Communication breakdown

Here's the thing about being a journalist: communications. You might have the greatest story in the universe or the most beautifully expressed but if you can't get it back to home base, you're worth about as much as a fake Olympic ticket.

A key tool for the Beijing reporter is a thing called a broadband card. This little beauty plugs into a hole in the wall in the Main Press Centre (MPC) and all Olympic venues and allows you to access the worldwide web at a highly decent speed and connect with your office through email and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and all sorts of interesting technology.

This card isn't cheap. So it's not a good idea to leave it in one venue while you are in another.

It's even worse when, just as you are realising that you have left your card behind and that you have the IQ of a brussel sprout, your laptop throws a fit.

All your lovely words on the screen suddenly bunch into a ball, which shrinks into a brilliant white dot, ever diminishing until there is nothing on your screen at all.

This provokes two things: 1) panic and 2) some very bad language indeed. Which brings us to the real point of this blog - the amazing ability of the Chinese (and most Asians, come to that...) to avoid giving offence.

This quality asserts itself when some of the thousands of Chinese girls assigned to media duties rush to your aid when they discern something is wrong - cleverly detected by the lifting of decibel levels and the persistent use of Anglo-Saxon expletives.

They are quite amazing, these wee things. There are about 10 of them to every journo. They are all about 4 ft 6ins tall, weigh 30kgs, are about 25 or 26 but look 12, have unfailingly cheery dispositions and an inability to say no (I mean this in the nicest possible way...).

They have hands the size of postage stamps and fingers like fantails' legs and - well, there's no polite way to say this - the smallest bums in the world.

Yes...now where was I? Oh yes, unfailing optimism. One concerned tiny Chinese girl suggested that I get back to the MPC and enlist the aid of the techies to fix the laptop. Good idea. I'd have thought of that myself once my heart rate had come down below 400 beats a minute.

Then, faced with the new problem that large, hairy, stupid foreigner has misplaced his broadband card, another Lilliputian has a great idea. Let's ring the MPC help desk and see if anyone has handed in my card, journalists being the unfailingly honest souls they are.

Language being a problem, I asked the bunch of impossibly tiny Chinese things on the help desk to ring their counterparts on the help desk.

Problem. No-one has the number. This provokes a flurry of scurrying about and high-pitched and voluble Chinese chatter. Fifteen minutes go by, then 20, much phone-calling is done and much agitated activity. But no result. Large, hairy foreigner begins to lose temper and forms emotional outburst.

The latter is often occasioned when something is your fault but then someone else does something to compound it. It's human nature, isn't it? You then round on them like they are the source of the whole problem, instead of your own stupidity.

But the outburst has an effect. Success! The help desk girl at the venue says the help desk girl at the MPC has walked to the work station where I was sitting and has retrieved my card from the hole in the wall, where it was sitting, begging to be removed by light-fingered colleagues.

Joy is unrestrained. I rush back to the MPC where a bored techie fixes my laptop in about five minutes.

While he's doing that, I rush to the help desk to reclaim my card. Problem. It hasn't been found at all.

The wee thing at the help desk at the venue was telling porkies. Faced with unreasonable, large, hairy, arm-waving foreigner she did a very Asian thing - she told me what I wanted to hear; a way to avoid giving offence and a much more palatable prospect than telling me I was toast. It also had the added benefit of getting rid of me as I rushed back to the MPC.

As I walked away from the help desk, I realised with sinking heart that I was going to have to shell out to buy a new card.

As I approached the desk to do so, I pulled out my wallet. And there, of course, was the missing broadband card - where I'd put it for safekeeping all along.

So, here in Beijing, I have a new resolution. I am going to be more Chinese about these things. Serene, with maximum optimism and a wide smile at all eventualities.

4ft 6ins may be beyond my capabilities but...jasmine tea, anyone?