Yesterday I took tea at Mouse Love Rice. This apparently random collection of words is intended by the proprietors to signify a Chinese tea shop on Manchester street. On conversation, it emerged that it was named after a pop song of the same name. I pressed for a brief summary of the lyrics, and determined that a more meaningful translation would be something along the lines of As Much As A Mouse Loves Rice (That’s How Much I Love You, Baby). It turns out that most everybody in the world apart from me had already heard of this song, downloaded it, and bickered about who recorded the best version. But none of this explains why a tea shop, decorated in a traditional manner, is named after a recent pop song whose lyrics do not seem to involve tea in any way.

There is a video, but it does not provide much in the way of explanation, as it contains only a simple narrative about a blind woman who buys many plants from a travelling plant salesman. He demonstrates his love for her by shouting into a mist-filled valley and giving her oranges, then she is run over by a car, and he is so upset he turns into a mouse and has himself mailed to her hospital bed. By some unexplored mechanism, possibly involving ancestral spirits or a compassionate Bodhisattva, this act of sacrifice causes her to recover her sight. She falls in love with her doctor and hey get married, apparently never knowing that they owe it all to the mousey plant salesman, whom she keeps as a pet. Nobody drinks any tea at all.

This is as far as I have thus far managed to get in exploring the mystery of the Mouse Love Rice Tea Shop. However, I can report that they serve excellent tea at reasonable prices, and I intend to return.

In addition, I can see a butterfly.

From Sunday I shall have a couple of spare rooms available for rent. Delightful rooms they are, each with its own special qualities. One is sunnier, but the other is bookshelfier. Both are close to the University of Canterbury and are connected up to some other rooms to form a house, which has two cats and other modern conveniences.

So if you or someone you know needs a place to live in Christchurch, and is looking for something more luxurious than a tent or bivouac, I have just the thing. Two things.

Comments are disabled on my main site at the moment, so if you don’t have contact details for me already leave a note on my LiveJournal feed or consult my contacts page for the method of your choice (choose from three).

Apologies to any LiveJournal readers who may have seen some old posts bubble up on their friends pages. I attempted to upgrade to Movable Type 3.3, and discovered that it breaks the plug-in for cross-posting to LiveJournal.

Shortly after putting 3.2 back, the spam attacks finally got out of control, and I had to remove the comment scripts entirely to prevent them overloading the server my site is hosted on.

I believe it is time to switch to some other blog software, which is a shame. Partly because I quite liked Movable Type, and partly because I just do not have time to muck around with my website at the moment.

I have recently replaced my dilapidated old wooden mailbox with a sleek new metal one, which does not have bits falling off it. While generally superior, it currently lacks one important feature of the old mailbox: a small sign reading No Circulars. I have been astounded to discover just how effective that sign was, for local postal operatives have wasted no time in stuffing my new mailbox full of a bewildering assortment of advertising brochures and community newspapers. It is quite extraordinary to see so much paper being misused in a vain attempt to attract my attention.

While it is disappointing to discover so much waste, it is also heartening to learn that my humble No Circulars sign was so scrupulously honoured.