2001-10-01 - 1:26 a.m.

�Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think it's Colin.�

A less than reassuring lunch the other day with some successful travel writers and editors (success is an ambiguous term of course, but let�s take it to mean, say, making enough money not to have instant noodles as their major dietary constituent). Travel�s had it apparently. Everyone is staying home forever to sit in their bunkers and watch �Who Wants To Be A Nuclear Holocaust Survivor?� on cable. Anyway, it�s not what�s known as a growth industry. In fact it�s a shrinkage industry. This really frosts my buns. It took me long enough to find something even resembling a career, let alone one that offers such perks as frequent dealings with those delightful people who work in pee-yar and as much free hotel soap as you can eat. Anyway, they�re all bailing and going into areas that are going to be more in demand, like freelance biological warfare supervision and temping in a bomb disposal unit.

Ironically, the only British journalists in New York at the time of what I believe the media have settled on calling �the tragedy� were the fashion correspondents, just about recovering from the cerebral apocalypse of Fashion Week. Wisely, all the news channels avoided any live reportage. �So, Delila, just how IS masonry being worn this season?� �Suicidal religious fundamentalism is the new black.� �And now here�s Osama modelling the international terrorist range � wise to avoid those military fatigues which are just SO 1998 � going instead with the soiled trousers and excessive facial hair with Koran accessory.�

�I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said 'Who's speaking please?' And a voice said 'You are.��

Another day, another hangover after drinking twice my own body-weight in ethanol with sundry Polish immigrants. Conversational boundaries were really being pushed back, cornered as I was by one guy who covered a spectrum of diverse topics ranging from heavy metal bands he�d recently seen, to the insignia of heavy metal bands he�d recently seen. My English cohorts had taken acid � I politely declined, as getting wasted with the Poles is invariably a fairly trippy experience in itself. Incidentally, a co-attendee of the party was The Ninja Bride, a girl I had a brief flingette with two years ago, who was then in the process of dumping her boyfriend. Him finding out about it wouldn�t have been so bad if he hadn�t been a martial arts expert, specifically one that became intent on feeding me my own internal organs after ripping me a new cakehole. I took the obvious course of action and just hid. After all, I�m a loafer, not a fighter.

As someone pointed out, I did actually steal a line in my film reviews from one of the more offensive NYC jokes, but I trust the new context made it less tasteless.

�He said 'I'm going to chop off the bottom of one of your trouser legs and put it in a library.' I thought 'That's a turn-up for the books�

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