A Nice Way to Show Power

So, I'm writing on a snowy day. December wasn't as cold last year and this year delighted my wife with ice falling out of the sky. A first for her.

China in general has another "first" going on. They are taking part of the international anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia. You might recall a news item a little while back where pirates captured a cargo ship loaded with tanks, spare parts and ammunition. The ransom demand was in millions of dollars and they still hold the ship captive. The Russians sent the Sovremenny missile destroyer to the area, but so far the ship has yet to be released. A little later and now the Chinese are also going in.

They aren't going in for the Russian tanks, of course. They are doing it because the Gulf of Aden is an important shipping route and because the international effort already rescued the Chinese merchant Zhenhua 4 last Wednesday. It's most likely a tacit show of force as well. Nothing threathening, but a quiet reminder that yes, China has a modern navy and is capable of deploying it outside of local waters. Unfortunately the news in English haven't stated which ships China is going to send. The People' Liberation Army Navy has quite a few modern ships to show off, including the two 1996 bought Sovremenny's and the two improved models of the same, bought in 2001. I'm hoping of course they send the destroyer Taizhou (it's the latter, an 956EM Sovremenny.) I wouldn't be surprised if the group of three ships being sent includes one of the newer domestic destroyers too.

The Chinese have said they will play nice, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao: "Chinese naval vessels will strictly follow U.N. Security Council resolutions and international laws. They are willing to work with other countries and to take part in humanitarian relief tasks." I'm not even joking when I say there's no reason to doubt this. The Chinese only showed interest in the operation after the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved of the action and the Chinese merchants have had pirate trouble.

Yes, to be honest I expected to see more cool warship pics in the news. If you share a bit of similar interest, here's a link to the news item and to the Sovremenny.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081220/wl_nm/us_somalia_piracy_china
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/row/rus/956.htm

OP Out.

Music, on the road.

There is something to be said for music which is not ashamed to sound
whatever it sounds like. On this the same token I can accept music I
don't like in many cases. Who wants to hear of those?

I once thought it might be possible to make a computer program to
which you insert hits, snippets of successful songs and other bits of
sound in mass quantities; the program would then create an average
value. The resulting generated song would certainly be a huge success.
It would also be the ultimate mediocrity, while selling millions.
Guess what? Coldplay came and beat me to the punch in making soulless
crap.

I can't blame Coldplay for selling out - there was nothing there to
begin with. Now don't get me wrong, it's not an injustice they've sold
millions of records, there is a huge group of people who answer "a
little bit of everything" when you ask what do they listen to. It's
not as bad an answer you'd initially think if you know what albums
they buy.

Want another? Go listen to Panic at the Disco. As an experiment, play
through a whole album and rest a little. You will feel as something is
missing, but you cannot say what. It's a small piece of your essence.
The machine that spits out averages like Panic made something so
horrible it became a void trying to fill itself. H.P. Lovecraft writes
of a color out of space - not really a thing unto itself, something
not tangible, but something which spreads and sucks the life out of
anything it comes near. The album Pretty Odd is the Lovecraftian sound
out of space. It is not really music, but something alien and
inexplicably terrible, weakening and using you only to spread. As the
victims of horror stories I cannot offer you a way to kill it, I can
but flee from it. In Color Out of Space the victims die or retreat to
the relative safety of insanity. The latter must have happened with
the first Panic album, it's the only way to explain how the second
album sold so well.

OP Out.

For Notepad

Here you go, Pekka.









Oh, if you don't get it, read
Pekka's post on web editing

#download a.download{ font: 14px "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #fff; }

Hi,

My apologies for being so delayed from regular posting. It's been a painful few weeks in coding for me, and time passes by extremely fast.

Now, if you're at all familiar with creating a website, you know it can be super fun to make one. If you're an expert, what you're going to read in this post will look stupid. If you're not an expert, you'll think website-making is a terrible world best left for professionals.

The thing is, to further expand my adventurous life as an entrepreneur, me and my business partner decided we could make an online shop for stuff we could sell cheap from China to Finland and elsewhere in Europe possibly. Not consumer goods, but stuff businesses need. Not like industrial components, but practical things. I won't give futher details, though, as it is still not ready and giving away details of my business to our millions of readers would probably end up in an idea-theft. Anyway, to get such a business going, we need a website.

I'm the only one of us who actually knows anything about making a website. So I got that winning ticket. I have a good understanding of HTML code and a bit experience in CSS. That's it. And I write everything in Notepad. I'm that old-school (or unskilled).

So, with those skills of mine, I had a task of creating a fully operational website that can provide a kind of online shopping function (not a real webstore, but with plenty of online forms to fill).

The first week went really well. I was creating the main graphic layout and the CSS to support it - albeit the visual image has changed about 3 times since, everytime to the better. I managed to put in a basic ordering system and some contents.

Second week I was working 14-15 hours a day (sleeping 5-6 hours) to get stuff into the website, and finally started having those rookie mistakes that make pros cry.

It's easy to put text into a website, but it's not easy to make them look super-cool and have them behave as you want them. Especially when you're using a frameless CSS layout. It's a magical thing what one misplaced comma or a missing '>' can do. With one small typo your whole website might ceace to exist the way you knew it. It might take a life of its own. The worst is if you don't exactly remember what you changed in the code just before - or if it takes you a long time to notice you've made a mistake (the changes are, you might have to go through everything to find that missing comma).

I had that. I missed one > after closing a bold text command. Took me two hours to find where I went wrong.

Also took me around two hours to find out why some pictures didn't open in Internet Explorer while opening perfectly normally in Mozilla. I thought it's my code and I went through it over and over again. No mistakes there - simple code - why isn't the damned thing working?! Oh, turned out some of the pictures were saved in CMYK-colours which, it turns out, IE doesn't open but Mozilla does. I converted the pictures to RGB and the thing worked like a charm again.

For the online forms, I also added a CAPCHA-security field so that visitors have to type in those funky characters to designate themselves as humans and not as spambots. For this I had to venture a completely new world of coding: PHP and Java - both which I had no experience from before. After working zealously to get CAPCHA working, my form stopped working. It worked almost, but it had one flaw: the emails that I received from the process.php protocol didn't have any of the '+' signs in the contact information (as in, someone would put in country code for a phone number). Turns out PHP code considers '+' as a space-character. Took me god knows how many hours to figure out how to fix that.

Today, I've had my favourite code-glitch of them all! Didn't take me as long to find the problem since it's in my familiar CSS code, but it's quite amusing.

At a location of the CSS code file, I have: #download a.download{ font: 14px "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #fff; }. This means that in Div type="download" if there is a link class="download" it'll have font size 14px in Arial and black colour. I used to have a html file that used that Div Type but I didn't need it in the end so I've deleted the html file a long while ago. However, I forgot to take out this line from the CSS file, but then, usually it shouldn't be a problem. The important thing is, it's a kind of leftover in the code that nothing uses.

Or so I thought.

Internet Explorer uses it. Internet Explorer needs this particular piece of code to make the website work. Mozilla doesn't, nor does any other browser. IE, for some reason, can't make my right side window and footer work if there is no code that would tell IE that in Div type="download" if there is a link class="download" it'll have font size 14px in Arial and black colour. I can change the font size and nothing happens, I can change the colour of the font and nothing happens. But if I take out the code all hell breaks loose! So, I'll leave the code there.

I'm quite sure this kind of leftover code is what will eventually make real Artificial Intelligence - or a kind of a real intelligence for machines. By wilfully creating AI ourselves, humans can only aspire for intelligence similar to our own intelligence. However, true intelligence has freedom and it cannot be dictated. Hence, only from true randomness and chaos can it be born!

I know a missing comma doesn't sound very intelligent. But look at it this way: I wanted it to work - I made in a way it should work and it looked smart enough - however, through a small mistake, I lost control of the beast and it took a life of its own!

Geeks are the lion tamers of today.

Locks

Locks are a smaller topic for a change, but let's go over some basics.

In China, whenever I've seen anyone move in to a new apartment, the first order of business is to change the locks. The occupants usually change the front door lock which is often a more expensive model to begin with and has easily interchangeable internals. These are nice locks and I would have no idea where to start picking them. Take for example the new lock in my apartment - it was changed in to the old housing and came with 6+2+1 keys. The first six are the regular keys to open the door. The second two are for maintenance people and such, who you will want to give a temporary key. The last key is a special key to allow or deny the two maintenance keys. Turn once to allow the two extra keys, turn again to disable. That's what you get for 100 RMB.

The second type of lock is the one for show. And no, I don't mean it's a pretty lock. It's the kind that says "I'm locked, kinda." My electric scooter has such a lock for the helmet case. You can open it with they key intended for it by pushing the key all the way in and turning. No surprise there. The joke is, you can also push the key halfway in and turn, it'll unlock.

So my new apartment complex has motorbike charging boxes available downstairs. We moved in and took our scooter there. I tried charging the bike and noticed that you need to unlock the box to get electricity. (You see where this is going, right?) I almost contacted the management office and asked how much a key would be, but I decided to try my motorbike key. I inserted the tip in the lock and turned. You guessed right, it unlocked. No forcing or picking, just like the key was meant for it.

That lock is similar to the one I had in my mailbox, except that instead of opening with any key, it didn't open at all. I had to change it and that, labor included cost me 6 RMB at the old apartment. You very much get what you pay for. Most people use additional tube locks for their motorbikes, hitching them to posts and supports like you would a bicycle. I don't, but that seems like a bad idea more and more.

OP out.

A few pics

I promised these. My current apartment has 2 bedrooms, living room with dining area, kitchen and two bathrooms. The outside view is from my balcony and the pool picture is from the neighbourhood.

I'll post more later if requested.

OP out.

The eco news headlines are all bad, but is it really?

I'll comment on my new apartment with photos later. Markvs asked for some pics and I've taken a few, but haven't uploaded any. They are coming, though.

Here's a bit of ecological news I picked up. Don't drink water from the Yellow River:

"The Yellow River, the second-longest in China, has seen its water quality deteriorate rapidly in the last few years, as discharge from factories increases and water levels drop because of diversion for booming cities.

The river supplies a region chronically short of water but rich in industry.

The Yellow River Conservancy Committee said 33.8 percent of the river's water sampled registered worse than level 5, meaning it's unfit for drinking, aquaculture, industrial use and even agriculture, according to criteria used by the United Nations Environmental Program.

Only 16.1 percent of the river samples reached level 1 or 2 — water considered safe for household use.

Industry and manufacturing made up 70 percent of the discharge into the river, the notice said, with 23 percent coming from households and 6.4 percent from other sources. The notice did not identify specific pollutants."

The numbers above are not relevant, but what is, is the fact that the pollution is being acknowledeged. The real hope anyone can have at this point is that no other agency comes up with a competing study saying the water is safe (with percentages of their own.) Remember, there is no need to worry for the environment per se - you need to worry for the people living in the environment.

The news post lists a few other previous events related to water quality. Note this one: "In February pollution turned part of a major river system in central China red and foamy, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to as many as 200,000 people."

That is a case where nothing was done until the water was visibly unusable. Red and foamy. The problem is that the factories near the rivers are important to the local citizens. Working in a factory can offer a steady, safe and comfortable conditions compared to farming. And I'm not joking. Amid all the crap you hear about labour laws in China the factories are important sources for employment in many areas. You can't close them and say "go environment." But at least in this case, we are noting the water pollution before the river is red and foamy. There's hope that it doesn't become as bad.

Perhaps it will be easier to control pollution growth next year. The forecast is lower, coming to a 7.5% economic growth. That's the lowest rate since 1990. Keep it in mind when you evaluate environmental news in the coming year. The challenges are huge and control mechanisms often need to be built from the ground up. Small factories and shops have none existent or next to none environmental control.

But remember, China is trying. You might have heard Hong Kong has natual gas taxis running around, but did you know so does Guangzhou? Actually, Guangzhou has natural gas taxis and electric buses. I've even taken a trip in a domestically produced gas taxi in Guangzhou, very few cities let alone countries have similar setups. On a related note, Shell just agreed to sell two million tonnes of liquified naural gas to Petrochina under a 20 year contract.

The full newsposts are available at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_re_as/as_china_polluted_river
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_economy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_shell_lng

OP out.

More about driving

Driving really shows the true nature of people.

When I drive inside to my apartment's car park, I have to cross an opposing traffic lane. There is a bumb just before my car park's entrance on the opposing lane, so that the car's wouldn't drive so fast and let people move in and out from the condominium.

However, again today, there was an idiot who thought that HE should go before me, so he decide to speed up while approaching the access point to my condo (and the bumb). BAM! His brand new Mercedes' bottom hit the bumb, and hopefully there's at least a minor oil leak now. It was truly hilarious, and serves him/her right.

And this leads me to;

Maybe it's a bit hard to explain or prove in a blog entry, but people really are "me first" "I'm here" "me me me" etc etc. all the fucking time. One proof, however, could be that every brand or product name with letter "i" or letters "my" in the front sell ridiculously well.

People are mass-individuals. These kind of blogs are one way to trick ordinary people believe that they matter.

Coincidences

I'm moving. This Saturday I plan to move the main load and hand over the old keys on Sunday. I have paid the first 6 months' rent, deposit and I've got the keys. But I'll tell you how the moving went after the fact.

I'm just here to share with you that I got a nice deal, partly through luck.

The housing area is said to be the best in Taizhou. It certainly looks the part - all of the 20+ buildings are less than 5 years old, near the city center but off the main road enough to be quiet and peaceful. There's a lush green hill on the other side. I've been there once before, asking about prices. The cheapest was 3300 RMB/month.

This time we decided I wouldn't take part in the apartment hunt at all and that I would only come look at an apartment once my wife had been trough the price negotiation.

So she did. She waded through several agencies, until the she found a nice deal. Trough the surprising Chinese social network. Guangxi. The real estate agent knew a friend of a landlord, whom my wife met when looking through agents. The friend was involved in the price negotiation and agreed to the terms.

2500 /month, 6 months up front, 3000 as a deposit. The average, we found out, is 3300-4000 /month, 12 (!) months up front, 5000 as a deposit. And since the friend had agreed to this, the landlord actually agreed too. When she arrived to the realtor she wasn't too happy. Actually, she had specified a higher rent for the apartment. But my wife had had the presence of mind to make sure and doubly sure that the price was the agreed one. After the landlord saw me, she remarked she should've push for a better price since I was foreign. On the other hand, she was relieved that she wouldn't really need to worry about her getting the rent money.

So, the air conditioners were bought in today while the TV cable was installed. The utilites all work and we'll be the first tenants in the apartment. The Internet will be set up tomorrow. I'll grab a few pictures once I get all my stuff sorted away. It's a short move from one part of the city to another, about 30 minutes in a car, so I expect things to go reasonably well.

OP Out.

Efficiency

Efficiency is when you march in to an office with papers in tow and the official makes your certificate while you wait. But I'm getting a little ahead of the story here.

About a month ago I contacted the Finnish maistrate asking how to apply for a paper declaring myself free to wed in a foreign country. It turned out they had a simple application available online, which they required signed as well as a second form they needed but didn't have online. The official in Finland was nice and responsive on the phone and emailed me the missing application to me the same night.

These maistrate applications were easy to get, but required additional work. The two steps were the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs who legalized the certificate by stamping and signing it. You see, Finland and China are not part of a mutual agreement where official documents of both nations would be directly usable in both. Instead, the stamped and signed official documents needs a second set of official identifiers from the government. This I got done by using a relative in Finland. They charged about 20e.

The second step was the Chinese embassy in Finland. For a document of this nature to be accepted in China, they need to authorize the legalization with a further stamp (it comes with a cool hologram sticker too.) They charged a little under 60e but were fast as well. The mail-in service is cheaper but takes longer (one day for 60e versus a week for 20e.) With this, the certificate is ready and has about five stamps and four signatures. Plus your own signature.

Get the paper to China. 100e for the courier covered my cost, but it was quick. I strongly recommend against cheaper options for important documents.

In China the local notary will need to translate the document. This is the step where all the stamps are needed, as the translation will be official too. The Zhejiang notary did the translation in a reasonable timeframe, for less than 200 RMB. They then stamp the Chinese translation together with the original document, so that now your certificate has five and a half stamps plus four plus two signatures. You are ready for the final hurdle, the local bureau in charge of the wedding registry.

You would expect it to be horrible by now, right? We walked in at about 10am with the documents in tow. The official took them asked for a copy of a couple of them (Household registry for my significant other, identifications) and gave a pair of documents to fill. Name, Date of Birth and such, nothing you couldn't answer off the top of your head unless you forgot where you were born. There was even a service available to have the paper filled for you if you couldn't read/write. (Not catering to the foreigners, but they would help a laowai too, I assume.)

The official checked the documents, printed a confirmation out and asked for one more signature plus 9 RMB. Official documents followed immediately.

The last step of the journey took 30 minutes, three A4 papers and no hassle at all. I walked out with a Chinese marriage certificate bound in a small red booklet with golden letters on top. Fancier than what would be provided in Finland.

I wish to apologize for all my lady readers seeking an eligible bachelor, there's one less fish in the sea.

OP out.

Kefsi

KFC. What a place. I liked it at first, but now I don't. For the food part.

The food there is worse than in McDonalds, and so is the service. I recommend you don't go to KFC. Yesterday I was really vittu kun vituttaa mood, so I went to KFC and ordered takeaway. They gave me next to none plastic bags plus I had to wait 10 minutes, because employees had a good laugh together.

When I finally received my goods, I told the KFC guy that "MARKUS WANT TAKE AWAY" and he said "take away?" ran to the kitchen and never came back. I never received any plastic bags nor shit. So I just yelled loudly some Finnish curse words and left to eat my thingie elsewhere.

Oh no, KFC must now be the most terrible place correct? Yeah well in McD they at least know how to serve, and they understand the concept of FAST food better. So I know now where my coins go in the future.

I have experience of KFC in three different countries (Poland, Hong Kong and Malaysia) so don't come nagging at me how KFC deserves justice. Fuck KFC.

Vittu ku vituttaa

Vituttaa so perkeleesti, that I'm too vitun tired to write any vitun entries for this or last week. I had a topic, but it was too diluted to post. 100 motrocyclists beat-up a car who tried to pass the mob after an accident in center of Kuala Lumpur. Whoopee. There it is anyway.

Albeit that is not what vituttaa me, but other things. Vitun vittu.

Markvs out. Vittu.

spicy eggplant and salted fish with rice.

Back in July Markus wrote a post about food. It's been a long-forgotten topic but I thought I'd approach it from a different angle.

Let me start with a few very simple and really short stories:

1. Today I ate some microwave food because I was too lazy to cook. I had some Spicy Eggplant and Salted Fish with Rice. In days prior I've had foods like Sichuan style beef, curry chicken in coconut milk and Rise, some Japanese style fried noodles with seafood, etc. These are all microwave foods.

2. My girlfriend's sister and her boyfriend were visiting us a few weeks back and I offered to cook. To the surprise of everyone, I made absolutely awesome meatballs together with brown sauce (secret ingredients included) with potatoes and a salad. I thought my cooking was awesome ("just like home!"), my girlfriend (who has some experience from my cooking before) thought it was "good", her sister and sister's boyfriend thought it was weird. Out of politeness they told me it's good, but as I asked my girlfriend later, I found the truth.

3. If I buy snacks, I buy potato chips, coke and sometimes sweets. If my girlfriend buys snacks, she'll get dried seaweed, fried prawn (or other seafood that is fried in similar way as chips), and maybe ice lemon tea for drink.

Of the above stories, number 2 is the most important for this topic. We Finns cringe at too exotic foods like, let's say, oriental seafood. We don't like tentacles in our food. However, as story 2 shows, not everyone agrees that potato is awesome. Or that a simple setting of three articles (=potato, meatballs and sauce) is enough to make a proper meal. I remember at the university some years back, the newly arrived Chinese (and some of the Europeans) exchange students found Finnish food very plain and boring - and again with the potatoes!

So, where am I getting with this? Well, it's what we all knew already before: Food is a matter of culture.

No big discovery there, eh?

It wasn't supposed to be a big discovery. It was to make a point of the fact, no food culture holds a de facto title "the best food in the world". We are often fooled to think that where we come from is better from "somewhere else". Especially if we come from Europe, the supposedly "better place" in the world.

I'll share two other stories.

4. When I was a toddler and up untill I was about 10 years old, I didn't like pizza at all. It didn't matter what was on it. I just didn't like pizza. I hated it. But then the unexpected cultural marvel from the America came to Finland and I found myself forced to accept that pizza is good. Turtles. I became a huge fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and like everyone knows, they just love pizza. Being a big fan of them, I could not NOT like pizza. So, I forced myself to like it. Didn't take me too long to like it, love it. And since then I always count pizza as one my favourite foods.

5. In my late teens when alcohol started playing a part in my life, I began with the "girlie drinks" like cider or vodka with blenders. Stuff like that. Anything that was sweet enough to cover the taste of alcohol would be good. Beer, no way. Beer was like crap. Well, one time me and some friends were on a budget and were forced to combine our monies and buy a case of cheap beer instead of expensive cider or long drink (it's always about the money-to-alcohol ration in that age). Didn't yet like beer after 4 bottles but for the sake of getting drunk, I was willing to accept it. After a few more beers, I was starting to like it. After few even more, it was good! Today, I actually like beer a lot. I really like it. I like it so much I may just buy one bottle for the taste of it and drink it without ever intending to get drunk.

Now, continuing about that discovery of "food is a matter of culture".

Prejudice - in this case culinary prejudice - keeps us from seeking new things we might enjoy after some subjugation. When we're young, our parents tell us to eat the veggies. We don't like them but our parents force us. As time goes by, we grow to accept them. Later we might even like them - enough at least to force our own kids to eat their veggies too. It's the same thing when we grow up. We don't like something and we don't want to eat it but this time there are no parents to force you. So you skip it. You never learn to like it either, though, but you could be missing out something. Great to be an adult.

Now, I'm a big fan of Cantonese food (a foodculture Markus bashed quite badly in July) but I didn't get this way just by picking up the safe foods. It's a lot of trial and error actually. The selection of dishes and whole styles of kitchen is simply so vast that it takes a lot of time to find the foods that are really honestly superb. In the mass of foods, there are some that are actually not that great - some are just misunderstood.

Hong Kong is mostly known, not only by Cantonese cuisine, but also because it has a really vast selection of world kitchens available (as mentioned by Markus as well). Granted, if you come here (or go anywhere) as a tourist, you're most likely given the finest things around. Tried foods, accepted by everyone. The tourist guidebooks will tell you what to eat and where to eat it. These restaurants will charge you extra but for that money you get an english menu and food that is "safe".

Stray from the path of guidebook righteousness and you'll find yourself staring at some very funky local foods. Not tried and tested cliché's but real local food. What is easily forgotten is that a vast majority of restaurants in Hong Kong actually offer food that should be graded "home cooking", not restaurant food. Their function is not to provide tourists fine dining experiences with first class wine, but offer local workers their low-cost lunch or dinner. We don't have ANY comparison points for these restaurants in Finland. None. Period. If you compare a Finnish restaurant to a Hong Kong one, stick to the restaurants in Hong Kong that serve tourists.

Anyway, I think I should start to summarize this post.

Story #1 tells us that despite Hongkongese people buying microwave foods, they don't go for western foods. They still like their own thing. Spaghetti is available, sure, but aside from that, most microwave foods I've found are very localized.

Story #2 emphasizes the above point by showing that even when served to the table, western food (no matter how good) won't make Hongkongese abolish their fondness to Cantonese food and convert to western cuisines.

Story #3 gives us a peek view that local preferences go to all aspects of food culture. The choice of snack sounds trivial but would you (our average Finnish reader) choose dried seaweed over potato chips for a night our at the cinema? Didn't think so.

Stories #4 and #5 finally prove that we all grow to like new things by subjugation. We like some things by nature, some we need to learn.

Did you know western fondness to salt and salty foods is a learned habit? So is the liking of sweet things. If we never tasted salt or sugar in our youth, we would later in life find both yucky. Ever tasted food that was too salty or too sweet? There ya go...

So, next time you don't like a food that other people seem to enjoy, you can think whether the problem is in the other people, the food, or you.

Just as a note to the end, let it be mentioned that I did have a point to all this when I started writing but I forgot it. It had something to do with the actual food culture - not with eating habits. Well, maybe I'll re-do this post at some later time once I remember my actual point again.

From Finland, for a Change

News from Finland Follows.

For our Finnish speaking readers here's the YLE link:
http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/oikea/id107158.html

For everyone else:
In Finland, Imatra, the local vicar (I think the translation vicar, a clergyman, I mean a clergyman) is going to undergo a sex change operation. A Finnish newspaper interviewed the man, soon to be woman, who told the media he had been found transgenered and will begin the corrective treatments early next year.

The local bishop in the Church has promised to talk with the man in person next week and discuss whether it will be possible for the vicar to continue in his current occupation.

I'm sure the bishop is in a difficult position. The church in Finland cannot really hold on to all of the traditional views and you most certainly cannot fire an employee over a medical procedure. On the other hand, I assume, it will be difficult for the bishop personally to accept this change. And it will most definitely set a precident in Finland. It should be interesting to see the follow up. Remember, the idea of allowing gay people to register their relationship is a relatively new idea - allowing gay people to work for the church is newer still.

I personlly hope he wil be allowed to continue should he so choose and I hope the congregation is open-minded enough to accept him back to his old duties once the treatments are over.

OP out.

New Figures

I've been thinking whether I should post about all the bad news I read from China after all or not. But this one I will share with you.

In Zhuhai, at the town of Baijiao (Guandong province,) a truck driver allegedly had a row with the police over traffic violations and swore revenge. This is not for certain. But what is for certain is that the truck driver ran intentionally in to a group of highschool students leaving school, killing 4 students, a parent and injured 20 others, some severely. Three are still critical or in a coma.

I haven't reported here of the recent landslides, with bigger numbers attached to them. But the volume of bad news isn't going down at all. I'm actually starting to understand the Chinese Government's idea of the freedom of press. If the press, instead of neutrally reporting all news flocks like a pack of vulture to the scene only if there is a carcass involved shouldn't someone push them away? I hope the news actually give the same courtesy as other countries would have. 

When a tragedy occurs in a Western country it is reported and then followed up by articles of the grief work the involved. It's closure and I can imagine it worth a lot for the people reading of their life in the news. But no so much in foreign news about China. Unless it's a total disaster, the news reports a figure and swoops after the next corpse. 

I've in the past critqued the Chinese news about their attitudes. But in a case like this, it's the Chinese news who follow up and bring up angles to the news, other than a casualty figure. 

Me reading news to you is getting old, I believe, but it's partly me trying to form a reasonable view for myself, between the mistruths and slanted opinionated news. 

See for yourself if you think this is reasonable and sufficient coverage of the issue. This is an updated article, but they only bothered to update it since the numbers grew.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081106/wl_asia_afp/chinaaccidentschool

Bedroom magic

There's two kinds of magic that generally happen in bedrooms. The first one is what you all thought I would preach about, the second is geckos.

Geckos are awesome. In many countries, you'd have to build a big terrarium with funky gadgets for life-support and all that to have a pet gecko - and you'd have to feed them. Here, they are self-sufficient and don't even ask for permission to be your pet. They invite themselves in and make it home. Granted, they run around so fast that you don't get to see them a lot (that's why I don't have a picture taken of one yet). So, as such a pet, they're not as much fun maybe, even less so than a cat.

So, what's so bedroom magical about gecko's?

Well, the 'bedroom' parts comes from the fact that they invite themselves in, and pretty much go wherever they feel like going. Including the bedroom. Killing a gecko is not like killing a mosquito (a lot messier, and quite difficult as well - hence I've skipped that part so far), so they pretty much get their way. Besides, geckos are cool and they are effective insect-killing-machines so why would I want to kill one anyway? I can choose between having a cool gecko around, or a bunch of cockroaches and other insects. Not a difficult pick. Thus, if they want to go to the bedroom, they can, and they will. Luckily that doesn't happen so often, and usually not at a time when humans inhabit the bedroom - they have thing about people around and cool air (aircon).

The 'magic' part comes from the fact that geckos operate 97% on magic. This came as a surprise to me as I was researching into their case.

You noticed how geckos can walk on walls like it was no problem? That is because it is not a problem for them. In fact, they're wall-walking-wonders: No suction cups, no stickyness, liquids or surface tension! They stick to walls because (wikipedia):

• ...the patula tipped setae on gecko footpads demonstrate that the attractive forces that hold geckos to surfaces are van der Waals interactions1 between the finely divided setae and the surfaces themselves
• Every square millimeter of a gecko's footpad contains about 14,000 hair-like setae
• Each seta has a diameter of 5 micrometers (human hair varies from 18 to 180 micrometer, so a human hair could hold between 3 to 30 setae)
• Each seta is in turn tipped with between 100 and 1,000 spatulae
• Each spatula is 0.2 micrometres long (200 billionths of a metre), or just below the wavelength of visible light

So, what did I tell ya? Magic. In effect, a gecko merges with the molecular structure of the surface its walking on. Or at least that's my free interpretation of it.

Now get this (wikipedia again):

• Geckos' toes operate well below their full attractive capabilities for most of the time (...because there is a great margin for error depending upon the roughness of the surface [and so they compensate and leave room for error])
• If a typical mature 70 g gecko had every one of its setae in contact with a surface, it would be capable of holding aloft a weight of 133 kg

Try convince me that isn't magic?

Artur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.", and I can definiteky agree with that. With geckos, moreso, it's not even a technology - it's what they do naturally. Super awesome!

Now, I suppose that wraps it for geckos. I know there are tons of animals and creatures around with magical abilities. I just thought I'd share my liking to the powers of the gecko - since they've taken a liking to running around my apartment walls.

On the topic of bedroom magic, I could mention my thinking on the human bedroom magic as well, for what it comes to Asia and also how everything relates to my post earlier about sucky jobs.

Don't worry, this is mostly quite scientifical and proper.

In the 'working nations' of Asia (my freshly inveted word for China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) people work as if it was the sole purpose of human life. Or so it seems. In my sucky jobs post I brought the example of factory workers who most likely have to skip large parts of their personal life just to be able to work efficiently (and not lose their jobs). In Hong Kong, many people work 10-12 hours a day and have some overtime on top of that as well - 6 days a week.

In Japan, full-time workers, both male and female, average 55 hours of work per week. One in three men aged 30-40 puts in more than 60 hours a week. Half of them are not even being paid for any of their overtime. There was even a deathcase in July, when a 45-year-old engineer at Toyota died after working more than 80 hours of overtime a month.

In Korea, people rank highest in working hours in OECD country study: with 2390 hours a year (quick calculation: 2390 / 52 = 45.96), that's roughly 46 hours a week. South Korea and Japan are the only countries where death by work or "karoshi" (過労死) is a recognized phenomenon (wikipedia).

Anyway, to put a long story short, is it a wonder that the "working nations" of Asia rank low in sex studies? I just had a look at the Durex2005 Global Sex Survey, and under "Frequency of sex", you'll see that Japan ranks lowest (45 per year), Singapore (73), Hong Kong (78), Taiwan (88), China (96), all well below the global average (103). Finland scored 102 and the 'winner' was Greece with a score of 138. Sweden, for some reason, scored only 92. South Korea was not included.

I'm sure culture plays a very big part in this; the general view on sex and dating, and all that. However, if you spend such a great portion of your day at work, busting your balls (figuratively speaking especially if a girl/woman), you don't have much energy for anything - especially if you get home late and need to wake up early again. You manage to put some time for sex too, of course, but no way as much as the life-loving Europeans or other westeners who have jobs only to pay for the "life" and work as little as possible.

I don't know how Sweden's low (or the relatively low score of Finland) fit to this theory of mine, except that maybe the sampling wasn't really good - or, especially in Finland's case, plans for sex are frequent, but with alcohol and late-nights in the mix too, perhaps people tend to pass out and fall asleep before any action happens. Who knows.

Well anyway, that's all about bedroom magic now. Remember, geckos rock!

Tchau.


1 In, the van der Waals force (or van der Waals interaction), named after Dutch scientist, is the attractive or repulsive force between molecules (or between parts of the same molecule) other than those due to or to the electrostatic interaction of ions with one another or with neutral molecules.

Bad Reporting

Remember when I talked about the China brand news? Well, the agencies are still at it, releasing any story that has a number and the word China in it - assuming the number is a casualty count. And sometimes this leads to poor reporting. Today's example is proudly brought to you by Yahoo! News:

"BEIJING – China's official Xinhua News Agency says 12 people have died after an elevator plunged at a construction site in east China.

Xinhua says the elevator fell Thursday morning on a housing construction site called "Sunshine City" in east Fujian province. Rescue efforts have been launched and local officials are investigating the incident.

No other details were available.

Workplace and industrial accidents are common in China, where safety measures have not always kept pace with rapid economic development."

And that's the entire newspost. It even goes to say "No other details were available." This wouldn't be too bad, but they will post no follow-up to the story. There's no backing to the last sentence and it doesn't really offer valuable background information either. This is what I would call bare minimum news. You write what, where and when and press post. It's not much different from Blogging, but more should be expected of news reporting. Perhaps it's reminecent of the time of minimal newspaper notes when you didn't have the pages available. But this is not a printed media.

Be careful with the China news, they underperform in many ways.

OP out.

Photo Challenge 1 Results - Misery, Sex

Hello Everyone.

As you can see, I've brought you last week's Photo Challenge results. Now, remember, participation is still open and I'm taking more categories/topics/requests. You can participate by commenting any of the Photo Challenge posts and leaving a category or a theme you want a picture taken of.

This week "Misery" goes together with the posts on sucky workplaces we've had. There's one guy who has a worse job than you. "Sex" depicts a scene very near to where I live. There are various small shops and barbers (where nobody knows how to cut hair) near here. Some with blue lighting, hinting of other trades in addition to prostitution.

Pictured, challenger

1. Misery - Markvs
2. Sex - Markvs

Open challenges, challenger

1. Martians - Markvs

OP out.

Sucky jobs

I know OP has much more to offer to this topic, but this is something I've been amusing myself on. Being amused about this is about as politically correct as thinking Paralympics as a comedy event, however. But since I live in China (almost) I don't have to concern about political correctness since no one else does either around here.

In fact, nobody cares around here. Racist jokes are funny and so are people in wheelchairs playing tennis. That's the way it is. You don't have to like it if you think it's not proper, or whatever, but it won't change the fact that most people in China don't give damn. If it's funny, it's funny.

Like an extremely funny retardation (© Borat).

Well, enough about that.

About sucky jobs. You see them a lot in China and Hong Kong too. It's, in fact, incredible how many sucky jobs there are around. Rest assured, a vast majority of the western world has no idea what it means to have a awesomely crappy job. You can watch Discovery Channel's show "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe" and think the people on the show have it pretty bad. But the thing is, they at least get a decent wage and don't have to live in fear of getting fired for trivial reasons.

Let's take a Chinese factory as a case example. A factory worker is at the bottom of the salary-range when it comes to urban jobs. They work long shifts doing a job that repeats itself every 2-10 seconds and get a maximum three breaks a day. Be late from work once and you're fired; be tired one day with reduced efficiency and you're fired. Worst case scenario, you don't have any vacations except Chinese national holidays - not even weekends. Some factories give you one day off per week. No talking to your co-workers while working either.

Because the restriction the workplace puts on you, you probably can't stay up too late after work, so you sleep early in order to wake up in time, fresh, and able to work yet another day. And for what?.. for salary worth my average trip to a clothing store. Not only do the workers need to live on that salary but their families back home depend on the worker sending some of the money there.

Of course, the conditions in factories vary greatly depending on who is your employer. Western companies and bigger Chinese companies tend to have more humaine conditions while the smaller Chinese companies sometimes don't pay some much attention to the finer details.

I once went to a factory that manufactured LCD screens. A really mad-scientist type of underground facility with cleanrooms and high sterility and all that. Well, there were people there working 10 hour shifts, inspecting and working on microscopic details of the electronics in really close-range. They got a 15 minute break every 3 hours or so with lunch at some point. While working, they had to operate on clockwork precision to keep the production line going with required speed. No resting your eyes there.

We asked the factory management about the employees doing the work. And the management said that they have to replace the workers every few years at least since their eyes go so bad they can't do the job. Apparently there was no consideration to actually improve the workers' conditions: the cure to the problem was to replace the old workers with fresh pairs of eyes. Pay them low salary, ruin their eyesight and when they're no longer usefull, kick them out. Repeat every few years.

Well, these are the kind of sucky jobs we hear about in the media as well. Nothing new there. And these are not amusing even for me. However, there are jobs that are. Makes you wonder, what is their function in this great scheme of life and why do the poor souls have to do such a work in the first place.

Like, the legendary taxi-queue service person.

A person whose job is to show (my pointing his/her hand) the next available taxi to a person in a taxi queue. If the salary was good, it'd probably make an ideal job for a lazy excuse for a human like me. But the salary is not good, rest assured. Similar jobs can be found in other places too, like in banks or at the border for passport inspection.

I was at the Canton-fair last week (and had my share of McHell (read OP's post earlier)) and there was a security guy standing on a podium looking very serious and authoritative. Great, expect his podium was placed directly under sunshine and it was a hot, hot, hot day. In any humaine country you'd expect a watch like that to be relieved by another guard every 30 minutes or so. Not this guy. Maybe he was a statue. No idea how he could just stand there and not collapse under hyperthermia.

Other such amusing sucky jobs include the recycling system in Hong Kong which basically is people diving the trash bins for anything suitable for recycle. They collect the stuff and take them to recycle depots. We don't really have extensive recycling program in Hong Kong but we have waste treatment plants. Someone didn't do the math of 1 (trash) + 1 (treatment plant) = 2 (a recycling program), so now there are people who gather the trash themselves for recycling.

Sometimes you see old ladies with a pile of scrap cardboard packing materials on their little trolleys and they're pouring water on the cardboard. This is because they get paid by weight, so they want to make them as heavy as possible. Illegal of course, but anything for an extra dime.

Sucky jobs for everyone! Sucky jobs for everyone! Get your sucky job from here! You want it, we got 'em! (Salary is not included in the package.)

If you think your job sucks. Don't worry. Just look at the picture below and imagine yourself doing that for € 80 per month. In the same factory, the welders didn't have proper welding masks but had makeshift masks made from cardboard and tinted glass. Now, your job isn't that bad after all, is it?

Imports in China

So I'll put the photo challenge thing from my mind for a moment. I'm thinking of posting about it weekly, but that's only if I come up with the pictures in time. Let's go with something more factual which isn't from a news post, for a change. I'll tell you of Imports in China.

Have you ever found a product in China with a white sticker pasted on top of the regular product info sticker? Yeah, it's an import. If the Chinese are good at something, it's exporting. 

You will find imported goods only in the largest chain stores and marts of foreign origin. Seven Eleven will have some imports. Wall Mart will have imports, as will Costco, Tesco and such. The local Chinese supermarkets C&U, Hao You Duo and others will not. 

At some point most foreigners will crave a good from their home country, or at least something similar. Or if all else fails, they might crave something ... not Chinese. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but you grow vary of Chinese goods and from time to time the imported items seem like a luxury to splurge on. And you go looking for what you find in your local chain stores.

You're in luck if you have a large shop in your area and you want cheese. Actually, with the dairy scare, foreign goods appear all the more enticing for the lao wai. You are also in luck if you like foreign beer, canned foods or expensive brand clothes (hell, even I have a Chinese made jacket with imported fabric.) But aside from those, you are out of luck.

Generally, this would not be a problem but for some items it's next to impossible to find imports and the local items leave a bit to be desired. Sausages spring to mind. And after eating a stick of meat with corn inside I know I've tried. 

So why is this? There exists a 1.3 billion people market opening up to foreigners by the day, eh? Yeah, good luck entering the market here. Your average consumer earns, on average, anything between 800 to 1500 RMB a month. Yes, the rich locals might find value in high quality expensive items and there exists the face culture which means they are willing to spend money on luxury. So imagine your target market is the small minority of wealthy city Chinamen. Consider the difficulty of entering a market where English is next to useless as a marketing tool. Remember it's a market where until the last few years you had to have a joint venture with locals to enter at all. All the while there are Chinese luxury brands coming up, competing with you for the wealthy locals. Suddenly your target market looks a lot smaller, with a lot more competition and risk.

I don't think it's an impossible market, as the people hopping in to Hong Kong to buy milk powder prove - there are opportunities for the brave, lucky and rich. But in the end it means imported goods are few and far between in select shops. 

A foreigner might think there exists a concrete difference between Asahi beer and Red Rock beer; not so much for the local consumer. They will drink beer. If they don't need to make face they can select the cheapest (and as an added benefit,) the lowest alcohol content beer. This goes for foodstuffs in general - and remember, for quite a large variety of other goods you can find cheap copies.

Believe me. If you ever end up drinking The Great Wall Cabernet Vine or Pearl River beer you too will think it's a cheap copy. 

OP out.

Cuts and Saucers

Haircuts, flying saucers.

I have been writing about haircuts previously also in one of my blogs. But anyways, generally, haircuts in Asia are nice: Cheaper than in EU, they always wash, sometimes massage, and the feeling is overall refreshingly gay. Its not one of those overweight lung cancer mamas playing with your hair, its either your Japanese school girl fantasy or alternatively gay Kim's super-fantastic gay barber.

I had the gay alternative today, but I'm really happy with the result. "Senior Stylist" was 65 RM and considering how rarely I bother to even comb my hair, I'd say the price was fair. But definitely on the fucking expensive side when Malaysian haircutting is concerned. I think you can get a regular haircut with 10-15RM if you're not too picky nor staying in the expensive areas.

On another news, I found out that Malaysia is being stalked by an U.F.O. I'm not that scared honestly, but I can already see the mass hysteria after I post this pic so let's just do it for the fuck of it;

Picture was taken by my girlfriend. That's an obvious Nazi UFO right there. Behold!

Photography

I used to lament how posting pictures in the old blog was difficult. And now that I'm here, I post pictures in perhaps half of my posts or less. Way to go me.

So here's what I'm going to do. (And this would be much more fun if we had many more readers, but we can try anyway.) Name a place, item, situation or whatever you want a picture taken of in Taizhou and I'll zip by and photo it for you.

If we get a massive amount of input I'm choosing the best suggestions. Regardless - suggest a topic and I'll photo it and post it here. I'll take submissions from anyone, you can mail it or leave it as a comment to this post. 

3.2...1. and ... go.

OP out.

See you at the party Richter!

I watched Total Recall yesterday. It was the best movie I've seen for a while. Almost better than The Dark Knight, albeit being from the sinister 1990's. But as with all Arnold movies, Total Recall is packed with legendary one-liners, supercool violence and pure awesomeness. ALL of the special effects were flawless as well, not to mention the amazing setting of Mars and future-Earth! 5/5 easily, maybe even 6/5.

The thing about Arnold movies is that they never get old. Some might claim them repetitive when the tempo of a movie is concerned, but the dialog, setting, plot, acting, and characters make up so much that whether your watching Predator, Commando, Terminator, Running Man or Pumping Iron, you feel that the whole setting is real, and it's like watching a documentary except that it's interesting.

The most superduperawesome thing that makes Arnold movies timeless is, however, the critique they present. If you watch, say, Running Man, you can still apply the movie's message to the current state of the world very easily. I'm not going to speculate the message here, because its crystal clear and America sucks again etc, but furthermore, I don't want to spoil anyone's movie experience.

Other than spending time with my best friend Arnold, my laptop broke down. Now I gotta buy a new one. In Finland you have to wait usually for few weeks when you want to buy a computer. In Hong Kong, you have to wait 2 hours. TWO FUCKING HOURS??!! What the hell is that? That's like more awesome than awesome. So I got used to that kind of service because I bought my last laptop from Hong Kong, and now my attitude is that if I want something, I want it NOW. If I can't get it "now", I don't buy it. In Malaysia you have to wait. Shit.

... and here I went to look for laptops ranging from 2500 - 3000 RM, recommended by a friendly PC Gamer magazine. No shop so far has the models available I'm looking for, so fuck them. "We can order" is the most common answer, and "1 to 2 weeks" is the most common waiting time. However, in Malaysia you can double the promised waiting time easily, and furthermore, I'm super pissed even if I had to wait more than 1 day. I'm left with an option to go through all the computer shops until one of them has a satisfying model. This will take more than 1 to 2 weeks, but it gets me less pissed than the alternative of ordering. Ordering sucks also because if the laptop is broken for some reason and I have to return it, then I'm SUPERDUPER pissed.


Fuck slow service. This is 2000's and I'm a kid who has it all. Do something.

Canton Fair

If I were to start a religion, one based on fear, I would tell my
congregation that Hell is a very real place, where you are forced to
eat at the Canton Fair McDonalds every day. This should be enough to
terrify even the most stout atheist, but for those few still
unconvinced I would explain the noise, the immense size filled with
people and the menu. The menu where you have 5 options, two of which
include a coconut flavor apple pie.

Honestly speaking, the fair has improved from last year. It's now in
three sessions instead of two which means less suppliers per session.
And even with the huge exhibition area, less traffic and chaos is a
definite improvement. But McHell is still there, loathsome and vile,
waiting for you to get desperate with hunger. It knows you cab only
walk so much further before you realize it's the only source of food
you can find. After, you feel violated and bloated.

Perhaps next year I'll try going hungry instead.

OP out.

Hey

This post will have even less things to read than the last one. The reason for this is simply that nothing is happening. I cry about the same thing again, you might have noticed, but honestly, as Pekka once stated; routines are pretty much the same everywhere in the world..

1) Wake up
2) Go to work
3) Come home
4) Do hobbies/watch telly/eat/have sex etc.
5) Go to sleep

And the same stuff again on the next day. Boy life is interesting. Seriously though, I'm 100% sure that no-one besides my mum or my girlfriend, gives a rat's ass what I had for dinner yesterday, what hobbies I did, what tv-program I watched etc. Don't get me wrong though, I'm quite happy right now with the situation as the power of Babylon has gotten its stranglehold of me, and I don't know about better anymore. I bet that people living under extreme conditions have much more interesting lives actually, yet they're probably less happy since their lives are unstable and unpredictable.

But before this post goes too deep into analysis about the meaning of life, and how should I repent about my wellbeing and not whine about it, I tell you that I moved into a new nice home which I like very much. 650+ sq. feet just for my skinny ass. Yesterday I bought new stereos as well. They're Sony. They sound very good. I picked the more expensive model 'cause I wanted to have a good sound. Then I also bought a new miniature for tabletop wargaming, but that one's going to be painted as a showcase for a Finnish miniature painting competition. Now I'm drinking McDonalds' coffee to wash down the apple pie and a Sausage McMuffin I just had.

Bob is now 100% sure that Markus is a prisoner of Babylon, and the worst kind actually, because Markus recognizes the "problem" yet does nothing about it. But unlike Bob, Markus doesn't believe in Babylon nor salvation. Markus believes in incurable loneliness of human mind and the joys of the flesh.

Tales from the Traffic Front

So every one has been with a bad driver. Sure, you can talk of your experiences here.

But please do not say you met the worst driver in China or Asia. Don't go on lenghts about how horrible the ride was. The China "vets" have been there and done that. Coming from anywhere except perhaps Italy, we all find the traffic much worse here. We all pay attention to it and at some point we all feel dread, be it doing 120km/h in a bus during a monsoon rain, or with a company driver who nods off on the highway - or just your common "Crazy Chinese Taxi Driver."

I won't be impressed by tales of how bad the traffic is in your home state. I have my tales of awful traffic, and no, you can't top them. Still, every so often a visitor here will want to talk about traffic. On and on. It's such a popular topic, but really, it's been done. My boss and a coworker of mine spring to mind immediately.

I'm not going to share any close calls I've had with my scooter, nor am I going to recount how many similar scooters I have seen stuck under trucks, smashed to bits. If you've been to China, you've seen the like and know what I'm talking of. And if you haven't, you don't need the mental image of a guy laying on the asphalt squirming in pain as onlookers wait for an ambulance. I've avoided any major bumps but I've seen my share.

Traffic. The one topic of which everyone has a top story.

OP out.

The Flow of Information

Did you know in China you are not always required to pass down information?

The example I will recount today regards factory holidays. I asked our contact at our regular supplier to tell me the dates they were going to get off for the National Day, about a week before the day. She told me the holidays were'nt set yet, but would be for one or two days starting on 2nd.

She was sure there wouldn't be a longer holiday though. So, unimpressed with the answer I press on, to ask the production manager a day later. He's higher in the food chain, so I assumed he would know. Same answer, not a long holiday.

So I call on the first to get one last paper done before they go on the holiday. The answer? "Sorry, we're on the National Day holiday and it'll be for three more days. Nobody's at the factory." So here I am, sitting here after the holiday and the subsequent weekend still waiting.

The factory boss was traveling in Japan, and didn't deem it necessary to let anyone else know how long or starting when would they have holidays. He then comes back from his trip a day before the holiday starts and declares it three days. Hardly a coincidence.

I won't even bother to ask when the next holiday is.

OP out.

Saving Face

The Olympics gave a great amount of face to the Chinese, too bad the Chinese children had to suffer for it. I don't mean the children working for Nike or Adidas (and they do use child labor) but the fact that China knew about the Melamine tainted milk powder but hushed the media.

Sanlu (the biggest baby formula manufacturer in China, also blamed) recieved the first complaints of sick babies last December and the first death occurred 1st of May. Newsreporters were prevented from investigating and reporting the incidents, in order not to tarnish the olympics.

Here's the newspost, from AFP, through Yahoo!:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081001/wl_afp/chinafoodsafetychildmedia

It was an intentional act to add Melamine to the milk powder. Then it was deliberately covered up. 50.000+ babies got sick and four died.

OP out.

The Chinese Space Program

So now the Chinese TV show presenting their most recent space exploits is saying the US moon landing might have been fake and that they might have not placed a flag there afterall.

Oh, and that the reporters didn't get a confirmation/denial for their accusations.

I've no idea who if anyone they've tried contacting, but I have no doubt they failed.

For a long time I've been giving the Chinese some slack. Well guess what?

The Chinese do not understand that attempting to discredit a simple fact from 30 years ago only makes them look stupid. I will no longer give a damn for their worthless space program. Let them have their propaganda filled national spirit programming. If they make it to the moon it will be a miracle. I believe someone will steal the titanium off the rocket while nobody is watching. Most likely they have a theft alarm strapped on to it, beeping every time someone coughs loudly in a neighbouring province, providing endless frustration to anyone nearby. If only they'd stayed away from the 2 RMB knock-off.

Or maybe the corrupt officials sell the astronauts for slave labor as soon as everyone forgets them. That should be about 2 seconds after the first malfuntion in their space program becomes public - and they can only hide so many. Knowing the Chinese Quality Standards it's going to be sudden, major and catastrofic.

Recall how the Iranese had to Photoshop their launch pictures to convince the outside world 25% of their missiles don't fail? Well China has both, Photoshoppers and cheap shit rockets a-plenty. They are broadcasting the fact their astronauts have the comparable luxury of an onboard toilet. Well, you already knew their rockets were full of shit. They are attempting an EVA for this flight but the Chinese news are much like the onboard space toilets after they clog; you have no reason to believe they succeeded even if they report success.

I wanted to give this story a pass today in the morning. Check what others think about the truthful reporting in China:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_re_as/as_china_space_article
China space mission article hits Web before launch (AP)

If you're not interested, the TL;DR is: "Stupid propaganda monkey didn't know when the rocket was supposed to be launched and reported anyway, including "recorded" radio transmissions."

OP Out.

..of Asia

I've been having a feeling lately that I honestly don't dig Asia so much. European travelers glorify Asia, as they always have, in a way that makes me a lil' bit sick. I kinda understand the hype, because the culture is so joyful, colorful and somehow more "visible" than European. But is it only like this to "us" or also for "them"? Maybe I should make a survey one day, but frankly I don't have the energy.

Anyways, the reasons why I've been starting to slightly dislike Asia are the culture and the hype around it. The latter is not Asia's fault so much, but then, in a way it is. Who made the tourism? Who made the appealing, yet plastic and meaningless iconography for tourists? Who made the clearly tourist oriented restaurants? Who made the "work hard without a point to just to keep a role" ideal? Well yeah, some argue that the beauty of Asia lies beyond these tourism and other stereotypical issues, but what's there then? The people? Fuck yeah, the best thing in the world.. people. I prefer Space Marine Land Raiders.

It would be a lie to say that I don't want to insult anyone. I don't care. But the fact is that people are still like shit almost everywhere in the world. They do unbelievable stuff to get few bucks, they're friendly to you on a good day only, they're multiplying, pooping (multiplying + pooping is like making potential amounts of shit in the world), fighting, polluting, and not giving a shit about anything - except maybe their forced beliefs. Wow, that's something to jump about? Well no, and people are like that also in Asia. Europe is currently more clean, more exciting culturally (look under the glitter and surface please), the salaries are better, jobs make more sense, education is top notch, the nature is clean etc. Or maybe it's just me, who likes constant change and new things - bored of Asia, so to say.

Actually, I could stop talking about Europe as well. They have their fuck ups. What I mean by Europe here is Scandinavia. I've been feeling, stronger and stronger each day, that Scandinavia is the best place in the world. I want to go back someday for sure.

Same guy, same gibberish, new location.

Back online and back to posting. I got my internet working again yesterday. That is not to say it wasn’t working before – it’s just a good opening statement implying a kind of a restrain on posting. The thing is, I was actually without internet only for about 20 hours. But let’s not go into trivial details. I’m back online and that’s all that matters.

The reason I was offline for 20 hours is that I’m now living in a new location. I quit my old job and changed to a new one. And with old job gone, so was the old apartment (which was arranged by the old company). And on Sunday as I left my old place in the afternoon, I had to wait until Monday morning to get the internet transferred to my new address.

The new apartment is in a village area of Hong Kong called Kam Tin (it’s under Yuen Long district). It’s a very, very traditional style area in Hong Kong and if you’re thinking skyscrapers or high-rise apartments, you can stop right there. There’s nothing here that is taller than 10 meters. And I live in ground floor – not 48th like before.

Outside we got dirt, bugs, smells and all the fancy things that make a place authentic and real. Inside, so far, I’ve killed a few ants, one small cockroach, a spider and things I’m not even sure what they were. My building is inside a wall of other buildings with distances from 1 to 4 feet of each others. Building next doors is over 100 years old. My main view in all windows is a brick wall.

I fully-heartedly enjoy this place, however. It’s something completely different, again, from anything I’ve experienced so far. The lifestyle is very different, the people are very different and the whole structure of life here is very different. When you think of Hong Kong you think of skyscrapers, shopping malls and modern big city life. When you think of Kam Tin, you think different.

I haven’t had the chance to take many pictures yet but I will. I was going to today, but we got a nasty rain until now and I didn’t feel like getting wet – again.

In the last two days I’ve gone out four times. Three times I got surprised by rain without me having an umbrella. Fourth time I went out and had an umbrella. It stopped raining after a minute. It’s not an easy life. Also, there was a T8 typhoon warning yesterday, I went shopping for some additional cabinets for my new apartment (the second time I was out). While I was walking outside the wind threw a speck into my eye and it hurt. Typhoons are a serious matter!!

To drag this post once more off-topic, let it be noted that the younger generation of my girlfriend’s extended family now refer to me as 哈囉哥哥 (haalougogo) which basically means Hello Brother (older brother) which I assume is because the only thing I say at family gatherings is “hello” to everyone, as I come in. And then I sit mute until the rest of the evening. Nice.

Anyway, off now. With my current and changed life-situation I’m sure I’ll be posting more, and I’ll be having more to post about too. So tchau!

"China" Brand News

So why all the press from China?

Simply because there are so many news items and the numbers are always big doesn't seem to cut it. I'm sure there are other large countries where development has left things behind and news happens. India doesn't seem to get any coverage.

Of course I follow more news of China, specifically, than India - just picking an example here, but I believe there's not so much to go around with. If a fire in a night club kills 40+ (Xinhua through AP on Sunday) or a mining accident kills 30+ due to inhaled gas (AP again, on Sunday) I'm sure to read of it. But not so much of any other developing nation.

It's because China has become unique. It's not any longer a nameless statistic in the developing countries list. It's China. Think if brand goods. You have your miscallenous soap and you have your Dove. You have MP3 players and you have your iPod. And just like with brands, there are several, but people are only interested in few. You have your Zune and if you really pay attention, you might recognize the Zen from Creative. But name three after that? The same goes for localized news. I can tell you there was news from US and China last week. I also know there was news from Finland, but name three more countries?

It's there if you know where to look for it, but the fact is, China now gets coverage for news much smaller in importance and more frequently than many other countries. And since positive things hardly make for gripping news, most items are negative - often with numbers like 30+ or 40+. This is what is contributing to China's track record.

People follow the news about China more. More news includes more bad news which people remember. People recall bad news and read more bad news. China's track record grows worse. See how this works?

There is nothing wrong with reporting accidents, catastrophies, faulty goods or internal strife about China. I'm not saying it's not worthy. But I am saying you should be aware of the spotlight China is under. Hell, just reading my writings you get exposed to a little more China coverage, and much like AP, I seldom write if something trivially jovial occurs.

Please continue enjoying your branded goods, they usually deliver on their promises. As surely as a McDonalds branded food items is going to be unhealthy for you, China news will continue to deliver casualties and problems.

OP out.

Tomorrow life is "ho best".

I decided to dig an old draft from the depths of infinite bit-space, and finish it , to commit to our blog in somehow, since I've been recently very lazy with my posting. This is excusing myself, but I tend to do that sometimes, so deal with it or go cry to momma. Anyways, the post.. ;

Malaysia has been criticized by some because of its "tomorrow" culture. Simply put, it means that in Malaysia everything is done "tomorrow" - nothing happens today, now, very soon, or currently. There is just "Today I'm having this and that, but TOMORROW everything is fixed." Sounds great until you realized that this applies to every single thing on every single day, so virtually nothing is ever happening.

In work life this is quite annoying; boss is pushing me to push projects through, and then I have to explain him every day, today and TOMORROW that why the fuck nothing is happening today. Luckily enough, he seems to be quite accepting to the concept of tomorrow as well. I've learned, however, that telling him "next week" is way worse. If you tell "next week", he says "ALWAYS THE NEXT WEEK! CAN'T WAIT ANYMORE!", despite its possible/happening/etc or not. 'Tomorrow' answer, however, makes him smile despite the thing happening or not. Strange.

Well. Anyways, I guess the main thing to pick from this post is that making a successful business is quite difficult in Malaysia if you depend on contractors or other outsourced elements, because I'd claim that managing them takes a lot more effort here, than in Hong Kong for example, where everyone is more than eager to work. Culture and motivation issue then, so to say.

Baby Formula, The Chinese Way

Hey, recall the post I wrote regarding the baby shop? The one where I wasn't completetly convinced all the products were for me?

Well, in case you haven't been following news of China, here's a tidbit.

There's a big thing being reported, where baby formula has been tainted with melamine. The most recent news from today cite 3 dead babies, over 6200 sick and (from yesterdays news) more than 50 babies in critical condition. Among these are over 150 cases of acute kidney failure

A probe was launched to find out the extent of the problem and it appears that approximately 20% of the companies providing formula are involved. China's largest dairy announced a product recall too.

Want to guess why they would add melamine? They likely used melamine to make the milk appear higher in proteine content. Yeah, that's right, it's most likely not an accident you find a chemical used in the plastic industry in baby milk here in China.

The previous formula-scare is from 2004, when 13 babies died of malnutrition, as the formula was fake and contained no nutrients. Let's see how big the numbers get this time.

Sorry for not posting about Finland, but I'll upload a few choice pics once I get them organized.

EDITED- Sorry. It's the 150 babies hospitalized and over 6200 sick, they are not all in hospitals.

Later

I'll try to write more tomorrow before I fly to Finland on Sunday.

The wedding party was yesterday, and I'm still dead tired. Happy too.
I just wanted to share a picture of my bride, seeing as we have a new (great idea, BTW) cover pic for the page. Surely more pretty Chinese girls will give more readers?

I have the 80 photos of the photoshoot to sort trough, and the 150 or so pics we took during the dinner, but I'll share one to tide you over.

OP out.

More for me

Fasting month has just begun in Malaysia, and for muslims it means denial from each thing that is good for man - like sex, alcohol and cigarettes. It also means no eating before... was it... before 19:00 I think, or something like that. Fasting month means, however, nicer lunching for me because halal restaurants aren't filled with hungry Malaysians. They have to starve and worship. How very sad.

Furthermore, this season since 1st of September should mean a big bunch of incoming public holidays, which I'm of course very excited about. Malaysia has the 2nd most amount of public holidays in all of Asia, if I remember correctly - this is naturally due to various ethnic and religious groups represented in the country, and each want their share of free days. Actually it creates a bit of a mess for companies to manage all, since some holidays only consider muslims etc. Simply put - each holiday is lost revenue to some. But guess what? I don't give a flying fuck 'cause all the more for me.

On another subject, OP pointed out last week that our blog doesn't have _that_ many readers actually, so I decided to change the Bruce Lee picture to something more appealing. Enjoy!

Away

I like writing on airports. It's the combination of traveling to write about, idle time and occasional free wireless internet access I believe.

I'll get a few chances the next two weeks.

I'm going on a two week holiday, first to Zhangjiang and then to Finland. My co-authors on this site have established a tradition of not writing in or of Finland but it remains to be seen if I gather any insights. I know last time in Finland I didn't write much.

No promises, but I'll get back on the saddle after I return.
OP Out.

Deadline

Oh boy. I'm sure people have talked about deadlines since someone invented them. I hate deadlines, and Dilbert and Garfield and etc. hate deadlines too. And mondays. Luckily it's tuesday, and unluckily I have a pressuring deadline.

My boss just told me yesterday that I have to move during this week, 'cause my old apartment is "due". I know the nice areas in Kuala Lumpur where to look at, and believe me, I've been looking at them. It is just that with my budget it isn't the easiest task to find a good value for the money - especially as a white boy, where every agent sees a potential for exploit. Well fuck that.

Regardless, I gotta move to a new home this week *snap* just like that. While it may sound hasty, hassleish, stressing or pressuring, it is all of those three lumped together and tripled. Vitutuksen multihuipennus, as we say in Finland.

I'll get back to you next week once this is sorted out.

On Wings

So what’s the deal with the airline food? You remember how that stand-up routine goes, right? I’ll talk of food in a moment.

The Guangzhou Baiyun Airport is definitely nice. It has large open spaces, clear directions and space to sit. As far as services, you have several little carts cruising around, ready to take you to the gate or check-in counter. There are restaurants, which, while expensive are clean and nice. Even the public toilets are clean. Or as close to clean as I’ve seen a mainland toilet. But this is all because you are specifically paying for these services - you get what you pay for.

The flights themselves are occasionally on time. I think I haven’t seen a flight which wasn’t 30 minutes late in the air this year. Not a big deal, but I’m glad I speak enough Chinese to understand when they announce plane is going to sit two hours before taxiing to the runway. Oh, they do have an English announcement too. I welcome anyone to come and try make sense of it.

But once you are up in the air, the airline is fulfilling its obligation to you. They have to take you where the ticket says. But they do not need to serve you nice food. They feel compelled to serve some food, true, but it’s just so say they did it.

If you’re lucky you get a choice of rice or noodles over sauce. It’s not great but it works. The sad case is when they don’t serve the hot food at all. You get a little box, which includes a bread, a few cherry tomatoes, a piece of something sweet and a wet towel. The towel is the tastiest item in the box. I wish there were food options aside from flying in business class.

I’ll be flying to Finland in a couple of weeks. I hope our grand national airline has stopped flying the MD-11. Calling it a venerable aircraft is a courtesy.

OP out.

Compound Suspicions

I'll write based on the pictures above.

The first one, dubbed "Sanitation" is a view 5 minutes walk away from my house. It's actually the street immediately outside my neighborhood. There are two points of interest. The first is the local funky Chinaman, proudly displaying his stomach. The local men like to show their bellies on a hot day. Sometimes they opt to take off their shirts, but either opening a button-up shirt or rolling up a T-shirt is the norm. It's a common enough occurrence. And it makes the people look like yokels. But hey, they act like it too.

The reason I took the picture, however, is the well. It's the local way of drawing daily water from a well in middle of the street. I do not know if it's straight up sewage, or is it the same water as the river sitting just behind the camera. The water in the river might actually be worse than sewage, but if you are the type to have a well on the sidewalk, you probably don't care.

I really don't trust these people when it comes to pretty much anything. And I have a baby on it's way.

At least the baby shops are for the wealthy, and as such are nice and clean. The items are mostly sensical and useful. Or I imagine they are. I'm still at the stage where I'm googling "goat milk as breast milk supplement" and seeing what comes up. They sell a lot of enriched goat milk here as supplement, by the way. According to my brief research, it's mostly a viable course of action too.

And then the shops strike out. They sell Eel-Calcium pills. I'm not going to apologize for the instant when my trust for the clean, nice, well-meaning baby flies out of the window the second I see a smiling Eel on a pill box. My thoughts immediately return to the street wells and rolled up T-shirts. Buying a product in China is a veritable minefield of broken, sub-par, coped, imitated and outright dangerous goods. But yes, if I manage to raise a healthy kid staring in Taizhou, China, I can do anything. Catching flies with chopsticks should be trivial in comparison.

My suspicions aside, my girlfriend and the now approximately 5 month baby are both healthy. No thanks to Eel-pills.
OP out.

Mess

Today I'm going to whine about dress code. My company has one, and I'm quite sure a great number of companies in Malaysia do also. Dress code custom is ridiculous, it's just like the old rule of taking one's hat off when eating. On a practical level you DON'T need to wear a suit when typing and making phone calls nor you need to take your hat off while eating, because there is no practical reason behind either of those.

Does everything need to be practical? Well certainly not, but how about letting me mind about my hat and my dressing and my practicalities? Dress code has been invented by someone sometime and the reason is "because". For example, last week I poured coffee on my pair of trousers which I've just picked from a dry clean service. Today, I poured melting butter from my toast on my other trousers (also dry cleaned last week). If I had jeans, I couldn't care less - wipe n wash. But now, I have to went again through all the trouble to bring both of my trousers to dry clean service, open my wallet, hand them money, wait one (1) day, and then I can mess my trousers with some other funky stuff again (;)). Just because my boss wants me to look professional. People who have no real problems have great talent of making their life harder in some other ways.

Hopefully it's something really permanent next time when I mess my trousers again, like epoxy paint or superglue, so I need to spend more fucking money to buy more fucking ridiculous suits and trousers to be allowed to work in this company 'cause I fucking need to look fucking professional. I mean, in army I understand the dress code because they actually DO have some practicalities behind it, but on a real life. What the FUCK?! Maybe you, dear reader, think that I'm whining about the slightest things - sod off to you too.

Thank you Mr. Dress Code Inventer. You ruined my day today again, as you have done for oh so many days before.

Everybody Poops

In Malaysia there are two types of toilets; the NORMAL one (yes, the porcelain seat is for normal people) and the-hole-in-the-ground-surrounded-by-a-porcelain-frame. The latter one is supposedly more common in India and China than in Malaysia, but it sucks nevertheless. If your knees aren't made of steel, that is.

Regardless of the toilet format however, Malaysians have a tendency to wet the WHOLE BLOODY TOILET when they take a poop. This is very annoying. When I have to go for the big second one, I don't like to do it in a fucking swimming pool. The thing why the toilet is wet, is because some people wash their assess instead of/in addition to wiping them. Maybe this sounds very nice to someone who likes to be a goddamn hippie, but on the other hand, excessive amounts of clean water is wasted in the process. I'm not an expert enough to tell which solution is more tolling for the environment, but both of them are that for sure. The fact is that there are too many poopers in the world, rather than people are pooping in a wrong way.

Imagine yourself having a stressful day, stressful meetings, tons of coffee, some quick lunching etc. This all means that a grand grand snake is building up during the day. Then after your work, when the mental pressure is relieved, the physical one in your intestines begin - and it usually comes fast as hell, so you gotta find the closest toilet 'cause normally you haven't reached home yet. You can probably imagine how FUCKING NICE it is to go to take a poop in a tiny all wet cabinet with the pissy shopping mall piano tunes mixed with farts , everyone else doing the same pooping thing next to you inside other cabinets, and the whole place stinking like there's no tomorrow.

This post is a direct traveler and expat tip; don't use public toilets, observe your snake build up, and time the sinking operation. Starhill Gallery in Bukit Bintang has excellent and clean toilets by the way. They're dark, silent and peaceful , and although a little bit costly, its definately worth to pay RM 1 for a good ol' stress relieving peaceful shit.

Mining

There hasn't been news of a major mining accident from China in a week. Maybe it's a good week for Chinese miners, as the last accident was an explosion on the 1st of August killing 14 and injuring 11. Last month saw about a hundred miners dead, mostly from collapses and some from broken elevators.

However, China is no longer among the poorest countries in the world, and is doing well in comparison. Sure, news trickle in, but it's a big industry and is manned mostly by willing adults. Other places are worse.

I've got a long article from AP through Yahoo! news for you:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080810/ap_on_re_af/toiling_for_gold

It's about children aged 5 to 10 in African gold mines digging up ore and extracting the valuables by rinsing it with mercury. It's a long read, and written a little dramatically at points, but I don't think it's an outright lie. Grim nonetheless.

OP out.