low-paying jobs in
sweatshop conditions. Now some foreigners drawn by
China's growth and hunger for English lessons are
landing in the schoolhouse version of the sweatshop.

In one case, an American ended up dead. Darren
Russell, 35, from Calabasas, Calif., died under
mysterious circumstances days after a dispute caused
him to quit his teaching job in the southern city of
Guangzhou. "I'm so scared. I need to get out of here,"
Russell said in a message left on his father's cell
phone hours before his death in what Chinese
authorities said was a traffic accident.

As China opens up to the world, public and private
English-language schools are proliferating. While most
treat their foreign teachers decently, and wages can
run to $1,000 plus board, lodging and even airfare
home, complaints about bad experiences in fly-by-night
operations are on the rise. The British Embassy in
Beijing warns on its Web site about breaches of
contracts, unpaid wages and broken promises. The U.S.
Embassy says complaints have increased eightfold since
2004 to two a week on average.

Though foreign teachers in South Korea, Japan and
other countries have run into similar problems, the
number of allegations in China is much higher because
"the rule of law is still not firmly in place," said a
U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of
anonymity.

"A number of substandard English language teaching
mills have sprung up, seeking to maximize profits
while minimizing services," the U.S. House of
Representatives International Relations Committee said
in a recent report on Russell's case. These institutes
have become virtual "'sweatshops' where young, often
naive Americans are held as virtual indentured
servants."

Davis said officials at her school in Hebei province
piled on classes without compensation, dragged their
feet on repairing leaks in her apartment and would
deduct sums from her $625 monthly salary for random
taxes and phone calls that were never made. These
ranged from $30 to $85, she said.

Wages offered range from $250 to $1,000 a month for an
average of 20 hours per week, with overtime that
varies. Housing is usually provided, and many schools
promise about $1,000 in airfare home upon completion
of a one-year contract.

Jobs offers teem on the Internet. On Dave's ESL Cafe,
one of the most popular sites, more than 340 were
posted in three months, ranging from positions in
prosperous Zhejiang province in the east to the
poverty-stricken grasslands of Inner Mongolia in the
north.

But also on Dave's ESL Cafe is an anonymous warning
from a teacher about a school in China's south.

"They will use you, abuse you, cheat you, and
disrespect you," it says. "You will hear it all when
they want you to sign the contract. Then after it's oh
sorry that isn't in your contract or a bunch of
excuses that go on and on."

There is no standard rule on contracts — some are in
English, some in Chinese.

John Shaff, a graduate from Florida State University,
said everything went according to his English-language
contract at Joy Language School in the northeastern
city of Harbin — until a disagreement over his office
hours erupted into a shouting match on the telephone
with a school official.

A few hours later, several men led by Joy's handyman
showed up at his school-provided apartment, physically
threatening him and cursing him in Chinese, said
Shaff, 25. About 10 minutes later, they left, and
soon, so did Shaff.

Like Shaff, Darren Russell had a disagreement with the
manager of Decai language school in Guangzhou, where
he had been promised 20 hours of classes a week.
Instead, Decai had him teaching at two schools, where
he put in up to 14 hours a day and oversaw 1,200
students, Russell's mother, Maxine Russell, said in a
telephone interview from Calabasas.

The school had troubles with foreign teachers. Two had
quit by the time Russell showed up, and a former Decai
employee, a Chinese woman who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said she left because she was asked to
recruit foreign teachers by offering attractive
contracts that went unfulfilled.

In April 2005, sick from bronchitis and exhausted from
the work hours, Russell told manager Luo Deyi he
wanted her to lighten his work load. An argument
ensued, Russell resigned and threatened to tell police
Luo was operating illegally, the former employee said.

The school then moved him into a low-budget hotel. A
week later he was dead. Police told Decai and
Russell's mother that Darren had been killed in a
hit-and-run traffic accident. The body was shipped to
California.

Maxine Russell, however, said Chinese authorities
could not provide consistent witnesses and a time of
death. According to the congressional report, which
was the outcome of a family request to look into the
Russell case, a California mortician who handled
Russell's body said he had suffered a blow to his head
and his body did not have bruises and fractures
consistent with a car accident. The mortician, Jerry
Marek, is a former coroner.

While Maxine Russell and the former Decai employee say
Russell was a beloved teacher, Luo, the manager,
insists he was often absent from class and his
"teaching methods failed to meet the requirement of
the school and fit the students." She said he had been
hired on probation, which he failed partly because of
a drinking problem.

"It was very strange and irresponsible for them to
blame us for their son's death," Luo said in a
telephone interview.

Maxine Russell denies Darren drank while teaching at
Decai.

Thanks to Phil for the passing on this article

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes

I rolled over in bed this morning, and groggily mumbled: "Happy Birthday Baby"

Shit, no that's not right. His Birthday was in June. What did I mean to say?

Oh Yeah, "Happy Anniversary Honey."

Phil and I have more anniversaries than we know what to do with, and have never quite figured out which one should take top priority.

First there is the anniversary of when we met in Kathmandu in September 2002- those couple of weeks are a bit of a blur, and we can't quite even remember the exact date- I think it was about the 15th.

But then after seven months of a long-distance relationship (me in rural Nepal, him in Shanghai, China), in April 2003 we broke up.

About six months after that, we started talking online again as friends. By that time I was living in Sydney again, Phil was still in China (with a short stint in Brazil). Over a year of chatting on MSN, with our friendship growing stronger and stronger, he finally told me in March 2005, that he couldn't be my friend anymore. Because he was in love with me.

*swoon*

Actually, I laughed at him and told him to get back to me in a week or so if he still felt the same way. Turns out he did, and in the mean time I got over my total denial, and realised I did too.

Then, after looking at several options of how to be together (Australia? Canada? China? Timbucktoo?) I finally moved here to Shanghai on the 4th August, 2005.

So tell me: what should we celebrate? The date we met? The date we got back together? or the date I moved here?

In any case we have been living together for 1 year today, and I must say I can't quite believe that I haven't smothered him in his sleep, or that he hasn't strangled me with my own incessantly flapping tongue... yet.

It looks like we finally got it figured out.

So, Baby: Happy One year Anniversary of living together- We done good, kid!

-----------------

Top points to anyone who recognised title of this post as coming from Rent:

Seasons of Love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?

How about love?
How about love?
How about love? Measure in love

And Now For Something Completely Different... *

To add a little culture ("kultchya") to this blog, I'd like to quote a poem from one of my favourite 'Creators'.

I first discovered Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)- painter, designer, writer, and translator- in 1996 when I stumbled on an antique book in my grandparents' house. The fraying, burgundy fabric-covered collection of poetry belonged to my grandmother, Marie-Jeanne Murnane. She told me at the time that it was one of the few books she brought with her when she emigrated from England to Australia in the 1940s to marry my grandfather Leo.

I began to read the collection, and found a beauty in the poetry that sang to me.

The book has since travelled around the world with me(carefully wrapped in paper, and several zip-locked bags in my carry-on luggage). Though I prefer his poetry to his paintings, I am full of admiration for Rossetti's diversity- his ability to transend the pressure to keep within just one medium. I consider myself to be a 'creator of all trades', and though our styles are vastly different, I consider Rossetti to be one of my role models for this reason.

Below is one of my favourite poems:

Love-Lily (1869)

Between the hands, between the brows,
Between the lips of Love-Lily,
A spirit is born whose birth endows
My blood with fire to burn through me;
Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
At whose least touch my colour flies,
And whom my life grows faint to hear.

Within the voice, within the heart,
Within the mind of Love-Lily,
A spirit is born who lifts apart
His tremulous wings and looks at me;
Who on my mouth his finger lays,
And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
That Eden of Love's watered ways
Whose winds and spirits worship her.

Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
Kisses and words of Love-Lily,--
Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
Till riotous longing rest in me!
Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
But find in her its gracious goal,
Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
Nor Love her body from her soul.

See the Dante Gabriel Rossetti Archive for more information.

*Don't worry, I haven't gone completely soft... to balance all the 'kultchya' I managed to slip in a quote from Monty Python's Flying Circus into the title.

"We will now return to your regular programming..."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Well I'm two days late with this (I always forget birthdays, not because I don't remember the date, just because I never know what the date is on any given day)...

But Happy Birthday Jess!! Carefull you don't start a bush fire with all those candles! :)

Also, Happy Birthday Aussie In The Orient! No, not my birthday, but Tuesday was the official 1st birthday of this blog.

The drinks are on me!

The very definition of cruelty

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - The Fear of long words.

I kid you not. Look it up.

Send in the Phobias

'Organisers of a British rock festival have been forced to change its circus theme after a number of ticketholders told them they had a phobia of clowns.
...
"We have had so many people with clown phobias contact us I am worried everyone might end up hiding in the woods," Rob da Bank, a BBC Radio One disc jockey who will "curate" the show, was quoted as saying.

Fear of clowns - or coulrophobia - has symptoms including shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, nausea, sweating and a sense of foreboding, The Times pointed out.'
- Sydney Morning Herald

Personally I don't get the clown thing, but so many people seem to feel the same way that there is even an I Hate Clowns website (it's pretty funny actually). Yet I totally understand the phobia of something completely irrational- I myself have had a life-long pathalogical fear of owls.

It is ridiculous, I know in theory that owls cannot hurt me, but if I look at a picture of one I get chills. If I hear one hoot, I convulse in involuntary shivers. If I see one at the zoo I start to get short of breath, and my heart races.

My sister, Liz, has a phobia of bees, but seeing as she is quite badly allergic to them, it makes sense. All our lives we have teased each other by buying little owl or bee presents and leaving them in each other's beds. Cruel yes, but fun? Also yes.

A friend of mine recently told the story of an ex-girlfriend of his who had an irrational fear of spots. Yep, you read that correctly: Spots. Dots, splotches, Polka dots, a pattern. It included clothes, furniture, even animals with spotted patterns. If she saw a spotted pattern she would start ucontrollably clawing at her body, as if to get the pattern away from her skin.

One of my students recently confessed to having a fear of any animal with a beak, and another friend has a fear of having their toes 'naked' in public.

Which makes me think: does everyone have an irrational fear? Perhaps not so strong as to induce a full-blown panic attack, but what gives you the willies?

[I WANTED TO INCLUDE A PICTURE OF AN OWL HERE, BUT WHEN IT CAME TO SEARCHING GOOGLE FOR ONE, I JUST COULDN'T DO IT]

Missing

I have spent 352 days away from Australia (I just calculated that right now, I am not carving daily notches on the wall prison-style). While most days I love --or at least Like Very Strongly-- my life here, there are some things I miss badly.

Family:


Friends:





My Munchkins (niece and nephew). Laura was a few days short of a year old when I left, and really doesnt remember me:


Good, reasonably priced coffee:


My town, Newtown, in Sydney... in all it's weird and wonderful glory:



My Baby:



Australian Beaches and Summer:




Pavlova:


Oh there's so much more now that I start to think about it! It's a damn good thing that this guy is so special, and partially makes up for so much of what I miss:

Gym, rhymes with Time

One of my favourite Simpsons episodes is when Homer walks past a Gym and says: "Gime? What's a gime".

Up until this point in my life, I had the same issue about Gyms. Never went in them. They were a mystery to me, and to be honest, a scary mystery.

But up until this point in my life I could still fit into my pants.

So on monday night I ....[*chokes on sentence in disgust*]... joined a gym.

Quite frankly I am terrified. How do these "gym people" always know so naturally what to do there? What locker to use? Where to put your shampoo in the shower? Not to mention what little buttons to press on the machines??

To make matters worse I am doing all this with my very limited Chinese. What happens if I misunderstand the instructor? If I can't read the buttons on the machine? If I go left instead of right in the aerobics class and cause a giant Human Dominoes Disaster??

ARGGHHHH!!!

I just know I am going to press the wrong button, and go flying at high-speed off the back of the treadmill.

When Bunnies Attack

Phil's arm (my fingers with nail polish!) after one of the bunnies decided he didn't want to be cuddled anymore.

A simple "No means No" would suffice.

Intermission

Ok, I don't want to leave that depressing 'bad day' post up there for too long, but I really have no time, or energy to post today. Bad me [smacks self on own wrist].

Instead I'll leave you with a joke (forwarded from Phil):

Home Security

An old Arab man lived alone in Idaho. He wanted to plough his potato garden, but it was very hard work.

His only son, Abdullah, who used to help him, was being held by the FBI on suspicion of aiding and abetting terrorists.

The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Abdul,
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my potato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.
Your Dad,
Mohammed.

A few days later he received a letter from his son:

Dear Dad,
For heaven's sake, don't dig up that garden, that's where I buried the biological weapons.
Love,
Abdullah.

Next morning, at 4a.m. the FBI agents and local police showed up and dug up the entire area without finding any weapons. They apologized to the old man and left.

That same day the old man received another letter from his son:

Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love,
Abdullah.

Why rain when it can pour?

Today has been a less than wonderful day. It began with my attempt to go out and watch the football/soccor at 2am this morning, culminating in Phil and I staying awake, getting dressed up, and walking to the front door before turning around and heading to bed instead.

I slept REALLY badly, woke up with a migraine, and had to face four 11 year olds for two hours of English tuition at 8.30am. To make matters worse, the kids had done better than I and had managed to stay awake for the game. Thus by 8.30am they were all over-tired and cranky, bickering at each other constantly. The soccor-mad David had been staying up and watching all the games this week obsessively, however he fell asleep at 1pm last night, and his family failed to wake him until the game went into extra-time. He was still crying from the disappointment of having missed the game, and I had to deal with that as well.

So after tutoring I came home, and at 12.00 I am making a peanut butter sandwich when I drop the bread. Butter-side down of course.

As I bend over to pick up the bread, the crotch of my jeans rips clean through. My last pair of jeans that actually fit.

I already know I am too big for most of the clothes in the shops here (I'm considered a whale with my 32 inch waist). Yet I try to go and buy a new pair anyway, as now I have only one pair of pants that fit, and that's going to get tricky on laundry day.

I ride my electric scooter to the nearest department store and walk around for an hour and a half, trying on every pair of jeans I can find (which is difficult since they have been cleared off the racks for summer). 100% of them are too small, 95% of them I can't even get passed my thighs. Feeling fat and frumpy I end up buying a pair of 3/4 length pants that fit me (just) but do not flatter me at all, because they are better than going naked.

I walk out of the department store, exhausted and demoralised to see that someone has stolen the battery out of my scooter. They somehow overcame the two locks on it, and carried it away (it weighs 4kg) without anyone noticing. In fact, when I came to my bike, there was a group of builders from the demolished building across the street standing there and openly laughing at me. I have my suspicions that they had something to do with it, and if looks could kill they'd be six feet under by now. The battery will cost at least a couple hundred dollars to replace- money I just do not have right now.

So, yeah, not a good day at all. Sure, no-one died, but none-the-less I feel like giving up and going back to bed.

Update: To overcome such a bad day, Phil and I decided to go out for dinner. We went to a popular street in an "ex-pat" area of Shanghai, that has many different types of cuisine. On the way to one of our usual restaurants, we passed a new Persian restaurant and decided not to be such creatures of habit.

Upon walking in, we asked immediately if they had any vegetarian food for your's truly. I was shown the last page of the menu, which had 6 vegetarian options- almost a record for China. As we settled ourselves on the cushioned day bed a la Arabian Nights, we congratulated ourselves for stepping outside of our comfort zone.

As our food arrived, I realised instead of an Eggplant and Tomato stew with rice, I had a beef stew in front of me. I sent it back and the manager (an Iranian man with perfect English) came to see what the problem was.

"Well, the vegetarian stew is full of beef" I tried to calmly report.
"I'm very sorry Madam, these two stews are very similar, there has been a mistake. I will bring you a new one".

Lo and behold, five minutes later, my vegetarian stew arrived. I was so starving I took a huge mouthfull without looking at it properly. You guessed it: it was the same beef stew with the larger beef chunks picked out. It was still full of smaller chunks of beef, not to mention the strings of slow cooked meat that have flaked off into the soup.

Phil had nearly finished his meal, but by this time we were so fed up with the service that we got up and left. On our way out the New Zealander owner of the restaurant came running up to us to see what was wrong. Phil shouted something about the meal and their attitude being completely disrespectful to me, but I was too worn down by the day to say anything.

As we walked away, the mounting pressure of all the little things that had gone wrong that day broke the dam wall, and I burst out crying in the middle of the street.

What a day.

Thanks to my hero and protector Phil, for always standing up for me, and letting me wipe my snotty face on his t-shirt in public. xxx

LOL

LOL
abbr.

laughing out loud.
- Dictionary.com

This internet/chat shorthand is taking over our lives. It used to indicate when something was truly funny and showed the person at the other end of the cyber conversation that you were indeed laughing. Out loud.

Now people just pepper net conversation with it out of laziness, and boredom, so much so that my sister and her friend Dan have started writing ALOL (Actually Laughing Out Loud). This joins LMAO (Laughing my arse off), ROFL (Rolling On Floor Laughing) and an ever growing array of emoticons to indicate just how amused you may be.

However I hadn't realised just how far the LOL acronym had taken over our lives until the other night. Lying in bed, I said something funny (believe it or not), and Phil responded by chuckling and saying:

"Lol" then a horrified pause, followed by: "Oh my god I just said 'lol' in a real live conversation"

"LOL!!" I replied.

Koala Cooties

I mentioned before that I teach English to four Taiwanese 10 year olds on Saturday mornings. During the Chinese summer holidays I am teaching them for 5 weeks, every morning, Monday - Friday.

In order not to have either them or me climbing up the walls, I have been searching for fact sheets about Australian animals today. They simply cannot get enough of Australian animal facts, and I can't get enough of something that we can make at least a week-long project out of.

While trawling the internet I came along a site called kid cyber, which has great fact sheets about many native Aussie animals, presented in child-appropriate language.

But then I found this paragraph. I know it's a serious problem, but I literally snorted pepsi out of my nose when I read the last sentence:

Koalas in danger!
People have destroyed koalas' habitat by cutting down eucalyptus forests. Koalas also die in bushfires and many koalas are hit by cars on country roads.
Now a disease called chlamydia, say clu-mid-ee-u, which makes koalas blind and makes the females unable to have babies is harming these animals.
-Kid Cyber: Koalas

I can just picture myself teaching that to the children: "Now everyone! Say Clu-mid-ee-u!!"


"Duuude, she totally looked clean..."

Aged P

When I first came to Shanghai, I can remember wandering the streets about 3pm and looking around to see many older people picking children up from school or kindergarten, walking with the kids down the streets, or carrying them in child seats on the backs of their bicycles.

I thought to myself- "Shanghai has a lot of seriously old parents!"

Of course I quickly realised these "old parents" are the children's grandparents, and one of the few positive results of the one child policy: many children have four retired grandparents to look after them while their parents are at work.

However, more commonly the one child policy has many more drawbacks. We have known about the growing imbalance of the sexes, and the abandonment of girl babies, for years. One more emerging drawback is the effect the aging population will have on industry in the near future. The following was in "The Times of India" this weekend (thanks to Phil for passing it on to me)

SHANGHAI: Shanghai is rightfully known as a fast-moving, hypermodern city - full of youth and vigour. But that obscures a less well-known fact: Shanghai has the oldest population in China, and it is getting older in a hurry.

Twenty per cent of this city's people are at least 60... By 2020 about a third of Shanghai's population, currently 13.6 million, will consist of people over the age of 59.

As workers become scarcer and more expensive in the increasingly affluent cities along China's eastern seaboard, the country will face growing economic pressures to move out of assembly work and other labour-intensive manufacturing, which will be taken up by poorer economies in Asia and beyond, and into service and information-based industries.

"With the working-age population decreasing, our labour costs will become less competitive, and industries in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh will start becoming more attractive," said Zuo Xuejin, vice president of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

-NYT News Service

The one-child policy does not stop the rich from having more than one child, they just have to pay extreme amounts of taxes for their second child. In fact, many of the richer people in Shanghai society are indeed having two children, and flaunting it as somewhat of a status symbol. My students simply cannot believe that the Australian government actually pays us to have children, instead of us paying them for the privilege.

The Chinese government has recently declared that when both the man and wife have no siblings (i.e. a couple consisting of two 'only-child' parents) they may have two children, as a strategy to overcome the issues of one person being unable to financially support two parents and four grandparents as the population ages. Part of me wonders if this will factor into the Shanghai peoples' already rather picky criteria for a suitable marriage. "I'm sorry darling, this just isn't going to work out. I think we should see other people. No, no, it's not you... it's your sister..."

There are very interesting times ahead for China.

A Proud Girlfriend Post

Phil had an exhibition of his photography last weekend, as a part of the Quebec National Day celebrations. His photos looked fantastic- all 27 of them!

I was so proud I wanted to put some pics of the night here, but you can look at his photos here

soft restraints

Sometimes when I'm feeling sleepy in the morning I keep bugging Phil for just one more hug before he goes to work.

Though it drives him mad when he's already late and running out the door, he usually humours me for a while.

But then he retaliates by doing this to me:



"Oh! The indignity!!"

Almost famous

Jess, my old flatmate from Sydney called me the other night, ecstatic after just having touched a sweaty Chris Martin at a Coldplay concert. I was was merely mildly amused until I realised that that makes me a whole 4 degrees of separation from Brad-the-most-gorgeous-man-alive-Pitt!



Me > Jess > Chris Martin > (his wife) Gwyneth Paltrow > (Gwyn's ex boyfriend) Brad Pitt.

Like I said, almost famous. Anyone want my autograph? Anyone...???