This week my
flaneurial activities have faced something of a challenge as the incessant rain
in South China has rendered any peregrinations a somewhat foolhardy activity.
It has rained heavily and continuously for four days now, soaking every single
item of clothing that I possess. My habitual minimalism on these sojourns is
perhaps better suited to more clement climes. I usually endeavour to embark on these
escapades with just the bare necessities by way of clothing, buying more if
need be. The notion is to spend one's time in relatively warm places and hence
all one normally needs by way of apparel is a supply of cotton t-shirts and
maybe a few pairs of shorts. Not so this week. Every time I stepped out into
the local streets it entailed yet another set of clothes being soaked, and as
the cleaning facilities are based upon the presumption of hot, dry days in this
part of the world, the chances of adequate drying seem to be extremely limited.
I am assured
that such intemperate conditions are a rarity in this part of the globe. The
average temperature is normally some six or seven degrees centigrade warmer
than I am currently experiencing and the rainfall on average a mere ten to
twenty millimetres for the month, as opposed to the current reality of thirty
odd millimetres a day, every day, for the past week. Indeed, my accuweather app
is constantly warning me of extreme weather conditions via a range of attractively
coloured danger symbols. This sort of rainfall is not normally encountered even
in the wettest of seasons in South China, and this is supposed, in theory at
least, to be the driest part of the year!
Such
challenging atmospheric conditions have meant far more time spent in cafes,
restaurants, shops and libraries – basically, anything with a roof on it. A
couple of days were even spent back at the flat being very anti-social (jet lag
was my excuse...). One's motivation for strolling around town is severely
affected by such adverse climatic inconsistencies. Given that I have spent far
more time than is usual for me staring at various forms of screens, I was
somewhat pleased in the circumstances to have kept to a resolution I made in
early January (on my birthday actually – New Year itself having brought but
little inspiration, being relatively content with life as it already is). I had
been attempting to catch up on the news as offered by the MSN site online.
Somehow though, on this particular site, the news items seemed to be presented
in an invariably shallow and somewhat facile way, and I had even managed, quite
inadvertently, to follow a couple of stories that were included in the list of
articles that subsequently turned out to be, in reality, adverts.
On closer
inspection, these 'news' items were marked with the word 'sponsored' which, in
effect, means that they were not news at all, but merely a rather dubious
attempt to mislead the reader into yet more commercial content. Over the past
two or three years I have noticed this trend becoming more and more prevalent,
much to the detriment of one's enjoyment on the internet (or, at least, to
mine!).
At this
stage, I recalled a book I had read some years ago by Tim Ferris; 'The 4-Hour
Workweek'. In this excellent and thought provoking work, the iconoclastic
Ferris had proposed that whilst engaged on one's travels one should avoid any
attempt to keep up with the news. Up to this year, such a restriction had
proven to be nearly impossible for someone such as myself. For most of my life
I had felt the need to always keep myself abreast of developments. The desire
to do so, however, had been somewhat reduced in recent times by the growing
realisation that the vast majority of the news is currently presented with an
agenda, rendering it not only horribly subjective and very inaccurate, but also
biased to the point of absurdity.
It would be
hard to say what the final straw was; perhaps the way that the UK press
reported so negatively on almost anything that the Labour leader, Jeremy
Corbyn, said or did, perhaps an attempt to read the formerly well-written but
now entirely muzzled Bangkok Post, or maybe the annoyance at being mislead by
yet another 'sponsored' link. Whatever it was, I resolved that I would no longer
make any attempt to keep up with daily news and only review developments long
after they had taken place, to take the role of the detached observer, as
befits a flaneur, rather than that of the mindless consumer who finds himself
constantly drip-fed alarmist and sensationalist items.
As soon as I
made this resolution two things became readily apparent; firstly, how difficult
it is in these wired in, tuned in and turned on times to actually avoid this
type of news content. Even though I routinely avoid television, except for the
odd sporting indulgence, I still found that even on radio every station seemed
to feel the need to give hourly updates, which forced me to quickly mute the
volume or simply hit the off switch. Secondly, it very quickly became clear
just how much time was wasted in keeping up with this constant stream of
bulletins. Suddenly, I had so much more time on my hands to get on with several
projects that had been merely vague intentions beforehand. After just a few
days, I found my focus had become so much sharper once the need to check on
'developments' had been removed (this latter process also being enormously
aided by the removal of all news apps from my mobile phone).
Also, it
quickly became obvious that one's general mood was positively affected by this
voluntary abstinence. No longer was I concerned about the latest blurtings of
Republican presidential candidates, the Chinese economic situation and
collapsing stock markets, or the ongoing threat of terrorism and just how
unpleasant ISIS are (as if it were a new discovery that Abrahamic monotheistic
religions tend to lead to such horrors). All situations on which I had no
influence whatsoever but which I had routinely found myself concerned about in
the past. Sometimes it seems almost as if we are fed a diet of fear and
anxiety, yet barely any one of us is in a
position to do anything about such concerns. Mentally and emotionally,
this cannot be a healthy situation, and may even be considered a close relative
to the 'learned helplessness' that the psychologist Martin Seligman spoke so
eloquently about back in the 1960's.
Finishing
this particular set of conjectures in my fourth watering hole of the day, I am
at last pleasantly surprised to find it has finally stopped raining. According to
the usually reliable 'Accuweather', we have one rather pleasant day of sunshine
tomorrow before the resumption of downpours from Sunday onwards. China is
currently gearing up for the New Year celebrations on the 7th
February, one hopes that the unreasonable unseasonable weather has dissipated
prior to these festivities. Having enjoyed such shindigs in the February cold
of London on several occasions, I was
rather looking forward to celebrating the coming 'Year of the Fire Monkey' in
what are supposed to be the much more moderate conditions of South China.
Xing Mian
Kuai Le! (Happy New Year!)
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