etrangere2011,
No one will be receiving emails as we had hundreds of requests for tickets. We fulfilled as many of those requests as we could. Those winners will be getting their tickets delivered to the addresses in their emails by kuaidi today.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Awesome, I'll be there!

Fifa 2012

This is what we waited for, another german cliché place in town.

Keanu Reeves an authority on taste? Wasn't it Dracula where he started the movie with a British accent and gave it up half way through?

ladymarmalade wrote:

Freedom fries, lest we not forget. Also that Falklands business. And from two nations with a free press...

Um...nope, not the same thing at all. Unless French people were being beaten in the streets and French factories vandalized nationwide. That's the point: free Western countries are capable of protesting without murdering people, attacking embassies and sodomizing ambassadors, destroying property, razing factories to the ground, forcing restaurants to close out of fear and keeping my friend's Japanese workmate away from the office for a week in terror for his own safety.

If you can't see the difference you are blind–hopefully through ignorance; probably through choice.

gdbill wrote:

BJnerd wrote:

gdbill wrote:

Ah, yes ... Chris Devonshire-Ellis is quite accomplished.

He's an accomplished fraud:

1. The Scottish barony was purchased for about 65,000 pounds sterling and not 'awarded" to him or handed down to him as he implies.

An accomplished liar:

Remember all those periodic personal interviews he had with various Chinese ministers and other high-ranking government officials? They were all lies. Finally it came back to bite him in the rear when the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the People's Bank of China publicly labeled him a liar for inventing stuff that never -- ever -- happened.

There are also his claims of being an attorney and even to this day his claims of having a legal degree when the fact is he doesn't even have a university education.

Ah, but he does like his music.

Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, but I grow a bit tired of all of the CDE bashing on the China blogs.

Purchasing of the noble titles is something that has been going on for many, many years. I understand it was fashionable in the earlier part of the last century for the rich US industrialists to marry into the (increasingly broke)aristocratic families in the UK, just to pick up some of these titles.

While the purchase of titles of nobility may not be uncommon, lying about it and claiming that you inherited the title is not.

I do hope you can actually name a few of the US industrialists who married into aristocratic families for the title. In any event, I wonder how many of those same US industrialists actually had to solicit clients based on fraudulent claims of connections to high-level Chinese officials.

I must confess that I can't name names. I just know I've read this before. I think it was in Bill Bryson's new(ish) book about the Home but I don't have it nearby to check. Not that what he says is authoritative, but the idea of new money chasing old seemed sensible enough. Anyway - I don't have anything further to add to this discussion.

fatboy wrote:

On their day off, all 7-11 employees were fitted with headsets to ensure they continued listening to crappy consumer music.

they were also each allowed to take home one Hello Kitty plush doll to clutch in their beddie-byes, lest they suffer from withdrawal.