At least the firefighters didn’t have to travel far
A FIRE STATION CAUGHT fire last week, with embarrassed firefighters fleeing for their lives in Lanzhou city, Gansu province.
The story came to light a few days ago when passerby Liu Siyu took a picture of a blackened, smoking fire station (above) and put it on his Weibo (Chinese Twitter) page. It was forwarded to lots of people, me included.
At first, officers pretended they "meant to do that" as a "training exercise." But people aren't stupid, and they eventually came clean. Even their fire engine was a charred mess.
China netizens mocked them. "They're forever telling other people what to do, how many extinguishers to have, and closing down businesses because they don't meet fire regulations," a local netizen commented. "How about we close them down now?"
That's a good idea. Then what do you do if your house burns down, Mr Silly Netizen?
On the plus side, these firefighters can surely apply to Guinness Book of Records for being the "fastest firefighters ever to reach the scene of a blaze."
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A WOMAN traveling from Lahore to Paris fell fast asleep in her aircraft seat last week and failed to disembark.
By the time she woke up, the plane had gone from Pakistan to France, to Italy and back to Pakistan. Now, that's what I call a nap.
The woman was furious that Pakistan International Airways' crew did not wake her, according to Express News, a Pakistani TV show. After 18 hours in the air, the Lahore citizen had managed to get precisely nowhere, so decided to go home.
Then Lahore officials stopped her re-entering as her paperwork was wrong.
And you thought YOU had a bad day.
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A SPEAKER who went past her three- minute deadline at a town council meeting a few days ago was arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
A big round of applause to police on duty at the Riverside municipal meeting in California.
I wish they'd attend every meeting I have to go to.
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SAME WEEK something similar happened in China, where a teacher in Hunan was sentenced to a year in jail for ringing a bell five minutes early.
You may think that is a bit harsh, but the bell was the one signifying the end of the Gaokao, the national exam that people take to determine the rest of their lives.
Furious students felt his action disadvantaged the Hunan community against 9.5 million others taking the test at the same time.
In China, a year in jail is considered lenient. Students wanted him killed slowly using only a cigar trimmer, then revived, to be killed slowly again, using only dental floss.
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TIP FOR for office workers: If short of time when filing things, remember, everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."
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THIS IS WHERE we were hanging out yesterday. Bangkok is such a great city. We were at the Mandarin Oriental, which is hosting us (the Asia Pacific Writers group) because it has long been associated with famous authors – Joseph Conrad, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, etc all stayed here. I was elected chairman of the writers' association last night so I will actually have to do some work. All ideas to improve the lives of creative people in the Asian century gratefully received…
Oddly enough one of the first writers I spoke to was a young woman from Davao City – the place where the mayor in the previous post rules supreme. She told me they call him “the killer mayor”…
