Monkeyrockworld

MM- What about the agricultural project you have in mind?

As I said before, at the moment I am trying to study, travelling and learning as much as I can. This is not for a professional career or with the goal of finding a “good job” for the future, but simply to realize some kind of social project with other people (no matter where in the world) who share with me the same ideas and passions. One of the project is to “go back to the countryside”. In Italy, as in China and in many other parts of the world, our grandparents were farmers and were living in the countryside. In the last half of the century, a great part of the globe population left the countryside seeking better life conditions in cities, creating the phenomenon we call “urbanization”. (more…)

My connection with Daniele started randomly over the internet when a few weeks before embarking on my Chinese teaching adventure, I was googling and researching about Punk in China. His blog “Secondo Me” was the first search result, and he was the first to tell me a few random things about life in Beijing and North east China.

Almost three years passed, me and Daniele had the chance to meet several times over different kinds of mouthwatering bei cang, discuss several topics, and sample several kinds of lung melting Chinese alcohol. Since the first time, I was really captured by the mental intensity of this out of the ordinary character, currently a Phd researcher in the prestigious People’s University in Beijing, writer and academic publisher disguised for a cheap ass punk with holes in his shirt and shoes and a taste for cheap, oily street food. In three words, my kind of guy.

Since then I’ve been an avid consumer of his excellent blogs and have tried to keep in touch as much as I could over the years… and finally decided to show you how much you can learn from this man sending him a few intense questions. For the sake of internet communication brevity, we didn’t engage in writing an encyclopedia, but what follows deserves to be tattooed on your brains with psychedelic ink. Enjoy. (more…)

I’ve recently had a pretty stupid message board interaction with someone with a fairly immense ego problem. Stating that I don’t give a damn is the most appropriate sentence, but buried inside the flow of shit talk this person addressed my way, there was a line about this blog that made me think, and I thought I’d like to clarify:

“I’ve checked your blog out. It seems a bit folk and naive, too clean and politically correct, as if Asia was just an enchanted land suspended in time.” (more…)

The Shan State expands out of Mandalay to the East, and reaches out in its vast, sheer mountainous beauty to Yunnan’s western border, and Northern Thailand to the Southeast. This is Myanmar hotspot for trouble, or better, the place where 10% of the world’s heroin production has hardened the plight of these people for a few decades now. The rest is mostly produced in Afghanistan. The Shan State is also where different rebel mountain ethnic groups have been trying to fight back the Burmese junta, and it’s a territory mostly out of reach to foreigners, us included. (more…)

Come regalo prenatalizio dell’anno 2009, ispirato da una idea di Francesco e una pratica gia’ attuata dal mitico scrittore Jim Goad nei suoi Misdirected, ho deciso di donare ai posteri alcune perle di saggezza telematica, cosi’ da suffragare ancora una volta l’ipotesi che la razza umana odierna abbia qualcosa di grosso che veramente, non va.

Mi permetto di commentare brevemente ai signori erroneamente “mandati da Google” su Monkeyrockworld.com, sperando che trovino nelle mie parole il conforto psicofisico che meritano, e apro cosi’ una nuova sezione del sito, che tornera’ sporadicamente ad allietare le vostre noiose giornate d’ufficio… il consiglio, per voi, invece e’ ancora una volta il medesimo: levatevi dai coglioni!! (more…)

Non ho mai avuto grande fiducia o apprezzamento per le donne in viaggio: spesso lente, sperdute, aggrappate a una Lonely Planet, SEMPRE incapaci di mantenere i miei ritmi o anche solo di alzarsi dal letto e inforcare lo zaino sulle spalle in maniera efficente (intendo: in circa 15 minuti)… quasi tutte, compresa Kit Yeng

Ovviamente non si puo’ generalizzare, e una tantum capita di incontrare donne di spessore e, soprattutto, con qualcosa da dire.

Ho incontrato Valeria, la “Signora Tripmaitrop”, a Kuala Lumpur con suo marito Paolo e quando ho deciso di cominciare a fare qualche intervista per approfondire gli argomenti di viaggio, ho pensato di prendere Valeria come esempio di “travellin’ woman” capace di imprese di tutto rispetto.

Ma non parleremo dei suoi viaggi, dei posti che ha visto o di altre banalita’ da “Manuale del Viaggiatore Zaino in Spalla” (ma chi e’ quel coglione all’EDT che permette di tradurre dall’Inglese in maniera cosi’ orrenda le guide Lonely Planet? E poi c’e’ gente come me che rimane senza lavoro…)… Valeria ha accettato da gran donna di rispondere alle domande di una Scimmia Maliziosa all’inverosimile… il risultato poteva diventare lo script di un mondo movie alla “Emmanuelle:perche’ violenza alle donne?” o di un porno storico alla “Messalina Orgasmo Imperiale” , invece ci siamo limitati a dare dei preziosi consigli di viaggio per le donne, ragazze e ragazzine che come Valeria hanno voglia di vedere il nostro meraviglioso mondo.

E in una nuova tradizione monkeyrockworldiana, inauguriamo la serie delle videointerviste di culto…. ciak! motore! AZIONE!!!

MM- You travelled with your wife recently, and she seems like she is quite cool in crashing wherever, eat whatever, take the longest and most uncomfortable bus rides etc. Someone says you are very lucky as a husband, but what is the real truth? Are women compatible with the hard road, the hard way?

Paolo- Someone said: “if you love me, you do it!”
Well, not all the girls are able to travel like I did. In these years I have had a lot of experiences with female travellers but I lost them on the road because it is not easy to follow the “beast trips”.
Finally I have met Valeria who at last won the reality show “the beast tripmaitrop”
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