Bad Week, Eh?

Judging from Markvs's previous post I'm not the only one having a rough week.

But let him tell you of his and let me tell you of mine. We've got a container coming up. If all goes well we're loading on Friday and next week will be smoother sailing with at least one fun project coming up.

But the workload for this container, just one, is serously unproportioned. We have a new location from where we are loading from - I will arrange the workforce and loading. We have a new shipping company we are using - extra worry. The products for the container won't be finished until day before the loading and will need to be transported to a different warehouse. Oh, and we have several side projects going in to the container including prints and stands.

So I'm running between the factories doing the products and arranging everything for the container. If I pull this off I believe most future containers will be much, much easier. It's just that this one can not be late and is more difficult than any of the previous ones.

I know it's my job, sure, but I'm stuck between a deadline and my boss doing equal parts of work, worry and hoping for the best. It's stressful enough. On a side note, I used to have problems waking up in the morning; up to this I've been a late sleeper. Not anymore. I wake up 20-30 minutes before my alarm, having checked the time usually more than an hour before. Nothing serious, but I believe it's caused by pressure at work. No problems falling asleep though, and I get enough hours a night to get trough the day, it's just different.

OP out.

Decisions

In life, there are decisions. Always. Lately for me they have been whether to buy Warhammer 40 000 Daemonhunter Miniatures or continue with Tau Empire. Now, however, I have a new smaller decision ahead concerning a bit different subject; Where should I live? Basically I have three options; Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Hong Kong or Finland. Each have their sides, but right now I'm sick of jumping from one place to another so I'd prefer staying in Malaysia.

So the decision has been already made? No. I have to consider social relations. Fuck. Life without social relations eventually ends to apathy, but on the other hand, it is so much easier to "jive" when you don't have any family or other than personal and work-related responsibilities to take care of. General consensus is that the latter option is naive, but I don't really know. I'm just tired of the hectic of "traveling" and moving. I've moved all my life as far as I can remember, mainly due to my parents.

The thing about working abroad is that eventually (sooner than you think) you want to settle down. I don't know why the hell running around the globe appeals to some people, but for me, if you haven't settled down for at least a while, you never experience the small details which really makes life worth living. Yeah, you can enjoy some parties, exotic girls, diarrhea and all the other crap related to traveling in not more than just few months. But what about the local communities, "underground" food culture, small shops you can't find in any other way than by luck and knowing at least 20 people. Those are the things I travel and work abroad for. And right now I'm getting into them slowly already in Malaysia, so moving again doesn't appeal a damn bit to me.

Funny enough, right now the decision about this seems to be entirely in my hands. No matter what will be my choice, some people will get pissed or unhappy in some way, but I don't know if I'm actually up for such humanity anymore - to try to please everyone else. Would be best to think about myself for change, big time.

If one thinks this post was too personal, get a grip. Everyone's pissed about moving, and anyone who was required (or opted) to move constantly can relate and feel how stupid it feels. You can't get anything nice & permanent cause you're about to move, neither can you waste your money on partying or passing time 'cause you need to save for your new settlement.

"Moving! Fuck yeah! Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah. Moving, FUCK YEAH! Freedom is the only way yeah!"*

*sang in a tune of "America, Fuck Yeah" from the Animation; Team America: World Police.

My favourite colour is transparent

I'll be off to Finland for a few week holiday so my posting will be slow for a while. With that said, let's move to the two issues at hand.

There is a trainstation close to the border of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Not the KCR station, but the real train station. It's a really nice and modern station. The trains on Chinese railways (especially in our neighbourhood) tend to be quite new as well. With the economy booming, China has been improving the infrastructure quite well, and it's a really nice feeling taking a train which smells like a new car.

Anyway. The train station in Shenzhen. For incoming trains, there is one platform and one small exit from it. The exit is about 5 meters wide and has stairs going down. What this means is that when a train unloads its passengers to the station (last station on the rail), the whole system just chokes.

It takes forever to get anywhere. It's ridiculous!.. The reason I'm writing this is that I had to wait for a good 10 minutes to get out of the platform in the blazing heat of mid-day sun. I was wearing a full suit (had a meeting earlier) and carrying my bags. And I was sweating like a pig. Not your cute little piglet but a fullgrown swine.

Warm weather is nice. Sunny days are nice. Even hot weather can be nice sometimes. But NEVER when wearing a suit! Damn it all to hell.

Few hundred little Chinese trying to squeeze through a 5 meter opening all at once. And one super pissed off Gweilo.

No point in the above. Nor in the below.

One thing I've noticed in Hong Kong (and now in China too) is that a large percentage of girls/women in Hong Kong (and probably in China) who dye their hair are actually not that good looking. And they are probably thinking that doing these kind of "improvements" would somehow improve their situation and make them stick out of the crowd to their advantage. Well, no. They don't.

What they do, is attract attention, yes. But... You see an asian girl with a funky colour hair and you're bound to pay attention. 'First mission accomplished', thinks the girl. But you'll quickly realize that despite the hair colour it's just an ugly broad.

Fail.

Off to Finland in 7 hours. Super fun times. Tchau!

Last One Out

In the news again, Three Gorges Dam.

The government finally finished evacuating all the people from under the Three Gorges Dam project. The last person evauated was a lady whom the police dragged out of the water. She protested to the end but was removed.

The key concerns of the people are of course the meager compensations given for their houses. In the usual Chinese style the payments aren't much and the protesters say many have been forced to move into their relatives houses. The houses weren't even left for the water to take care of - a few hundred people reportedly came and dismantled the last houses last week.

The whole artificial lake displaced some 1.4 million people. It's a grand monument for Hu Jintao. You can critisize the dam all you want, but it's very grand to have built a 2km+ wall holding back a 660km reservoir of water during your administation.

Several smaller hydroelectric dams along the river would have been more efficient, I recall hearing 12 being the optimal amount instead of 1. And we don't know yet how much the hillsides next to the reservoir will erode and fall to the water. We also don't know how much waste the local cities will dump in to the huge lage. Oh, and we won't know how corrupted the relocation program really was, all we have is accusations.

But we can hope the dam doesn't break. It's a nasty worst-case-scenario, with possibly millions of lives on the line. Luckily China isn't the most likely target for a military or a terrorist attack targeting a dam, but it's a large target. We must also hope no large earthquake hits the area and that it was well enough built to withstand the masses of water.

At least the government doesn't see cause for worry and claim the site is safe. But as an unrelated note, they have "encouraged" anohter 4 million people to relocate from the areas nearby by 2020. Completely unrelated to the dam as they say.

I'll credit this info to Yahoo News, who got their news from AFP and Xinhua.
OP out.

The Dark Knight

If Hellboy, Batman, Hancock, Hulk, and Iron Man were to have last man standing in the Coliseum with no other ways out besides victory or death, who would win? Joker. Previously played by Jack Nicholson, the greatest actor of all time, and now played by a seemingly lousy wimp, Heath Ledger. But before jumping and screaming, hear me out; Ledger actually outdoes Jack Nicholson! When I saw The Dark Knight yesterday, the moment Joker appeared and started to talk I went all like "This is the best thing ever, in all of chaos' endless possibilities, this is THE best fucking thing!". The new Joker is more sinister, more chaotic, more intelligent, more cold, and without an identity, which by the way does a lot good to the character . Something that Tim Burton didn't earlier realize, albeit I admire his works, was the fact that if one drops a villain to "normal people's level" even temporarily, the character loses a lot of its grimness and power. Seemingly Burton thought the completely opposite.

Actually one could easily argue how Jack Napier (earlier Joker) was far more clear and stylish character when played by Nicholson, and how Ledger's version without an identity was just more chaotic, but not necessarily better. However, when the original Batman movie came out, the Joker was a rather normal person just gone crazy - and albeit at that time he may have seemed like a real scary and paranormal character, nowadays a traditional lunatic just won't do. Enough madmen in the movies alright. When I heard about the blasphemy of sequel being made to Batman Begins, and Joker being re-enacted, I thought that the new guy must look like a ridiculous B-class villain, unless he is at least 10,0000 times more sinister and mysterious than Jack Nicholson's masterwork. But, again, he really made it.

SPOILER! There was one little flaw in the new Joker however. He seemingly showed a small sense of humanity when he started to explain his traumatic childhood, and how he got his scars. However, later in the movie, he has a different explanation to those scars, which made me hope , and I still hope, that those explanations about his scars were just lies all the way. /SPOILER! I don't want villains to be "abused children" or crap alike, I want them to be genuinely logical, intelligent, sinister and just plain crazy for the sake of it. That's primitive, that's brutal and that's like the way it should be. In other words, villains with no traumatic childhood etc. are just far more fascinating. I hate when there needs to be an explanation in the movies for people's "bad" behavior. It really is a spit in to the face of audience, when everything is readily chewed for them. Just open your mouth and swallow.

This is the point which makes Batman movies so great; There is a morality game all the way throughout the movies, where you really can't say most of the times if Batman himself is doing any good. And if the thing with new Joker was really how I hope it to be, that he has just gone berserk through logical reasoning , it is really how "good and bad" should be done in every movie. Not in the way that you have in most movies "Ooh, his dog died when he was 12, and now he is killing everyone." For most people the quoted is just fine, and thus, they can go safely home after movie without fearing of becoming killers themselves 'cause their dog didn't die when they were twelve.

The Dark Knight is a best movie of all time for me, currently. Movie-wise it's maybe not that great to some, but I really don't mind about minor details if the overall feeling of the movie is great and entertaining. Just like in music, the main point in movies for me is the atmosphere. The Dark Knight has a brilliant atmosphere, and although Gotham has too much daylight, it is only a minor "mistake" in my books. Go and see it, it outdoes Batman Begins, Batman the Movie, and Batman Returns. Those two other movies including Batman are not to be spoken of. They suck.

Wham

I remember sitting in a car doing a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour on a rain slick highway. I recall sitting in the back seat watching my driver nod off, almost sleeping. I also recall seeing wreckages on the most dangerous highway in the world.

An today I saw a dead man lying on the street after an accident. The taxi had deep dents on it's right side where the small lorry had hit it. The taxi driver made it, but the guy driving on the open lorry laid on the road where he landed from the impact.

The taxi drivers here are among the most desperate drivers. They have a constant deadline, bitching customers and an attitude of a person who has to deal with Chinese traffic day in and day out. They are the ones doing 60 through a busy intersection and cutting lines. I know, everyone who's been to China says the drivers are crazy and have their own horror stories, each more terrible than the last. It's a kind of a penis measuring contest, sharing these stories, except the winner has been closest to death on four wheels. My regular taxi driver came to pick me up with two new gashes on the front hood and a broken light cover.

The taxis in Taizhou have the rear seat seatbelt tucked behind the seat so that it's impossible to remove. Nobody wants to wear the belt, so the drivers put it out of the way. Or perhaps it's a way of them to hope for a quick death instead of being painfully crippled.

OP out.

Consuming - Supplemental

Consider this a supplement to Pekka's post on brands.

In addition to paying attention to the expensive brands the wealthy Hong Kongese / Chinese wear and use, pay attention to the small mistakes they make.

They enjoy the western trappings, but they don't have quite the history with the items to make them look comfortable or familiar.

The easiest to spot is the "loose watch" - it's when a Chinese man has a Tudor or Rolex watch, which costs more than a 5 year average wage, they still often leave the strap as-is without shortening it to fit. It's very common, and looks quite silly with an expensive watch.

A second common one is "My car's expensive but I don't know how to use it" - you can spot this on a rainy, cold day. The Chinese have no idea why their windows fog when it's cold outside, but they've heard the fog clears if you open your window. So the t-shirt wearing factory bosses roll down their windows doing 100 km/h on a highway in a brand new Mercedes or a BMW. It's too bad no-one actually taught them to use the thousand dollar AC the car is equipped with, nor explained what the little button with a window and lines on it means.

It's things like these that make looking at the rich Chinamen a little more fun to my eyes.

OP out.

I'm a happy consumer.

Brands. Hong Kong is full them. Hong Kong is full of people whose life's only purpose is to boast on new, expensive things. You don't go for just one or two expensive things like a watch or a fancy shirt, no, you go for the full package. You have to have expensive everything on you. It doesn't really matter if you live in a shithole in the Chinese border, or under a bridge in Fanlin. No. What is important is that whenever you're out in the public you can wear the finest things available and look like you're worth millions.

Once I heard my girlfriend call LV bags the "uniform of Hong Kong". Sadly, it's a very truthful way of putting it. Every time you step outside, you will see LV bags somewhere. If you take a look at people queuing somewhere, there's at least a few LV's there too. If not LV, then it's Gucci, Burberry or any of the sort.

I can feel it my fingers, I can feel it in my toes. Brands are all around us. Branding doesn't stop with clothes, of course.

It's amazing how much money locals use on anything from Japan. It's like Japan is a magical land where only good things come. Put a few kanji or katakana characters on a product and it's an instant success. This works especially in cosmetics and skincare products.

Yesterday I was watching a TV show (local channel in Cantonese) which was pretty much like any talk show where they might discuss politics, or the days topics, etc. Well, this program was about new brand products in the market. I don't really know if there's any other point to the show than this, but from what I saw, it's just another marketing tool for companies. This time, a Japanese skincare product company was given a generous 15 minutes for promoting their product with computer animations (the kind of animations that prove the product works without a question) and everything - and the host supporting this obviously superior product (has to be superior because it comes with a big price tag). I didn't really understand a word said on the show, but the message was clear enough. Go and buy!!

A more obvious channel of information for those with material aspirations are the local magazines. They are full of articles about new brand products. Page after page of pictures and product information. They even tell the price for all these new products so that once you see someone wearing/carrying it, you will know how much it cost. And of course, if you have bought one yourself, you can rest assured that everyone seeing you will know how much you spent on that dreamy new LV bag of yours.

There's nothing wrong with brands, of course. There's nothing wrong in bringing a guarantee to the market only brands can provide. In fact, I'm a big fan of brands.

However, the extent in which brands are worshiped in Hong Kong is quite disturbing. Less would do just fine. You have people who make HKD 10,000 or less a month, spending way more than their monthly income on single products. You have people incredibly shallow and materialistic, who will start and end relationships based on the income of their companions and the value of the gifts they give.

When I started going out with my girlfriend, my income was among the first questions she received from her friends. And I am sure they weren't asking out of concern to my financial health.

Anyway, as a final thing, at least Hong Kong people in general know how to dress. When they buy their expensive brand products, they have an idea how to use the product in a proper context. Mainland Chinese (the Nouveau riche), however, can't dress for shit. They buy the garments with the biggest logo available and have no consideration of how the different colours/designs go together with the other things they wear. It's funny. Even in Hong Kong, you can still quite easily tell who is Hong Kong native, who is from Mainland China by what people wear. Of course this is a generalization, but you see these things happen all the time. And it really is funny.

That's about all time I have for today. Maybe I'll get back on the topic of brands later. It is a broad topic to cover. Anyways, off now. Laters.

"I'm a happy consumer! And you know, I'm concerned about what my children consume! I'd like to consume the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun right now -- blam!' - Bill Hicks

Why, oh, why!?

Doors in Hong Kong open inwards. So what?, some ignorant individual might say, but it's really stupid actually.

The door of your apartment occupies a square meter of your home. In Finland you would use this place for keeping your shoes but not in Hong Kong. You must have an empty space which you cannot use for anything and still have to pay rent for it. Why can’t the door open to the common area which is used only for getting out of the apartment or getting in?

I had a carpet outside of my apartment door for wiping the dog shit out of my shoes but the management forbid it saying that it "obstructs the means of escape". Naturally I ignored what the management said because the carpet doesn't do that because the door opens inwards and not outwards. The carpet would actually obstruct the means of escape if it had located inside of my apartment.

Well, anyways one day I heard a knock on the door and I was like what the hell!? I have no friends so I assumed it's the police or TV-license inspector, so I flushed down the drugs and threw the TV out of the window. It wasn’t the police or the inspector. There was a pretty lobby hostess and a security guard. They had come to inform me that I need to remove the carpet "immediately". Jeez! Is it really that serious that the management sends a blushing girl and guy who keeps staring at the ceiling to my place to say just that get rid of the carpet? Now I have the carpet inside obstructing my means of escape...

The reason why the girl was blushing and the guard was staring at the ceiling was that I was wearing a towel around me, gold necklace, a pair of eyeglasses and nothing else. I guess they had never seen a body figure shaped as well as mine…

Oh, yeah! Let's say you need to crap and you must use a public toilet. First you walk in to the toilet room. So far, so good. Then you open the door of the stall where the toilet seat is actually located. You walk inside and try to close the door but the stall is so small that you can't close it because there is not enough room between the door and the toilet seat. To solve the problem you either stand so that the toilet seat is between your legs or you stand on the toilet seat to be able to close the door. Try to do this with a bag and an umbrella and you really start to appreciate Satan, who designed the Hong Kong doors. And the same difficulties wait after you have wiped your arse.

Then you want to wash your hands. You wash very carefully with soap. Just like the public awareness ads teach you. Then you dry your hands and are just about to leave. In Finland you would kick the door open to avoid SARS and avian flu waiting on the door handle to kill you. In Hong Kong that's not possible because the door opens inwards. Great! So either you wait somebody to get in or use a hand towel and enjoy the convenience of Hong Kong doors.

Let's say that you are indoors in a place packed with people. Somebody farts so terrible fart that everybody needs to get out of the room or they DIE! So what happens is that dozens or hundreds of people are pushing against a door that opens inwards. And they all die. This kind of situation could be caused of fire etc.

Why, oh, why!? I tell you why: because of Feng Shui, the Chinese magic. The doors must open inwards or the good fortune flows out.

I definitely appreciate Kung Fu over Feng Shui.

Take a Look

I think Markus makes some good points in his write-up on driving. I made an illustration to make it easier to visualize the finer points of driving in these parts.

OP out.

Mit Gas

Having a car in Kuala Lumpur is a necessity. Having said that, having a car in Kuala Lumpur is nowhere near as useful as one might think. If anyone has ever experienced Kuala Lumpur traffic jams, I'm sure one knows what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if the traffic here is extremely bad in comparison, but it still is bad nevertheless. Any situation where you would be better off with a bicycle than a car, is an extremely bad use of car for me.

The traffic problem is two-way; public transportation sucks 'cause the jams are huge (and to be honest, the whole system is under development), and the jams are huge cause public transportation is not used. Rise in gasoline prices has (surprisingly) added to this problem a great deal. One of the worst traffic jams I've ever experienced was the day prior to adjusting gasoline prices. People were queuing to gas stations like it was free money for free (practically it was) and sucked them dry. This was just one day's problem however.

The real problem at this moment, which is more persisting, is that rise in gasoline price caused demonstrations in the roads in Malaysia (as well as in other countries). If these demonstrations weren't hassle enough, police decided to set up road blocks to control the security threat these demonstrations posed to people. The Star is a rather objective newspaper in KL, you may wanna check it out to get a better view of the current situation (the picture in the article gives a very good impression how a traditional KL traffic jam looks like);

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/7/15/nation/21822758&sec=nation

Anyways, knowing that there are traffic jams in Kuala Lumpur is not very useful, but "the local tricks" are. After few months of driving around the city I've found out some very common useful tricks;

- Avoid the most direct routes. If you choose a longer road in distance, you get only about 50% or less of the cars than on the main roads, and can arrive from 15 minutes to even 1 hour earlier.
- Be rude. This is probably the main reason behind traffic jams anyway (or the city's road "design"...), but believe me, without being arrogant you will get the shortest stick. No matter how noble or polite you want to be on paper, it is easily forgotten when you're still stuck for the third hour in a normally fifteen minute trip.
- Avoid driving during the rain. I don't know if water is forming the extra cars or what, but for some funny reason the amount of cars in the roads during rain is at least tripled from normal. I guess Malaysians are made out of sugar.
- Abuse the jumpers. If you see a driver jumping in a queue, or using any other masterful traffic jumping/switching lanes tactic, and slowing down everyone else - copy that and do it for him or her. They usually regret their own rudeness, so you can freely exploit that more than often 'cause they let you in front of them more easily.
- Traffic light stop. Every single moped in KL are already going when they see the crossing traffic light turns to red, and soon theirs will be green. Thus, I don't understand why people still go during a yellow one. So be careful. But here's one trick to "pay back" if you're bored and the car behind you is annoying; look for a blinking green, stop, and you hear a horn. When the blinking green turns to yellow, press the pedal and leave the sucker standing stupidly with his red light. Works every time, but better be sure the driver is not fit for vengeance.

Seriously, I don't want to recommend rude, arrogant and plain awful driving to anyone since it is the major reason behind traffic jams. But the fact still is that a lot of people think "eye-for-an-eye" in the traffic, and you should too. Nice people always end up with nothing and thats the rule of (urban) jungle forever and ever. And always remember to blame either the government or the gas prices on bad traffic and your bad driving.

On the Ease of Eating

I'll throw in a second $0.02 worth of opinion to the discussion on food.

One of the things I appreciate in Hong Kong is the ease of eating. It's safe and they have a great selection available almost anywhere. The advantage over Malaysia lies in the ease of finding a restaurant. The information on where to eat is available easily and finding a restaurant doesn't really rely on prior knowledge. Malaysia, on the other hand, has more Indian food - perfectly suited for me.

In both Malay and HK eating the food will be safe and decently priced. And to be honest, I prefer both places to Chinese eating.

I'll share a short news story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080711/ap_on_re_as/china_dog_meat

It's just a short article on how Beijing is taking dog off the menu for the Olympic Games. Nothing new in the fact that the Chinese eat dog, but it serves as a reminder that while eating in Continental China it is very possible to order something quite unpalatable.

Chicken feet in vinegar is the only dish I have been literally unable to swallow at all. Smoked tofu came close, and there have been various oddities ever since. I never ran to anything as strange in Malaysia or Hong Kong.

Seafood is, like Pekka mentioned a good alternative. If you are open minded enough, most of the things that crawl from the ocean bottom to your plate are fresh and according to some, tasty. I'm not that open minded, but I can eat the shrimp and crab shoved on my plate.

The key in eating in China is to find a dish or two that you like, and when asked what should be ordered, always pick the favourite. The other people will order stuff too and you will be safe in the knowledge you get something you like. It's a way of betting on a winner.

There are other tips as well. Eat in a restaurant where you see locals eating. Perhaps it is a coincidence that a restaurant is empty at the moment, but I haven't really gone wrong in following the popular opinion. Even a small dodgy looking place gets an instant "good enough" certificate if it's full with people eating.

In China, you are allowed to say you don't like a certain dish or a food. The Chinese consider it as an honest response and won't think twice of you eating something else instead. This is true especially since the Chinese have a large variety of food. Guangdong food is seafood based, Sichuan is spicy, Shanghai sweet and so on - the Chinese understand fine if someone doesn't like something.

It also helps if you don't really think of what exactly do the crab eat on the ocean bottom, or how clean the water is in the pool used to grow the fish.

OP out.

Feeble Screams From Forests Unknown

The title is a song by a band called Burzum. Magnificent song, but doesn't have much to do with the subject I'm about to write.

Food. I have very limited experiences from a food in Asia in general, but that's mainly because I don't have too much variety in my diet. If I find a meal that is safe, reasonably priced, tasty and healthy, I'll stick to that. 'Cause especially in Malaysia the available dishes are virtually limitless. And then, I sadly have to say that Hong Kong doesn't offer many options. Sorry, yes the options are many, not that the food isn't safe, healthy nor reasonably priced, but the tastes are sub-par in Hong Kong. There. I said it.

If anyone of you has ever tried traditional cantonese cuisine prepared in a more-moder-way-than-normal, then that's Hong Kong food. I'm missing something about the Roast Duck, Duck Rice, Dim Sum etc. since all that stuff what Hong Kong food culture is famous for, doesn't appeal to me at all. Some individual dishes are good, and the food is not hopeless. I just don't understand what is the hype for in tourist leaflets etc. I've spent quite a bit of time in Hong Kong, and after countless meals, the western and japanese food are the best ones Hong Kong has to offer. I gotta give props for the japanese food in Hong Kong though, since sushi is relatively safe to eat compared to many neighboring countries, due to active and strict government on food regulations. Sadly I don't like raw fish.

The moment you exit the Hong Kong border, wether it is the Sezchuan Kitchens in China, Dim Sum in Taiwan, all the food of Malaysia etc. you have totally different world. Heck, I dare to say that even the airline food tastes better once you cross the Hong Kong border.

From one thing to another, what really bothers me in Asia sometimes when eating is the way of cooking the meat. You have all the wide variety of diseases available from foodstuffs, namely Grand Master Food Poisoning, and yet some cooks (even in high quality restaurants) refuse to cook the meat properly. Seeing a pinkish chicken or pork meat isn't that rare, and boy it gives me aggro nowadays, cause I want to enjoy my meal and usually eat too late so I'm angry to boot with when I'm eating. Medium vs Rare vs Well Done with steaks is another subject, and I'm not going to cover it yet, but until you know where to go to have a steak, I'd suggest to take well done 100% of the time. Especially outside Hong Kong where the food regulations and hygiene might be not so strict.

As a conclusion I'd like to state that Malaysia has the best food. Period. Go there and try Nasi Lemak, Teh Tarik, Satay, Roti Jala, Naan (Indian), Chicken Tandoori, Kampung Fried Rice... etc. Spicy/Mild/Hot you have all the shit, but in general everything tastes great, doesn't cost a dime, and is more than often available 24 hours any weekday (especially Indian kitchens). Malaysians can cook, they complain about food easily (easier to maintain quality), they use spices in a proper way, and they combine different kitchens with great results.

Don't Laugh Now

You know,when you take pride in having thousands of years of history and tradition, you should also look at the baggage you are carrying. And in case of China how you are carrying it.

For growing so fast, China has a price to pay. It's environmental and humanitarian in nature, and it's extracted in small payments all over. The fact is that if you are small in China, you are next to nothing. The farmer on the field with his ass up in the air has his rights, as long as those rights don't intervene with progress or someone more rich. And seeing how the factories sprout up there are a lot of guys with more money.

Now the Chinese government has never bought land from me, so I can't speak for experience, but I've heard that the land is bought for a pittance or simply mandated. And I've seen farmers working on their fields directly in front of an elevated road construction - it's one of those situations where you can clearly see what's going to happen next.

It's not a complete negative - China needs the infrastructure, factories and business. And they do try to use unutilized land wherever they can. It's just that when you have so many people you cannot cater to every one. Especially not to the one not building a road to an industrial area.

The pictures below are taken from our company's warehouse window. You can see a farmer proudly lifting his arse up like they have done for a long, long time. Click on the pictures to view them bigger, you can see a large facility in the background of the second shot, with a 4-lane road being built behind the river. It's a small example, but don't think it's an isolated incident - just this time to road is close to, not on, the field.

I would like to make an overreaching point in the vein of "Think of the little guy in China" with this, but it would likely miss the mark in many places. I'll just say Taizhou, like other places in China, is one of the areas where you can see simple rice paddies next to a million dollar factory. 

On Future Technology

Not so much about China, but about technology in general.

I think I've spotted a trend in current popular applications and internet sites. Of course a popularity of a device or a service is greatly determined by usability and convenience, but there's more. On devices secondary physical features are important too, but it's not my point.

Information retention. The idea is, that we will see many more devices and services which allow as to retain as much information as possible. Let's start from the photographs of old. They were a superior form of retaining a picture compared to a painting as they were more accurate and faster to take - they allowed you to gather more information more quickly. You probably have a picture or two of your grandmother when she was young. More of your mother and many, many of yourself and your siblings. This is of course because the pictures became cheaper and easier to take as the technology grew cheaper and more common, but the promise of the technology was to retain information.

I'll take Google as another example. Remember how Gmail became a thing? Why? They said "We'll let you retain your mails, we'll give you 2 gigs of space so you'll never have to delete an email again." It's a clearer example than the photographs, and very recent. Similar internet phenomena exist. Sites like Facebook are not popular only because we like to stay in touch with our friends - they are popular because they allow us to retain information. Birthdays, likes, dislikes and such.

This is a future trend that will continue. I firmly believe those mobile gadgets that allow us to carry on more information, more conveniently and better organized will prevail over those mobile devices which offer different funtions. I'm drooling for the new iPhone since they promise the new service will allow me to get my emails pushed to the device on the road. They also promise to keep my contacts and calendar up to date between the phone and computers. It's a promise of retained information.

Pay attention to this, it's not something the companies will market by my term, but a thing which will be pushed more and more. Soon you will want a phone which can not only retain phone calls or audio/video messages, but organize them. We're not there yet, but I'm sure many companies would pay for a way to keep track of things said during a phone call. 

This desire to hold information and keep it available will also remove some limitations we now think normal. Someone will soon market a cellphone which not only can save all of you text messages but also organize them and synchronize them if you so want. And if it's not big enough of a benefit to market it'll happen quietly and accross the board - especially if video messages run over SMS's.

It's a trend with internet applications, but synchronized services like mobile blogging and social networking sites make their profit out of it, just by holding on to things you already know so you don't need to remember.

OP out.

Off to a Bad Start

Ever met a guy who had a deadline, who proceeded to ask a supplier for a schedule and got a big Can-Do as an answer? Let me know, I want his job.

The first phone call to the factory today wasn't a success and I'll definitely need a second opinion from the same people. I hope I can get the schedule better as my boss will probably kill me otherwise. 

The fact that it's basically the factory's responsibility for not meeting a wanted deadline doesn't mitigate the response I get from my boss. Well, I'll try to worry about that when it comes to it. Worrying never solves a problem, it doesn't even make you feel better. It's just that when you have pressure from work, worrying comes quite easily.

But it's not like I don't have pleasant things to look forward to, as well. It's just that I would like one of those things to be telling my boss what the factory told me.

OP out

More about Power and Distance

To supplement Markvs's post about Power Distance, I must say that having a short (or is it small - two words you don't want to hear from a woman anyway) Power Distance isn't that great either with the wrong boss.

The thing about short power distance is that while your boss is more friendly with you, and maybe acknowledges your skills better - you might not want him to do either.

Let's elaborate:

Having a boss as a friend is great, if the particular person is someone you'd most likely to be friends with anyway. However, when a boss you don't really like wants to be friends, the situation turns crap. You don't want his attention, you don't want any extra crap. You just want to do your job. Period.

In a proper company, if you have to do overtime or anything extra, there is a proper compensation for it. Or at least something is agreed upon. In a "friendly" company, there's a chance the extra work turns to be the standard, and are expected to do extra work because you're all such a big happy family, all putting in 130% effort for the common cause.

And he acknowledges your skills, eh? Well great. He can throw more work at you! Super fun since now you can work extra tasks.

"Our company hires several professionals"
Wrong, it's one guy doing several people's jobs at one go. And no need to hire any more people.

Well, of course not all bosses are like that, and having a short power distance can be the greatest thing ever. However, though maybe most bosses are not total pricks, all it takes is one. Your own boss.

Nothing personal here, of course.

Attenzione!

I'm the last and least of the four authors of this blog. The name is Lasse and the rank is irrelevant. Air France brought me in Hong Kong late November 2006 where I have stayed ever since. Well, I have visited Shenzhen, P.R.C. (four hours) and Malysia (four days) and Macau (four times). Four is the unluckiest number of all in the minds of Chinamen but whatever brings bad luck to other people brings me wealth and fortune.

I don't consider Hong Kong being the best or the worst place on Earth nor anything between. It's just a place where I am now. I have always enjoyed the place where I have lived, even Valkeakoski. This is the second time I live abroad the first time being a year in Kosovo. Luckily I have been blessed with the wisdom from Cross Cultural Communication course so I don't need to worry about anything. Besides I know 74 different ways to kill a man with a library card. I'll be just fine.

I don't make any future plans so I have no idea what will happen later. But one thing is sure: it won't be pretty...

Analysis on Asian Power Distance

One thing that I completely hate about people is the concept of power distance. Seriously, I unleash my blackest hatred on people who think of themselves greater than others, and this can be also applied to work life. Guess what?Asia has power distance, I live in Asia. Maybe Asian people are so beat-down in the beginning of their career that they become tyrants later on? I really don't know, but I know that I damn sure don't like Asian bosses shouting, disrespecting, spitting and telling their sub-ordinates how to live their life. Job is just a job, and despite how much a boss values one's employee's skills, there should be mutual respect with an employer and an employee.

Maybe I'm talking about this with too narrow perspective, but before proven otherwise, my conception is this. Of course on the other hand, it is easy to see the benefits with power distance once you've grown into it (ie. without it workers don't do shit), but a method of managers discussing the solution, and later on forcing the workers to complete their job does not deliver enough to me. It results in serious overtimes, exhaustion, too high competition amongst the workforce, and all-in-all missing the real point of life. Pooping.

When managers don't cope on a same level with their sub-ordinates, they will never know how to create a solution to the problem. They instead create even more problems, while they should create solutions. I dare to argue that with a great power distance, a manager is bound to be partly unaware of one's employee's competences and areas of expertise. If the situation would be different, we could easily see how and what are the means of completing a task. Right now we instead got pink-clouded dreams of impossible schedules, technical solutions and such. A common worker knows how to dig a hole, he knows how long it takes, and he damn sure knows what tools and how many men are needed. Manager doesn't know these things in a situation where one just wants things done, but never contributes.

In order to understand the procedures and requirements of digging a hole, manager should have respect, discussion and genuine interest to those who can and will do it. Otherwise the job is done inefficiently, there is unnecessary tension around, and furthermore, the job takes a good while longer to complete. For me, this is directly connected with the concept of power distance - without it, if the problems still persists, its relatively easy to discover which of the involved parties (employee, employer etc) are incompetent.

Power distance does not need to be completely absent. However, it should derive from a healthy and natural respect of higher position instead of a whip and shouting.

The story so far.

Dearly Beloved,

we are gathered here today in the presence of these virtual none-to-be-seen-witnesses, to join OP and Markvs and Lasse and Me (Pekka) in matrimony that is absolutely not at all gay, which is commended to be honorable among all men (in an un-gaily manner); and therefore – is not by any – to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly – but reverently, discreetly, advisedly and solemnly. Into this holy estate these four persons present now come to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together – let them speak now or forever hold their peace.

So STFU.

I'm Pekka, or Pkeku, or Beix, or that-bum-from-TuncChung, I have many names all equally unimpressive and unimportant. I'm the second one of the two writers of this blog who live in Hong Kong. I can't say my output will be worth more than a few jacks and some shit, but I'll make my best to leave the stupid jabbering behing of which I'm previously known for in my old blog Sunset Station.

As the tradition is, I've never had a workable or interesting topic to cover. To honour that tradition, I don't have one now either. Hence I will stop the jabbering but with a promise of more equally worthless post to come.

Tchau! (That's italian for "I never ment to sleep with your sister", used together with fast-paced running movement in the away direction.)

About me and Kuala Lumpur

Dear beloved readers. My name is Markvs and I'm a cockface. Not a joke, I'm a shithead for real, and I do my best to insult directly or indirectly each and every single one of the rubbish, which form the human landfill that chums on the face of earth.

So I live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and I pretty much like it here. I hate the people - as usual for me regardless of my location - but I love the food and Malaysian pricing. Generally Kuala Lumpur is a slow-paced big city, but with its own personality. Traffic jams are huge and common, the city is designed by "dropping" some high buildings around the city and building the roads randomly to cause extreme traffic and confusion. No wonder KL is not a major tourist attraction.

I really don't know what else should I write in this introductory post so maybe I write something about Japanese noise. If jewtube works in your country, please go and see.

---

Inspiring, am I correct? This stuff is the shit, and albeit it may seem like total crap to your narrow-minded assumptions of what art should be like, I'm sure you can't deny that you're fascinated by those performances in a twisted way. I don't know Japanese people, their culture, their pop-culture nor anything else valuable - but I know they are hella good in Street Fighter III - 3rd Strike, and they are extremely good at being random.

Thus, I'm being random as well, and my jump from Kuala Lumpur presentation to Japanese noise is just a mere homage to Japanese randomness. If you don't like it, I'm honestly not very sorry and won't be held responsible of your moral values going down the drain when you see a woman peeing on the stage.

Welcome to the New Site

Hello everybody, and welcome to the new site.

For everyone that's new here, I'll provide a brief introduction. I'm
the Taizhou perspective to You Don't Know China. I might occasionally
talk about Guangzhou and Hong Kong, as I often visit both, but I live
and work in Taizhou. If you haven't heard of it before, don't worry -
very few foreigners have.

I'll explain the whole "You Don't Know China" motto a little later,
but I firmly believe any China expert who conveniently forgets to tell
you he really doesn't know China isn't worth your time. Here we are,
trying to avoid the same mistake.

And for my old readers, just remember that I'm still writing about the
same topics and concerns as before. I've been complaining about the my
previous blog site for a long time, and I pushed to get a joint effort
started. The other guys writing here are my friends, and I hope their
perspective is different enough from mine to make the whole site more
enjoyable.

OP out.