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on Thursday, October 13, 2005 - 02:15 PM AST - 2831 Reads
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For the following weeks, you're invited to follow Jeremy through his Silk Road Journey. You can get the whole story on his blog.
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How does one describe irony
By Jeremy
October 20th - 17:00pm
In bed, in my hotel, in the middle of the day
Today I want to talk about irony. I’m told I have a keen sense for irony. I do have to admit, that my sense of humor probably is greatly influenced by irony. As far as I know, the Chinese on the whole don’t have quite the same appreciation for irony as some western cultures, especially American culture. Upon looking up irony in about four or five English-Chinese dictionaries, I could only find words that related to irony as satire or sarcasm or using it to ridicule – irony in word-form. But that isn’t really what I’m talking about. When I talk about irony, I mean in the bigger sense, the whole concept. I mean in terms of the occurrences of daily lives and of fate. When things in your life or in events that you observe happen perfectly opposite of how logic might have predicted, or they happen perfectly in line with logic, but not the logic *you* were using. It’s difficult to describe irony, but it’s with me all the time. Especially now.
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If you look at the end of yesterday’s post, you’ll see me raving about eating sheep parts and how I’m a changed man, etc… Well, the irony is that I believe those very sheep parts have given me food poisoning. Last night was a long night for me. It was one of those nights where all you want is to be able to sleep through the night, but due to sickness, you wake up repeatedly, uncomfortable or nauseated or feverish, just wishing you hadn’t woken up so you wouldn’t have to be consciously experiencing your pain. I didn’t go to the Mogao caves today. I stayed in bed, shivering. I had to call the front desk and ask them to buy some bottled water for me, because I had run out here in my little, cold room. There’s not a lot to write about today, because all I did was get up for a while in the afternoon, and sort of hobble to a net café and do a couple of updates. Even that was a bit painful, due to my fever and body aches.
So there’s my dose of irony for a while (I hope). I sing the praises of sheep parts, and they stab me in the back… or the intestines. You might ask, “How do you know it was the sheep parts?” Well, I’ve had food poisoning a few times in my life, and every time after getting it, there’s one food that makes me feel nauseated just to think about. Today, that’s stir-fried sheep liver/lungs. I probably won’t be able to eat that kind of stuff for a while, despite how I was just writing about how wonderful these things are. Once again, irony.
One more thing I want to mention. I am THOUROUGHLY impressed by the service at this hotel. They went out and bought me water, brought it up to me at no charge, and then asked if I needed anything else like medicine. They helped me move my arranged bus to the Mogao caves from this morning to tomorrow morning, and in general have responded quickly and gladly to every request I’ve had. If you ever come to Dunhuang, stay at the Holiday Hotel. And tell them Jeremy Hou sent you. Not that they’ll know who I am, but it sounds cool to say that.
Well, that’s all for the day. We’ll try again tomorrow for something of actual interest, and for a post that doesn’t mention more intestinal woes. Hopefully that can be achieved.
Jeremy
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Episode 11: Ready to attend class?
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