Adventures Of The Humanaught

End Of The (Blogger) Line

2006-05-28T12:52:00.000+08:00

And so ends my time using Blogger. I've switched to WordPress, which gives me a bit more control over everything. As it's all on my server, I'm not dependent on any third-party company (Google) and I like that.

1. If you're viewing this because you've subscribed to my RSS feed (Bloglines, Mozilla Live Bookmarks, etc.) please go to my site (www.thehumanaught.com/blog) and click on the "Subscribe" button in the sidebar to update to the proper feed.

2. If you've found this site through my Blogger profile, please come check out my site for the latest updates. It's worth the click, I swear! ;-)

3. And anyone else... I just dunno. The idea of this post is just to tie up some loose ends on changing everything over to my new system.

C'mon over and let me know what you think of the new design.

Chairman Mee-ow!

2006-05-25T15:35:00.000+08:00

I guess a bunch of Chinese foreign students are upset over the parody their New Zealand uni newpaper did on Chairman Mao (cover left) and communist China.

As such, there've been numerous protests from the Chinese students exclaiming they've been insulted to their core by such blatant defialment of their once great leader. In near tears (crying, not laughing like the rest of us), they exclaimed that it was on par with someone making a funny cartoon of...

Jesus

George Washington

President Bush

Comparing Mao to George Bush and George Washington is fair (all being despots), but Jesus, really? I mean I'm no Christian, but in many circles he's touted as "The Son of God!" And that's a hell of a title; kick's the ass off "Great Helmsman" no matter how you say it. The students also, through their tears of the travesty, said it's an insult on par with the Muslim cartoon thing that was a hot topic a couple months back.

It's part of Islam to not make cartoons of the prophet or Allah, as they could be misconstrude as false idols - best I can figure Maoism is NOT a religion and Mao is NOT a God - despite his devotees possibly believing otherwise. Besides, that 'cartoons of the prophet' thing was a farce. A well ochestrated one, but farce none the less. Just a great way to stir up some hate and up the reasons why the Islamic world should hate the West.

This cover issue though, is just stupid. I mean, we wouldn't criticize anyone for making funny pictures of Hitler (and he killed less people). The REAL kicker is the paper's issue was taking the piss out of China not having freedom of speech nor freedom to protest - two things this whole fiasco draws attention to. The students are protesting an insult to the leader of a party that doesn't allow you to protest. Like time travel, this does my head in.

Besides Mao's looking sexier than ever, don't ya think? He didn't look half as good in that wax rendering of him I saw in Tiananmen.

Shifting Commitments

2006-05-23T07:58:00.000+08:00

It seems no matter how hard I try, I can't stay on task with any one thing for long. It's troubling, and completely the product of these wonderful things:

No Attention Span
Too many hobbies
Horrible procrastination

I'll get deeply into something for a few days (or weeks) and then it shifts to a new interest. Photography/digital photo editing, film editing/making vblogs, Web design, studying Chinese, reading about history/politics, reading fiction, reading blogs, making my computer look cool, learning some new songs on guitar, writing songs, writing... it's endless really - but the idea has been illustrated.

ANYWAY, with that in mind, after four or five days break from Web design I'm back on it today, as I've completed my third video blog (vBlog.03: Field Trip!). I know these things are becoming few and far between, and longer and longer (vblog.01 - 10min, vblog.02 - 13min, vblog.03 - 15min) but well... perhaps a little longer, but less frequent is the better way to go - meh, maybe not, I still like vBlog.01 the best. This last one is quite cute though as it gives a glimpse of my students (all 500 of them) as we all went out on a field trip to Labor Park.

If you watch it, leave some comments on the vBlog page.

Us Against Them

2006-05-21T08:13:00.000+08:00

This is certainly not a new topic for China bloggers, but I just finished reading an article on ESWN entitled "How I Was A Chinese Traitor" and it brought back memories of my own similar experience in Beijing.

For those in too much of a hurry to click and check out the article - essentially it's a translation of a blog entry of a Beijing journalist who helped out a German friend that got swindled by a quite popular tea scam. The Chinese journalist then got called a traitor by the swindlers.

When I went to Beijing last year with Martin we got taken in by the same scam but at about half the cost - we were lucky, though it didn't feel like it at the time. Yay for looking poor I guess.

The article is really interesting because it shows what is a common China occurance, and anyone with a Chinese girlfriend, boyfriend, wife or husband would likely agree. Everytime I go to the markets with Maggie the Chinese people - expectedly - rip me off, out right lie to me, and try to cheat me in anyway they can. They do it poorly, and it brings shame to them as it really illustrates their ignorance. I mean, not to sound judgemental here (ha!) but what foreigner is stupid enough to pay 500 RMB (about $75 CND) for a pair of obviously counterfeit Nike sneakers or Converse hoodie?

Maggie then scolds them for being blind idiots that didn't see that she is Chinese (and therefore SHE would know a fair price - because not in my entire life in the West did I ever need to know the price of products, or even see a shop for that matter, what with being the decadant and agoraphobic person that I am). She then proceeds to barter with them and gets the price down to somewhere between what the Chinese people would usually pay and what the foreigners usually pay (like 30-90 RMB if the original asking price is 500 RMB).

The shopkeepers then, perhaps (but inconsequently) wrongly assuming that Maggie is my tour guide, berate her for stopping them from ripping me off. Much like the author of the ESWN article above, they essentially call her a traitor to her country.

Now, keep in mind I have two very strong principles when I go shopping. A) I understand that these people are poor and as such if they try to charge me a little more than a Chinese person, I'm not offended, as long as that price is not them blatently banking on the fact that I'm an idiot and they can lie to and steal from me. This to me is simply immoral and unethical. B) Should they act this way, I just move on. I don't bargin, I don't do any business with them at all.

I like bargaining, when done, as the guidebooks would have you believe, all in 'good fun'. If the 'fair price' for something is say 50 RMB, and the shopkeeper might be willing to go as low as 40 RMB to stop you from buying it at another shop (taking a cut in their margin just to keep the business), I might be willing to go as high as 60-65 RMB just to be done with the transaction. Somewhere in there is the settled price, and that's fine. But if I walk up and ask how much a pair of sunglasses are and the shopkeeper says "220 RMB" because they are a "good brand" - I walk. No little shop servicing the common people of Dalian is going to sell sunglasses that are either real or expensive. In Canada I'd pay $10-15 for a pair of sunglasses - MADE IN CHINA! Why would I EVER pay more for something IN China than I'd pay in Canada? Despite me explaining this to a countless number of shopowners... the effects have been minimal. They need a newsletter, or Web forum or something... someone should spread the word to them on what common prices are in Western countries.

Anyway, that's my rant on why I take no shame in shopping at Walmart (fixed prices) for near everything I can. Bargaining may be "fun" for the first little while, but when your white skin removes most of the decency from a person in their quest for the ultimate money grab, buying day-to-day items can become a tiring pain in the ass and after a year and a half here - my ass is sore as.

AdNon-Sense

2006-05-19T07:34:00.000+08:00

I've been in a bit of an e-mail exchange with Google AdSense lately. They wrote to inform me that one of my pages is in violation of their policies.

I'll be the first to admit, I may have skimmed that policy/terms of agreement bit a tad quickly before clicking the little "I Agree To The Following Terms of Agreement" button when signing up, but really... violation?

I checked out the page and what they had a problem with was a bit at the bottom that was informing visitors to use the links I had added to the site to direct them to my hosting provider to get more information about a good hosting package I'm affiliated with.

Figuring the little Googlebots made a mistake thinking I was talking about Google ads (as in their policies you're not allowed to encourage visitors to use the ads), I wrote Google back and they told me I'm actually not allowed to advise visitors of MY pages to visit ANY advertising on MY site - Google or not.

Does anyone else see the problem in this? When did Google start dictating the content of our sites? I mean, I can understand that they don't want you pooching their click-thru system by telling people to click their's, but what right do they have to tell us that we can't advise people to visit affiliate programs' Web sites for more information about the program?

Here are the two e-mails... [blablabla] has replaced the violating phrases so as not to get in trouble again. Fuck, I wouldn't even care as the AdSense on here is not too important, but it's directly connected to my new site, where it is important... so if I pooch it on one, it's pooched on the other.

From: adsense-support@google.com
To: Ryan McLaughlin
CC: adsense-support@google.com
Subject: Google AdSense
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 18:37:44 -0700

Hello,
While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as thehumanaught.com/blog/2006/03/lil-somethin-for-everyone.html

Publishers are not permitted to encourage users to [blablabla] Google ads or bring excessive attention to ad units. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as "[blablabla]," "[blablabla]," "[blablabla]," or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. Publishers may not use arrows or other symbols to direct attention to the ads on their sites, and publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements."

Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 72 hours. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team

From: "Ryan McLaughlin"
Subject: RE: Google AdSense
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 23:55:12 -0400

Hi GoogleAdsense, while reviewing my account, I noticed that I am currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is completely compliant with your policies. For instance, I found no violations of AdSense policies on pages such as thehumanaught.com/blog/2006/03/lil-somethin-for-everyone.html. It does (rather, did) contain phrases such as "[blablabla]," but it was NOT referring to any Google AdSense advertising. The entry, as this is a blog, was outlining details about an affiliate program I am connected with for my site hosting. It is very clear in the text what I am referring to, and there could be no mistake on the part of my viewers in thinking I meant for them to [blablabla] on my Google ads.

I understand Google's need to use bots to monitor the millions of sites that use these ads, but I think if a violation is found, perhaps a human being is best to check out if it's a valid violation or not. I thank you for your warning, and please let me know if you find any other non-violations to your policies.

With regards,
Ryan McLaughlin

And they said...
Thanks for following up with us. Please be aware that our program policies state that web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to [blablabla] ads [[[it should be stated that the only incentive I stated was "to get more information"]]], including encouraging users to [blablabla] any ad, regardless of content. This policy is not specifically restricted to ads being served through Google AdSense.

Sigh. Anyway, here's an interesting statistic, to show how useless they really are: I consume two things most mornings for "breakfast" - the contents of these two things are 75% the same. Three out of the four things included in each are identical. One is oatmeal, the other is coffee. Weird eh?

Windows Dead Mail

2006-05-18T07:28:00.000+08:00

That's it, I give up. I've stuck with Hotmail since like '97 or something...
tao_monkey
acidhartha
thehumanaught...

Me and Hotmail, we've had some good times, we have. But I'm tired of having to battle with the commies to access my e-mail. I mean, I'm not exactly a political dissident, an active activist, or anything...

Besides, I have my site(s), I can just create any number of cool e-mails... like "ryan" or "me" or "itsmeryan" @ thehumanaught.com...

And as it was written, thus it shall be. Hotmail, like some 16-year-old pregnant daughter in 1950s Dublin ... you're dead to me. And the CCP boys that think it's cute that they have the power to block possibly the world's largest e-mail provider... go fuc... have a nice day. (I don't want to lose my Internet access completely).

This Day In History: The Cultural Revolution Begins

2006-05-16T19:57:00.000+08:00

Right, so it was forty years ago today that Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The gist: Mao Ze Dong, feeling the power he had gained over the first two decades of CCP control in China beginning to slip into the hands of others, began a purge of "bourgeois" from government and the rest of the country.

Despite having made a rather large flub a few years earlier (aka The Great Leap Forward), this is where Mao's infamy lies. Even though it had a catchy title, the GLF just didn't have the rabid fanaticism the the Cultural Revolution did. Mao (with the help of the Gang of Four - one of which being Mao's wife) managed to mobilize the nation's students into a crazy and often lethal group called The Red Guard. These guys ousted, criticized, and often tortured whomever they felt were standing in the way of the revolution. Labelled "bourgeois", this is when the middle-class, limping for years, died.

The Cultural Revolution also, puntastically, removed most of China's culture from the country - and indeed from the planet. Literature, temples, art, and basically anything else that might give China some sense of identity now, was considered "rightest" and unneeded under the new regime.

This continued until Mao's death in 1976. A few years later Deng Xiao Ping returned from in-country exile, impossed on him during the CRL, took the reigns and began reforming China - it is largely due to him that China is where it is today. Good or bad, I think the world can agree that he was a shade better than his megalomaniacal predecessor.

Four decades on, the scars are still deep, and the middle-class has yet to fully recover. Though growing, well-educated free thinkers are still the exception, not the rule in most places throughout China.

And so yeah, that's my brief "This Day In History" moment.

This post officially marks my breaking of 200 posts. 200 posts in a little over a year, not too shabby. If you've been along for the whole ride, thanks for reading... and if you've just got here... I swear, sometimes I'm entertaining.

I get a day off tomorrow (actually still have to work 2 hours tomorrow night, but) after working a week straight teaching each day... I'm tired as all hell, but somehow have been conned into heading downtown to meet Maggie and all the girls from her work for a night out at Noah's (a nice bar in town). Though perhaps most people would jump at the opportunity to spend time with their beautiful girlfriend and her cute friends... I am very much not. I'm tired, they don't speak English, the last time I went out with them was a clusterfeck of confusion that despite being sold to me as fun and dancing didn't touch on either.

We'll see if tonight fares better.

Da Hei Shan 大黑山

2006-05-09T12:10:00.000+08:00

Last week, as I've mentioned, was May Holiday. This is a very popular time for people in China to travel - as many have a week long vacation. The "many" however did not include Maggie. As I didn't really feel like trekkin' around China on my own, and am still slaving over this new Web site (I swear, I'll tell you all about it soon), I opted to stay in town for the week.

Most of my week was spent staring at the business end of an LCD screen, but come Sunday Maggie and I decided we needed to get our lazy asses up and out for some fresh air. Enter, Da Hei Shan 大黑山 (or Big Black Mountain).

For some of you this name will seem familiar, as I've ranted about it a few times. Da Hei Shan is a mountain that sits between Jinzhou and Kaifaqu, about 30 minutes north of Dalian. When I lived in Jinzhou for my first eight months in China I stared out the window at this big rock every day, but as per my manager's instructions, never visited it.

You see, three groups of people dig this place. Daytrippers looking to get some fresh air and exercise, monks who live at the rather touristy temples scattered both on and around the mountain, and the PLA or People's Liberation Army. I'm not entirely sure why the PLA decided to build a training base at the top of the mountain and I don't care to know - a fact I was planning to plead had I been captured, tortured, and had my organs sold to rich Brits due to my presence on the mountain. Likely I would have just been fined 3,000 RMB and let on my way - how much does a spleen go for on the black market anyway?

It was this fear (of the fine, as at the time the whole Sujiatun Death Camp thing was sorta unknown) that kept me from climbing the mountain until a year after my initial plans to do so. It was worth the wait though - in part because I still have all my organs.

Let's get a few things straight. This isn't The Rockies. The 'mountains' around Dalian have about as much right to the name as any big hill might. Fortunately for naming sake, the word for mountain and hill in Chinese is the same. So there ya go.

That said, it's not a simple jaunt, and it will get your heart going. Like most Chinese mountain climbs, it's mostly all stairs. I'm not sure who it was that cooked this idea up, and though it does cut down on the "authenticity" of 'mountain climbing'... it does make the hike a bit simpler.

To get to Da Hei Shan from Dalian, it's easiest to just take any number of busses to Jinzhou, and then either take the rather infrequent bus (only runs in the morning) or take a taxi. As we missed the bus (I needed sunglasses damnit), we opted to take a cab, which dropped us off on a nice little path that led up to a ticket house. Admittance is 10 RMB, which is fair enough as the park seemed reasonably well maintained, and the fee included entrance to the Buddhist temple at the top.

Immediately upon arrival at Da Hei Shan's base you notice a difference in the air quality, and deep breathes don't bring with them a slight panic due to the amount of dirt you're inhaling (as is the case in the city). There's also the presence of the long-forgotten tweets and caws of birds. All-in-all, the place closely resembles nature. I was surprised.

The hike starts out gradual, slowly becoming steeper as you ascend. At one point there is an incline of about 70-degrees, which was a bit more like climbing a ladder than a stairway.

It amazed me throughout the climb how limber(ly?) and quickly the elderly (wow that was a lot of -ly's) climbed. Not only did they keep pace with us youngin's, but often they zoomed by with a wisened/self-righteous smirk.

After about an hour or so of climbing, you reach the first "top", which is where the temple is located. You're rewarded with some nice views of the valley you've just hiked through, and on a clear day might be able to see the sea. We couldn't as it was hazy.

The temple is sort of lackluster as it is more an opportunity for the monks to sell you their "blessed" wares. Anyone who's been in China more than a couple days has likely seen carbon copies of the same temple. There are however some nice marble statues of Buddha looking his serene self.

From here you can go back down the way you came, or continue up a little further, passed the army base (something I did quickly, not completely escaping the gaze of some plain clothes military guys), and up to a parking lot. Yup. Top of the mountain parking lot. Apparently for those that want the view, but not the exercise.

A little ways away from the parking lot, down a Temple of Heaven-like marble path, is a Keep-type structure, which while we were there had been rented out for an Amway rally - you heard right. We elbowed passed the rah-rah brainwashing to riches, and got a spectacular view of Jinzhou on the left and Kaifaqu on the right. Had the weather been clearer, we could easily have seen Dalian in the distance.

After taking in the view we had a tough decision to make... continue climbing to the real 'top' where I think there is an even better view, and a TV tower, or start our descent. The several hundred stairs assembled in a near verticle fashion between us and the top made the decision none-too-hard to make and we started down.

The road down, is literally that, a road. Though well-paved, it's steep and features repeating jackknife turns - tough on the toes and calf muscles after a while. It was a bit surreal on the way down as we randomly bumped into Doris, a friend of ours from the Jinzhou Future School days. I had considered calling her and inviting her along for the hike - funny how things work out. We stopped and chatted for a bit, made vague dinner plans (as you do) and continued on our way.

At the base, the road opens up and winds passed farmer's fields until it reaches an intersection where there are a load of old women selling produce in baskets, as well as a bus stop and taxis waiting to take you back to the city.

Upon discovering we had also missed the bus home, we hopped in a mini-van back to Jinzhou and returned to Dalian, via a shared taxi, for some well earned lunch and relaxation.

And so there it is - my trip to the big black mountain, Da Hei Shan. It should be noted that I have heard of foreigners getting hassled by the army, and I think it's still officially off-limits. However, I haven't heard any firsthand accounts of trouble; quite the opposite actually, as most foreigners I've met here have been. Now I know why. It's a nice way to get away from the honking bustle of the city for an afternoon.

Expenses summary (per person):
Bus to Jinzhou: 4 RMB
Taxi to Da Hei Shan: 12.5 RMB (25 RMB/2)
Da Hei Shan Entrance Fee: 10 RMB
Mini-van Back to Jinzhou: 10 RMB (20 RMB/2)
Shared Taxi back to Dalian: 16 RMB
Total: 52.5 RMB (or about $7.50 CAN)

Notes:
Shared Taxis
This is a reasonably convenient way to get between Jinzhou and Dalian. Essentially it's a regular taxi shared between a group of strangers that ferries you between the two cities for a set price. Dalian->Jinzhou should be 11 RMB, and Jinzhou->Dalian 16 RMB. There is a 1 RMB discount if the taxi doesn't take the ShenDa Highway. The easiest place to catch a shared taxi in Jinzhou is by Jinzuo Market, just north of the #1 Bus Terminal, and east of what I think is called Shengli Square. You'll see a long clusterpuck of taxis waiting curbside for people looking to go to Dalian. Try to find a car with some people waiting in it already. People in the backseat are preferred, as often a driver will stick his buddy in the front passenger seat to make it look like he's got people waiting to go. Failure to adhere to this might see you waiting an obscenely long time.

Da Hei Shan Entrance
You can tackle Da Hei Shan two different ways. We took the path up and the road down, but it is equally possible to take the road up and the path down. Both have their benefits. My friend Doris explained that they were taking the road up because it's easier to climb the road and descend the stairs than the other way around. I can't say which is easier. Just make sure you explain to the driver which entrance you'd like to go to. Assuming you come directly from the city, the path entrance will be reached first, and on your right.

War On Fat: Part III - Good Habits

2006-05-09T08:08:00.000+08:00

So, about a week after going to war... how are things?

Well... I nixed jogging. At least in the everyday way. With some advice from friends who seem to have an uncanny amount of knowledge about this stuff, I've decided to take things a bit slower than I initially intended.

I was all gungho about the war going in, but realized that if my body didn't understand what was going on, I'd have mass anti-war protests, led mainly by the H. S. Thompson in me. So, what I've been doing with the war effort is developing good habits, or at least better habits. I figure if I can maintain good habits for a month or so, these habits will become just part of my routine.

The habits include: drinking more water (check, now drink about my required amount in water and/or green tea a day), eating healthy (check, no more fried foods,and a lot more vegetables, seafood and chicken), moderate exercise (check, check out my soon-to-be posted review of Da Hei Shan), and no more beer (check...). That last one has been a challenge, as I didn't realize how intigrated drinking beer was in my life. I go out for drinks, I have a beer with dinner (most men do here), I come home and have a beer on a Saturday afternoon... but it all adds up... a lot.

The other habit that actually started a while back, is that I get up early. This one has helped a lot in peripheral ways. It gives me more daylight and starts my day off -ummm- earlier. And well that might sound stupid, I just tend to be a lot more motivated to do things, and do the right things, when I haven't slept until 9 or 10. So, 6:30 a.m., every day. I find that by the end of the day I am much more tired, but it's a good tired and in turn a good sleep.

May 9rd, 2006: 107 kg
but it has fluxuated between about 106 and 108... so... until things really start moving and the new habits are really changed, I doubt this number will matter much.

The Mac Daddy

2006-05-06T13:08:00.000+08:00

I know, I know... two posts in one day - inside of a couple hours even. But since I left here last I stumbled upon something and wanted to share it. I've effectively turned the look of my computer into that of Mac OSX.

For those, like me, whom years ago swore off Mac and all its "I'm faster, better and slicker looking" boastfulness, but now feel a little like maybe they were wrong... just a little, can get the 'slicker looking' bit on their PCs.

Through a few simple addon programs you'll have those Apple pundits believing you're one of them (at least at first glance). For detailed instructions, visit this guide.

What I particularly like about it is the OSX (Mac's Windows XP) toolbar at the bottom - it's just damn cool. Just to be clear, the programs don't actually change the function of Windows in any way. It's still an XP system, all your files are the same, etc. It just looks... well... nifty.

Here's a screen shot. As per usual, click it for the bigger version.

China Doesn't Like Hot Males

2006-05-06T08:23:00.000+08:00

Haha... of all the sleazy titles to drive traffic to your site...

But yeah, so this last week I've been on holiday. It's the Labour Holiday in China, and as such the people who do the least labour (the rich) get a truckload of time off, while the people who do the most (the poor - and Maggie) get none off. Ah, the logic of this 'People's Republic'.

Anyway, I've had the whole week off and pretty much have done nadda with it. I've gone out a handful of times, but while many people went travelling, I sat in front of my computer working on my new Web site (details soon, I promise).

Something I've noticed from these days getting a monitortan, is the lack of use of Hotmail. Thankfully I could access it this morning, but for the rest of the week it's been completely unavailable to me without the use of Great Firewall of China breaker Tor. I can't figure it out, the blockage was sporatic. Not everyone in China couldn't access it, just a select group. Even here in Dalian there were those that could and those that couldn't.

Essentially Tor redirects the packets of information you send and receive from web sites through various other servers around the world, so that way neither the site you are visiting nor your ISP (aka. gatekeeper of your connection) know who you are. It's completely anonymous. This is extremely useful, not as one might assume, so that I can visit the site of groups that the government here deems unfit for my eyes (any ╒a└uиgΘиg sites, the 'president' of Taiwan's homepage, and of course any Chinese-print newspapers not written in Mainland China) but simply so I can visit wikipedia and most recently so I could check my e-mail.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but I've also noticed that not all my e-mails are coming through. I always get e-mail updates if someone replies to a post on this site, however only about 50% of the notification have reached me. The others have, well, slipped through the holes in the Net.

After reading up on it a little (and I do mean a little, so pardon errors in thought here), but I'm really considering changing e-mail hosts. The more I read the more I realize how the three big Web-based mail companies (MSN's Hotmail, YahooMail, and Google's Gmail) are in bed with people who don't share my interests, but have a share of interest in my information (and yours for that matter). Maybe it's because I've been watching Manufacturing Consent, but I get a little ansy knowing how easy it is for them to filter, view, or even just stop what I feel is my right to communication with the outside world.

From Google filtering search results in China, to Yahoo outright helping the PRC arrest dissidents, it all just makes me wonder if we are sitting a little too comfortable thinking that these companies (who have $$ and power as their goals, not public trust or solid ethics) have our interests at heart. We just trust that there's not some tech. at Microsoft reading our e-mails. Or that they don't have filtering software in place to search for keywords that them, or someone their in partnership with, deems flaggable.

There are alternatives, Web-based e-mail like Hushmail offers a encrypted e-mail service. But again, it still puts all the trust in a company, that though now small, if one day makes it big, might also play the slight of hand trick with a similar 'Don't Be Evil' corporate motto.

I guess what it boils down to is this - Bill, er. Mr. Gates: if I promise to only write nice letters and stuff to my mom, touting the amazing beauty and unending kindness of China and Chinese culture, can I have access to my e-mail? Please?

What these companies need to ask themselves is what phrase is more appealing:
"Hu Will Love You" or
"Who Will Love You?"

History is the judge, but a Benz is a Benz.

Gasp! Fake News ... in China!!!

2006-05-05T06:56:00.000+08:00

There's a new post over at ESWN talking about the Beijing Legal Times. Apparently Chinese counterfeiters have now decided to make a newspaper that's contents are completely false. This will leave many Chinese aghast at how low these people will go. In other surprise news, Chinese people still believe State-run news agency XinhuaNet is telling them the truth.

Thanks go to ESWN for the translation of the Ming Pao article that tells the story of 'fake' news in China.

(Ming Pao) May 3, 2006

[in translation]

The May 1st golden week was an opportunity for scam artists in mainland China to make money. In Wangjingfu street in Beijing, there are usually a large number of tourists. In recent days, the place is covered with "fake newspaper gang" members who publicly declared that "Faye Wong is dead by suicide" and "Li Ahpeng is arrested" and sold copies of the newspaper Legal Times to tourists. The amusing thing is that the "fake newspaper gang" has large numbers of customers.

Yesterday, the reporter was at the Wangjingfu subway entrance and was shocked to hear someone announced the news that "Faye Wong is dead." The story was that Hong Kong singer Faye Wong was despondent after splitting up with Nicholas Tse and therefore committed suicide at her home. The news report also falsely reported that Nicholas Tse was so upset that he shaved off the hair on one half of his head. Also the newspaper reported that famous Chinese television program host Zhao Zhongchang was suspected of rape, that female singer Mao Ahmin has returned to the business, and other 'news stories.'

None of the reports contained dates or the names of reporters and editors. Even funnier was that this Legal Times contained some contents from the supplementary section of the Legal Evening News (=Mirror) that was published legally on April 4th in Beijing. Yesterday, the reporter was observing at the scene and noted that more than one hundred people bought the newspaper in less than 30 minutes. Some tourists thought this news was true and they started reading immedaitely. Some other people said: "I knew that this was false, but I was just curious."

The "fake newspaper gang" seemed to be well-organized. The reporter saw two vendors selling Legal Times at the two Wangfujing subway exits, with two other people acting as lookouts. When the reporter took photographs, one of the man came up to stop him and also attempted to take away the camera. The police and security people on the street did not seem to mind these people.

Honestly, if you're going to make a newspaper that isn't sponsored by the government, perhaps you might want to consider using it to do some real journalism. Of course then the police wouldn't turn a blind eye.

The War On Fat: Part II

2006-05-04T10:03:00.000+08:00

I don't intend for my updates to be quite so regular as every day - I mean, it's a long process and rather boring I think... but just wanted to comment on my first day.

Day One:
Got up at 6:30 a.m. - this has become a strong habit, and with few exceptions is something I now do everyday - yeah!

Went for a jog - actually about 30% jog and 70% walking. Basically I'd run, tire, and start walking. After catching my breath I'd look around and notice all the early-morning Dalianers staring at the fat laowai breathing rather heavily... and I'd find my motivation to run again. NOTE: I discovered a park that I had been to while living at my previous apartment - it's now much closer to my home and will be part of my daily exercise routine. It's quite busy in the mornings, but meh. The highlight was seeing a middle-aged woman wearing a pink sweatshirt with a big rhinestone pot leaf on the back. Too funny.

Got home and did some crunches, or whatever they're called. At first it was a little bit of a challenge, but once I figured out the breathing and stuff... I could really start to feel it working away at my abs. I read somewhere that large stomachs are mostly because the ab muscles have become weak and stretched... so... fat burning, good eating and ab building are my goals. Hope Maggie doesn't mind me using the yoga mat I bought her for her birthday.

The rest of the day kind of went down hill. I skipped drinking a lot of water - no real reason, just not a habit for me yet. I also skipped all the meals, making me quite hungry later at night when I met up with Maggie to go dancing with her and her co-workers. This ended in me A) drinking several beers and B) eating chuar (BBQ).. if that wasn't enough, I got home and ended up eating some leftover cheesecake that my friend Rick and his girlfriend brought over the day before...

So, this morning I slept in, skipped the jog and haven't consumed any water yet. Well, no one said this was going to be simple. Time to go make some green tea.

The War On Fat: Part I

2006-05-03T07:57:00.000+08:00

Seems everyone has got their "War On" these days - and I'm a follower of the Faith of Conformity, so I'm starting my own war. Dubbed "Operation: Reclaim Waistline", my War On Fat shall combat the Axis of Evil (The Democratic People's Republic of Lethargy, The Sovereign Kingdom of Crap Food and Not Drinking Enough Water - ok, that last one didn't have the PR department that the first two had...).

I've always been overweight - at least since I was about 9 or 10 when my parents got divorced and I found solice in savoury things. As you should, I just became comfortable with my body (awkward puberty years aside), and generally haven't cared too much about it.

But now, getting older and perhaps a little more responsible, I'm starting to understand that the damage to my body of every kilo I'm overweight will be compounded by every passing year - and so, The War On Fat has been declared.

Like a Chinese farmer looking at a Western toilet, I'm a little unprepared as to how best to go about it. If there's one thing I've consistantly failed at and not learned from it's exercise routines. See, this isn't my first War of Fat; in the past I even went so far as buying one of those big exercise machines and drinking chalky tasting milkshakes.

So why is this time any different? Well, I think losing weight is a lot like quitting smoking - you have to fail a number of times before you succeed, before you REALLY want to do it. The failures are because you try knowing you "should" do it, but you don't really have the willpower to keep it going because you don't really "want" to do it. And I want to do it! Really, I do.

Optimally, I would be able to join a gym. Alas, I am unaware of any good gyms less than 40 minutes away by bus, and I think that trip would kill my motivation - so I need an inhouse solution - and I think it's the Rocky Balboa method: just run like your ass is on fire, and wave your hands in the air at the top of all staircases.

I'm going to cut out the oily, meat-stuffed Chinese food, I'm going to hydrate myself (I currently drink about one glass of water a day, the rest is either sugar-saturated iced tea or beer) and I'm going to exercise. It's that last one that worries me the most because unless I can make it a habit, it's going to fail.

Fortunately I've been reading a lot about developing habits (thanks Steve Pavlina), and I think if I can get through the first two or three weeks and definitely if I can do it reliably for a month, it will then feel uncomfortable or awkward NOT to exercise.

And just when you were thinking, "But Ryan... we should ALL pitch in for the war effort - how can I help?" - your answer has arrived. A) Check back here often, as I'll be posting my progress (in KGs), this will give me the motivation of knowing people are following along, and B) Give me suggestions. If you've ever discovered a way that worked for you in shedding a few pounds, or living more healthily, please leave a comment.

Alright, so that's it. Oh, wait. The goals. I guess you need a target right? G.W. has the oil of the middle east in his "War On Terror", Nixon had something with his "War On Drugs", and my "War On Fat" too has directives and aims. I don't really know much about losing weight, so I can't say how long - but I do know where I want to be sitting on the scale and that's in the 77-80 kg. range. I've a long way to go, as you can see below, but there are few things more important than your health... so. Yeah.

May 3rd, 2006: 108 kg

Worth A Thousand Tears

2006-05-01T09:24:00.000+08:00

Just made my daily trip over to EastSouthWestNorth Blog and his current post features a photo journalist named Maohair (毛孩儿) from Shenyang (about 5 hours north of here, and the capital of this - 辽宁 - province.

His photography is strikingly raw. It reads more like a CSI report than a portfolio, as most his work details the China that has just run headlong into a train, car, embankment, pot of boiling oil, etc. Needless to say, some of the photos aren't for the easily disturbed.

A quick sampling (check out the original post for more):

[1] A father cries, his newly wed son and daughter-in-law were killed in a car accident. [2] The female passenger of the wrecked car checks her face before calling for help for the trapped driver.

The father of a boy just hit by a bus can do nothing but cover his face.

Respect To The 中国人

2006-04-29T12:34:00.000+08:00

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life." - Chinese Proverb (because THEY know how to eat the bastards!)

Just finished trying to put down a 1/2 mug of this instant oatmeal beverage that my co-worker Pam gave me ages ago. You might ask why, after just eating lunch, do I need to consume breakfast products. You might ask, but I doubt it. So, the reason is... fish. To put it frankly, I hate fish. I mean, I've got nothing against them. I'd give my seat to one on a bus, I'd say hello to it on the street. But my politeness ends there.

These little refusers of evolution were born with more bones than they could possibly know what to do with. I understand we all deserve a suitable framework by which our meat can cling to - but c'mon!

I've never been much of a fish eater, but I certainly don't shy away from a nice chunk of salmon, or if I'm really lucky a properly prepared bit of ahi tuna. Notice that these are both rather meaty fish.

Sadly, meaty fish are not on my school's lunch menu. Only scrawny, slow ones. I swear that the main reason for the serving of fish here is for the sole (pun intended?) purpose of humiliating the laowai. I sit there painfully trying to remove what little meat I can find, covering myself in fish bits and intermitantly lodging sliver-like bones in my throat... only to look around and see a room full of Chinese people (the aformentioned 中国人) sucking the meat off like it's as easy as Paris Hilton. (ok, that pun actually wasn't intentional... but I couldn't change it, I just couldn't).

Right, so fish. Bane of my esophagus. Unebater of my hunger. Killer of my pride. Swimmer of my fish tank.

Why I Live In China

2006-04-27T12:43:00.000+08:00

I realized today that though I've been along for this bloggin' adventure the whole way, some have not and they may be a little unclear as to my current motivations and reasons for living in a country that can often be rather crazy and confusing. So...

People come to China for a bazillion reasons. Some of the more popular are: 1] To experience a new culture (developed over 4,000 years and destroyed in about 50). 2] To learn Chinese (what an insane task that is!). 3] To travel and see a world different than anything they've known before. 4] To get away from life. 5] To donate time and knowledge doing good in a developing nation.

When I boarded that small airplane in Penticton, BC, last January I admit that these were all on my mind (all but that last one ... I can be culturally-centric, but I don't think I ever believed I was doing the Chinese a favour by coming here). That was my first eight months. By the end of my eight months I had had enough. I was China'd out and was extremely excited to get out of the country, with an option to possibly return a year later and study Chinese - but long after I'd gotten a much-needed dose of Western culture and sensibilities.

That's when I made the easiest hard decision of my life. I stayed on. I stayed for Maggie. I had finally, after quite literally eight months of avoiding it, confessed my love to the girl I had endlessly talked to, taught, learned from and - frankly - drooled over my entire time in China. I realized that I couldn't leave and always wonder if she was the one I was meant to be with (I'm 50/50 on that fate crap.. but meh.). Turns out my gut was right, as I've spent the last eight months blistfully in love. Maggie and I are made for each other. We're great together. We have ups and downs, as ya do, but I've never felt more positive about a future with anyone.

It's that future that has made me choose to do whatever needs to be done to make it work. Right now that means staying in China. To move to Canada involves a lot of very complicated things, the least of which not being the fact that we need to get married. I wouldn't be with Maggie if I didn't think that was in the cards, but marriage is a tricky thing for me, and I don't want to just jump blindly (as I'm prone to with matters of the heart).

As such, I've tried to take my available options and mould them around the things I can't change. So, what does China give me? A great resource for Chinese language practice (hense I'm learning Chinese) and a part time job that more than sustains myself and Maggie, which in turn gives me time. Time I'm using to finish my degree via distance education.

Number [4] in my list was "get away from life". That is a common reason people come here. It's easy to disappear in China, no one knows you, Chinese people treat you like you are some sort of English-speaking prophet (aka. profit), and you can generally live quite comfortably not going forward or backwards in life. This is not me though. I've never taken a step backwards when it comes to my life and would someone please explain this to my grandmother, as she seems to think I'm living a college student life with no responsibilities.

Though often used to support the irresponsible, ESL is not in and of itself an irresponsible career path. There are a hundred options for an experienced ESL teacher. One course I could choose is to finish my degree and then move to Hong Kong, where I could make upwards of $4,500 CAN per month to start. Not at all a bad wage. The other is use the experience as a stepping stone to illustrate international exposure, and cultural awareness to a company looking for a communcations manager.

Like all things, it's what you make of it and it would be unlike me not to make the most out of everything I do. Anyway, all of this is to give some outline, for those that might not know, why I live in China.

My previous post may have passed the opinion that I was tired and just wanted to go home - and of course I have those days, but I know exactly how I'd feel back home, like I wasn't moving forward. My way forward wont always be in China, but it is for now.

PS: A new vBlog is up!!! Go check it out.

Got Bumped

2006-04-26T11:18:00.000+08:00

Well, life in China is finally catching up with me. Most days it's easy to forget that there is an entire collection of lives being lived by people very dear to me in a country that I still call "home" though it isn't in any functional sense.

That I'm not there living it with them was driven into me the other day when I was talking to my best friend Cory and he informed me I had been bumped from 'bestman' to "guy#somethingontheright" (I don't know the exact location) in his upcoming wedding.

His reasoning behind the bump is sound, and I don't fault him at all for making it. I'm simply not there to help out with the wedding planning, or any of the other things a bestman traditionally does. And as much as we've been friends longer than we haven't, that stuff is important. Hell, I've not even met his wife-to-be as he met her after I left Welland for B.C. in August 2004 (the last time I saw any of my friends or family in my hometown - not including Sarah and Vanessa who were wonderful enough to come visit me here last spring and summer respectively).

I'm a bit bummed about getting bumped, not because I think it hurts my friendship with my friend, but because it shows me directly the affect my being away has caused on my relationships with people that are still very important to me. It's been a while since I was homesick, but lately it's been a growing feeling. I look at the last 10 years of my life and I've lived away from my friends and family for a total of about three and a half years (BC twice, backpacking and now China).

It's a fight to stay in touch with everyone, and with most family members it's not been too hard. My mom and dad usually e-mail me once every couple of weeks or so and let me know what's going on and I'm in semi-regular contact with my aunt as well, which is nice. But my big failure is my sister.. I rarely hear from her at all - and if I do, it's usually not more than a sentence-long, very functional e-mail. I'm not sure why it is, I've tried repeatedly to keep in touch with her, but she just has "no time" to maintain it.

It all just furthers my feelings that however much in my mind living abroad doesn't affect my relationships with those back home, in everyone elses it does. For me they are a base I can always return to and that gives me the strength and energy to somewhat fearlessly live in or visit foreign places, but for them it's a quite natural occurance of out of sight, and out of mind.

I guess this all sounds a bit whingy, and I don't mean it to be such. If anything, all of this is making me re-evaluate life abroad. The problem is: there's nothing for me back home. I mean, friends and family are great and important (some would say the most important)... but back home I'll just be working some crap job, living for the moments I have off to go watch the game with my buddy or go out to a bar with friends - and of course being able to attend the family functions a handful of times a year. As much as I miss those things, really miss those things, they're simply not enough to base a life around. I need challenges, goals and change.

So it is now my goal to see how I can meld these two things together. How I can live close to my friends and family, but still live the life I want to live. I often read Steve Pavlina's rather insightful blog, and a recent post talked about how we often look at our careers (and in turn our lives) from an outside-in perspective. Trying to weigh the avaiable options and choosing the best (or good enough) one for us. He wrote this often leaves people frustrated or confused, as there are simply too many choices, and what do we "really" know about any of them. What he then outlined was that it's better to take an inside-out approach, whereby you look at who you are, the things that are important to you and the qualities you value in yourself - then apply these to a job that would suit them. I think this system may also be the solution to all that I stated above. We'll see. I'm still working on his advice for waking up right when my alarm goes off, and nixing my caffeine addiction. Woke up late and had two cups of coffee today.

Earth Day, And Other Fictions

2006-04-23T16:59:00.000+08:00

Earth Day and Easter seem to have a lot in common. 1) they both happen in April, 2) they both were forgotten by me, 3) they are also both largely ignored or unknown to the 1.3-1.5 billion people residing in the rooster-shaped beauty of the PRoC.

My friend Eric posted this in its entirety at his blog (click the name - turn on Tor if you're in China), but I think this paragraph sums up my feelings about the planet and how much it needs to be "saved".

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole. - George Carlin.

I read, what in my opinion is, a really great book once called "Straw Dogs". It maintains the opinion of George in that environmentalists are a bunch of human-centric worriers that believe we have harmed or could some how harm this massive ball we call home. Keep in mind I'm a) human and b) a semi-practicing environmentalist. The book led me to my current belief that if I really want what's best for the "planet" then I should help pollute it anyway I can. The quicker we kill ourselves off, the better off the planet will be - until insects with opposable thumbs comes along.

The thing about "-ists" and "-isms", beliefs and idologies are that they're just concepts, ideas that we've made up... and when you start incorporating them into your life as dogma, it's bound to mess things around a bit. So I don't. I accept that I should do my part to live a clean, eco-conscious life, but I also accept the more nilistic view that we really have no idea, and we might just be genetically programmed to kill ourselves off. Add these to a thousand other conflicting "beliefs" I hold at any given time and you start to get a picture that the world often operates on principles of black and white - but those aren't our rules, we're just tenants, we live in the grey.

Oh... went to a wedding today. My second Chinese wedding. It was pretty amazing. Expect photos and a new vblog soon.

ChinesePod: One Smokin' Pod

2006-04-21T13:21:00.000+08:00

Hey, so I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to mention the wonder that is ChinesePod, but well, here we are. If you are at all interested in learning Chinese, this is the place to start, linger and finish.

The term "pod", for those that don't know, is from Apple's amazing ability to come up with cool branding - i.e. The iPod. Basically pods are sweeping the net as they are on-demand radio, television and, as ChinesePod illustrates, learning. Coming in any number of formats the standards are generally MP3/MP4 (audio/video), making them easily listened to or watched on a variety of computer software.

Back to ChinesePod. The site offers a new lesson in Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) each day. Ranging from Newbie to Advanced, all students can find a suitable lesson fit to their personal ability.

They launched mid-2005 and I clearly remember it being touted to me by my former neighbour Matt. I looked at it quicky, but at the time I was still in the "osmosis" stage of learning Chinese - you know, when you sit and hope that just by eating Chinese food and talking to English-speaking Chinese people you might learn the language.

However, I now find it an invaluable tool. For the full service it isn't free, but you can get all the pods (sans PDF transcriptions and access to the Learning Centre) without paying a fen (note: 100 fen = 1 yuan, or roughly $0.0014 CAN). They have an extensive archive of all their previous lessons, complete with convient ability to leave comments - often used to post questions about the lesson.

I throw a couple episodes on my MP3 player and listen to them on the bus. At first I didn't notice a huge improvement, but now I find my listening is improving quite a bit, as is the extent of my vocab.

NOTE: For any Chinese readers - there is an EnglishPod constructed in much the same excellent format. Maggie's been using it to round-out her English... I almost busted a nut when she used the phrase "Da BomB!" yesterday.

In other news, I've recently noticed we have a new neighbour. He sporadically appears during the day and makes his presence known to all. While writing this I can hear him calling out to the gods above asking, "Why? ... Why? ... Why do I haul barrels of some unknown substance saddled with garbage bags. My forefathers bore Mongolian cavalry.... oops. I just made a doodoo."

5 Reasons Why I Love My Job

2006-04-17T17:06:00.000+08:00

Here are just a few reasons why I love my job (with a little help from my camera phone):

	1. Cute Kids Ok, sometimes they piss me off, but mostly they are just completely adorable and it's hard to stay mad at them long, even if it's the 12th class and they still can't remember "How are you? I'm ok."
2. Free Lunch There's no such thing as a free lunch, my ass! Sure, it may come in a bucket, and be made of random bits of animals or rather old vegetables... but hell, it's free! Saving me - at least - $1-2 a day.
	3. Eye Exercises: Mao Style Everyday at 9:30 a.m. the roughly 2,000 students at my school can be found rubbing acupuncture points around their eyes so as to relieve pressure and end the need for glasses. Many, even most, of my students have glasses.
4. Eye Exercises: My Style Everyday while the Happy Birthday tune signals the start of class, my students illustrate that they've practiced the things I taught them the class before.
	5. Creative Writing I tell them and tell them that they need more spacing between their words ... and this is why.

Is It Easter?

2006-04-16T09:49:00.000+08:00

Wow, so it hit me last night. Today's Easter. Totally didn't see that coming. I mean, you take away the massive amounts of chocolate company marketing, the dinners with family, and the childhood hope of searching the couch cracks in May for un-found eggs and there's really nothing here in China to indicate that today is the day that marks JC's return from the grave.

Funny that.

The question hit me last night, and was confirmed by John's Sinosplice blog today where he referenced something called "The War On Easter". As is so often the case, one link led to another and I found myself:

A) Reading about The War On Easter
B) Downloading The God Who Wasn't There - Torrent

Well, whether you worship The Resurrection or The Rabbit - Happy Easter - as in China we've got neither.

The God Who Wasn't There: Trailer

Back To The Future

2006-04-15T17:51:00.000+08:00

I have to admit that 90% of my motivation to write an entry comes from the fact that I have a legitimate reason for using that title. Hehe.

Well into using a couple bottles of China's finest pijiu to wash away the week's hardships last night I got a phone call from my old manager at Future School. Looks like one of the teachers there was out for the count with illness and they needed a sub.

Enter me, sub extrodinaire. I swear, I was made for jobs that require me to come in, have little to no responsibility and get paid nearly twice as much as the regular staff.

That said, I have noticed that I've a new found hmmm... love is just too strong a word, but a new found something for teaching. Teaching at the primary school for a little more than a month now has given me a real sense of what it is to teach to a massive amount of kids that want to do anything but sit still and pay attention for an extended duration of time.

It has also shown me that I really do dig kids. I've mentioned it a few times on here, and I notice it more and more. I mean, don't get me wrong, I still yell something fierce when they get too noisy and I've more than once considered the ratio of how long it takes a particularly naughty student to fall from the second floor and how long it takes me to get to the embassy in Beijing... BUT, I've started to develop a real affection for the students I teach. I see them learning, and see them look to me to teach them and it's amazing that you can actually play a difference in someone's life that directly.

There aren't a lot of other jobs where you have the opportunity to play such a seminal role in someone's life.

Anyway, back to the future. ;-) (that's twice). I only had to do five and a half hours teaching today, and it was a nice amount to remind myself of what I'm missing at Future School and also how different things are at the primary school.

Small classes is just COMPLETELY the way to go. If I could combine the small classes of Future School (no more than 18, and averaging around 10-12) with the short classes at my primary school (40 minutes) - that would just be excellent. The kids would have more one-on-one talking time and be able to ask lots of questions, plus they wouldn't get exhausted in a big 2 hour session.

It's funny as I was told by the Chinese teacher assistant that a couple of the classes I was teaching today were "rowdy/naughty" and it's possible that just having a stranger come teach them might have straightened them up for the day, but managing a class of 10 students WITH a Chinese teacher assistant always there to step in and help me is just SO much easier than trying to control 40 kids all trying to talk at once, with only 5% of them actually using English to do it - sans Chinese teacher assistant.

Strangely enough, I don't mind it though. I'm not kicking myself for changing jobs and with the perspective that today leant me, I really do just see it as "different". Not better and not worse... just a whole other animal.

[LEFT] From 9:30 to 10 a.m. every morning this is what all my students can be found doing. [RIGHT] An English teacher and Foreign Teacher Liaison extrordinaire. Oddly enough, also named Maggie.

China Rises: 坐下中国

2006-04-12T21:26:00.000+08:00

So, has anyone in Canada, or the US caught any of this China Rises special? I'm not sure about dates or times, but it's a combo project of the NY Times and CBC.ca (and some other guys - Germans I think).

You can check out some information here and if you dislike commercials or don't live in the US or Canada - just go to TorrentSpy.com and download it.

I've downloaded the first two parts but haven't had time to watch them yet. I was told that for any foreigners living in China it's mostly old news, but I'm excited to watch it anyway.

I've only recently started browsing for torrents of documentaries about China. Watched an interesting one from The History Channel about the Tiananmen Massacre - or as it's known in China: "The Day Something Happened But We're Not Sure What". It was good to finally find out what all the fuss was last year when Zhao Ziyang died. I didn't really know his significance, and the documentary explained it well.

And in yet more China watching news... check out this site:

It's interesting to contrast Canada with China - quite different in fact when comparing China to the States. I never realized how much it craps on your country to be competing for something. The States have a bunch of power, so they're struggling to keep it and in the end they turn out to be (International) assholes (no offence to my American readers - I'm sure you're all NOT assholes... but have your neighbours put up Anti-Iran flags yet? Or is that next month?). The same can be said about China. Sitting in the wings, waiting for the announcer to say "C'mon China... get on stage... it's your time." Everything is pressuring China to keep the momentum going, and it, like the US, just can't keep it up for ever.

But Canada, oh Canada. Our biggest problems are: A) wood, B) seals and C) being next to a country with a feck off target on its back. We're constantly awarded one of the highest standards of living, we've got pretty damn good healthcare (despite the PC's best efforts), we've got loads of trees, somewhat clean water (not counting Hamilton, which is apparently causing people to mutate into merpeople), we're at an all-time low in unemployment... Life for Canadians is pretty sweet I'd say.

So... the moral - in so far as I can tell - is ta hell with being the biggest, most important, most powerful country in the world. I'll settle for being the one that's got a kickass flag and an obsessive liking of hockey. Who needs oil when you have maple syrup?

Soapbox: Smokers

2006-04-10T07:35:00.000+08:00

Always one to step on my little soapbox here, I just read an article on CBC entitled "Anti-smoking crusader takes on final campaign" and if you're a smoker and feel it is your 'right' to be able to smoke in public places, please read this and educate yourself.

This is not an issue of civil liberties for smokers this is an issue of civil liberties for non-smokers. Personally I'm all for allowing people to do whatever they'd like to do in the comforts of their own home (where children don't reside), and hell, if they want to smoke outside in uncrowded areas, not a problem... but for those smokers out there that start to cry when the government passes a new law banning smoking from various confined public areas (i.e. restaurants, coffee shops and bars) - don't be ignorant and claim you have the right. You really don't. No more than I have the right to shove the lit cigarettes down your throat - something I'm reasonably certain is equally bad for your health.

Lights, Camera...

2006-04-09T19:36:00.000+08:00

Ok, so the YouTube thing didn't work out for my vBlog idea. However, having already strung together the first entry, I've decided to go ahead with it anyway, bandwidth limits be damned.

Take a lot of meat, a lot of beer, a few friends and a rather steep video-editing learning curve and you get...

The vBlog

Please go check it out. It's all still in its infancy, so if you notice any problems, please let me know. Also - a note about the pixilization (not crystal clearness) in the video. It's because of the file size. Right now the file is sitting at 15MB, to get it at its optimum quality I would have to have a file of about 70MB. I'm currently looking for solutions to this - if you have any ideas, please e-mail me.

YouTube, I Tube, We All Tube: Banana

2006-04-05T18:18:00.000+08:00

Ok, sometimes I just don't know where the blog post titles come from.

Last night a few of us met down by Olympic Square for some BBQ. In the course of stuffing ourselves full of meat and beer, Rick, the man behind Panda Passport, mentioned a site called YouTube.com. I sort of yaya'd it at the time, but today I got a chance to check it out.

It's awesome.

Basically it's a site that allows you to upload videos and share them with the world at large. It's got a huge collection of just random videos. Here are two that I thought were pretty good:

Japense Police vs. Darth Vader

First it was table tennis, then badminton, now skipping... what's next, marbles?

For a while now I've been tossing the idea around of doing more vBlogging. As uninteresting as the video tour of my apartment was, I just sort of like the idea of presenting some of the stuff here in China in a video format, as it's got a bit more life to it. Photography and writing are great, don't get me wrong. There's lots you can express and convey, but still, some of the things in China need that motion. I recently got turned on to a guy named Ron Sims here in China that's doing this very thing. Check his site out to get a sense of the potential of vBlogging, or video podcasting (I dig the non-brandenominaltional term more though).

The problem I forsaw was that an average video will be up around 10-15 MB for just a few minutes, and that's going to kill A) the storage capacity and B) the bandwidth of my server. Enter YouTube. They just let you upload and upload. No problematic size restrictions and complete freedom to link the videos.

Expect more on this soon.

Pizza & Beer Wine

2006-04-03T19:06:00.000+08:00

Ah, the comforts of home... brought to you by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Walmart

Yeah, so I've sort of become a tad dependant on Walmart pizza. I discovered it a couple weeks back nestled right next to the freshly steamed Bao Zi (steamed bread stuffed with meat) and it's become nearly a daily thing.

It's a sad fact that I have absolutely no motivation to cook for just myself, and with Maggie working until 9 o'clock most nights, it leaves me scrounging for easy to prepare dinner. Pizza, with no surprise, has become the answer.

At 7.90 RMB a slice, it's not the cheapest thing you can buy for eating here, but it kicks the pants off a plate of jiao zi (dumplings). Now, you may be saying to yourself... "Walmart, pizza? Wha?" And if you are, talking to yourself is a sign of mindloss, don't challenge the pizza - ya nut.

It should be explained that Walmart here is 50% home goods and 50% full-on supermarket, not the 70/30 ratio that they were/are in Canada (at least when I left), so when I say "pizza" I mean oven-baked goodness, not frozen in a box stuff or anything of the sort.

Honestly, it's great. Perhaps it's just that I've not had real pizza in so long the Chinese versions are starting to be alright, but I had pizza at the local Pizza King a few months back, and have had it various other places since getting here and it was always startlingly craptastic. Maybe we just have to admit, Walmart can do things right.

Maggie, after asking what I ate for dinner the other day, gave me a flash of her qwirky smile and exclaimed, "Again!?" To which I very proudly pointed out that I've eaten Chinese food for in around 400+ days and no one says "you ate Chinese food AGAIN last night..." Honestly, don't get between me and pizza.

Now sitting here with a glass of wine (2 bottles of not hot, but not bad, Cab Sav for 36 RMB) and the pizza I have to reflect on the fact that I very definitely went to Walmart today NOT to buy pizza. I recognized early in the day that I was going to have the now all-too-common challenge of deciding for myself what to eat, and made the resolute decision to lay off the stuff today and settle for the more traditional (and equally convenient) bao zi. However, the pusher that she is, the woman selling the pizza conned me into getting not just my regular two slices, but she threw in a third free to sweeten the deal. She took one look at me and knew my "jin tian wo bu yao xie xie" was about as valuable as an yi fen note ($0.0014).

Meh, pizza and wine... really, I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

That's Fantastic

2006-04-02T13:16:00.000+08:00

The other day it dawned on me that this new found BitTorrent technology that I've been utilizing to bring me the latest episodes of all my favourite TV shows from back home might actually be able to add some nostalgia value to my free time.

So it was that I did a quick search for two little-known cartoon movies that left an impression on me in my younger years - "Fire and Ice" and "Gandahar/Light Years". I've just finished watching "Fire and Ice", and wow, they just don't make cartoons like that anymore.

Disney-saturated family values have polluted the younger generation's right to learn about the real world via complete works of fiction. I've liked the return of violent fantasy movies that are creeping back into the mainstream these days. Stuff like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter have a bit of fright, and a bit of death & blood (more the former than the latter) that movies since the late-80s just haven't had.

The fantasy films I was raised with, and that I owe a lot of my love for all things creative, are quickly being put on the "classics" shelf replaced with the computer-generated g'faws of Pixar and Dreamworks - but I suggest if you've got kids in that pre-teen age group, you should sit them down in front of the likes of The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, Legend, The Dark Crystal and Willow. Foster your kid's imagination ... because as funny (and subliminally racy) as Shrek and Finding Nemo may be ... it's all a bit candy-coated. Kids need death, swords, demons, unseen dark evils, seen dark evils... this is the stuff that childhood is made of.

That said, man, I didn't realize when I was seven that the heroine in "Fire and Ice" was so damn sexy. I guess the animators spent far too much time cramped up in their studios and this was their outlet. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trading in the far-sexier Maggie for an extended scenes DVD version or anything... but I was just a little surprised at how upfront (and upback) it was.

See for yourself:

Despite the photos, this film isn't some sort of early 80s Nordic-themed Hentai thing... it's not softcore porn. It's more Conan meets a pencil crayon.

Anyway, all this to say that we need to reintroduce the themes of violence, good/evil, and heroism back into what our children are watching. Kicking to the curb the bland, feel-good, lets all get along, sure-he's-bad-but-he's-a-person-too crap.

Have we gotten over passing the buck and blaming movies with a bit of blood and death in them for all the shit the youth of the world get into? We need to just relax and remember that fantastic stories complete with frighteningly creepy things have been around for centuries. We weren't blaming Homer, the monks that wrote Beowulf or The Brothers Grimm for the ills in society. Lets just move on.

Loose Change 911

2006-03-29T12:11:00.000+08:00

[Torrent Link] 911 Loose Change
I would never really classify myself as a conspiracy theorist. I remember reading the Operation Majority crap when I was a kid and being totally engulfed in the idea that there was a world of things happening that we, the public, weren't allowed to see. Secret things like alien presence on earth, global masterminds that controlled the world, governments lying to the public to cover things up, etc., etc.

All but the last one I think I've grown weary of. Because, unlike the other two, the last one only relies on one simple thing: greed and power. Ok, two simple things. These two principles have ruled history, and aren't we supposed to look to our pasts to reveal our future? Why now, in a time of greater self-realization and global conception, do most of us really believe that these two things are not ever present.

This is why, I guess, when I watch something like Loose Change 911, a documentary about the massive conspiracy behind the 'attacks' on September 11, 2001, I usually sit back and just shake my head. Basically the documentary (which I've provided a BitTorrent link to above) is a rather well done, indepth analysis of the attacks - the stuff we saw/didn't see on CNN. It's quite incredible.

Films like this are always going to sit precariously with me, as while watching it I eat it up wide-eyed, open-mouthed and nodding at the appropriate times. Then after, I sort of sit back, reflect and wait for people to debunk it all.

The content is what it is, I say watch it and make up your own mind. And if you do watch it, please come back here and comment on it. I'm curious what everyone thinks.

AIDS In China

2006-03-27T16:59:00.000+08:00

Right, so I'm becoming a little too accustomed to posting about stuff I've read on other people's sites, especially the ever interesting and insightful EastSouthWestNorth Blog. But if ideas had to be original, we'd all be in short supply.

As such, I just finished reading "Being Alive Is Not Just An Instinct", ESWN's lastest post/translation of a Southern Weekend article by Zhang Ying. The article is about Chinese author Yan Lianke and his experiences with AIDS riddled small-town China.

Some selected quotes from the article:

On that day, Gao Yaojie [a top civilian In AIDS prevention] also told me another shocking detail. She said that when the peasants sold blood back then, they might be working in the field. When the Blood Heads went to the fields to collect blood, they said that they would take 500 cc but actually they were taking 600 cc or 700 cc for the same money (at most 80 RMB). The peasants who had the blood drawn were often dizzy afterwards because too much blood had been taken. At those moments, the Blood Head would pick up the peasants and turn them upside down, shaking their bodies until the blood went back into their heads. Then the peasants didn't feel as dizzy as before and so they continued to work.

... a Blood Head in real life told me that when they collected blood, they diluted it with beer to increase the volume. As another example, when this village began to collect blood originally, bottles were used. But since bottles cost too much, they used soy sauce and vinegar plastic bags later. Then they used those plastic bags again and again. There was a water pool about two mu in area, and every night he would wash out the blood plastic bags at this pool. After the while, the water pool was dyed red.

Then there was another a family of three in which the male was an AIDS patient and the female had been healthy. After the woman married the man, she was infected. That was seven years ago. The man said that he was unaware that he had been infected when he married her (of course, there is a phenomenon in which when a man is ill, the family and the village will try to conceal the truth and get him a wife from outside quickly so that she can become pregnant and continue the family lineage). After getting married and then infected, the woman collapsed mentally. She hated her husband, she hated the family, she hated the village and she even hated the whole society. From that moment on, she would not do any housekeeping or farming work, she just threw the dishes and bowls around, she cursed the man, and she was hostile to her parents-in-law.

So yeah, some crazy stuff. I knew that the AIDS situation in China was troubled, but this article really filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge about it. I really hope I can find an English transation of Mr. Yan's new book, "The Dream of Ding Village".

Something that I'm constantly surprised about is the naivety in China about AIDS. The government, for all their merits, are trying their best to educate - and I'm sure nary a day goes by that there's not some sort of ad or article (一样吗?) in the newspaper about how they are battling this horrible disease that the damn foreigners have forced upon the otherwise innocent and undeserving Chinese population.

No joke. I honestly believe that the biggest reason the AIDS epidemic wasn't faced quicker was that China (blanket statement) simply didn't feel it was their problem. I mean, it wasn't "created" by a Chinese person, it MUST have been some dirty African or sluty American [would both nationalities please forgive the dramatics] that brought it here - they should be the ones taking care of this.

I know that's a bit harsh - but I've had several conversations about this with Chinese people (of mixed stature in society) and all have said only slight variations of the above.

So, for all my Chinese readers (of which I'm not aware I have - do comment if you are), please read the following very carefully:
Gao Yaojie and Mr. Shao explained many things to me about AIDS. I know that there are three ways by which AIDS can come about. One way is through blood infection, such as sharing a needle. The proportion is high, about 96% to 97%. The second way is infection through sexual intercourse, about 2%. The rest comes from mother-child infection. There is no other way of infection. About this, we should trust science and not be too scared.
Have we given up thinking we're going to get it from toilet seats or shaking hands yet?

A Lil' Somethin' For Everyone

2006-03-26T11:31:00.000+08:00

If you come to my site for news about me...

I've finally settled into my new routine. Teaching at a primary school as opposed to teaching at a private language school does comes with some differences.

1) More kids. At Future School I was teaching class sizes ranging from 5 to 19 kids at various levels of English. At my new school I am teaching average class sizes of about 35-40 ranging in age from 7 to 11. Where at FS I taught a wide range of ages and levels (from pre-school to adults, can barely say their name to near-fluent conversation), at the primary school most days I'm lucky if I can get them to remember "I'm ## years old."

2) Staff. Man, the last few weeks has done more to improve my Chinese than any single thing I've done for my Chinese education thus far. Where at Future School there MIGHT be 2-3 people on staff that can't speak English at the primary school it is effectively the opposite. Most teachers (having had a reasonable education) can manage some basic sentences and such, but for fluency, I think there are maybe only 5 people out of a faculty of 50 or so that can really speak reasonably comfortably. I may see this change over time, as I think at first many of the teachers are rather shy.

This is actually something I have to combat quite a bit. Whereas the teachers at Future School are used to working with foreigners, the teachers at the primary school aren't. I often find that I feel I'm stepping on their toes when I come into their classroom. I also get the sense that they're a bit worried I might call their bluff on what they may have indicated on their job application as their English ability. (more so for the English teachers).

3) Distance to school. I'm now subject to the arduous task of taking public transport every morning to get to school (gasp!). While working in Jinzhou I did have to do this, it was pretty simple, and my last 6 months at FS in Dalian, it's just been a short walk to work three times a week. Now however, I have to take a bus at the busiest time of the day, often having to wait two or three buses to find one where it's not so full peoples limbs are getting caught when the doors close. I've worked it out if I leave a little later, getting to school just before my 10:10 class starts, the buses aren't half as crowded.

4) Work days. It's a bit surreal having the weekends off after working nearly every weekend for the last year and a bit. It's nice in some regards, but is hurting my social life with all my old FS friends as they're all on my old schedule and have to get to bed early on the weekends. And in reverse I'm playing the wuss by calling early nights during the week, when they all go out.

5) Class length. FS classes are generally 2 hours long with a variety of levels per day. At my new school the classes are 40 minutes long and I only teach three grades all week. Basically I do a lesson plan Monday for Gr. 1, teach the exact same thing 6 times Monday, then modify it slightly for my tuesday classes of Gr. 2 and Gr. 3. I repeat this process on Thursday and Friday (I've Wed., Sat. and Sun. off).

6) Freedom. I've a lot more freedom in what/how I teach the kids. The curriculum calls for the use of an Oxford Press English book for Primary Students, but it is totally retarded. These kids can barely remember "Where are you from? I'm from China" after three weeks of review, and the Oxford book would have me teaching them "Do you want to see my present?" "Show me your new shoes"... just stupid. Anyway.. needless to say, I've sort of scrapped the book. I'm going to make a modest effort to include it in some classes so the kids' parents don't feel they've wasted their money in purchasing it. Next term I'm going to seriously recommend changing books. If anyone has any suggestions, please e-mail me.

Anyway, those are the major differences. I'd say mostly they are positive. I am enjoying the new job so far, and am not regretting leaving the safety of Future School, as I thought I might.

If you come to my site for my sometimes interesting, sometimes stupid, and often scathing criticisms of life here...
So, Taiwan has once again declined an offer from the Mainland for some pandas as a rather dear peace offering. I'm not really sure who cooked up this 'panda diplomacy', but I think it's passed its novelty.

If you ask most people in China, they are under the opinion that China gives pandas to other countries as a way of extending friendship to that country. They see it as an altruistic way of sharing Chinese culture and kindness with nations that want to be friendly with China.

Bollocks.

It, like almost everything when it comes to China, is a money grab. China lends these little monochrome bamboo eaters out on a 10-year loan at about $1,000,000/yr.

Under current agreements, the zoos in Atlanta, Memphis, Washington and San Diego each pay more than $1 million a year for what the Chinese government says is a fund to protect endangered animals. In addition, China charges the zoos a one-time fee of about $600,000 each time a panda cub, such as Tai Shan, is born. - Pricey pandas put squeeze on zoo finances, By Gary Emerling, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, February 26, 2006

After revealing that it wasn't a "gift", I asked my adult students once if they felt it was fair for China to charge this money. They immediately said "of course". So I furthered the conversation by asking if it is "right" for a country to claim they "own" a species of animal simply because its natural habitat resides within the country's border. They again said, "Of course! China is a poor country, Western countries have the money to pay for it." Using this logic, I finished the discussion by asking if they felt that China should pay - to the respectively poorer countries than China - approximately 8,000,000 RMB/yr. for each non-native cat (tigers, panthers, lions) I saw at the Haerbin Dongbei Tiger Forest Zoo. No comment was given.

Since 1998, thanks to the WWF, U.S. zoos must make sure that at least half of the money paid for the loans is spent on panda conservation in China. Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with large amounts of money being paid by zoos into the conservation efforts for a severly endangered species (even if that species seems just completely out of wack with natural selection when it comes to its breeding/birthing process). I just, and maybe I'm wrong, don't trust the Chinese powers that be to be responsible with it. "Conservation" is a term that has a somewhat alternative definition when it comes to China. I've not been to Sichuan and seen the panda conservation parks, but if they're anything like the Siberian tiger "conservation" park that I went to ... a lot is left to be desired.

and finally...
If you come to my site because you are also a blogger or into Web site design...

You might have noticed I've put some ads on my site for my provider. I've been asked a few times about them, and as I've always had good experiences with them (cheap price, competitive services, ultra-fast responses to help issues), I've decided to become an affiliate of theirs. So, if you are currently hosting your site on some free service, messing around with free photo hosting sites with size limits and bandwidth limits, but you thought like I did that it's REALLY expensive to have your own server to avoid all that crap - nope. It's $6/mo. for hosting plus $5/yr. for domain (that dot.com thingy that you type into the address bar) registration.

For that you get 750 MB of storage, unlimted customized e-mails (ie. yourname@yourdomain.com), FTP accounts, 15 GB of bandwidth (that's how much stuff people can download per month from you). It's not bad eh?

For more details, check out the page I've set up for a bit better explaination of everything, or use your mouse on the colourful box-like links that go directly to a non-G00gle related page, but rather a page for additional information about what I'm talking about.

Inboxinated

2006-03-23T20:28:00.000+08:00

Hey, always in a rush to add little gizmos to my site that make it just the coolest thing since sliced bread (and you thought it was sliced bagels!), I've set up a Daily E-mail Update.

So, if you like reading my site, keeping posted on what's going on with me in China, but can't really be bothered to check more than your e-mail when you come online... just put your e-mail in the little box here, or in the identical one on my ever-expanding sidebar, and like magic you'll see an e-mail from me everytime I post a new entry. Pretty fancy eh?

Do On To Others ...

2006-03-22T10:37:00.000+08:00

Right, so does anyone else think the world is just stupidly retarded these days? And I don't mean to throw the term retarded out there to offend anyone with special needs, as they are certainly more abled than the planet at large.

I just read about this case in Afganistan, where an Afgan man is being tried (and seemingly convicted) for converting to Christianity 14 years ago. Unless he renounces his ways and again affirms his belief in Allah, wait, not Allah... just Mohammad -- the rest of the cast and crew are pretty much the same aren't they -- they're going to sentence him to death.

Now, lemme get this straight, the Muslim world gets up in arms (literally) when the "Christian" (rather, the multi-ethnic, rather tollerant and aware that there IS an entire world of people that live on this planet) world publishes A SINGLE defamatory cartoon about the Prophet, which characterizes the fact that the Muslim world tends to blow up innocent people to show their dislike of other people blowing up innocent Muslim people (a la G.W. Bush and his bedmates).

So, now we've got a Christian guy in Afganistan who's going to be killed for being Christian. If the Muslim's unite when their faith is attacked (by horribly damaging cartoons), where the hell are the Christians? Bunch of pacifists. I say the Christian powers that largely rule the US, and now Canada, should illustrate to Afganistan just how astronomically stupid they are by extending the same level of "justice" to the Muslim people in North America. Hell, Tony Blair and John Howard ... they'd probably admit to being Christians too right? (do when the votes are needed anyway). So lets get the UK and Australia in this too.

If a man can be killed in a Muslim country for being Christian, isn't it fair that a man, woman or child in a largely Christian country be killed for being a Muslim? No, it's not fair... it's remarkably brainless... and I'm SURE that the Muslims in "civilized" Western countries would agree. So... what the fuck?

It's common to hear that all this shit going down in the Middle-East by America is just causing more and more terrorists (and I'm the first to advocate that it does, and denounce the whole thing), but what the hell is the Muslim world doing? I mean, they're not exactly giving the world a lot to like about their religion.

Worth A Thousand Words...

2006-03-19T17:24:00.000+08:00

The Humanaught's Photo Gallery

So, it's finally up. It's not complete, it's got a few kinks, and there's no Dalian section (bit ironic I think)... but my photo gallery is finally complete enough that I'd thought I'd put a link on here for it. Check it out, and leave some comments about what you think.

Putting The Rough Back In The Diamond

2006-03-19T10:10:00.000+08:00

Maybe about a year ago I was talking to my friend Matt about "old nobility" versus "nouveau riche". To be honest, being from a country with a limited amount of direct history, these two terms were, well, foreign to me.

I mean, I'm sure Canada has some nobility attached to it, but most of the nobles would have stayed in England, and not ventured to the "New World" themselves. As such, the rich in North America I would summize are all what nobility would call "nouveau riche".

Matt sided that the "nouveau riche" lacked a class and manners that is instilled on nobility and basically nouveau riche are just a bunch of brutes with money. At first I disagreed with him, thinking that nobility is just a fancy way of saying you didn't have to work for your money and the "nouveau riche" are hard workers that have done well (English Royalty vs. American Dream and all that).

After reading a translation of The Most Popular Forum Post Ever In China, my opinions have swayed a little. It is basically an online battle between the rich ("nouveau riche") and the inconceivably rich ("old nobility") in China.

It starts with a rich woman (Yi Yeqing), who claims to be "upper-class", harping on how shitty and worthless the poor are - she hates even looking at them. This is when a man (NL), who claims to be a member of one of China's six "noble" families, entered the dialog. He, with the edge of a razor, put her in her place and explained that she had no right "waving the upper-class banner".

Yi Yeqing said that her family can spend "several thousand US dollars" in a blink and they fly every two to three days, such as from Moscow in Europe to San Francisco in the United States for tens of thousands of US dollars. NL commented: "We don't pay for airline tickets when we travel. We fly in our own private plane."

Yi Yeqing said that the red wine that she drank on New Year's Eve cost 1-2 thousand RMB (US$125-250). NL said that the a bottle French wine that he drank on New Year's Eve cost US$13,000.

He systematically destroys her claims to being "rich" (though I'm sure she's quite rich by most of our standards). He explains that the true "upper-class" would never act in such a way. They are taught to respect all people, be broad-minded and generous - as they have "class" in every sense of the term.

This is when I began to possibly understand where Matt was coming from. Money means ability, mobility and accessibility - but it doesn't at all come with a stipulation or guidebook that explains you should also have presentation, ideology, ethics, manners, and etiquette. This, at least as NL alleges, comes from being "nobel".

Maybe there are a million examples for and against the above - but the real thing that happened for me after reading the dialog was that I began to understand that all wealth is not created equal.

Sadly, it also made me realize that most everywhere, but definitely here in China, people are questing Yi Yeqing's style of life and views, not the "noble" path. With the use of Guanxi (relationships), it is quite common for the cruelest, most manipulative and deceitful people to be the ones that are populating China's bustling (now renamed in my mind) upper-middle class. This creates some rather powerful and rich people in China that have no regard for the people around them - or "below" them, if you will.

New Apartment: The Tour

2006-03-15T14:36:00.000+08:00

Download the video (if it doesn't play above).

Hey, so I finally got around to taking some photos, and even making a little video, of our apartment. It's pretty sweet. For 1000 RMB ($142 CAN)/mo. we have a 2-bedroom, approx. 100 sq. metre place. Seventh floor, but hell, I need the excercise.

[LEFT] The livingroom, complete with a comfortable sofa, two comfortable armchairs and a nice big TV with sound system. [RIGHT] Our dining room, which we've admittedly put to little use thus far, but it'll be nice to finally have people over for dinner.

[LEFT] Also adding more comfort to this place is a bed that actually feels like a bed, not a sparsely padded piece of stone. [RIGHT] The quaint, but functional kitchen comes complete with a dish sanitizer - wahtever that is.

The Office: Where I spend FAR too much time.

Shamed To Suicide: The Lesser-Known Victims of Kiddie Porn

2006-03-15T10:17:00.000+08:00

Yeah, so this is going to be a tad controversial of a post. If you’re like me, just hearing the term “kiddie porn” fills you with squeamish and uncomfortable feelings, but two things got me thinking/talking about this topic lately.

Hit Me Baby One More Time
Sadly, I know from a conversation I had last night with a new friend of mine, Tom, that just having this topic on my site is going to land me a lot of unfounded hits. I got chatting with Tom, a bit of a guru in Internet marketing and an advocate for NGOs, about this topic last night and how rampant it is in S.E. Asia (that’s Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia for those that don’t know).

The area is often portrayed in Western media as a major gathering point for all the perverts of Western nations, but what Tom enlightened me about was that something like 90%+ of the business comes from Asian men. That means for every 10 little boys or girls that are horribly abused in this way, only one is by a white guy (not to be gender or multi-ethnically biased here, but I think we can agree that if we’re talking percentages, white males are going to dominate the ‘Western’ category).

He brought this to my attention because we were talking about an amazing group he’s the project leader of (www.nomadicmarketing.com) that provides marketing services to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that otherwise couldn’t afford good marketing. He was talking about a few of the groups they help, and how they’re fighting this sex trade.

More to the point, he told me because they mention this topic on their site, they get a lot more hits. I immediately replied that this can’t be good as it’s the wrong sort of visitor – but he corrected me that if the hits are high, the search rankings are high, and site statistics are high, it doesn’t matter who the visitors are – computers can’t really discern. And yeah, I'm still getting hits for "Shanghai KTV Girls".

Anyway, check out the site and donate in some way if you can.

The second bit…
Shamed To Suicide
As horrible as sexual child abuse is, there is a side to it that we often forget about – the victims who get no sympathy from us - those accused. Notice, I didn’t say tried, and convicted. Just being accused of purchasing, watching, creating or supporting kiddie porn in anyway is enough to completely ruin your life.

I watched “Goodnight, And Good Luck” a few weeks back, and though the content is about McCarthy-era Communist witch hunts, the same ‘witch hunt’ term can easily be applied to child pornography today. We hear about someone accused of having a den full of kiddie porno and we want to sauté his balls and feed them to him. We lose all sense of rationale and justice.

I just read a fantastic article on CBC.ca, ‘Global child porn probe led to false accusations’ as well as The Landslide Case from The Fifth Estate. If there’s one thing that is consistent in this world it’s the short-comings of our justice systems – which is why we have “presumed innocent until proven guilty” built into it. However, with child porn cases, the opposite is true. Just being associated or investigated in a case will generally cost you your job, your friends, your relationship and you’ll be forced to live in a anonymous state of exile or, as is quite often the case, kill yourself. And you're completely innocent.

The article illustrated the gross mistakes that can be made in child porn cases, not at risk of hurting the obvious victims (the children), but hurting the unseen, and often uncared for victims – the accused.

Why is it someone can be accused of killing people and we don’t mind rallying behind him as being innocent, but if someone is accused of being affiliated with kiddie porn they are immediately shunned – whether they have a good chance of being innocent or not.

In my opinion it’s for the simple reason I began this all with. Kiddie porn and sexual child abuse gives us a queasy feeling in our stomachs. It doesn’t jive right with our souls. We can sit at home and find in our hearts a bit of sympathy for someone who has killed someone, especially in rage, as we’ve all been very, very pissed off before. But add sex, and then children to the mix (even minus the murder), and it becomes a huge taboo. These people our freaks, they have no place in our society and if they’ve been accused there MUST be some sort of evidence there. Police don’t just accuse innocent people. Maybe they aren’t guilty of exactly what the police are looking for, but hell, they MUST be guilty of something. Burn them. BURN THEM!

Herein lies the problem. I really don’t think A) those that are innocent should be treated this way, and neither do I think that B) the guilty should be either. These people have a sexual deviance and it’s a problem, but treating them like social outcasts is what leads to child murderers. And I don’t care how you stack it in this post-90s, soft-spoken, 'I-have-issues' world we live in – but being abused and being alive is better than being abused and being dead.

We should be creating programs for pedophilia and finding solutions to – by better examining the causes of – this problem.

And that’s my two bits on that. Oh, and if you’re looking for pictures of naked kids, I can only hope that you read this and now seriously examine your choices. The world doesn’t have much sympathy for pedophiles, and there is no “level” of guilt when it comes to this.

NOTE: Please, please, PLEASE don't bombard me with a bunch of "pedophilia sympathizer" hate-mail. Honestly, I don't support pedophilia at all. I think it's horrible. I am only trying to make a point that the way we're tackling this issue isn't working. We have to recognize that a) innocent people are having their lives ruined in our quest for "justice" and b) guilty people are being treated like they are monsters for a sickness they need help with.

2008: The Year of Manners

2006-03-07T08:49:00.000+08:00

For anyone that has been to China, and certianly for those of us that live here, one of the hardest things to deal with is that many [not all] Chinese people seem to have a complete lack of any sort of manners.

Near every day walking to or from the bus stop I pass no less than several hundred gobs of mucous spewn about the sidewalk and road. Spitting is something I hardly notice anymore, but when I first arrived in China it was strange to see everyone from big burly men to frail little old ladies horking like I thought only a trucker could (I apologize to the phlegmless transport workers I've likely offended).

If I'm not dodging the recently dispatched contents of someone's throat/nasal passage, I'm trying hard to avoid the plastic bags and rubbish blowing about. Litter is, by Western standards, quite rampant in China. People have very little regard for the practice of placing trash in the appropriate recepticals. This said, in China, Dalian is considered one of the cleanest cities, and from my experiences in a handful of other Chinese cities it does earn that title. But you don't have to travel too far from the well-swept downtown core to see what "real" China is like.

Finally, once I reach the bus stop, I encounter the third part of Chinese society that conflicts with my Western ideas about manners - no lines. I can't count how many times I've been elbowed by surprisingly agile old men in their attempts to be the one ahead of me on the bus. This anti-queueing phenom spreds well passed the curbside scrum to overload public transport. Lines are absent at train stations, food stands, McDonalds, and basically anywhere organization would assist in putting the "civil" back into "the world's oldest CIVILization". I've heard things have improved from years past, but it's still a long way off from being "polite" society.

Like the good public-caretakers that they are, in recent years the government has put fines in place to try to deteur spitting and littering, but I've yet to see or hear of any tickets being handed out. I recently read an article on MSN News that reported how Beijing is preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympics. It's a great article because it really illustrates the tackling of the problem with both Chinese and Western values.

"I'm trying to wake up a sense of decency, I know it's there." - Lu-chin Mischke, the Pride Institute

The quote above is from a Chinese woman who lived in the US for 10 years, only to return to her homeland with a complete look of disgust on her face at how Chinese people are treating the place. She, and I agree with her, couldn't believe that people would have such a lack of respect for their country.

Whereby the Government run program is "teaching people the right way to spit", Mrs. Mischke's Pride Institute attempts a much more ambitious feat - teaching people the right way to live. It's easy to become desensitized to the rather rude habits here, and it's easy to write them off as just a "cultural difference". But in the end, any culture that promotes defiling the environment, lack of respect for other's personal space, and complete disregard for a basic sense of civility - well, what's so cultural about that?

So while most Chinese people are eagerly awaiting the sun-lit days of 2008 for all the wealth and prosperity it will bring - I can't help but feel that the biggest thing that China might gain from having all eyes in the world turn to them for a couple short weeks is a sense of civic responsibility.

PS: They also chew with their mouths open. I know that's petty, but well, it is a PS and it really pisses me off listening to a restaurant full of people chomping every bite.

Movin' and Shakin'

2006-02-25T21:19:00.000+08:00

Well, we're all moved in to our new apartment. After a few hiccups and finally having to agree to having a rent increase after six months (I knew that 1,000 yuan thing was too good to be true), we moved in Thursday. Last night shortly before meeting Cam and Maeve for some dinner in our new neighbourhood we finished cleaning. My gawd, who knew four years of no habitation (and no sweeping) could lead to a thick layer of dirt on everything.

The other thing is that because there were no tennents previous to us for nearly half a decade, the landlord didn't bother to pay the heating this year, and so we've only got the heater/air conditioner units to keep us warm - it's barely enough. But well, heat's going off for the rest of the suckers (I mean paying customers) in two weeks anyway. Still, makes for some shivery mornings...

I don't have photos yet, nor do I have Internet (posting this with limited time at my old place), but expect some soon.

Meanwhile, it's been a whole lot of goodbyes lately. This "goodbyes" thing is getting old on me. I'm tired of seeing my friends move away. Cam, Maeve, Adria, James, Corey & Helen, and Chris are all leaving this coming week. As such this week is playing host to a lot of "goodbye" gatherings.

We all met last Sunday for a party at The Box, many met again for a "jam" at the Tinwhistle and tomorrow I think we're doing Brazilian BBQ and KTV to "officially" send everyone off with good memories of what China's all about: copious amounts of good food and bad singing.

I will post all the "goodbye" photos at the same time, but right now all I've got time for is a few from our party at Future 4 last Sunday. It was a suprising blast and a good pre-cursor for the night to come at The Box.

Anyway... will write again soon, but if it's an extended delay, I do apologize - blame the Chinese Telecommunications Bureau for making it unneededly complicated to change residence with your ADSL high speed account.

and here I spent six months thinking no one could pull off the fake plastic flower look...

Corporate Responsibility: Again

2006-02-21T10:54:00.000+08:00

Continuing the conversation of an earlier post about cheap labour in developing countries, I wanted to post a video I found on my friend Rick's (highly improved!) site - Panda Passport.

Essentially the video shows how employees are exploited by a factory in Shenzhen, China, that produce goods for more developed nations - in this case, Disney books that appear to be going to Japan.

It was long my opinion that a company like Disney is responsible for where it's products come from, and therefore are responsible for the working conditions of the laborers who make said products.

Now it's easy to just lump the responsibility on the big bad demon that is the Disney Corporation. But to get a clear picture of what really happens, you must first realize the deceit that most "sweat shop" managers are capable of. I am willing to bet that when the top honchos from Japan, the US, the EU or where-have-you, come and visit their manufacturers they are presented with a shining factory with more than suitable conditions. The company heads likely leave feeling that they are doing a great service to these workers.

Fifty years ago there was a movement in China called The Great Leap Forward, whereby then leader Mao Zedong set overly ambitious goals for the country and funnelled the responsibility of these goals down to regional politicians. When these goals could not be met, out of fear of losing their positions (often the only thing keeping them and their families safe from the chaos sweeping the nation) the local leaders lied to visiting dignitaries checking up on progress. Due to this, Beijing had no clear idea of the actual status of things, and quietly closed their eyes in contentment of progress as about 30,000,000 people starved to death.

Now, though not likely starving to death, much the same thing is happening in today's blue collar workplace in China. When the money comes to visit, the management fears job loss, scrubs up the factory and makes things look good ("Would all amputees please take the day off - without pay") while also promising to meet unrealistic targets that the foreign buyers ask for based on previous meeting of unrealistic targets - read: forcing people to work grueling amounts of overtime for no extra pay. The brass leaves, and keeps the money coming none the wiser to the plight of the common worker.

I'm not going to say that the foreign money is completely naive to the situation - but I am willing to bet that it's not overtly obvious to them, any more so than it is apparent to the average consumer where their produce comes from (it's not grown in the back of the supermarket?).

There is a chain in the retail business. Manufacturer --> Wholesaler --> Retailer --> Customer. If you can blame one part of the chain, you can blame them all - and that means you and I.

But what I will suggest (as I did before), that it is not 100%, or even 50% the chain's job to fix this. Business makes money like people survive. It's its nature, its only true function, everything else is just for looks. We can't expect businesses to have self-impossed ethics, any more than we can assume that without society, a human would have them. As such, we need 3rd party intervention for these things, and that's only going to come from governments that actually care about their people.

Governments aren't supposed to be businesses. Governments are supposed to be responsible citizens. Responsible citizens should have ethics, and in turn so should governments. Somewhere this got lost in most countries. I make the (not so) humble suggestion that our pressures be put not on guilting souless multi-national corporations but in working to assure that governments have the power to protect their people. We can't blame the wolf for abusing the sheep, that's its need for survival, but we can fault the shepherd for not being vigilant.

No Press For The Wicked

2006-02-20T15:09:00.000+08:00

It is never far from my mind that I should perhaps watch what I say on my site about China. When I first arrived in this country little more than a year ago and befriended Mask of China blogger Derrick, I had him instill a bit of fear about who might be watching me. Though he's since moved to the safer-shores of Hong Kong, I'm still on the Mainland, and as such I've tried to keep the extremely critical comments to myself.

Sometimes they slip through, as is my nature I guess, but by and by I really would rather not end up with a site that's blocked. It's not likely, as things are rarely shut down on a site by site basis. However, if you are in China and try to access the mirror of my site at Blogspot (or any site at Blogspot), you'll have a troubled time doing so without Tor. In the end, I'm not sure what the "real" risks are for a foreigner speaking out about politics, policy, culture, etc.

That said, I've always a deep internal conflict not telling it how it is (or at least how my perspective views it). I am a journalist. Perhaps not currently in practice, but by education, experience and general attitude towards information, it is what I am. I guess this makes me particularly sensitive towards the punishment that other journalists have received for doing their job, and ethical duty. Below is a list of all the journalists currently imprisoned by the Chinese government as compiled by The Guardian Unlimited.

In my daily travels online I read a copious amount of information. More than I could ever hope to remember. I am consumed by it. I read, sometimes, for hours and hours on end. Clicking one link after another, leading from a news site, to a blog, back to a news site, to a summery of a referred to documentary, back to a blog, to Wikipedia to figure out what the hell "dhimmitude" means, and then I start all over again. It's endless, not very productive, I'm not really that much more educated because of it, and man doesn't it all give me a headache. But well, like any habit, I guess there need not be a real "purpose" for it.

The biggest things on my mind lately are the events surrounding all the talk about journalistic rights and freedom of press in China. We, in the free-er nations, sometimes forget how important that can be to an open and accountable society. Anyone can make the argument that the press in the West is just a corrupt and propaganda spreding institution with no morals or ethics left and that journalists are just pawns on the media conglamorates' chessboard. And that does them a disservice as I really believe that most of them are soldiers of information - the most valuable thing our planet is producing these days. Without them, we'd know nothing. We trust them to deliver the most relevant and topical information to us in a concise enough format as to not test our rather limited attention spans.

News outlets are often criticized for being vultures of bad news, focusing entirely too much on the bad shit going down. Sadly though, I think that's more a condition of the world we live in rather than the news' fault. My Current Events professor in college once illustrated collecting the news as being in huge, dark room with nothing but a penlight. It is impossible to illuminate everything all the time, so journalists just have to get damn good at that penlight and guessing where they should point it.

But I digress... with the China issue, I really believe that things are leaning to change. Who knows, the closing of The Freezing Point, and the hooplah about Microsoft, Yahoo and Google may just all fade away - but I think it's attrition, and ever so slowly the concept of freedom of thoughts and ideas is seeping into this otherwise "told what to do" nation.

Many had hoped for a loosening of controls when Hu Jintao became president three years ago. The early signs were good. During that year's Sars crisis, journalists enjoyed wide freedoms to expose cover-ups and contributed to the sacking of the health minister and the Beijing mayor. It did not last. MediaGuardian has learned that former president Jiang Zemin wrote a letter to the politburo that summer warning that the media were running out of control. Since then, China has gone through a prolonged tightening. Prominent journalists have been arrested, publications closed, websites blocked, blogs shut down. Internet cafes are supposed to register all users and monitor which sites they visit. New filtering software has been introduced to limit access to "spiritually impure" information, which includes positive references to the Dalai Lama, Taiwanese independence or the Falun Gong spiritual movement. - Jonathan Watts, "War of the Words", The Guardian

The Chinese journalists in prison
Compiled by Matt Keating with information from the Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org)
Monday February 20, 2006

Guardian

Shi Tao The former editor of Dangdai Shang Bao is serving a 10-year sentence for an email he sent to an overseas website in 2004 in which he described the Chinese government's instructions on how his newspaper should cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Yahoo helped the Chinese authorities identify Shi through his email account.

Yang Tongyan He has been held without contact since December on the grounds that the case involves "state secrets". He had previously spent 10 years in prison on "counter-revolution" charges for condemning the Tiananmen massacre.

Huang Jingao Sentenced to life in prison in November on corruption charges after he publicly exposed official misconduct in a letter to the People's Daily.

Li Changqing Sentenced to three years' imprisonment in January in connection with an article on the banned Boxun News website exposing an outbreak of dengue fever in Fujian province before the authorities officially announced it.

Zhu Wanxiang and Wu Zhengyou Detained in August 2005 after reporting on land disputes and rural unrest in China's southeast province of Zhejiang. Sentenced to 10 years and six years respectively.

Ching Cheong A correspondent for the Singapore-based daily the Straits Times, Ching was detained last April while seeking transcripts of interviews with ousted former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang.

Zheng Yichun Imprisoned in December 2004 after criticising the Communist party and China's political leaders in online publications including the banned US-based dissident website Dajiyuan.

Zhao Yan The New York Times researcher faces 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to foreigners". Zhao was detained in September 2004 after the Times printed an article correctly predicting the retirement of Jiang Zemin as chairman of the central military commission.

Zhang Lin A political essayist, who wrote regularly for overseas online news sites, he was sentenced to five years in July on allegations of inciting subversion.

Zheng Yichun The former professor and regular contributor to Dajiyuan was sentenced last September to seven years.

Yu Huafeng and Li Minying The editor-in-chief and former editor of Nanfang Dushi Bao are serving eight years and six years in prison for corruption and bribery. In December 2003, their paper reported the first suspected Sars case in China since the epidemic died out in July that year.

Kong Youping The essayist and poet has written online articles supporting democratic reforms. Arrested in 2003, Kong was sentence to 15 years.

Huang Jinqiu The Boxun News columnist was detained in 2003 and sentenced to 12 years for "subversion of state power".

Luo Yongzhong Due to be released in June after a three-year sentence for writing a series of articles for online forums.

Luo Changfu Sentenced to three years in November 2003 on subversion charges.

Cai Lujun Jailed for three years in 2003 for subversion for numerous essays distributed online calling for reforms.

Abdulghani Memetemin Sentenced to nine years in 2003 on charges of "leaking state secrets".

Zhang Wei Sentenced in 2002 to six years in prison and fined 100,000 yuan (£7,000) for publishing illegal underground newspapers.

Tao Haidong The internet essayist and pro-democracy activist was given seven years in prison in 2003.

Yang Zili, Xu Wei, Jin Haike and Zhang Honghai Detained in 2001 and then sentenced in 2003 to a total of 36 years.

Jiang Weiping Arrested in 2000, serving six years in prison.

Xu Zerong Sentenced to 10 years on charges of "leaking state secrets".

Wu Yilong, Mao Qingxiang and Zhu Yufu Sentenced to 25 years in 1999.

Gao Qinrong Jailed in 1998 for 12 years after reporting on a corrupt irrigation scheme.

Hua Di Charged with revealing state secrets. Serving a 10-year sentence.

Fan Yingshang Serving a 15-year prison sentence.

Chen Renjie and Lin Youping Chen was sentenced to life in 1983 and Lin was sentenced to death, later reprieved, for publishing a counter-revolutionary pamphlet. Executed

Chen Biling The co-producer of Ziyou Bao was sentenced to death in 1983.

Lower The Red Lantern

2006-02-18T20:01:00.000+08:00

So I was just reading my buddy Chris' blog and realized it's all stopped. The maddening fireworks going off every five minutes have finally ceased. I won't say that I'll miss their fight-or-flight instinct inducing bangs, but I do have a bit of that sense you get as a really great party is dying down.

It all officially ended with the 15th Day of the new Lunar Year - also known as Lantern Festival - actually an English name given to it, that has nothing to do with the Chinese name of 元宵节 (yuan xiao jie).

To celebrate the group of us from Jin San Jiao went down to the crazily stuffed Xinghai Square to watch the fireworks. The display was impressive, if not a bit more systematic than the skyfull of explosions two weeks ago. After the show we tried hopelessly to get a cab to Labour Park, but it was a no-go. Eventually, after walking about 3 kilometers (nearly all the way to Olympic Sq. - trust me, it's far), we got one and managed to catch the last hour of the Lantern display at the park in the centre of Dalian.

The park was loaded with displays of various kinds, but mostly we focused on eating. There was everything sort of food stand you could think of and we stuffed ourselves. I finally broke down and tried Chou Doufu 臭豆腐 (stinky tofu), which despite it's unappetizing name, is quite good. The other unique cuisine that I gave a go to was Ostrich kababs... a bit tastier than the standard mutton ones.

From the park we headed to my new favorite haunt, Xi Xia Bang Ma 西夏邦玛 (commonly referred to as "The Tibetan Bar" or "The Nepalese Bar") on the corner of WuSi Rd. 五四路 and Wan Sui St. 万岁街. It is just damn cool. Totally chilled atmosphere, good music, cheap beer... what else do you want in a place - oh, and they've got a (rapidly shrinking) Jenga game.

FFWDing to the present. Been apartment hunting like a fiend lately and was starting to get nervous that I might not have a place to live come next week when I get booted from the Future School provided apartment I've called home for the past 6 months.

Hope shone when Cam mentioned that no one was moving into her place after they moved out, so Maggie and I might be able to get that. This suited me just fine, as I've been comparing all the apartments I've been looking at to theirs. I've not so quietly envied them getting the better apartment for the past half a year and I was tickled to think I might finally get it.

Long story short... the landlord seemed hesitant, and though I might have been able to sort it out in the next couple of days, I got home from work today and Maggie had spoken to my new boss who had found us a couple places to check out. We short-listed it to one, but weren't hopeful as everything we've looked at thus far had been absolute shite.

The place turned out to be quite amazing, though lit only by a flashlight as no one's lived there for like four years (start of a scary movie or what?) and there's no power. Aparently the landlord (and a headmaster at a school my new boss also farms foreigners to) got it shortly after getting married, but quickly moved onward and upward and hasn't wanted "just anyone" to live there.

It's a beautiful place, bigger than the apartment I'm currently in. Two bedrooms (one master, one guestroom); a dining room; a full kitchen; a study/office area with a big desk; and a livingroom with a large, COMFORTABLE leather sofa and two matching armchairs.

The place is sans TV, so I'm going to spring for a nice new one. For less than 2,000 RMB ($250) I can get a nice big one and enjoy my DVD fetish in style. It's also on the 7th floor, which is a helluva hike, but the exercise isn't bad for me. Speaking of which, it also comes equiped with a new-looking treadmill.

We will be moving stuff in as soon as they get the place cleaned up a bit, which means by the end of the week. I can't wait. I'm giddy. Not thrilled about moving all my crap, but it should only amount to a couple of suitcases and a box or two, so, that's no too bad.

Anyway, recently got hooked on HBO's Rome... gotta go catch an episode before bed.

Google Woes

2006-02-17T17:50:00.000+08:00

Right... so I FINALLY get off my ass and write Google Adsense an e-mail about why my Google Ads haven't been working, they sort it out and I suddenly realize that I was contemplating boycotting Google for its giving in to the truth editing, 'masses protecting' Chinese government.

THEN I realize that Blogger, the site that I use to post my entries, is also owned by Google and well... I'm still posting this, so I guess my decision can be extrapolated from that.

S.O.B., I hate when function conflicts with ethics. Why can't Google not sensor information, why can't Nike not run sweatshops, why can't McDonalds quit cutting down rainforests ... life would be so much simpler and straight forward if global corporate responsibility was the rule, not the exception.

Bah.
Please go click on my ads.

Baby, Baby

2006-02-16T13:18:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the world Dakota Justice Wright (the smaller pinkish thing in the picture), born February 3rd to my bestfriend CJ (the larger pinkish thing in the picture). I generally don't like reading about other people's friends having babies, so I'm going to assume you all don't particularlly care about his - unless you know him.

However, it has got me pondering about the whole fatherhood thing. I use to scoff at the idea of a paternal clock (new age mumbo jumbo!), but lately I've been hearing ticking and I'm going to assume that it's not the bomb drawn into Mohammed's turban in those controversial cartoons that are all over the news - nor the retaliatory real ones the Muslim world is setting off in protest (that's balanced eh?).

I really think a lot of my grown affection to the idea of fatherhood comes from two things. 1) Having met a woman that I could see having a family with and 2) Having a job that has dispelled some of my fears about being around children. I admit, I was just downright scared of the little buggers before coming to China. I mean, I know they're smaller than me, but bees are smaller than me too and I'm fuckin' fearful of them as well.

Working with, entertaining and trying to relate to kids is my day-to-day here, and it's shown me that they're rather a lot like me, but smaller of course. They're just as clumsy, have both moments of brilliance and moments of complete stupidity, like goofing around, have rather short attention spans, and enjoy saying horribly inappropriate things at the most inopportune moments. And most of them share my dislike for vegetables.

Kids are great. I never would have said it a year and a half ago, but I can't wait to be a father. This isn't to say that I'm in a rush to put a bun in the oven or anything. I do see the limits starting a family creates in life, and there are a few things I want to do first (school, marriage, South American travels, better job - in roughly that order), but when the time comes (whether it comes when I expect it or when I don't) I think I'll really dig being a father.

Congratz CJ.

Ciao Entry

2006-02-11T20:27:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been a bit shit at posting, and I hate that I'm now a blogger that is posting that statement. I mean, like it's your problem I've been verbally constipated. Hell, I should be thanking you for even making this part of your day.

Thank you.

I guess it's not so much a lack of words, just a lack of new. And that is changing rather quickly, but it seems pre-emptive to go on and on about things that have yet to happen. So, things that HAVE happened: 1) I've finally had opportunity to repay my debt to GlobalFreeLoaders.com and I've got a really cool Italian guy 意大利人 staying with me waiting for his motorbike to clear customs. Gionata, or John, originally requested a place to stay just before I left for Haerbin, so I manage to hook him up with some friends (thanks Victoria and Adria) in town for a week before bringing him up to my neck of Dalian.

We get along really well, and it's not been a burden at all to have him around. Quite the contrary, it's like having any guest, I get to revisit all the stuff about China that has become commonplace in my day-to-day, but is really pretty cool (mostly food).

He's on this amazing multi-year trek around the globe on his bike. You can check out more about him at his site. He's having a hell of a time getting his bike through customs after arriving here from Korea, but hopefully it all works out quickly (and inexpensively) for him, not because I don't want him around, but because I imagine Dalian will lose its charm, here in the depths of winter, in short time.

The other thing that's been keeping me away from posting is that I've picked up my love for photography again and have been trying to dust off my knowledge about the subject. I'm gradually accepting the limits of my new camera - it might be new, but it's still not an SLR - and am beginning to see what I can do with it and what I can do in Photoshop. I should have galleries up on the flip-side of this weekend.

Other than that, I've been sorting out The Great Next Step (I was going to call it The Great Leap Forward, but turns out someone had used that previously). This past week I finally met up with Danni, the woman I'm contracted through for my new job. I signed my contract with her and then went on a bit of a mad scavenger hunt for the things I needed to get to her so she could go to Shenyang and sort out my new - much more legit - visa.

I'm learning more and more just how "dangerous" it's been working on an F Visa (for the authorities reading this, please regard all this as a joke). Future School makes it all seem rather common, and simple. Even make it seem like it's your idea to come here on it. But well. See, an 'F' visa is a Business Visa, designed for those foreigners looking to come to China to work out some business deals, to (for some strange reason) intern at a Chinese company, or to lecture. You are very much NOT supposed to teach with one. That said, near everyone I've met who works at Future School has an 'F' visa, for the simple reason that they're much easier to get (no health check, and half the processing time). Thanks to what I must assume is a fair amount of Guanxi and a system more corrupt than a food critic, the whole process works smoothly. I've never been hassleed by customs agents, PSB officials, nor police officiers. Though I wouldn't want to put it to the test.

Anyway, as of a couple weeks, it'll be all copasetic and I'll have my 'Z' visa and officially be a Foreign Expert. Nice title eh? It took me finally breaking down and having blood tests here for the health check. It's not that I was really scared of giving blood in China, but well.. I've seen the standards of everything else... and I like being blood-disease free.

I've signed my 1-year contract with Danni, and Maggie's spending her free-time apartment shopping. Oh, she's got a lot more free time since she quit her job (they kept dicking her around about pay and it wasn't enough pay to be dicked around about.. so...).

To recount my new job. What I'll be doing is working at a local primary school teaching 35 minute lessons to classes of 30-40 kids. I work Monday to Friday for a total of about 16.5 hours a week, and get paid double what I'm making now at Future School for 15 hours a week. However, I do have to pay for my own apartment, but that's a blessing as it allows Maggie and I to get our own place.

I can't believe that I've only three more weeks at Future School. I will be sad to leave it behind, as for all my gripes and whatnot, they've treated me right and I don't have a problem recommending them to other foreigners that are considering coming to China for the ESL experience.

Haerbin There, Done That

2006-02-03T21:50:00.000+08:00

Well, the party's over folks. For us Future School peoples anyway. We're all back at school today, making up for Christmas Day. It went quickly though, and I'm home now trying desperately to post about my trip to Haerbin 哈尔滨, also known as the coldest place I've ever experienced.

All my thoughts of "Hey, I'm Canadian, how cold can it be?" and "Ah, these Chinese people are such reactionists. It can't be THAT cold" did nothing to warm me. Fortunately my newly purchased coat and hat did. I've never worn so many name brand clothes ... fake or not. That's a Puma logo leaping on my jacket and a Nike swoosh adorning my 15 yuan toque.

The Lunar New Year started with my visit to Maggie's parent's house. Being the first time I've met her parents, I was a little nervous. Not so much nervous about anything in particular, but more just worried I would do something culturally insensitive that they would not forget for generations upon generations to come. Or more likely, just do something that would support the rather twisted view much of China’s population has about foreigners. I think I was able to make it through the afternoon without doing either. Mostly we just sat around and ate a load of food that Maggie's father cooked for us. The food was familiar, as most of it was dishes Maggie had made for me previously - it also helped that Maggie prepped them not to cook me any "gross food". I was spared the numerous dishes that contain parts of animals I didn't know existed, never mind were editable.

After Maggie's parent's, we returned home with just enough time to pack and eat some dinner before catching our overnight train to Haerbin (Dalian-Haerbin, 9.5h, 224 RMB for a middle bunk hard sleeper). Having now weathered a round-trip to Beijing 北京 and a day-long journey to Shanghai 上海 on overnight trains (as well as a plethora of them in various other countries), train journeys are a bit old-hat for me, but Maggie was like a kid at Christmas with her excitement. As previously mentioned, the number of places Maggie's been can easily be counted on one hand, with a couple fingers not getting much use. Her excitement was infectious and it helped me get excited about sleeping in the crappy little beds north-bound.

Day One

We arrived in the chilly Heilongjiang 黑龙江 city early in the morning, and went immediately to the booking hall to secure our train tickets home. No such luck - the only tickets that were left were standing tickets in the smoky, noisy hard-seat cars. In the end we settled on the cushy, if not as comfortable, seats of a 12 hour long-distance coach. Saved ourselves a bit too, as the seats were only 180 yuan each.

Checking into our hotel also brought a few complications as the room we thought we had booked turned out to be a room with two single beds - far too Fred and Wilma for my ideas of a romantic vacation. We complained, and despite there being a 20 yuan/night price difference, the hotel gave us the room with a big bed at no extra cost (180 yuan/night).

Only having two and a half days in the city, we wanted to make sure we had some sort of plan - and it, for the most part, went off without too many problems. Monday's itinerary mostly focused on the downtown core. The city centre, directly south of the Songhua River 松花江 (of pollution fame), is bisected by Zhong Yang Da Jie 中央大街, a long pedestrian street full of tourist-geared shops mostly touting Russian Goods.

We started our journey at the Russian-style Church of St. Sophia 圣索菲亚教堂 (pictured left), but balked at the 20 yuan entrance fee (me having seen some of the biggest churches in the world, and Maggie not knowing the difference). From the church we stealthily followed a tour guide to Zhong Yang Da Jie, and leisurely made our way up the length of it towards the river, marked by the large Flood Control Monument recognizing Haerbin's triumphant conquering of the Songhua. By this point I had resigned myself to the unstylish fact of having my face buried beneath a low-pulled hat and my scarf. On the upside I experienced an anonymity I have not felt since landing in China 13 months ago!

From the monument we were able to see the creative use Haerbiners had made of the frozen river - there was everything from tubing to ice bike riding. Too cold to motivate ourselves to partake, we continued east along the river towards Zhaolin Park 兆麟公园 (20 yuan daytime/60 yuan after dark) - one of the cities many collections of ice sculptures. Though we'd been seeing a smattering of them throughout our walk, the park gave us a glimpse at what everyone had been going on and on about back in Dalian. The sculptures were numerous and amazingly detailed. The park had a "Classic Chinese Literature" theme, meaning there was a lot of displays from China's four most famous works of fiction: The Journey West 西游记, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三国演义, Dream of the Red Chamber 红楼梦, and Outlaws of the Marsh 水浒传. Pictured right is the Monkey King lounging on some peaches, with an ice temple and ice pagoda in the background.

Famished from all the walking we attempted to find some fine Haerbin cuisine to warm our gullets. We were left wanting. After searching a while, we found a small restaurant that specialized in fried, meat-stuffed pancakes 陷儿饼 - the sort that can be purchased at many a fast-food shop, cheaper and better tasting than we were offered there. We also ordered (based on a misleading photo in the menu) a potato and rib dish that had mushy potatoes and a sprinkling of over-cooked, under-meaty ribs all coated in a sickly sweet craptastic sauce. Needless to say, we were not impressed with Haerbin's, so far, over-priced and unsavoury food.

We returned to the hotel in hopes that the next day we could find better food.

Day Two

I don't know what it is about Chinese breakfast; rather I don't know why Chinese people eat it. With a complimentary breakfast included with our room, we headed downstairs bright and early. Aside from some sweet-bean stuffed man tou 馒头 (steamed bread), all that was on offer was a couple of tea eggs 茶蛋 (I mean that count literally) and the completely tasteless slop that has no right calling itself porridge or anything else that could be confused with food (available sugar for seasoning or not).

Again, I was a bit disappointed with the food.

Day two was divided between tigers and more ice sculptures. The tigers bit was first with a quick bus ride to Dong Bei Hu Lin Yuan 东北虎林园 (Northeast Tiger Forest Park), located on the northern side of the Songhua.

For those that don’t know, tigers are the biggest cats in the world, and the Dong Bei Hu, or Manchurian/Siberian Tiger, is the largest in the family. It’s also a threatened animal, and the park touts that it is a breeding and protection centre for the big predators. I can’t really say that I was overly impressed with their conservation efforts, as more focus seemed to be on selling chintzy souvenirs and tiger baijiu (you can buy bottles of baijiu that had sat in a big tank with a full-on tiger skeleton).

A big open-concept zoo (animals are free to roam in big enclosures), the tour began after buying our 50 yuan tickets and boarding large, new, big-windowed minibuses. Along with about 12 other buses, we entered the various enclosures, where tigers were everywhere (more than 300 in the park). We also got to see lions in their very realistic snowy climate, hanging out in seeming harmony (and envy) of the better-coated tigers.

After passing a cage housing a mom and her rather playful litter, and driving through the King Tiger Area 虎王区, we entered a big clearing where all the buses had formed a wide circle around about a half dozen tigers. Not quite sure what was going on, I watched as a well-caged vehicle entered the circle and all the tigers licked their lips in salivating synchronization. The car released a chicken, and faster than I could push the shutter release on my camera it was in the maw of one of the big cats. This was repeated several times before a larger truck entered.

The truck paused for a few moments, giving the predators time to get a whiff of the meal inside, then it slowly began to raise its hold dump truck style, plunging a small cow into the Arena of Death. The bovine’s last moments (and they were brief) were spent staring through the thin glass separating me from the carnage, passed the viewfinder of my anxious camera, directly into my soul. I’ve never seen a big animal killed in person before, and as fast as it was, I doubt I’ll forget it anytime soon. The “wild training” (as it’s dubbed in the flyer) seemed rather a little illegitimate, and left me feeling like the Romans must have two millennia ago while exiting the Coliseum – a bit guilty about being so fascinated by it.

The end result was that I truly have a much broader respect for tigers. I mean, I’ve seen tigers in the Toronto Zoo, continually pacing in their caged existence, and it was nothing compared to watching the power of them doing what every muscle in their body does best – kill.

When the tigers were well into making mince of the cow, the buses started to depart – giving everyone a nice close drive-by of the feeding. From here we were brought back to near the start where we concluded the tour with a walking portion. We walked along a heavily-caged catwalk (pun, unusually, not intended) where you could buy strips of meat to taunt, and eventually feed yearlings with. We also got nice and close to the parks other inhabitants – some snow/white tigers, a rather restless panther, some huddled together (dreaming of savannahs) lions, and a bizarre lion-tiger mix, appropriately called a Liger.

From the zoo we made a brief stop at Tai Yang Dao Gong Yuan 太阳岛公园 (Sun Island Park), where we were told by a taxi driver that paying the 80 yuan to see the park’s ice sculptures was a waste of money if we were later going to go visit the more impressive Bing Xue Da Shi Jie 冰雪大世界 (Ice Snow World), which we were later that evening.

Wanting to wait for nightfall before heading to Ice Snow World, we decided to go back to the hotel, relax and warm up a bit. At around 6:30 we got to the park and immediately felt like we had made the wise choice by the sheer number of people and the rather colossal entrance completely made of ice.

Entering, it was all a bit much to take in at first. Everywhere there were large buildings made of ice, all near-faithful recreations of famous Russian constructions. Everywhere we looked was either ice or lights in ice – from coffee shops to “warm” up in, to a giant castle. The photos likely don’t do it justice, as many of them turned out blurry, no doubt a large part due to the fact I couldn’t really feel my fingers, never mind hold the damn camera steady.

Despite the cold we stayed for a couple hours and explored. As our core temperatures neared that of the architecture around us, we decided to break and head to Zhong Yang Da Jie to see if we couldn’t get a bit of Russian food at a nice looking restaurant we’d seen the day before. The restaurant was open, but wouldn’t accept any more patrons due to the late hour, so we settled on Korean, and finally had a good bite to eat.

Day Three

The third and final day’s primary goals were to see two Buddhist temples, Ji Le Si 极乐寺 and Qiji Futu Ta 七级浮屠塔, on the east side of the city (10 yuan). We took the bus from our hotel, and got off at the required stop, but were a little lost as to where exactly the temples were as we were surrounded by the very un-Enlightened cityscape. Not sure what direction to go, we guessed that the man with the close-cropped haircut and earthy-yellow robes at the stoplight might know. Maggie and I are clever that way.

The temples were surprising serene considering being surrounded by the mid-town bustle just outside their gates. There was a number of people burning incense and asking good ole Siddhartha to assist their wait for Nirvana with a bit of cash, so Maggie and I – with our heathen ways – opted not to mock the institution and kept our peeking inside the places of worship to a minimum. We did manage to get some shots of the complex’s tall golden Buddha and its namesake – the Seven Tier Pagoda. We also picked up some cheap monk-blessed jewelry in the gift shop.

From the temples we made one last stab at having Russian food, something the city is famous for due to its close proximity to Russia. Though we had to wait about a half hour, and were then seated at makeshift tables beside the kitchen, we pulled it off and were not disappointed. The food was fantastic. We had borsch, cabbage rolls, real bread (few and far in China), and some meaty stew.

Before heading to the bus we stopped and grabbed some edible souvenirs (the only souvenirs we bought) in the form of Haerbin sausage, Russian pickles, baijiu candies, and ginseng. The bus ride back to Dalian was mostly uneventful, with the exception of a fight that broke out. It was about an hour after we had stopped for an extended 30 minute break, a man in the back of the bus yelled to the bus driver to stop the bus so he could take a piss. The bus driver explained that wasn’t going to happen. The guy paused, and again requested an immediate stop. The driver said no again. The man, a third time, complained and added that he would piss on the bus if the driver didn’t stop. The driver spotted a sign saying there was a stop in 12 km, and he told the man we would stop in about 4 minutes. This wasn’t good enough, and the man reiterated his threat of in-transit urination. Having enough of it, another passenger stepped up and gave the man (I can only assume, as my Chinese is weak) some advice on how to hold it. This erupted into a small brawl as the bus pulled into the rest stop.

Not in all my bus journeys have I seen such a flurry of people getting off a bus and heading to the washroom. No one wanted to be stuck in a situation that required them to request a stop before we reached home.

We’re back now. I’m back at school. The break was nice and I can’t believe this means that I’ve barely a month before I’m moving to a new apartment and a new job.

*Note: If you've got some goofy characters after the Chinese spellings it's because I've included the Chinese characters and you've still not installed the East Asian Language Pack for Microsoft Windows. Get on it man! Also, I technically posted this on February 4th because my computer crashed just before posting it last night, and I had to write it all over again. Yeah, I was pissed. But I'm passed it and if not for this note you wouldn't know, so I think you should move on too.

New Year's Redux: More Bang, Less Suck

2006-01-28T11:31:00.000+08:00

Welcome To The Year of the Dog
Today I begin my second journey through the noisy, exciting and sometimes dangerous world of the Chinese New Year. Though last year was simply amazing, in that I had never seen anything like it before, this year has afforded me an experience even more unique and rewarding - I get to spend it with someone who actually knows what the hell is going on.

What last year seemed like a completely random explosion of China's two most famous inventions (gunpowder and paper), this year has had some light shed on it by my beautiful (and patient with all my questions) girlfriend, Maggie. With her help I've created a somewhat detailed timeline of events for those of us not in the know about this massive holiday season.

Small New Year/Xiao Nian 小年 (one week before): Basically you eat dumplings and give the world a sampling of the firework extraveganza that is to come. This is also the day you clean the whole house so your relatives don't think you're a pig when they come and visit next week. And so begins the final week of shopping craziness for buying gifts (strange, but practical, things like a box of milk, bottles of pop, fruit, etc. are all acceptable gifts) and readiness for a few days of nothing being open.

Chinese New Year's Eve/Chu Xi 除夕 (1 day before): Really, the big day.
The morning begins with preparation of food for a big dinner with the whole family. Cooking includes deep fried fish; balls (wan zi 丸子) made from radish, glass noodles and corn starch; steamed bread (man tou 馒头); steamed cakes (dou bao 豆包) filled with sweet bean paste and other deep fried desserts (zha mian yu 炸面鱼).

The afternoon is reserved for napping, followed by family members burning (fake) money to send to their ancestors. The money, along with incense, is burned in a drawn circle (if burned on the road) or in front of the grave (mu bei 墓碑). Extra money is included to appease the ghosts that live on the path to heaven. They are paid off in an effort to stop them from stealing the cash during its journey to the rightful recipient. Fireworks are also used to scare away spirits looking to steal the money.

In the evening the entire family gets together to make dumplings (jiao zi 饺子) and cook the dishes prepared that morning. At the moment when the dumplings are finished being boiled and are set in a dish, fireworks are lit to celebrate. When all the food is ready, the family gathers around the TV to watch Spring Festival programmes (dancing, singing, magic/za ji 杂技, comedy/xiang sheng 相声, and small plays/xiao pin 小品) while feasting.

After dinner, some play Majiang (麻将) or cards, or just continue watching TV and chatting until midnight draws near. At midnight everyone eats dumplings again and launches fireworks of an amount that few other countries in the world could imagine. After midnight all of the younger generations must tell their elders "Guo Nian Hao 过年好" or "Have A Good Year" and the older folks give the youngsters red envelopes (hong bao 红包) filled with money. At this point the older people can go to bed, but those of fewer years usually stay up all night playing Majiang, chatting or watching TV.

New Year's Day/Da Nian Chu Yi 大年初一: Breakfast bears resemblence of last night's dinner and midnight snack - more dumplings and more fireworks to celebrate. New Year's Day is usually spent with the father's family, eating, chatting and playing more Majiang. "Guo Nian Hao 过年好" is the phrase of the day, and should be said to everyone you come across.

The Day After New Year's Day/Chu Er 初二: Usually spent at the mother's family's house in much the same fashion as the previous day.

Lantern Festival/Yuan Xiao Jie 元宵节 (Day 15): About two weeks into the new lunar year the Chinese celebrate what in English we've called Lantern Festival, but in Chinese takes its name from the sweet balls (yuan xiao 元宵) made with glutinous rice flour that everyone must eat on this day. At sundown money is again burned and candles (or electric lights) are put in front of the deceased's grave to help light their path to heaven. After a dinner of boiled or fried yuan xiao some will stay at home and watch another gala performance on TV and some will go out to the street to see the lantern displays that have been placed everywhere. Again, fireworks fill the sky.

So that's the jist of it. I'm sure it's not 100% complete, but it certainly filled in a few of my blanks. Maggie and I are breaking from tradition a bit and are spending today (New Year's Eve) with just ourselves at the apartment. Maggie is cooking (pre-made) dumplings for us and we're going to take in the fireworks and performances on TV from the comfort of our home. However, tomorrow we're heading to her parents house bright and early to spend the day with them.

This will be the first time I've met her parents and I'm a mix of emotions about it. I'm a bit nervous, but also pretty excited. It's a big deal in Chinese culture to meet the parents of your girlfriend, much more signifigant than in modern Western culture. It's pretty much on par with announcing engagement, which may explain why it's taken five months. This isn't to say we've got wedding plans, but it does illustrate the importance of the meeting tomorrow. As such I've bought them both some nice gifts to smooth the way. For her mother I've bought a lovely traditional-style jacket and her father is getting a rather pricey bottle of Mao Tai (sometimes spelled Mou Tai), China's most famous brand of Bai Jiu (白酒).

After a couple hours at her parents', we'll return home to pack and head to the train station... we've got a 9:50 p.m. train to Haerbin. We're going to spend about four days there, returning on Friday with loads of pictures and stories about our adventures in China's most northern metropolis - that's assuming we don't get frozen to anything and miss our train back.

新年快乐. 我希望你狗年快乐.
Happy New Year. I hope the Year of the Dog is a happy one for you.

PS: The photos in this article are all (slightly modified) pictures taken of decorations around my house. The middle photo (snowflake-like red paper cuttings) was a hand-made gift from our friend Qian'Qian.

Mad(e) In Canada

2006-01-28T10:22:00.000+08:00

The following is my response to an e-mail forward sent to me by my friend Katie in Canada about Canada losing jobs to lower wages in developing nations. The original FWD is below. I think my perspective is perhaps biased because I've met people here in China who work at these factories that build things for our comfort in developed nations, and having lived in Canada my whole life - in a variety of states of financial need/want/have - I know that even at our worst, we border on these workers' best.

Hey Katie... how are things? Hope all is well back in Canada. :-) We're celebrating Chinese New Year today... and it's crazy... fireworks everywhere (and it's only 10:45 a.m.)... it'll grow and grow until the sky is filled with them tonight for about 4 hours.

Just saw that I still had this forward in my e-mail... and wanted to say that it's a tad xenophobic in nature. The idea that Canada loses jobs for things being made in other countries is a bit silly, considering no one wants these jobs anyway. Do you know a lot of people taking jobs in factories? The simple truth is that Canada has a higher education level, and cost of living level than most 2nd and 3rd world nations... making it much more cost effective for the company to make the things there. Considering that the average Canadian wage is 7-10 times that of people in poorer nations, as is the cost of the factory, the infrastructure, etc., you have to assume that by getting Canadians to make the products in Canada you'd have to charge 7-10 times more for the product. Do you want to pay $3,000 for a 27" TV rather than $300?

So, while it's easy to gripe (especially for those without a job) that all the jobs are going to foreign countries... keep in mind it's the only source of income for many families in poor countries. Assembling Nike shoes or RCA MP3 players is the only way they can afford to feed themselves and their children. While the unemployed in Canada have to get off their asses once a month for the strenuous job of cashing their Social Assistance cheque, the unemployed in other nations simply die on the side of the road.

Original e-mail:

Oh Canada...OH, so true

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock ( MADE IN JAPAN ) for 6am. While his coffeepot ( MADE IN CHINA ) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor ( MADE IN HONG KONG ). He put on a dress shirt ( MADE IN SRI LANKA ), designer jeans ( MADE IN SINGAPORE ) and tennis shoes ( MADE IN KOREA ). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet ( MADE IN INDIA ) he sat down with his calculator ( MADE IN MEXICO ) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch ( MADE IN TAIWAN ) to the radio ( MADE IN INDIA ) he got in his car ( MADE IN GERMANY ) and continued his search for a good paying CANADIAN J O B . At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals ( MADE IN BRAZIL ) poured himself a glass of wine ( MADE IN FRANCE ) and turned on his TV ( MADE IN INDONESIA ), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in CANADA....

Keep this circulating [sic]
(plus most of us shop at walmart where nothing is made in CANADA)

I think what we really need to remember here is that these people sweat long, long hours, day after day, making things that they themselves could never afford. Despite the evil images painted by human rights advocates (and sometimes rightfully so), often the conditions and wages in foreign owned factories are much better than those in the domestic industries. So, before we criticize companies and countries for stealing "our" jobs, we should seriously consider who needs these jobs more. Canada is one of the richest nations on the planet, ours should not be a position of selfish greed.

Googlie Eyes & Google-ish Lies

2006-01-27T17:50:00.000+08:00

Right, despite my post yesterday about The Freezing Point... the big big China Watchers news lately seems to be about Google.cn's launch. Following in the footsteps of MSN and Yahoo, Google has opened a .CN affiliate so all the Chinese can feel special about viewing targetted advertising, country specific searches, and more newsworthy, have their search results edited to reflect the values and opinions of the ruling power.

My friend Chris has a good post about it at his site Notes Of A Sinophibe. Basically, like MSN and Yahoo before it, Google has agreed to the Chinese governments stipulation that to open a .CN Web site they must edit the search results, removing all things that conflict, or contradict, with the official Party line.

This is making waves, but in the end... will anything change? Will we all stop using the three major search engines to protest this? Nope... we'll let Corporate America dirty its hands with Communist China and gladly place out of mind the fact that there is a whole generation of Chinese netizens that are not allowed to access the Web sites of their choice, but even worse, they have no idea that those sites exist.

Reference: No Booze Or Jokes For Googlers In China @ CNET News.com

Oh, and check this out... it's hilarious!!
Mark Fiore's iRepress Cartoon

A Hundred Flowers Bloom

2006-01-26T17:48:00.000+08:00

"Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." / "百花齐放，百家争鸣"

- Chinese Poem

I've long advocated that "free country" and "free press" go hand-in-hand. A free press acts as a watchdog for the government, assuring that they aren't misappropriating the public's money or trust. It might not be a perfect system we've got in our so-called "freedom of speech" countries, but it is miles ahead of what is on menu here in the PRC.

The idea, I assume, is that with freedom of speech you would have a seething mass of people all wanting to pass off their half-baked ideas about the way things should be. Movements in countries have been sparked on less, and well, a movement is the last thing the CCP digs. Status Quo is what they know, everything else feels like an ice cube down the backside... eventually it melts and goes away, but mostly it just chaps your ass.

It's taken some time, but it would seem that I've convinced Maggie that reading any newspaper in China (which she - as many - was in a hardcore habit of doing) is no better than kicking the "open" right out of the phrase "open mind". The papers are all funnelled through the Central Propaganda Department, which puts their OK stamp on the good, and buries the bad and the ugly, making all newsprint in the Middle Kingdom nothing but a Party newsletter.

This isn't to say that articles that are negative aren't published, they are. And here in lies the brilliance of brainwashing. Borrowing from the Matrix here, the human mind needs a bit of negative to make things believable - so there's no shortage of articles about this crazy person doing crazy things, that corrupt official being punished, and a cornucopia of filler that displays just how messed up every place outside China's borders are... especially those not in favour with Beijing.

In the end you get 1.3 billion people (not adjusting for illiteracy, though word-of-mouth would compensate here, more than most places) who have a rather skewed version of events. Tack in the sugar-coated history, and rather liberal geography classes... and man... you begin to wonder if anyone's got an idea about what the "real world" is.

But then there's Freezing Point. A supplement of the China Youth Daily, that dared to push the boundaries of what was "acceptable" to print. Perfect, no. Biased, what isn't? But largely, it had the gonads to go the distance with some real attempts at journalism. Sadly, as of two days ago, it's been axed.

China Shuts Down Influential Weekly Newspaper in Crackdown on Media
By Joseph Kahn, New York Times, January 25, 2006

Bing Dian, or Freezing Point, published as a supplement to the influential newspaper China Youth Daily, was one of the few major news outlets that routinely printed in-depth investigative stories and broached delicate topics. The order to cease publication is effective immediately, the paper's longtime editor, Li Datong, said in a telephone interview. "This is an intolerable step that has absolutely no basis in law and is in fact completely illegal," he said. It cannot be appealed, he said.

The authorities cited the publication of a lengthy study of Chinese middle-school textbooks as a reason for the order, Mr. Li said. The Jan. 11 article discussed what the author, Yuan Weishi, a Zhongshan University professor, referred to as official distortions of history to emphasize the humiliations China suffered at the hands of imperial powers. He criticized the textbooks' treatment of events like the Boxer Rebellion and the burning of the Summer Palace by British and French troops in 1860, which he said were partly the result of mistakes by then-flailing Qing Dynasty leaders. "We are at a critical moment in our modernization and the key to the success of our development is understanding our system and mental model," he wrote. "I was shocked to see that few things had changed since the Cultural Revolution."

Mr. Li said the article, though provocative, was just an excuse for closing the paper. In August, a letter by Mr. Li led to a revolt at the China Youth Daily group after the paper's new party-appointed editor, Li Erliang, sought to impose a review system that graded the staff on factors including the reaction their work elicited from party leaders. The letter, which was posted on the Web, and the backlash resulted in the modification of the review system.

Hope flickers, but in my opinion, is not extinguished. Perhaps it is a step backwards in the scheme of personal liberties... but it illustrates something that is much greater (and to me, a little surprising) - people care. This open letter from Li DaTong about the shutdown, and the mention of the wide-spread readership of The Freezing Point exemplifies that though the masses may be duped, there are those drowning in the sea of blind acceptation that are still swimming for shore. There are those that are eager for truth, whether it conflicts with national pride and current taught tenets of the Mainland or not. Pride is really the problem here, I think. Face is a tricky thing, and it makes it damn hard for anyone in China to go back on anything they've publicly stated. For the CCP to admit fault, even if it was by previous regimes, is a step not easily took. It's good to know that when the truth finally does make it's debute there will be an audience for it.

I Hate Minorities

2006-01-24T21:47:00.000+08:00

Hell, if that subject line doesn't give me some hits... perhaps posting some photos of how they "farm" cats for food here in China might.

But yeah. The votes are in, no signs of a recount, and despite being OH so many thousands of kilometres away... I would like to firmly shout... 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING CANADA?'

Have we become so complacent that we don't really care who runs our country? Just because the minority government decided to play tricky dick with politics and call a "no confidence" election (off of some real sketchy scam that hardly involved the current government at all), doesn't mean that the general population has to hand it all to the Tories... and their baby-lickin' leader.

Don't get me wrong... I am not a Liberal supporter (and BTW thanks to at least two people who voted Green as surrogate votes for me), but there's just one thing stupider than a minority Liberal government, and that's a minority PC government... essentially the government's going to sit on their collective well-paid asses for a time, spending our tax dollars while doing absolutely fuck all because they can't get anything passed. Which, is safer seeing that it's the Tories at the helm, but is still a colossal waste of time and money.

Meanwhile every good 21st Century thing that the Liberals did manage to find time to get moving (decriminalization, gay marriage, animal cruelty bills, etc.) is just going to get pooched under the new regime.

The sad part to me is why it happened. You had a group of politicians vying for more power for no hugely particular reason other than it's their job to do so. They decided to take their chances with the Canadian public, and call an election. Then you have a mass of Canadians that go out to the polls and aren't really sure what's wrong, but something must be... I mean, there's an election on... They get into the poll booths and realize that there's just not much other option other than Liberal... and hey, those PC guys were in one time before... you rarely buy a KIA when they're offering Chryslers for the same price.... no matter how good the KIA looks on paper. And voila...

Head shakes and sighs for the rest of us.

At least there's this:

And It Begins With A Bang

2006-01-22T18:11:00.000+08:00

Xiao Nian Kuai Le

小年快乐

(Happy Small New Year)

Hey, so it's all beginning. It's one week out from the Year of the Dog (狗年) and as such today is considered Small New Year, but you wouldn't know it from all the fireworks going off. I had foolishly forgotten exactly what I was in for this week... fireworks, fireworks and more fireworks. If you tuned in late, and didn't see my rundown of last year's event - check it out here:
Chinese New Year's Eve Video
Xin Nian Kuai Le

Well... I've gotta make this short, as I'm on my way out the door to join Cam, Maeve and Cam's boyfriend Tom for some SiChuan food... that's right Tom's back in town! It's been great to hang out with him again as since his last visit we've chatted a lot online and he's quite a cool guy - always happy to share music, and who's cooler than that guy.

Oh, one other thing.... I was out for dinner at a local restaurant the other night and nearly coughed up my lamb when I saw these sitting beside my plate...

For those that can't read it... that address says Burlington, Ontario. As in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. As in 1 hour from my home town.

Hu's On First

2006-01-15T20:55:00.000+08:00

Here is a meeting between the American President and his National Security Advisor.
(We take you now to the Oval Office.)

George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The Chinaman!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.
George: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China.
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.
(Condi picks up the phone.)
Condi: Rice, here.
George: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too. Maybe we should send some to the guy in China. And the Middle East. Can you get Chinese food in the Middle East?

Primary Motivation

2006-01-14T19:00:00.000+08:00

Right, so I just finished working five straight days at a primary school, and my poor white ass is whipped. My god, is teaching in primary schools ever a different experience than teaching in an additional learning centre like Future School.

The school, YuWen (育文), is not far from where I live in JinSanJiao (金三角). It is part of an outside contract that Future School arranged with the private primary school, and was worked out as OT hours for me (100RMB or $15CAD per hour). I initially only agreed to work four consecutive Wednesdays, and after two was ready to quit. See, I had been promised a Teacher's Assistant and that just got dropped somewhere along the line (quite typical actually).

Out of the four hours I taught, the first two were manageable without a Chinese translator/disiplinarian, but the second 2-hour class was a nightmare of a level I had not had the misfortunate of encountering in my near-year in China. After effectively quitting, I somehow got suckered back in with Vicky, the Chinese teacher trainer/odds and ends doer for FS, as my TA. This worked out well, and I agreed to do an additional solid week's worth of the job... Monday was fine, but come Tuesday I got a message (10 minutes into my first class) that Vicky wouldn't be coming... for the rest of the week.

I entered my class and it was almost like they could smell the fear. When they asked me if Vicky was coming it felt like that scene in the movies when hapless victim falls off the boat into shark infested waters and the camera's looking up at the tasty seal-like thrashing. You don't know when they'll attack, but you know it's coming.

But I survived.

After a helluva day, I begged and managed to get some staff from our FS location to come with us for the remaining three days. It went ok, but the whole process wiped me out and I've little energy for my regular classes this weekend.

The good news is that the week's worth of work netted me 2,000 kuai - which will go a long way to paying for my Spring Festival adventures, something that is getting more and more expensive.

Maggie and I are planning to go up to Haerbin (哈尔滨), in Heilongjian (黑龙江) province, to check out the 'world' famous Ice Lantern Festival featuring a load of amazing ice sculptures. We debated where to go, and for a while contemplated making the trek to Xi'An (西安) (famous for the Terracotta Warriors). In the end we realized we can go to Xi'An or anywhere really, in warmer weather and probably appreciate it more, whereas Haerbin is only properly appreciated in the deathly cold depths of winter (-40 is a common figure on the thermometers).

Well, I'm going to go get some much needed R&R with a couple episodes of LOST: Season 2 and Lord of War.

Oh, one other thing. I was cruising the net the other night looking for apartments in the area and came across a rather interesting "profile" on my friend Tim. I laughed for nearly five minutes at his celebrity. Tim came to China last year (near the same time I did) and works with us at FS (a franchise one, but we still call him family).

Back near the start of the summer he was approached at our FS BBQ to host an English segment of news on Dalian TV. It all went off and he's been redubbed Bud Briggman (where in The Abyss did you pull that name from Bud?) to the better part of the city's TV viewers. Anyway, it's well cool, but I was just knocked over that he's even got publicity...

It was actually through him that a few weeks back I did a TV spot promoting the falsity that shopping in Dalian is a breeze because many of the shop attendants can speak great English. I know, I will not pass Go, I will not collect $200, I am going directly to hell - but damn, at least I can say I was on Chinese TV first. Watch out DaShan.

Happy Anniversary 一周年快乐

2006-01-09T09:31:00.000+08:00

So, I made it. I survived a year in a foreign country. Today officially marks the one year anniversary of my life in China. Whether you've been with me since the beginning, or you've tuned in more recently (or just came here searching for "China KTV girl photo" <-- still my number one search hit on google, sigh), thanks a lot for reading. It's been a ride, and it's nice to have people to share it with. For anyone that's curious, here's the first "real" entry I wrote on Chinese soil: Dag Yo I'm In Jinzhou

It's funny to look back on some of my initial entries and see how I saw things then and how I see things now. I am sure most, if not all, foreigners that come to live in a strange country could say the same... but it's interesting to see the areas my understanding has grown, and also the areas where some biases have built up.

Anyway to mark my one year anniversary I've finally sorted out why Chinese birthdays are so wacky. It's a bit amusing to me that even after sorting it out I think it's far too complex and diluted - but at least now I understand it.

Basically I've long been confused as to why Chinese people always state they are a year older than they are. When asked, they just say it's how they count the years in China and then referenece vaguely the Lunar Calendar. So, for example, Maggie, when asked will say she's 26, though she was born in 1980 and hasn't yet had a birthday this year. She was more than happy to cut her age back by a year, after I explained that Chinese birthdays just confuse Western people.

The reason for this extra year is that Chinese people consider the time spent in the womb as time lived in the scheme of things (raises all sorts of interesting complications with the commoness of abortion here). So, the moment you are born you are one year old. Then come your one year mark in the cold harsh world, you actually turn two years old.

This is all further complicated by the fact that the majority of Chinese people don't celebrate their birthday on their birthday, but count themselves one year older come Spring Festival (usually in January or February, dependant on the Lunar Calendar). SO, if you happen to be born, say... January 6th (as one of my students was), you are immediately one year old, and then come Spring Festival (a mere couple weeks later) you turn two years old. Two years old and only a few weeks outta the womb - the pressure to be walking and talking must be unbearable.

So, that's it. It's not all together much clearer why this is done, but that's at least how it is done. I guess the reason it's done is much like many things here, a clash of culture/tradition verse the reality of the modern world. Because the Western world largely invented moderninity, you rarely see too many conflicts like this... western culture just adjusted and evolved with the times, however in nations that are still modernizing, the conflicts - though sometimes arbitrary - are more evident.

Well, I just found a little origami boat in my fridge carrying a note from Maggie saying that she's taking me out for dinner tonight, presumably to celebrate my having lasted a year. Interestingly, or not, tomorrow it'll have been one year since I met the love of my life.

Chinese Pet Names
If you look closely at the picture you can see the characters 宝贝 (bao bei) and 大宝贝 (da bao bei). These are two terms of endearment that Maggie and I often call each other. Literally the first means "treasure" and the second means "big treasure", but in use it's more of a way to just say "baby" or "hon", like you would in English with a boyfriend or girlfriend for a pet name. The 大 (da) part, well... I think that's Maggie's way of being cutely cheeky, as it means "big". ;-)

Tradition Verses Political Agenda

2006-01-03T11:42:00.000+08:00

It's an ever-constant source of amusement to me to think of what it must be like behind that red curtain where the buttons and levers are pushed and pulled by the Wizards of China. I mean, you've got this group of people who are charged with the daunting task of keeping things running in one of the biggest, craziest, mixed up, developing, over-populated, under-pressure, highly-observed nations in the world; all the while balancing the ideals of Chinese tradition and the party line - two things that don't always coexist well.

I was just at http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/ reading a few of his excellent posts (really, what a fantastic page of Chinese commentary). The newest is about how Beijing is supressing homosexuality in China.

The part I'm a little surprised about is that they haven't adopted the (albeit quite goofy) idea that homosexuality would lower birthrate. In a country that has signage on all the public busses that states "don't have babies, plant trees" (assumingly to give the opinion that the govn't is all about solving China's two biggest problems; lots of people, not lots of trees) ... it's a wonder they've not come up with an equality fitting slogan to sway the massess into accepting homosexuality - maybe "Chairman Mao was a Comrade, and you should be too!", or "be like the west, touch your buddy's chest..." alright, alright, I'm no marketer, but you get the idea.

Unfortunately, I suspect many in the government and elsewhere have made the cut/dry decision that there's an AIDS epidemic at their doorstep and proper AIDS education is a lot more time consuming and expensive than just blaming it on homosexuals - took a page from the rest of the world for that one, didn't they - so, for the time being, even without a real religious vigor to oppose it, gay is not the way.

All Is Quiet On New Year's Day

2006-01-01T16:27:00.000+08:00

Well, it's been 2006 for 16 and a half hours... and I really don't see what's so 'new' about this New Year.

In one of the most inactive New Year's eves I've had in my adult life, I did absolutely nothing. Because Future School gave us no time off for the 'holiday', I had to be up and in class for 8 a.m. - not exactly with bells on.

As one might be prone to do, I have been a bit reflective on the last year. Minus 6 days at the start of the year, I spent the whole of 2005 on foreign soil. It's certainly been an experience, and not one I would trade for anything. It really has changed my life in innumerable, largely good, ways.

Things I've done this year ... in rough chronological order:
1) Moved to a foreign country without even knowing how to say 'hello' in the local language.
2) Started a job I knew absolutely nothing about beforehand.
3) Realized that kids are not something to be feared (as previously thought).
4) Merged onto the long highway of learning a second language.
5) Met the love of my life (I guess this could have come earlier in the list technically).
6) Begun to see that cheap DVDs and beer are not the only good things about China.
7) Made the decision to complete my bachelor's degree over the next year or two.

Well, it's not a Top 10 list, but 7's a prime, and primes are pretty.

One thing I've realized lately is that there is just stupid amounts of things to read about online. It amazes me just how easily amused I am when it comes to random Internet topics. For example, this entry. The path to the birth of this entry should have been thus:
A. "I should write an entry" ---->
B. Go to Blogger.com, log in ---->
C. Type, publish entry

However, the actual course was as such:
A. "I should write an entry" ---->
B. Go to Blogger.com, log in ---->
C. Start writing and realize that a nifty graphic would look good at the top ---->
D. Realize I don't want to piss about in Photoshop
E. Go to Google's image site and look (fruitlessly) for things related to 2006 ---->
F. See an interesting looking image of some code and get curious about how it relates to 2006 ---->
G. End up at a site that makes predictions about 2006 ---->
H. Catch something about China and follow a link to a new page that has a rather peculiar article about a speech Chi Haotian, China's 'defense minister', made regarding attacking America ---->
I. Spend endless amounts of time searching for confirmation that Chi Haotian is even the defense minister (as I think it's Cao Gangchuan) while thinking more and more the article is just racist propaganda, completely forgetting I'm writing a blog entry ---->
J. Get phone call from Maggie saying she's back from visiting her parents and I need to get my ass down to the supermarket so we can go out for dinner ---->
K. Quickly write J & K, and click "Publish Post" (after hastily bolding the letters for better clarity of it all.

You Down With MSG?

2005-12-29T10:00:00.000+08:00

Thanks to my friend Chris at Future 3 (www.livejournal.com/users/klotho), I've recently been re-educated in the taste-enhancing greatness that is Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). Well, perhaps not so much of a re-education as a re-evaluation.

I remember walking past various Chinese restaurants back home and them often proudly displaying a sign that had MSG circled with that red cross of anti-ism made famous by such campaigns as No Smoking and No Public Nudity.

Not really being clear on what MSG was, but knowing it sounded BA-AD, I accepted that if a restaurant was going to make a sign claiming they didn't have it, it must be not so great and chucked it towards the dark recesses of my mind. Later I learned that MSG stood for Monosodium Glutamate, and life was not made clearer. I knew sodium was like salt, and most people said that was bad for me too, but mono meant one, and one salt didn't sound all that troublesome. And glutamate... well, I had no idea. Glutamate.. glu.. glucose was sugar... could be related to that I guess, and who doesn't like sugar? Sort of sounds like glue, and that was always a tasty treat as a kid.

Basically, I was clueless about MSG other than my multi-media induced aversion to it. When I reached China there was talk about it in our foreigner circles and someone mentioned it's a chemical that basically causes your brain to like the taste of stuff (I am pretty sure I got this from a chemistry major who was teaching here). I guess, that is not a bad laymen's definition looking back, but it didn't really explain the myth and misinformation surrounding those three deadly letters.

I highly recommend anyone at all concerned or curious about MSG to give this excellent article a read: If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?

At no time has any official body, governmental or academic, ever found it necessary to warn humans against consuming MSG.

Basically, you're best off reading the article and deciding for yourself, but a couple quick facts about MSG that I now hold in my cive-like mind.

Discovered/Invented in/from kelp by Professor Kidunae Ikeda, in early 20th Century Japan.
Large amounts found naturally (free form) in tomatoes, cured meats, parmesan cheese, and a boat-load of other things.
"It's a chemical as much as water or oxygen are chemicals."
"Every government across the world that has a food licensing and testing system gives MSG - 'at normal levels in the diet' - the thumbs-up. The US Food and Drug Administration has three times, in 1958, 1991 and 1998, reviewed the evidence, tested the chemical and pronounced it 'genuinely recognised as safe.'"

And though a bit of a hypocondriac's nightmare, www.truthinlabeling.org has a plethora of information about MSG and Aspartame and all the alleged maladies that come with the consumption of either.

In the end, I'm still not certain if it's harmless or the bringer of the apocalypse, but like most things, I'm just not going to worry about it. I think society is far too concerned with its longevity. Who wants a mind as clear as glass when they are old? Gimme crazy and forgetful, as the last thing I want is to be conscious and lucid while watching the nearing approach of death.

Caught The Shutter Bug

2005-12-28T10:45:00.000+08:00

Right, so I did it. I finally got myself a new camera. After a year and a half of putting up with a damn blotch on the inside of my old digital camera's lens, and in turn having to photoshop it out in every photo I take, I've stepped up and bought myself a rather nice new one.

As mentioned in the previous post, it's the Canon A620 (largely recommended by Sera and her husband Zac, who were kind enough to show me their A610). I've been a fan of Canon since I bought my Canon EOS SLR back in college, and don't think my expectations will be let down with this new one. Though not the digital SLR I had been hoping to one day purchase, it does go full manual, and that's all I really need. Basically I just want the ability to do creative things with photography again, and this guy will let me do it - plus it's not even half the cost of a low-end digital SLR.

The Group Of Us
Last night our little group went out for some Beijing Kao Ya (北京烤鸭), or known better in the West as Peking Duck. We found a pretty good Beijing restaurant on the back end of Olympic Square, and stuffed ourselves silly.

It was a bit of a sad affair to say goodbye to Erin. Much like when Tom left, you realize how quickly someone can become a familiar part of the group... and it's strange to think you might never see them again. Anyway, off to class.

Oh, along with these photos, I've also included a video of the guy cutting up the duck. Just click on the photo of him. The quality isn't representative of my camera, as I had to scale it down to make it accessible online. The photo of Maeve above shows her sporting my Secret Santa gift.

[LEFT] Mmmmm... duck. [RIGHT] I think Cam is really going to miss Erin.

X-mastations Met

2005-12-26T12:42:00.000+08:00

Mounting Christmas Expecations have been something that consistantly foil even the best intended Christmas celebrations year after year for me. I think the problem is I've just learned to induce such a build up in the days leading to the big day, that when it actually arrives, happens and departs I'm left with an "is that all?" feeling.

Granted, these last couple years have withered my Christmas expectations a bit, as well as prepared me for the mix of emotions that come with being away from your friends and family over the holidays. And though not completely able to avoid the melancholy, I have learned to prepare for it.

So it was I went into my Christmas plans yesterday. The day started off rather slow and sluggishly as I drank half a brewery's worth of cheer at the Future School Christmas Party the night before. Maggie and I got up and exchanged our gifts while sipping some homemade (and noticably missing vanilla) egg nog, and then had a lovely breakfast of french toast and sausage.

Things got a bit stressful when I decided I wanted to buy myself a new camera, rightfullying thinking it would be much easier to justify the expense if it was bought on Christmas day. Maggie and I went to Olympic Square, but didn't find the Canon A620 that I was looking for. We ran into Walmart and grabbed the chicken for dinner I had promised Adria I would bring (settling for the already roasted kind, as it just looked and smelled better - despite the stickers on the fresh whole ones that claimed they were bird flu free) and then headed over to an Electronic City by Carrefour that I knew had the model I was looking for. Once there, I tried to use an ATM to get the money I needed out of my Chinese bank account... but sadly I couldn't remember my pin, and after trying every combination I could think of, I hung my head and accepted I was not meant to have the camera today...

In mixed spirits, we were off to Adria's for Christmas dinner. I really didn't know how this day would turn out, as I sort of assumed everyone would have their personal feelings of how Christmas should be held, and that would lead to conflicts - but it didn't. Kudos to Adria and Victoria for whippin' up some amazing grub, and a shout out to James for his wheaton bread (no relation to the dog I once had, I checked) and mulled wine. I was well impressed with the spread. We had:
Roasted Chicken
Stuffing
Roasted Veggies
Mulled/Red/White Wine
Roast Potatos
Mashed Potatos
Salad with Vinegrette
Green Peas
and homemade Cookies, Pie and Fruit Salad for dessert.

We topped off the dinner with a few more drinks and a watching of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer and How The Grinch Stole Christmas that I managed to burn onto VCD. All a bit run down from the night before; Cam, Maeve, Erin, Steph (who lives in my old apartment in Jin Zhou!), Maggie and myself all headed back to Cam and Maeve's place to do our Secret Santa.

I got Maeve, so after racking my brain about what to get her, I decided to make her a t-shirt as a bit of a souviner from China. Maeve has become a legend in our group for having done an amazingly BAAAD version of Michael Jackson's Bad at KTV one night, so I found a place that could print a t-shirt of the following graphic I whipped together in Photoshop. [Click On The Photo To See Maeve's Amazing Singing!]

Despite Cam stating repeatedly that she got really lame gifts for her Secret Santa, I was well impressed with the things she got Maggie and I. There was a definite theme of photos and frames, but that's great, as it's looking more and more like Maggie and I will be getting our own place come March, and it'll be nice to have some photos to put on the wall and stuff. She also got us his and hers mugs, and me some much needed gloves. And breaking the Secret Santa concept, Maeve got me a really cool Mao-era communism poster... tres cool.

So, all in all, even with the unrealistic expectations that the holiday-buildup brings, I really feel like I had an excellent Christmas. Of course I still missed my family lots, and have made some silent vows to try desperately to be home next Christmas, but I must thank the friends I've made here in Dalian for taking what little Christmas spirit there is here in China and finding a way to amplify it to a level that left me feeling all warm inside... though that might have been the wine.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

2005-12-20T23:10:00.000+08:00

Student Gets Federal Visit For Requesting Mao

Honestly, I'm not going to waste too much blog space talking about the often-said, and sadly obvious fact that America is FAR too concerned about things. I mean, for a country that spawned the biggest peace/love movement in recent history, one has to wonder how the whole place fits so comfortably in that hell-destined handbasket.

On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, three Beijing students have mysteriously disappeared after being caught requesting Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". Just kidding. God, I hope they read the 'just kidding' part.

And for all the injustice we hear about every day, it's nice to read this:

CBC: Girls Often Torture Barbie Dolls

Mind The Flying Kimchi

2005-12-19T15:20:00.000+08:00

Well, the last week or so has been a scramble to get the minimal Christmas shopping I need to do done, as well as balancing my over time hours and investigating possible job options for the future... and this week seems like it will be just as busy. Everyone say "Yay" to the holidays.

My friend Justin begins his LONG journey home for the holidays today, and as such we all went out for dinner last night to sort of say goodbye. A newfie, he has to first fly to Beijing, then to Vancouver, and on to Toronto where he hopes he'll have a direct flight to St. John's waiting for him. Fun!

We sent him off in style though, complete with very nearly having the police called on us. Maggie and I met up with the group at a hotel-cum-Korean restaurant not far from Justin's place, and we were later joined by fellow Jin San Jiao teachers Maeve and Cam, who was giving her just-arrived friend from home, Erin, a night out in Dalian.

[clockwise-bottom] Maggie, Adria, James, Jane, Justin, Victoria, Corey, Helen, Todd, Michael and Zhou Wei.
After consuming most of the restaurant's stock of beer and soju (Korean liquor) the staff asked us to leave so they could retire for the night. It was here that a problem we long suspected would surface caught up with us. See, Cam and Maeve, being the rather rowdy (but loveable) just-out-of-uni girls that they are have a predilection for "borrowing" various negligible items from the places we go.

As might be guessed, most of us rather dislike this, and don't see it for the laugh it is intended as. Foreigners are a small group in Dalian, and what one does effects the lot of us. Plus, what might be worthless or "cheap" to us, does actually have value to Chinese businesses that have margins thinner than an early-90s Kate Moss.

For months we've all subtly and not-so-subtly suggested they knock it off as it has the potential of making us all look bad, and such was the case last night. After we settled the bill Corey approached me and said that the staff saw one of the girls pocket something, and we needed to confront them about it. Corey sorted it out with the girls and the staff and things, though fragile, seemed stable. Enter, or rather exit, Adria.

The last of us to leave, she came off the raised Asian-style sitting area where we had been eating, and stepped too far forward on the stone/marble step, causing it to fall forward and break. Could have been anyone, and really was the problem of the restaurant, as it's a major safety hazard. However, the small truce Corey had established crumbled and they immediately demanded that we pay for it - no less than 500 RMB.

Perhaps not very fair, but the girls had burned any moral ground we had to stand on. Things were made worse by their attempts to defend themselves. Korean backup arrived (I think the staff was a bit worried because we out-numbered them), and threats of calling the cops were made. In the end, despite offers that we all split the cost (something I still really thing is the fair thing for us to do), Adria paid for it with money loaned from Corey.

I'm not really sure how everyone is feeling today... but you could have poked the tension in the air with a chopstick when we said our goodbyes last night. And to top it off I had the sad, and really rather pointless task of arguing what happened with Maeve the whole taxi ride home. Bah. For some reason it's rather difficult to impress on them that arguing about what is "just" and what is "fair" is just not a concept we are able to do. We are not on native soil, we are guests here.

Meh, I'm over it, but I really dont think Corey or his girlfriend Helen are in any rush to be around Cam and Maeve any time soon - and rightfully so, as Corey had to sort out a situation he really had nothing to do with, and Helen, ethnically Korean, was terribly embarassed by the whole thing.

Happy Holidays eh?

ANYWAY - I'm sure that much will be talked about it tonight at dinner. It's Cam's birthday today and we're all going out for dinner at a BBQ/buffet. The big question that's on my (and I'm sure her) mind is who will come.

Oh! So, as Justin was heading home and will not be here for Christmas, I gave him a rather hastily made Christmas gift last night to remind him in the Future of what his time in China has been spent doing. A shoddily-framed 8x10 of this (artistically remastered) photo I took of him in the summer.

Oh, and if you've got a couple hours to kill - check out Hapland and Hapland 2, two crazy puzzles that require a lot of clicking on things. Frustratingly fun.

Feed The Masses

2005-12-15T11:49:00.000+08:00

Right, so I've added an RSS (Rich Site Summary) link to my site (over on the left side, at the bottom - replacing the graphic that reminded me I failed at NaNoWriMo).

It looks a lot like this:

If you don't know much about RSS then click on the darn links in this post and sort it out man. It's quite nifty, and as much as I'd love ya all to come directly to my site everytime, I know you get busy and well, I still want to be a part of all your lives.. so... click and be fed.

Believe In The Power Of Santa!

2005-12-12T13:20:00.000+08:00

No Chistmas For You

I bought myself an early Christmas present the other day, an MP3 player. That's right folks, I own a cell phone AND an MP3 player - technically an MP4 player. Man, have I embraced the 21st Century or what?

Though it's no iPod or Lycra, it's not bad. It only holds 256 MB of stuff, but it has a little video screen that I can watch video on, it does voice recording, has an FM tuner and a couple of other things (ebook reader, phonebook, games).

The best part though is I paid the ripe ole price of 350元 (about $50 CAN). I mean, it's not Sony, or even a Korean brand, in fact... it's some generic Chinese brand, but it's got a warranty and all that, so meh.

In other news, this morning I went to see the new school I'm going to be subbing at for the next four weeks or so. I'm going to be working there for the next four Wednesday afternoons for about four hours. It's quite decent because I'm going to be doing it as over time hours, which Future School pays 100 RMB for. For all those folks back in Canada, that's about $15/hour.

This was my first foray into a public school, and I must say I'm impressed. The school is massive and has just loads of kids/classes. Each class is well-sized though, at only about 30 kids per class (not bad considering that the country's norm is between 50 and 80). The other big difference over Future School is that because this is their regular school, regular school rules apply, which means the kids are on their best behaviour. At FS we get the kids after they've spent a grueling week under the pressures of 'fail and die!' They get to our school on the weekend and most have figured out that if they piss about, nothing really happens to them. The result is a chaotic mass of kids that can sometimes be hard to control. Mostly it's alright, but it will be interesting doing these hours at the regular school and seeing how it compares.

The other thing I did today was meet with a woman about where I'm going next. Last week we had a rather cool guy named Jason sub at our school for one of the girls while they were in Beijing and he told me a bit about his job at public schools. He used to work at FS, but moved to the public sector in August. He mentioned they might need people for March (when my contract at FS ends), so I called the woman that sets it up and we met this morning. It looks like the deal is thus: About 7,000 RMB ($1,000 CND) a month for 11.6 hours a week - ah, yeah. That's $22/h CND... granted it's not FULL TIME, but even if you take out 800 RMB for an apartment (they don't pay for it), it still leaves me with more that I'd make a FS working twice as many hours. Needless to say I told her I was well interested. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks.

The other cool thing Maggie and I are doing now is Mystery Shopping. I can't say what we're mystery shopping, as it's a breach of our contract, but it's ace. Basically we just go to the place, check out some pre-established criteria of how the staff should act, how the place should look and the quality of the product, fill in a form, and voila! 50 RMB (plus the cost of the product) in our pockets. Pretty nifty for like 10-20 minutes work.

The Day I Tor Through The Wall

2005-12-10T20:05:00.000+08:00

So, I've discovered a rather brilliant new program thanks to Chris, a fellow teacher over a Future 3. The program? Tor.

Actually Tor is two programs: Tor and Privoxy. The two programs work together to basically confuse all the computers out there that take note of where you're going and what you're doing. This is effective for two things; surfing in anonymity, and breaking through The Great Firewall of China.

For anyone that doesn't know, the Chinese government 'controls' the flow of information that can be accessed via the Internet in the PRC. This causes a number of Web sites to be blocked, justly or unjustly, to protect the sensitive minds of the masses from the horrors of the outside world. Some of the many sites that are blocked are most Chinese language newspapers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, sites hosted at Blogspot (the ban was off for a while, but seems to be back on again), and also Wikipedia, the open-source encyclopedia that is linked to above.

So... by installing Tor, you can effectively weasel through this sensorship and view whatever the hell you want. It's great, with one downside, it's a bit slow. Because it essentially bounces the packets of data (read: the web pages you are loading) through an intricate maze of servers and systems, it takes a little longer to access everything.

If you scrap the rather crap IE and get yourself a copy of Mozilla Firefox with the SwitchProxy plugin (as suggested, and explained, in the install instructions included in the download package above/below), it makes switching between surfing exposed and surfing covertly a breeze.

So.. there ya go. Download it here if you want it.

PS: Go read this, and don't tell anyone in the PRC I told you about it ;-)

You May Say I'm A Dreamer...

2005-12-08T18:01:00.000+08:00

John Lennon, 1940 - 1980

Dear John
Dear John, it's been how many years since I let my hair grow long?
And so many years since my first Beatles' song,
It just doesn't seem that it could be that long,
But now you're gone - dear John.

Dear John, we all know you didn't deserve to die
But still you've gone to join Lucy in the sky,
And the questions we ask will forever start with "why?"
And now we cry - dear John.

Light a candle in the dark
Keep it burning in your heart
Light a candle in your heart
For John.

Dear John, we'll try to imagine the world that you sought,
And we'll remember the cause of peace for which you fought,
Oh to capture the feelings of love that you caught,
And what you got - dear John.

Light a candle in the dark
Keep it burning in your heart
Light a candle in your heart
For John.
PS: We loved you, we loved you
PS: We loved you.

lyrics by Michael McLaughlin (aka My Dad)

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

2005-12-05T18:03:00.000+08:00

In a break from tradition (at least from what I hear about Dalian weather habits), it snowed pretty solidly all weekend. It's fantastic, and has really jump-started my Christmas fever.

I don't like to admit it, but I really do love Christmas. Don't get me wrong, the commercialism and all that crap sucks ass, but it always gives me a warm tingly feeling when I walk into a room lit only by a Christmas tree, and outside there's a luminescence that only a blanket of snow can give off. Oh, that reminds me, I got a tree!! It's three feet of festive fun, and I love it!!

This year marks the third year in a row I'll not be with my family back home for the holidays. 2003 - Belfast, 2004 - British Columbia, 2005 - China. It's a bummer, and I'm thinking that I'll have to do my best not to let it happen in 2006. Perhaps I'll be able to show Maggie a Canadian Christmas.

The snowfall has caused some problems for a city that doesn't have a lot of snow-removal facilities. China continually gives me new things to chuckle about, but an army of people out shovelling snow with random pieces of plywood is on my short list for goofiest.

At has also caused problems for some vechicles, namely taxis, whose standard practice seems to be to let their tires get as treadless as possible before replacing them. Most of the tires have a Buddha-like baldness to them, which makes it near impossible to navigate our neighbourhood, which is largely built on the side of a hill.

The slick surfaces have also given Maggie reason to curse the beauty that is winter, as she's repeatedly bruised her tail-bone; that gravity, she's a harsh mistress.

Oh, so Dalian now has a second representative from Niagara! Thank god, the pressure is off me. But yeah, Victoria (who recently finished studying at Victoria University, in Victoria, B.C.) arrived about two weeks ago to work at the Future School down town, and I finally got to meet her last night. She seems nice.

Well, I swear I had more to say... but I can't for the life of me think of any of it right now... perhaps it's that I've just spent about an hour and a half working on my Chinese, most of which time was used trying to piece together the average Chinese family tree... there is a different name for every family member... like your father's father/father's mother are a different name than your mother's; your uncle on your father's side has a different name than on your mother's side... and then if they are the husband or wife of your blood uncle/aunt, it's also a different name... and all the cousins have different names depending on whose side they are on and when they were born and what colour sweater they're wearing... it's ridiculous.

Not having a great camera sucks, but it does force me to get creative in Photoshop. Isn't my girlfriend beautiful... gawd, sometimes I wake up, roll over and wonder when the hell she's going to figure out that she's much too good for me ;-)

This photo was taken two weeks ago when we went out to a park not far from our apartment. I was using a tripod to take photos of the two of us, most of which didn't turn out very good...

The major problem with my little point-and-shoot camera is that I don't have any aperture control, and can't do any work with depth-of-field or forced perspective... but with a little creative use of blur tools in Photoshop... I can feel again much like a photographer... gawd I need a new camera.

Holy 1984 Batman!

2005-12-02T19:32:00.000+08:00

Right, if you do nothing else with your day, visit Google Earth and prepare to be blown away. And for those of you that have seen this already and want to comment on how cool you are ... ah, hell, go ahead - it's true. I mean, my god, I was able to show my class my mother's swimming pool today.

Incidently, new maps on the side bar showing where I am. Unfortunately the peripheral cities of China aren't as highly detailed as the bustling metropolis that IS Welland.

"Culture of Blame"

2005-12-01T09:39:00.000+08:00

"Provinces blame the federal government. Municipalities blame the provinces. Provinces blame other provinces. The Conservatives blame the Liberals. The Martin Liberals blame the Chretien Liberals and the NDP blame everybody."
- Jim Harris, Green Party of Canada Leader

God that's true. I guess the only reason the people of Canada don't look at the Green Party more seriously is because of trust. We like the smell of dusty rooms and old wood when it comes to politics - no matter how much we need to stop and really examine the political system and it's desperate need for change.

Being in China, both I and the Green Party have been mercifully saved from me running again. I hear rumours they might have a lawyer running for them in the Welland riding, which would be fantastic. Those lawyers, sharp as whips they are.

My big hope is the Greens get the disenchanted vote this year. They've got some momentum, having secured a respectable 4.3% of the popular vote 17 months ago and also now have some bucks coming from the feds (so expect to possibly see some advertising this year!). All of this might help to legitimize a party that has long had to battle the public's misconception that it just stands on an environmental policy.

Alright, enough about politics... lets move to a more intelligent topic - kids. Does anyone else receive those e-mails that are a collection of goofy (darndest) things kids have uttered to their grade 2 teacher or whomever. Does anyone else think this is a sham? I mean really. Did you ever see your Grade 2 teacher making notes on what you said in class... and exactly what federally funded agency is collecting these? Is there some, unknown to me, group that allows teachers to submit these? More likely it's just some bored, middle-aged woman whose cats have started to ignore her cooking these things up.

Well in continuing with my no-mention-of-China (crap I just did) entry... a possible big change is on the horizon for me. I might be going back to school, atleast in a highly 21st Century sense --- Distance Ed. I learned last year (and recently confirmed again) that Athabasca University has an agreement with Niagara College whereby I can apply my Journalism-Print diploma towards the first 2 years (60 credits) of a Bachelor's of Professional Arts degree. An added bonus is I can do it all from anywhere in the world, including China (damn, mentioned it again).

But like all things, there's a negative side; it's f'in' expensive. From what I hear, an average year's university tuition in a traditional institution is about $5,000, but through Athabasca I'll be paying $820/course X 20 courses (over 2 years) = $16,400 or $8,200 a year. This is where I get all pissed off at perceived value...

Logically, you look at the distance education concept and you'd think.. 'hmm.. must be cheaper. There's no big expensive campus to pay for, no full-time staff of professors in tenure...' but of course, this isn't how it's looked at. See, distance education is designed for people with jobs and little time. Evidently, people making money (no matter how little) and strapped for time because of it apparently have to smile and take it in the rear because of the "convenience" provided is "worth" the cost. 操他们妈的! Not only that, but best I can figure that $820/course I have to pay is simply because I'm in China - if I lived in Canada I could pay $200 less per course (a $4,000 savings). Sorry, didn't I pay taxes my entire adult life in Canada? Or does that money just go into the same slush fund that my EI payments went to? The magical pot o' gold that's going to pay for all the GM workers to get a nice long vacation and then get re-educated in gardening or something.

Well, I guess if getting an education was simple EVERYONE would want one, and what kind of country would Canada be then.

Power In Numbers

2005-11-29T15:48:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking a lot about the issue of energy today. I guess it's never far from mind, what with all the switches and buttons I push in the average day, but headlines brought it to the forefront.

As you may have heard, there was another tragic mining accident in China yesterday. This year alone, the article states, more than 2,700 people have been killed in Chinese coal mines (it was 6,000 last year). To put this in perspective - the latest figures show about 2,100 U.S. casualties in Iraq in the nearly three years of occupation there. This has got to make working in a Chinese coal mine possibly the most dangerous job on the planet.

It could be asked why anyone would check the "Coal Miner" box on their guidence counsellor's Guide To A Healthy Career Path survey, but the reason is simple: poverty. At about 20,000 RMB per year (approx. 4.5 RMB or $0.30 CAN/hr.) the income offers a salary to many of the roughly 900,000,000 people living in China's impoverished countryside.

The other headline that caught my eye today was Canada not meeting its targets for the Kyoto Protocol. I mean, WTF, Canada as a country has little enough in the way of cultural identity - but the one thing we've always been good at maintaining - aside from diggin' the Hockey - is that we're tree lovin', free healthcare givin' people. Now we're not meeting our environmental obligations and if Harper has his way, healthcare should be privatized by January 24th.

So... all of this got me thinking, or rather re-thinking, about China's biggest problem, and the world's biggest opportunity. Clean power sources. Basically, it's long been touted that the fossil fuel and automaker lobbyists in the US negate the country from taking any real steps towards innovative clean power becoming commonplace in the market. However, best I know, China isn't so tied up in such things and seems more fearful of not having enough fuel than most nations. Couple this with a burgeoning marketplace ripe for such products that can tack on their signage "Will Save You Money!" and you've got a winner.

Take the hybrid car for example. Though true, most of China's population is more in the market for a bicycle or bus pass than a car, there is a huge growing industry here for personal automobiles. Why doesn't the CCP make a law stating that all cars bought in China must be hybrids. Considering most the cars bought here seem to be by the rather rich upper crust, this would force them to at least buy eco-conscious luxury items. And if you get an entire country that MUST buy these cars, two wonderful things happen, the cars get cheaper for everyone and car manufacturers start creating them in force.

This is just one example, and I'm sure there's a plethora of logistical problems with this idea - but the point is the concept. We keep excusing developing nations like China and India for being 'behind' in the sources of power game and allowing them consessions for pollution to afford them the ability to catch up. But isn't developing nations going through all the growing pains (and global problems they've caused) that the now 'developed nations' went through a bit like China not using antibiotics because it hasn't been invented by a Chinese person yet? If the technology exists, why don't the developing nations act as a springboard.

I just don't buy that China couldn't afford investment in long-term clean energy sources. I suppose that's, in part, what the Yangtse River's (长江/Chang Jiang) Three Gorges dam and windfields in Xinjiang are all about, but it's just not enough - or rather, not as much as it could be with a little more foresight applied to it.

I guess this is the one thing I do agree with about the American stance towards Kyoto. One of their main reasons for not signing on is that it doesn't make India and China responsible enough, which in their opinion negates the efforts of the other nations. This might be true, but c'mon, the US is the BIGGEST producer of greenhouse gasses. Kind of avoiding the issue there, non mon frère?

Anyway... there's my 10 cents (plus the lazy Tuesday interest rate).

I'm Young. I'm Coffee.

2005-11-27T18:26:00.000+08:00

I never thought I'd admit it, but I really miss commercials. As the only English channel I have access to is CCTV 9 and its bland pablum of programming, and all the American TV I watch comes in the form of an advert-removed DVD, I tend to even forget that commercials even exsist.

It's only on the rare occasion that I come home and Maggie's watching Chinese TV that I'm blasted with a heavy dose of consumerism on the boobtube. As much as we might complain about the annoyance of it all, they do serve a purpose. I've always conceeded that I'm very susceptible to advertising, and have pretty much banned myself from watching late-night infomercials for this reason, but I really do feel like I'm missing out on what products are new. In about 1 minute of TV today I got three or four ideas for things I wanted to buy; from a caffeine drink to the new FIR CD.

The thing I miss more than anything else though is trailers. Every once in a while I learn of a new trailer being out and like some freak with a basement tan I go and download it off of Limewire. But it's really the only way for me to get some of the hype for new movies coming out.

Oh, this nearly made me piss my pants, thanks mom: Hawaian Weather Report
If it doesn't work, please leave a comment. It was actually e-mailed to me, and I'm not sure if this link will really work.

Free Quebec - for anyone that wants it

Health & Safety Eat Your Heart Out

2005-11-22T14:43:00.000+08:00

One of the great marvels of Asian cuisine is the penchants for cooking at the table; namely hotpot (火锅) and barbeque (肉串儿). This type of cooking could never fly in the west for the simple reason that there's too many safety concerns. I mean, you're either cooking over open coals or with a boiling pot of water - a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Speaking on the latter first, BBQ (said 'rou chuar' in Mandarin) is something that first won me over back in Jinzhou with my friend Matt. We'd go out to a small BBQ place down the road from our apartment and eat stick upon stick of questionable meat, washing it down with draft beer. In the warmer months the restaurant (as most do) puts a scattering of tables and chairs out on the sidewalk (and sometimes the road) for customers to enjoy the cool night air. The range of things you can get skewered and ready to cook is endless. Though mutton (羊肉串儿) is the most common, some of my favourites include chicken neck (鸡脖), chicken hearts (鸡心), beef (牛肉串儿), and steamed bread (馒头).

Typical hotpot set with a spicy and non-spicy side.
Hotpot (said 'huo guo') has recently become the food of choice for these cool November nights. I've had it the last three nights in a row, and would likely eat it again tonight if I didn't have other dinner plans. Hotpot is exactly what its name suggests - a pot of boiling seasoned water, into which you drop a variety of tasty things, wait a couple of moments and then eat. Most hotpot restaurants give you the option of 'la' or 'bu la' (spicy/not spicy) versions of the broth, and some offer both in a pot with a divider. Like the BBQ, hotpot's options for what to cook are endless. The meat is usually an extremely thin cut that is served rolled, placed in a stack and slightly frozen. Again mutton is the most common, but I prefer beef. Some of my other picks for the pot would be: frozen tofu, straw mushrooms, prawns, glass noodles, and about a million other things. The real prize with hotpot is the dipping sauce. Made with a combination of sesame paste, fermented tofu and some chili oil, it's fan-frigin-tastic. Thanks to Maggie, we've now got a hoptpot for the home - and as mentioned, have been putting it to good use.

Maggie would kill me if she knew I showed anyone her hair looking all a mess, but c'mon, it was her first day off in two weeks of solid work.
So, other than eating copious amounts of boiled goodness as of late ... I've also been singin' the greats. It would seem that KTVs have just been a popular way to take in the Fall as I've been to about three of them in as many weeks. Most recently though was Thursday night's trip to the Super K by Olympic Square. The occasion was to say farewell to Sarah, an American Future School teacher whose parents have managed to convince her to run away from the evil land of Avian Influenza, and back to the States. It's easily the most hi-tech KTV I've been to, and despite the 10RMB/bottle beer prices, it was a lot of fun. Here are some pics:

Cam, Maeve, Maggie and I. Not sure who the other guy is - but he did Sinatra well.

The happy couple.

**NOTE: I'm starting to use more and more Chinese characters in my posts as both to add some authentic Chinese content to the site and as a way for me to practice my growing interest in reading/writing Chinese characters. If you've not done so already, you really should install the Asian Languages pack for Windows. It's on your Windows install CD. You'll know if it's already installed if you can see the Chinese characters in my posts. If you just see little rectangles scattered about my post, nope, not installed. Learn more here.

Now that's just good marketing.

Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni : Clever

2005-11-18T20:21:00.000+08:00

I've been meaning for some time to say something about last weeks announcement of the Beijing 2008 Olympics' mascots. Now, I've learned two things about the Olympic Games since coming to China. A) The Games coming here is a VERY BIG DEAL to pretty much the ENTIRE population of China. In fact, I would place renmenbi on the fact that if you went to the most isolated area of Xinjiang and found some Uyger sheep herder that had no radio and had never heard of no confangled TV - he'd still swell with pride with mention of the 2008 Summer Olympics. "Best part of being an autonomous region in the great wonder that is China," he might exclaim (but probably not).

Everywhere are signs advertising the event (which when I arrived was still nearly four years away); most companies have spent sleepless nights thinking of ways to slip it into their advertising. Hell, Dalian, a city a ways away from Beijing, even has a square in tribute to it. Can you imagine Regina building a square for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver?

Dalian's Olympic Square (奥林匹克广场)
This brings me to part B) No one knows there are Winter Olympics! When I ask people where the next Olympics are being held, they invariably say, "Beijing, dummy." I've put it as a question in every Jeopardy game I've played with my classes, and no one has yet to get it right. When they should "Beijing!" and I say no, I incessantly get confused looks. Not once has anyone said Italy. (It's Torino, Italy, by the way).

I thought perhaps it was just 2008 Blindness amongst the Chinese that didn't allow them to see Olympics other than those happing in the grand year of 二00八. So I tested the question on some of the foreign teachers at my school. They didn't know either. Are we Canadians the only ones interested in the Winter Olympics? I mean, I guess it makes sense, I imagine we bring home more golds with the winter sports, but hell - Britian doesn't bring home golds in either, why don't the English know?

So... I think it's time we start a campaign explaining that the Winter Olympics are by far the cooler of the two. Who's with me?

And going full-circle, I come back to my original topic. Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying and Ni Ni. The latest craze in Olympic marketing; The five Olympic Mascots are positioned to be the biggest extravaganzas since Furbies. Well, at least in China. Four of the charactures represent significant Chinese animals, while the fifth embodies the Olympic torch. The creativity doesn't stop there - they're names (when halved and spoken) are 'Bei Jing Huan Ling Ni - Bei Jing Welcomes You.'

Personally, I dig the little guys - but it's only been a week, and I don't watch a lot (if any) Chinese TV. I'm sure that it wont be long before the dolls are in every market, the posters are at every bus stop, the radio spots, the shopping mall appearances, the dance routine on the Spring Festival TV Special, etc. ad nauseam.

Birds of a Feather: Laowai Warning

2005-11-16T11:29:00.000+08:00

I'd like to relay two stories I've heard recently. The first happened a couple years ago and the other happened less than a week ago - but both illustrate something that all of us in China need to be reminded of, we're in China. I know, it seems obvious, but sometimes it's easy to forget and our at-home sensibilities jump in before we have time to remind ourselves of this.

Both these stories are from the best of my memory, and I hope the tellers/victims don't mind me relaying them.

Story #1: Scottish Mike's Slashing
A few years ago one of the Dalian English teachers had spent the evening at a local night club. He was standing outside at the end of the night when a Chinese guy who had been kicked out of the club earlier returned. Mike noticed that he had a knife, and so warned a couple people standing around him to get back. The guy, having overheard Mike's warning, quickly walked by him and slashed his abdomen open.

Mike got to a hospital and was stitched up, and thankfully recovered (I am pretty sure he said the doctor told him his spleen was nearly falling out). The police did nothing because the guy had mob ties and that was the end of it.

For some reason Mike didn't let this horrible event send him home and he's good humoured about the whole thing, but damn.

Story #2: Adam's Beating
We were sitting in this very cool Tibetan bar Sunday night when Adam came in with two dark rings around his eyes, looking like he hadn't slept in a week. He relayed how he had been at JDs the Thursday before (not quite a week ago) and saw a Chinese guy kicking the shit out of a girl. Realizing that the gawking Chinese standing around were not going to step in, Adam approached the man and calmly explained that he shouldn't be banging anyone's head into the grill of a cab.

To repay Adam's sharing of this somewhat common-sensical knowledge, the guy, very drunkenly, took a swing at him and missed. Adam, just generally wanting to stop this guy from hurting him or the girl, put the guy on the ground. At this point two of JDs bouncers, who had been watching the the beating of the girl and the altercation with Adam, came over and offered their assistance - to the drunk guy. They held Adam down while the guy went to work on his face. One of the bouncers took a couple swings for good measure, all in all leaving Adam with two black eyes and a fractured nose.

The moral of the story: Chinese people are much more likely to stand around and watch horrible things happen then offer help. And should anyone get ambitious and offer to help, no matter who's right and who's wrong, it will ALWAYS be for the Chinese person.

Adam's story was especially poignant as a few days before I had been returning home from class and saw a man and woman screaming at each other, with the man somewhat violently pushing the woman away. Typically, the scene had attracted a crowd whose only call to action was to obtain a better viewpoint. A lot of me wanted to step in and do something, but I took a second look at the situation and realized no good would come from me getting involved and I reminded myself I was not in Canada.

However, had I been Adam, like most people raised with a Western sense of values (sorry Chinese people, but action and a lack of it really speaks in this case), I too would have stepped in and with similar results no doubt.

All of this is just to say to all those new to China, remember, you're not in Kansas anymore. 95% of the time, if you're responsible, you'll be fine in this country and most Chinese people are kind, caring and lovely human beings. However, should you find yourself in that 5%, don't expect much, if any, help. Best I can figure the order of assistance is as follows for most Chinese people:
-Family
-Self
-Friends/Those With Guanxi
-Locals
-Chinese
-Foreigners With Guanxi
-and MAYBE Foreigners if it's not too much effort

It may be a cold way of dealing with things, at least from Western eyes, but it's a system that has been developing in this country for a few thousand years and isn't likely to change tomorrow.

Oh, and may I suggest any foreigners living in Dalian boycott JDs? I realize it's the only real meat market club around, but maybe we can show some solidarity as foreigners and let them know that a club that survives off of foreigner money shouldn't kick the shit out of their customers.

真的吗?

2005-11-15T14:38:00.000+08:00

I saw this article referenced on life of a rat, and found it interesting. Basically it talks about the counterfeit US bills being made in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). The article is written for a South Korean site, and there's no love lost between the two places, so read with bias. However, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Those DPRKers are a suspicious bunch, what with their complete lack of a viable economy, alleged nuclear arms, and just a general bad attitude. However, that said, the only North Koreans I've met have all been lovely.

My only experience changing money in China was at the Shanghai airport, and it failed. Like most airports the world over, Shanghai airport has booths of various banks that will change money for you. However, if you want to change Chinese Renminbi you need to have official receipts from the source of the money. Without it all you get is a "next!"

The solution was remarkably simple: patience and the Bangkok airport. When I arrived in Bangkok I simply went to a said bank-exchange booth and they happily changed it for me. Gouged a bit on the exchange rate, but did it none the less.

However, the most common way that I've heard from other foreigners to change money in China is to just use the black market exchanges. Most major banks will have a guy standing outside casually mentioning his services to those that walk up. Like most things in China, it's a bit dodgy. Also like most things in China, it pays to have guanxi. If you know someone who knows someone you are much more likely to get a better rate (and real bills). Personally though, I think I'll just stick it in my carry-on.

Alright, so I'm officially a net junkie. I know I've always spent a rather large amount of time gripped in the talons of the World Wide Web, but this is just getting silly.

The problem, at least of late, is I've got too many things on the go. If I'm not sitting at the computer trying to write my novel, I'm reading up on news, or blogs, or random advice columns, or living in China forums, or ESL info. It's just never-ending.

Lately I've been spending more and more time checking out possible ESL jobs in other parts of the country. My contract here in Dalian finishes at the end of February and I'm going to need employment until I head home at the end of June. Plus, I'm starting to feel that maybe I'm missing some things just staying put up here in the north. I've only been to Beijing and Shanghai in the nearly a year I've been in China and it's dawning on me that there's probably more to see: Xi'An, Yunnan, Shandong, Xizang (Tibet), Xinjiang, etc., etc. So, maybe moving to a new place and getting some new scenery might be a good idea.

I've spoken to Maggie about it and initially she was reluctant to move too far from her family (Dandong, 4 hours away, is the furthest she's been from home), but she's warmed up to the idea of experiencing some place new and she recognizes that it might be a better opportunity for us to save some cash for next summer. We'll see what all this endless searching yields.

The other item that's criss-crossed my cerebellum recently is I'm considering perhaps moving to Japan next year to teach. There is a big question mark on what to do after visiting Canada for the summer, and Japan might be the answer. I've looked at a few sites and it seems the average contract pays between 200,000 and 250,000 JPY (about $2,000 - $2,500 CAN). Compared to the barely $1,000 I make in China, it's a bit more cash - and I think even taking into account the cost of living difference, it would be a good place to save some cash. Now yet another thing I now have to look up on the next - Japanese Cost Of Living - sigh, it never ends.

真的吗? = zhen de ma? = really?/real? --- one of the most useful sayings I've learned in Chinese.

Now You Don't See That In The National Post

2005-11-13T19:03:00.000+08:00

Three steps to Chinese law reform:
1...

...2...

...3!!!

The teenage girl beer drinker spews up after drinking the beer. [actual published caption]

Chinese Girl Takes On Beer Binge
China has come up with a first nationwide regulations on managing alcohol sales, including a ban on selling alcohol to minors, China Youth Daily reports. [Full Story]

If the personal day-to-day experiences in China weren't enough to amuse me... the media certainly would provide enough entertainment to keep this monkey occupied.

Training Day

2005-11-11T21:38:00.000+08:00

Well, I've only managed to bump my count by 500 words (up to 6,425)... man, that 50K is looking further and further away. Today I did have a slightly reasonably reason for not getting things done though - I had to go to some training. I don't know about the rest of the group, but personally I feel like a better, more prepared and generally just 'with-it' teacher now.

For what it's worth Sera (the teacher trainer that replaced Lorna last month) did a good job of keeping us all doing stuff, and the material fit the topic. Basically what it came down to though was the subject was 'classroom management' and no matter how long and how hard you talk/think about it... kids are going to be kids. It was however a nice way to spend some time with some of the other teachers - as we all went out for lunch afterwards. There's something so gratifying about drinking with people shortly after noon... perhaps it's just when there's a lack of people it makes me feel sad. ;-)

After lunch a group of us went to the Electronic City by Carrefour (near Future 3) and did some serious DVD shopping. Though there were a number of others I would have liked to have got, I limited myself to these six:
Mail Order Wife
Instinct
Romeo+Juliet
Candyman
The Beach
& A Life Less Ordinary

Ok, self-affirming way I've wasted time today:

Thanks to Eric for making me feel good about myself. He's 22% stupid.

Altruism - A Click Away

2005-11-10T22:31:00.000+08:00

Hey, so I came across this amazing concept, using Internet click-ads for the benefit of humankind (and our other brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom). All you do is click on the button, go to the site - click on the other button (don't worry, it tells you which one, it's really easy - trust me) and presto - you're Albert Schweitzer (he's cool, trust me).
Save The World - One Click At A Time!
On each of these websites, you can click a button to support the cause -- each click creates funding, and costs you nothing! Bookmark these sites, and click once a day!

And should you not bookmark the sites, just bookmark mine, as I've added this feature to my sidebar. Scroll down (I promise it's there - trust me).

And yeah, so I was reading the news just now, killing time waiting for Maggie to wash her face so we can watch Friends. I saw an article about a strange weather phenomenon that ripped apart a school in Hamilton. This reminded me of something Ryan brought up the other night after Phoebe's birthday party. He said that it just seems like a lot of bad shit is happening in the world these days. I countered that I thought it might just be because we all read the news a lot more now (that we're in China, that is), and so are more aware of what's going on. I am pretty sure that Revelatory journalism has been the mainstay of most media for the past 100 years or so, and that it is just that we are far from home, so hungry for news of it, that we hear more about it.

But then I remember thinking earlier this year that there had seemed to be a lot of crazy things happening with the world. And then this thing in Hamilton, just some random crazy weather that rips apart schools... so, to recap:
Tsunami in S.E. Asia - kills nearly 300,000 people
Earthquake in South Asia (Pakistan) - kills about 90,000 people
Major floods in China/S.E. Asia - kill a bunch of people
Floods/Landslides in S. America - kill more people
Avian flu - 63 people dead (but well... it COULD mutate... and LOTS of Chickens died)
Hurricane Katrina - 1,281 killed (and more from Wilma, etc., basically BUSY season for ambitious tropical storms)
Typhoons hit Asia; bombs go off in Iraq, London, Jordan, and a number of other places; earthquakes in Japan; heatwaves in Ontario; and the list just goes on and on and on...

Now, the question is... is this normal? I mean, is it just because I've been paying more attention to news over the last year while away from the virtual safety (apart from Hamilton) of Canada? Or are the seven signs upon us?

Well, I guess one guy with a blog in China isn't going to stop it all... so might as well just sit back, pop open another 2 kuai Yantai beer, and enjoy the descent.

Procrastination: The Mother of all Intention

2005-11-08T17:16:00.000+08:00

Well, I can't say that today has been overly productive on the wordcount front, as I've only upped it to 4,698. However, I did finally sit down and come up with an outline and though it's still cheesy as hell (how cheesy is hell, really?), I feel a little more confident about the storyline.

I have come up with a three act plotline that fits nicely with the general ideas I had for the story. I've also broken up the tediousness of writing 1st Person narative by having two main characters - splitting the narative between chapters. Considering the diversity of my two MCs, it's made the process a but more fun.

Sadly, I didn't get to writing until late in the day today. I had all intentions of starting nice and early, but instead chose to lie in. When I finally got up at about 10:30 I finally finished watching Troy, which I had started last week. Upon completion I got a text from Tim that his news broadcast was going to be on at noon. At only 10 minutes, that provide me with sufficient procrastinating material, so at about 12:30, when I finally sat down at the computer, I started catching up on reading blogs/news.

I think if I really want to make headway with this thing I'm going to have to unplug from the Net and go write in the livingroom or something. I am getting worried if I don't put word to screen soon I'll be too far behind to even possibly hit the 50K mark in three weeks.

Tonight is the birthday dinner for Phoebe, a woman I work with. Her and Richard are a married couple that have been here for about four or five years (forgive my memory) and are just a great set of people. They're always happy to pass on advice, and despite having played many a role in Future School over the years, are just as prone to bitch about a class as the rest of us.

I had planned to get Phoebe something, but cannot for the life of me think of what to get her. Having not spent a lot of time outside of school with them, I know little about her interests.

Ah well.

Oh, and for strange news story of the day:
Garage doors work after mysterious radio signal disappears
The powerful radio signal causing the problem stopped transmitting on Thursday afternoon, around the time CBC News contacted the U.S. Embassy to ask if it knew anything about it.

Good to know that the U.S. is putting their Canadian Embassy to work.

Oh... and check out http://www.voipbuster.com/en/index.html. It's a program, similar to Skype, that lets you call places via your computer DIRT cheap. You can talk to me online with it for free, and/or call me in China for only 1 cent (euro) a minute. Not too shabby.

Super Be Dingle

2005-11-07T17:45:00.000+08:00

I just thought I'd share with you a tid-bit that sheds light on the complexities and humour that comes with learning a new language.

Yesterday in my C-13 class (high level learners usually in the 13-16 year old range). We were doing a reading about different forms of entertainment and in the text was the word 'superb' I got the kids to underline all the words they didn't know in the text so we could go through them one by one. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Any words in the first paragraph you don't know?"
Jacky: "Yes, 'Super Be'"
Me: "Super Be?"
Jacky: "Yeah. First line. 'The play was super-b!'"
Me: Shakes head and realizes this learning English thing ain't so easy.

The converse of this was shown today in my Chinese lesson when Ryan Wang and I were doing a reading with some new vocabulary. One of the new terms is 'ding' (定) which means 'to decide, to fix, to set'. To make verbs past tense in Chinese you add 'le' (了) to the end. It had myself, Ryan W. and Carol (our teacher) near tears when in the reading he hit the term 'dingle' (定了) and couldn't resist saying "DINGLE" not "DING LE".

Anyway, hit 4,482 words today. Not where I need to be, but moving forward.

And for some humour, check this out: http://harpers.org/BubbaTea.html
Some excerpts from My Life: Bill Clinton's memoir, as seen in the unauthorized Chinese translation version. Who knew Clinton had such an affinity for Deng Xiaoping and China?

No News Is Good News

2005-11-06T19:34:00.000+08:00

I'm just waiting for Maggie to come home from her second day at her new job and I'm killing the time by catching up on news - as well as getting versed in the beauty of football.

So, first off, in case anyone cares or is worried... Liaoning officially has cases of bird flu (ahem, I mean 'avian influenza'). Liaoning for all those not clued in is the province I live in.

Nearly 400,000 birds were given a swift quick to the afterlife up near Shenyang the other day. They've vaccinated about 14 million other chickens, and everything seems to be under control. Keep in mind, not one case of human infection has been reported here yet. Did anyone else know this stuff's been around for like 100 years? (More Info)

The other funny thing I read recently was that South Korea is getting testy about cheap imports of Kimchi from China. Aparently they don't like getting the parasite eggs that are included free of charge. The bit of the story that I thought was damn near tear worthy on the laugh-o-meter is thus:
It's the latest salvo in a kimchi crisis [that's great writing BTW] that has gripped the two Asian nations since last month, when South Korea banned kimchi imports from China after finding parasites normally found in human feces in Chinese brands. China, in turn, banned some South Korean food products.
"China, in turn, banned some South Korean food products." Hahahaha. You don't want our shit spawned parasites, well then, we don't want Samsung cell phones and gawd damnit, we'll find our own source of Internationally praised cinema.

Kimchi for those that don't know (in particular those that wrote the CBC article), Kimchi is a collection of various 'pickled' things (usually vegetables, but I don't think it's limited to this). The most famous is spicy cabbage (La Bai Cai in pinyin). The stuff is fantastic, and I enjoy going to Korean restaurants for this alone (and it's usually FREE!). Anyway, for more information about Kimchi, go to Life In Korea: Kimchi and prepare to salivate.

Alright, Maggie just called. She's waiting at the restaurant for me. Sadly her working means less home cooked Chinese meals, but it does give me more opportunity to rediscover my cooking abilities. Just not tonight.

Caf-fiend: NaNoWriMo Day 4

2005-11-04T23:16:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, shortly after I posted, I had a bit of a breakthru. Nothing monumental or anything, but it took me from my paultry 600 some-odd words up to just over 2K. Then after more writing today, I ended off with 3,388 words. Not the 10,000 I should be at by this point - but at least it's moving.

The things that were getting me down Wednesday were that I wasn't feeling the character, didn't know much about him. Didn't know where I wanted to take him or how I wanted to get there. I had some rough ideas, but that was all. Plus I hadn't written enough to have commited to the concept of the story. However, now I'm deep in it and have a desire to tell the story for the story's sake, not just because I want to get to the 50,000 word mark by the end of the month.

I realized a little while ago that this is likely the most consecutive fiction I've written in my entire life. I've written longer articles for magazines, and I'm sure I had to write longer essays in uni, college or high school. But never fiction.

Oh, the other thing I clued into was the amount of caffeine I have in my system is directly proportional to the amount I can write. It would seem that if I keep feeding myself cups of coffee throughout the day, the writing goes smoother. Sadly, it kills my appetite, and I've missed all but dinner the last two days.

Sitting at my computer for large amounts of time does afford me lots of opportunity to procrastinate though.

Biggest form of procrastination today:

Congratulations, Ryan!
Your IQ score is 140

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.

Find out your IQ

Personally, I think it's a bit unbalanced, as there is only 30-40 questions, making each one a bit more weighted than they would be in a real IQ test. Who doesn't like getting compared to Plato though... oh, but if anyone does it and gets the "Like Socates, your exceptional ...." paragraph, please note that I am not just going to have sex with you.

NaNoWriMo: Day Three (in Hell)

2005-11-03T14:12:00.000+08:00

Well, it's Day No. 3, and I've quit roughly the same number of times as my paultry word count - 955. This NaNoWriMo thing is no easy task. I keep going online to their forums (half for help and half for procrastination) and getting hyped again about the idea, or at least getting some commiseration from like souls. Then five minutes later, when I try to dive back into the story... nothing. Everything seems like drivel and I have no clear idea of how to do anything with my characters other than make them walk around and bang into walls (whomever said art reflects reality was on to something).

Anyway, I knew it was going to be tough, and I'm still committed to the idea of completing this thing, even if it sucks more than I ever thought it would. Initially I thought choosing a topic I wasn't too serious about was a good idea because then I wouldn't care if it sucked (as opposed to using one of my collection of semi-well-developed ideas), but what I'm realizing is that it's difficult to sit down every day and spend a few hours writing about something you don't care about. Bit of a Catch-22.

Well, I just spent the last hour and a half talking to Cory (voice) over the Net using MSN Messenger and it was fantastic - pretty clear and didn't cost us a dime. So, other friends and family members... get into it, I want to hear from ya all. However, it's left me with only four hours before I need to be in class - time to get back to the novel.

And so it begins...

2005-11-01T12:12:00.000+08:00

Having just logged on to the NaNoWriMo site, I've learned that the clock has started ticking... and only 14 short minutes ago... they must have known the night I was going to have last night and the slow start I was going to have today because of it - or more likely it has to do with time zones.

So, I've broken it down that I must write about 2,500 words / five times a week to reach the 50,000 goal in four weeks. So really, what am I doing wasting word count on this damn blog?

But something should be said about Halloween in China. It was pretty good. Much better than I would have suspected, and I would say better than the Halloween party I went to last year in Penticton. Basically my buddy Justin and his friend Adam got chatting with Matt, the owner of The Tin Whistle (a hip little Irish bar down by the Shangra-la Hotel, off Renmin Rd.), and decided to hold a bit of a 'thing' there.

Usually these things work out well for the simple reason that most people here have bugger else to do, and if they hear that a place might be a 'hot' thing to do... the foreigners become moths to a flame. Matt, said owner, also got in touch with the local ex-pat scene and advertised the event to them, so instead of just having the usual English teacher crowd we had people from all industries. In fact, I met a nice guy from England whose job it is to watch ships, or check ships, ah... definitely about boats.

The night was a blast. I found out that my friend Corey's Chinese girlfriend, Helen, studied in Canada for four years - spending time at Mohawk in Hamilton, and considered going to Niagara College! I never thought it would be a Chinese person I'd be reminiscing about the 406 with. She also was able to give Maggie some much needed insight into dealing with Lao Wai (we're a crazy bunch).

Tim also showed up, which is always cool (if not somewhat rare), dressed in a costume which has the double function of being his work clothes. He just took a second job as Dalian One's newest news anchor! He even left his pants at home to give the costume added realism. After a few rounds of beer he broke out the guitar and between him and Corey we had some great East Coast/West Coast representation.

Eventually the night wound down (3-3:30?) and we all emptied into the street and went across the road to huddle around a little BBQ stand (the Chinese equivilant of after-bar street meat) and fill ourselves with bits of BBQ goodness. Despite Camilia disagreeing (somewhat violently), the chicken hearts were a personal fav.

It's a bit strange (and Camilia's disgust drove the point home) dating a girl that enjoys stranger food than me. It's not uncommon to find Maggie craving random inner bits of otherwise familiar animals. She actually got me to try chicken feet last week, and all I can say is, as expected, they're a bit boney. But it screws with your sense of femininity when this cute, beautiful girl turns to you and says, "Mmmmm... I really want to eat some pickled pig's face." (She just read this and confirmed 'it's sooo delicious').

Anyway, my novel's not going to write itself, and the fried noodles I've got waiting for me certainly aren't going to eat themselves...

I'll Sleep With My Machine Gun If You Let It On The Train

2005-10-28T10:46:00.000+08:00

Sikh student banned from train for wearing kirpan

Sorry to break from my up-to-the-moment health status, but I want to lay something out there about religious tolerance. I love Canada. I love that we are a mixture of cultures. I love that this allows me to travel around the world and have most people like me because they've got family in my country or know someone who has. I like that I get to meet people that are not white, were not born in Canada and aren't Baptist Christians. I also love that there are 2nd or 3rd generation Canadians that still practice their traditional rituals and beliefs. It all just makes the place that much more damn interesting.

However, lines need to be drawn. If you read the news article above you'll see this man's argument, and indeed a common argument among Sikh men, is that Sikh tradition has it that they should carry this ceremonial small dagger-like sword.

A typical Sikh Kirpan
Now I admit, multi-cultural country or not, most people in Canada are pretty ignorant about other religions and cultures. This isn't a phenomenon limited to the white, Christian majority. The truth of it is, most Canadians just stick to their own. However, now freshly educated on the cultural importance of the Kirpan (thanks to The Kirpan in Sikhism by Santbir Singh) I can confidently say that I'm sorry, but it's time to change the tradition.

I mean, we grasp at tradition like it's this unchanging rock holding us to our past and our roots. But it's not. Tradition is created, changed and destroyed as dictated by the culture. That's how we evolve as residents of the planet.

There's no getting around the fact that the Kirpan is a weapon, and as this quote shows, one that is to be used to maintain the sovereignty of Sikhs.

The Kirpan is our way of showing to the world that we as Sikhs will never bow down to any state authority. The Sikhs of the Guru recognize only one authority, and that is God. We recognize only one throne, and that is the Eternal Throne of the Timeless one, the Takht Akal Bunga Sahib. Our Kirpans are our passports of freedom.

Americans, with the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution, have a similar Right vs. Reality situation. The simple fact is that should you have a number of people armed at all times you create a state of violence and fear. Humankind has proven countless times that their responsibility with things that can kill is pretty much akin to children not putting things in their mouths.

Now, I'm not attempting to say that Sikhs are going to go out on a wild stabbing spree, and very likely there has never been any incidences of violence occuring in Canada with Sikhs using their Kirpan as a weapon. However, it opens the door to allowing all people to argue "What's fair for one person is fair for all people."

So, just as the government, and overwelming majority of the population, in the US has decreed that the 'right to bear arms' does not include caring a Glock hand cannon to 4th period history, so should Canada's 'freedom of religion' not override everyone else's basic freedom of not fearing those carrying large weapons.

Times change, religions and cultures adjust. Get with it. Or perhaps we should also allow Muslims their religious freedom to stone women adulterers to death. Some traditions remind us of the diversity and greatness of our roots, but some have no place in the modern world and there is little need to carry a small sword on a train or into a classroom.

In other news... I'm feeling better, and despite the words of Richard Ashcroft, the drugs do indeed work. The pain in my foot is all but gone and the one in my throat has faded to a dull ache.

A Day Late And A Gold Fish Short

2005-10-26T23:11:00.000+08:00

I always read these things after the fact:
Rome bans 'cruel' goldfish bowls

I mean, I'm not so naive to think that the fish are living in paradise, but I had no idea they were going blind and now I guess I can figure out that perhaps lack of oxygen might have been a deadly factor in the change of status of my fish.

Well, I've survived another day of what I'm now convinced is tonsillitis caused by strep bacteria. I read online (gasp!) that strep bacteria causes both tonsillitis (strep throat) as well as soft tissue infections if it gets in open sores (i.e. a blister on my foot).

At one point today I could do nothing but lay on my bed, near tears, and beg for the pain in my foot to stop. This convinced Maggie to make another trip to the pharmacy for me (her third) and get me some asprin. Well, they worked like a charm and I'm now superfantastic. I mean, the pain's still there and I have to lamely shuffle through my apartment, but at least I'm not considering using random dull objects to remove my foot.

Assuming my self-diagnosis is correct, the anti-biotics I started taking yesterday should have it cleared up in another day or two. However, if it's not feeling better late tomorrow or Friday, worry not, I'm going to the hospital.

Oh, and for crazy Chinese news of the day:
10 die as Chinese children rush to flee 'ghost' [CBC]
And for a Chinese perspective on it:
Trampling accident kills 7, injures 37 pupils in Sichuan [Xinhua]

Doctor, Doctor Give Me The News

2005-10-25T10:30:00.000+08:00

Well, I had an absolutely horrible night last night. As mentioned yesterday, I seem to have come down with a cold. Turns out the cold symptoms (cloudy head, general miserablness) were just a hangover, but some little germ stuck in my throat and now it feels like I'm downing big chunks of glass every time I swallow. As might be imagined, this makes it difficult to sleep, especially after napping all day.

So, what I can only guess was about 2 a.m., I got the good sense not to subject Maggie to my tossing, turning and near tears and I went out to the couch to watch T.V., figuring that if anything could put me to sleep it was CCTV9, the only English channel on Chinese TV.

After finally beginning to doze off at about 5:30, I jumped back into bed and drifted off for about 30 minutes before Maggie's alarm went off to get her up to go get a health licence (more on that in a minute). I asked her to grab me some medicine on her way home because there was no way I wanted to endure another night of this (she, oddly, seemed to feel the same).

She came back a few hours later with a box of Azithromycin. I love how most prescription drugs are just over the counter here. I mean, I'm not one for self-medicating and it all makes me a bit ansy to be honest, but I trust Chinese doctors as much as I trust Chinese police. I've heard horror stories of an English teacher that broke his arm here and went to the doctor and the doctor calmly explained to him that it just has to come off. He promptly got a second opinion and cast in Korea.

Fortunately after a quick search of the Internet I discovered that Azithromycin is exactly what I need to cure my throat as well as to cure my foot. Yeah, so yesterday also brought with it a soft-tissue infection in my foot. To be honest, I wasn't (am not) certain that's what it is, as Maggie has informed me that in the walk up the steps to my apartment I took a tumble the night before (I did mention I had consumed far too much alcohol right?) and it could have been a sprain (they feel the same). But today there's no swelling, and just a lot more pain... I'm pretty sure that it's exactly what it is.

Let this be a lesson to you, should you finally find a pair of new shoes for your average (in the West) but huge (in the East) feet, and said shoes give you blisters... don't forget you have a band-aid on it for several days.

So yeah, damnit, the summer made me forget how sickly I get in China. It was nice having a bit of a holiday from always feeling like crap.

Well, not being able to sleep last night did afford me loads of time to consider a topic for my novel. Perhaps it's the toxicity in my foot, the blinding pain in my throat or the late hour at which I was putting my mind to it... but it looks like it's going to be a harrowing tale involving pirates and aliens. Yeah!

Another One Bites The Dust

2005-10-24T13:51:00.000+08:00

May a flight of angels carry you...

Yup. After a week long hunger strike, in protest of being bowled no doubt, Fish #2 has also passed on. Now, true, the little guys didn't come with any instructions or anything, but I'm fairly certain I know how to take care of a fish, or two. I'm blaming it on being in China, I'm not sure with what justification, but well.

As he is now on the fast-track to the sea, the cause of death may never be fully understood. I had noticed that he wasn't eating his beautifully coloured blue/red food balls (as provided by the pet man in the square), but I took a page out of Parenting 101 and figured when he was hungry enough he'd get over the fact that it wasn't up to his gastronomical appreciations. I was wrong. Either that or the water was no good. Listen, this isn't CSI.

After returning this morning at 3 a.m. from a night out with the Future School crew I saw he was grasping the last few threds of his cute, if somewhat feeble, existance. I quickly, and impressively considering how much beer I had consumed, performed an emergency aquatic environment transfer and an H2O-rejuvination process. Sadly it was all for naught, and sometime between 8 and 10 this morning he made his final swim across the Styx.

And he didn't even have a name.

Well, I'm out of the caring for fish business and into the novel writing business now. I was recently passed an interesting Web site by my friend Sarah that has lit a challenge in me - I'm going to write a novel. I know, I know... many, MANY utter this phrase, but how many try to do it in 30 days or less (well, at least 42,000 people last November)?

The concept is simple, write 50,000 words in the month of November and you win. The Prize? Nada. Well I supose a great and satisfying sense of accomplishment, the ability to brag - until death - that you've written a novel, a working manuscript you can polish and actually try to get published, etc. etc. But yeah.. mostly that first thing. The whole thing is more about just taking the pressure off of writing a masterpiece and putting it all down to the single and unifying marker of word count. Quantity, not quality.

So... I've no idea what I'm going to write about yet, but with about a week until I start, I should be able to come up with something. Expect updates on my progress.

No Comparison I'll Wager

2005-10-23T18:07:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been looking at some figures (mostly that I've guessed at) regarding Chinese wages verses Canadian wages. I've been wondering for some time how the two compare. I mean assuming anyone's checked the label on everything they own lately, it's strikingly obvious that Chinese people make shit compared to Western wages ... but what I was really curious about is how that compares to the cost of living in both places. So here's a little (unqualified) breakdown:

Note: All figures are approximate and from my experience.

Canada
Average Monthly Income (working 40h/wk. @ $7.50/h): $1,300 / 8,860RMB

Essential Expenses:
Rent: $350 / 2,380RMB
Bills: $100 / 680RMB
Food: $200 / 1,360RMB
------------
Total: $650
Percentage of Income for Essentials: 50%

China
Average Monthly Income (working 48h/wk.): $147 / 1,000RMB

Essential Expenses:
Rent: $44 / 300RMB
Bills: $15 / 100RMB
Food: $66 / 450RMB
------------
Total: $125 / 850RMB
Percentage of Income for Essentials: 85%

And for shits and giggles...
A Foreigner Teacher Working in China:
Average Monthly Income (working 40h/wk. - not common): $1,176 / 8,000RMB

Essential Expenses:
Rent: $0 / 0RMB (provide by school)
Bills: $15 / 100RMB
Food: $66 / 450RMB
------------
Total: $81 / 550RMB
Percentage of Income for Essentials: 7%

Additional Notes: Rent and bills are based on a shared apartment, and bills includes only the essentials (water, heat, electricity, gas, phone). Food for all is assuming cooking at home and budgeting.

As you can see, it's a pretty big difference. I mean, obviously the English teacher thing is going to be extremely different, but even the 35% difference between low-end Canadian jobs and low-end Chinese jobs... basically you work more for less here.

I wonder if the government is not really eager to change things here because of the whole 'idle hands' idea. But it's easy to understand why Chinese people are generally just fantastic at saving; when you're living that close to the red line, there's not a lot of forgiveness if something bad or unexpected happens.

Silver Linings And A Farewell To A Fish

2005-10-20T17:34:00.000+08:00

Well, I'm sad to report that sometime early this morning my fish became one step closer to reaching a higher level of existence, and his mortal vessel became one step closer to reaching the sea.

Tragically the little bowl-dweller didn't live long enough for me to give him a name. Out of fear that perhaps it was a lack of identity that killed him, his surviving bowlmate will be getting a name as soon as Maggie gets home and we can decide on one.

I bought the fish on the way home from work on Saturday and was thrilled when they made it through their first night of breathing chlorinated water (I have none of those drops to add to the water to make it all cool). All was going well, despite the little guys not seeming to eat everything I threw at them, but then after doing a tank cleaning yesterday I noticed the bigger one was moving a bit sluggishly - though not quite as sluggishly as this morning.

The whole thing has me questioning my own mortality. Alright, not really. But the two grey hairs that Maggie has recently plucked from my head (not to discard them, but to dispell my disbelieve that they even existed) have forced me to realize that I can't hide behind that 'I'm still young' mantra that has kept me a good distance from any real responsibility.

I mean, a hair or two out of... well... quite a few others isn't SO bad, but upon seeing the silver strand suddenly it felt like that part in the movie where we all realize who the killer is .. and lemme tell ya folks, the baddy in this film is time.

So, as might be expected from someone who has just discovered such hairs, I've been devoting a lot of time lately to sorting out what I want to do with my life. I've not come to any concrete decisions yet, but am exploring my options with a little more long-term-idness than previously.

Now before I get a lot of comments (right, a LOT of comments, hell does anyone even read this anymore?) about being to uptight and serious about things... don't worry, I'm doing it all with a casual grace.

Oh... Maggie got a job today. Well, she technically got a job yesterday, but when a better job presented itself this morning, she nixed the first one. It looks like she's going to be working as a clerk (of some sort) for a company that deals in imported wine. It's 6 days a week, 8-5... and she only pulls in less than 1/3 of what I make for lazily working two days a week... but well, I don't make the rules. She starts tomorrow ... bye-bye day-time company. It looks like I might actually be forced to do productive things with my day, instead of the current schedule of laying around uttering the occasional, "we should really do something productive."

Fun for the Day: The Amazing Falling Junichiro
This one is for all the Chinese and Koreans that think Junichiro Koizumi can take his ancestors and his mutated sense of pride and stick 'em. Generally my views on Sino-Japanese relations tend to side towards the island people to the east, but when you're a public figure and you continue to do something you know is going to piss off one and a half billion people ... you deserve to be thrown around the screen and giggled at as you slide over spacey balls.

The High (Speed) Life

2005-10-17T11:56:00.000+08:00

That's right folks! I'm back on top! After nearly two months without ready access to the wonders of high speed internet, this morning a young man delivered a beautiful little box that is making my shiney new laptop just that much hipper.

So the breakdown, for anyone in Dalian looking to get ADSL is such:
400 元 - 6 mo. access
100 元 - Install fee (the most I've ever paid someone to take something out of a box)
180 元 - 6 mo. rental fee for modem
300 元 - deposit (which I allegedly get back)
~~~~~~
980 元 - The total cost of heaven. Honestly, it's pricy and I hated paying it (especially that install fee), but sometimes you just have to suck it up and accept that there are costs associated with being this cool.

Like A Chinese Space Program

2005-10-11T15:35:00.000+08:00

So tomorrow China's going to space, again. I am not sure if it's been all over the news or not as I'm still on dial-up and haven't been able to keep current with anything - but I doubt it, I mean 20-30,000 people just died in Pakistan. Two years ago China sent the first Chinese man into space, and despite being decades late for any sort of claim to fame, you wouldn't know it from the tickertape still lining the hearts of most Chinese when you mention the name Yang Liwei.

I'm guessing China will -eventually- be the second country to land on the moon, just a tad shy of four decades after Neil coined that "One small step for man..." phrase. When I asked Maggie why it was so important to go to the moon so long after it had been done, she said that China wants to be the 2nd for national pride. Now I laughed at this initially because I thought it was hilarious that it was even an issue... but then I clued in that it's not a race to be second, but a race to beat the Japanese there. Now, again, I'm not 100% on this, and it's all conjecture, but I'm pretty sure the Japanese aren't even aware they're in a space race with their big, red neighbours.

Anyway, that leads me into two things: 1) despite their best efforts to give me loads of things to whinge and joke about, I'm now officially making an active effort to stop bitching about the Chinese and the country that contains them (and me). After countless dead-end talks with the woman I love about the country she gets her cultural identity from, I've realized that it is just far too easy to spend all day focusing on the bad things in this country and I've got better things to do (like finding the good things). 2) I am really, really getting high speed. This dial-up crap sucks ass as I can never get any pages to load, I spend loads of cash just waiting for things to upload/download/load in general... and more often than not I just spend my time waiting for something to happen. Initally I hoped having dail-up would keep my tush off the computer for so many hours a day, but now I'm realizing it just bottlenecks the time I spend on the computer. I can't get new programs or new music, can't read the news or keep in touch with people, can't regularly update my blog (gasp!).. and generally it just makes me less cool.

A somewhat desolate looking Jinshitan.

So... what's new? Well... because of the National Day holiday (Happy 56th PRC!!) last week, all the kiddies had to go to school this weekend, giving us Future School teachers a rare weekend off. This motivated someone to organize a Future 4 day at the beach. After trying, unsuccessfully, to convince Maggie to come (the "I know it'll likely suck, I know no one goes to the beach in October, but c'mon..." didn't work)... about 15 of us (the foreign teachers and a load of Chinese staff as well) headed up to Jinshitan and had a wonderful day drinking in the sun. Ok, well us foreigners drank... the Chinese people did their best to hide from the sun while playing various games.

The Future 4 crew: [1] My roommate, Ryan Wang. [2] Maeve from Belfast. [3] Cam, from England, and her visiting boyfriend. [4] Scott feeding the wolf. [5] The school's manager, Esther. [6] My Chinese teacher and TA, Carol with her boyfriend.

As evening approached we headed back to the lightrail station and I got Maggie to meet the lao wai in Kaifaqu, where we had an excellent meal of North Korean food at "3,000 Miles" an excellent N. Korean restaurant I've now been to several times and not once been disappointed. It's difficult being let down by a place when they top off good food with singing/dancing Korean girls. It's a bit surreal sitting, eating your meal, and then watching your waitress strap on an electric guitar, nod to her co-worker and then start jamin' out a combination of Korean and Chinese songs.

[1] In true Chinese style, the girls were kind enough to cover him in newspaper first. [2] I'm still at a loss as to what the idea of this was, but I was game for taking a photo. [3] Now that's a skill, how many people can work an umbrella and play catch? [4] Christina and Sophie hiding from the sun - notice the long johns - it wasn't exactly cold...

The last couple days I've been doing mostly a fat load of nothing. I'm getting into a bit of a routine for practicing Chinese and I've started picking up writing. I wasn't going to focus too much on writing, as between writing, reading and speaking, it's the least needed. However, a lot of people have told me that if you can read the characters, speaking is a lot easier to understand, and to remember the characters, writing is a great way to help your memory. It's slow, but going well. There are just a load of Chinese characters, but for functional, everyday language there's about 3,000 (covers 99% of everyday language), of this about 925 construct the majority of commonly written things (about 90%). So, it's a lot of little lines to learn, but it's doable.

And we didn't even tip...

I've also finally broken down and bought a new guitar. Since my first month here I've had this crappy 200 kuai piece of junk and it's finally worn thin on my patience for playing it. So, it's taking a seat next to my old laptop and I've now got a much nicer, richer sounding Johnson acoustic. It was 600 RMB, but in my opinion worth every penny.

And the final bit of business... Dalian now has a Subway Sandwiches shop!!! After coming out of Xinhua Bookstore yesterday a big green and yellow sign beamed at me from across the street. I swear to you, I nearly fell down in a fit of happiness. Maggie must have thought I was completely mad for being so excited about some fastfood sub place, and I am sure some of you in the comforts of your western world may agree with her - but if you've had three choices for fastfood - McDonalds/KFC/random Chinese food - for the past 9 months, you might sympathize. It's only been open a little less than a month, and the girl (ahem, Sandwich Artist) said a lot of the customers are foreigners. Both her and her manager/boss/laoaban spoke great English (more than I can say for the staff at KFC), and I can see this place quickly becoming a hotspot for lao wai. Maggie seems certain no Chinese people are going to dig it, but I think as more and more Chinese people sort out that growing waists and heart disease are directly proportional to their trips to KFC and Micky Ds... Subway and other healthy alternatives are going to blossom here.

So, if that #1 thing above doesn't work out - hell, I've got a new guitar and Subway!!

Oh - here are some pics of my "new" apartment:

[1] Bedroom: a bit bigger and brighter than the last, and with a nice big bed. [2] Livingroom: alright, a bit sparse on furniture. That's Maggie studying hard at the far end. [3] The balcony. [4] The view from the balcony looks towards downtown Dalian and the sea/shipyards. [5] My new computer.

2005-10-01T14:00:00.000+08:00

Hey, so I finally did a post up for my trip to the zoo a month ago. Check it out, there's lots of snuggly animal pics...

Dalian Forest Zoo - Caged

We'd Like To See Your References...

2005-09-30T17:34:00.000+08:00

Alright, I know I've been crap at posting lately, but it's not my fault! The only reason this is getting posted is through the grace of Buddha and his karmatic rewards. See, I'm stuck on dial-up, which though slow usually allows some movement on the web. However, for whatever reason every time I've tried to go anywhere online for the last week I've just been met with "Page Cannont Be Displayed" errors.

Until about five minutes ago, I was beginning to think it might be something ill in my new system (more on that in a moment), but as this page seems to be working, perhaps others are as well. There may be hope for this dial-up thing yet.

Right, so I'm typing this on my brand-new, fresh out of the box (as of Monday) laptop. Now, not to get all gushy about inanimate objects... but it's love. I know, I know... I've been throwing that word around on this site quite a bit lately... but after suffering through a mediocre system for the last two years, it's nice to have some power again.

For all the techno geeks out there, the following is for you, and for the rest of you, just skip down a bit:
What I had
PIII 750 MHz
256MB RAM
10 GB HD
12" screen
8MB video RAM

What I've got
P4 M 1.7 GHz
512MB RAM
60 GB HD
15.4" WXGA wide-screen display
256MB video RAM
DVD player + CD-RW

It's great.

I looked around at name brand computers, and settled on getting a Chinese brand called Hasee. I checked out the company online and feel pretty comfortable about the purchase, and the comprehensive warranty is nice too. When I went to look at computers last Friday it was priced in the flyer at 8999 yuan, but when I came back on Monday the price had been dropped by 400 yuan to 8599 RMB. So, paid to sit on it over the weekend - and it was nice because I had already settled on paying 8999 anyway. For all those without a calculator, that's about $1,300 Canadian. Not cheap, but well... if I'm not going to Australia, I think I deserve a treat. Ok, ok, Maggie's the treat... the laptop is just a bonus.

So now a word on the Chinese employment system. I'm having the fortune of witnessing first-hand what an averagely employable Chinese person needs to do to get a job here. About a week ago Maggie started seriously looking for a paycheque, and though I've asked loads of questions, I'm still pretty much in the dark as to exactly how it all works.

Basically all the ads she answers in the newspaper are from a few (maybe one?) headhunter-like companies that search out employees and match them with a job. The catch is that unlike any employment program I've see, this one runs you 150 kuai. So, after an interview with the employment company and forking over some cash she was given some good leads to follow - of which nothing seems to have panned out. Then yesterday she went to another interview where she was told about an internet sales job and was also offered 300 RMB for 3 hours of modelling work. Modelling what? Well.. underwear for the Japanese market. She was promised her head would not be shown and her body would just be seen by Japanese... she passed on it.

Going to the Internet sales thing today she learned it was actually trying to sell Web design to businesses on a 15% commission, no salary - meaning no sales, no money. Again, pass.

The kicker is that the best job she could really hope to get would be maybe a 40 hour/wk. job as a clerk or receptionist, pulling in about 1,000 RMB a month. That breaks down to about 45RMB/day - less than what I make in an hour of teaching at Future School (less than half of what I'd make an hour doing private tutoring).

She wants to get a job to help out, pay her own way for things, and start saving for coming back with me to Canada next summer (that's right Cory, looks like I've got a date for the wedding). I put this all in perspective though, and it just seems like she's throwing pebbles in the Yangzi to help build the new dams.

It really makes me feel lazy too. I do bugger all (work 2 days a week - and not even full days) and get paid more than three times the amount of someone who slaves away Monday to Friday...

So, things I'm planning to do to help kill my laziness and eventual boredom:
1) Study Chinese
2) Learn how to cook Chinese food
3) Pick up some tutoring work (mostly to refill my bank account - damn laptop!)
4) Get fit (yeah, that's been on the list for years... but meh)
5) Get back into writing professionally

And if all that fails, I bought all ten seasons of Friends on DVD yesterday (for 55 RMB!).

Not Long In Dandong

2005-09-23T14:37:00.000+08:00

But you don't really need long...

Monday Maggie and I took our trip up to Dandong and I think we were both pleasantly surprised by the congeniality of the place. Though I guess Maggie's disposition is a little slanted, this being the first time she's really travelled anywhere - and it's only 4.5 hours away. "They have YELLOW taxis here!" makes me laugh every time I think of it.

From what I had heard from others, I was expecting a shitty little villiage with a few restaurants, a rundown hotel or two and some boats on the river... what I found was very much to the contrary. Though not as big as Dalian by any means, Dandong is a full-on city.

After a rather bumpy bus trip we sorted out where we were staying (a school-provided apartment) and grabbed some lunch. We were both a bit eager to try the Korean food, being so close to the border and all. The food was mamahuhu, but as we learned, damn cheap. Every meal we ate in Dandong came to about half of what you'd pay for it in Dalian. None of it was as good, but it was cheaper. I guess that's sorta the slogan Dandong could go by.

[1] Maggie and I on the Yalu River Promenade. [2] Balanced relaxation.
With the afternoon to kill before I had to do my obligator three hours of teaching we headed down to Ya La Jiang, the river that keeps the North Koreans on one side and the Chinese on the other. The shore of the river has a nice promenade, similar (in a Dandongian fashion) to The Bund in Shanghai, and we lazily walked along it taking photos and checking out the brides getting their photos taken.

[1] A great place to fly a kite ... or hit Lao Wai up for spare change.
Class went well, two 1.5 hour classes with A7 and A6 students. After class Maggie and I hit some hot pot and wandered around the city a bit, calling it an early night as we were both exhausted from a late night out at Noah's Ark (a cool Dalian bar) the night before celebrating my roommate Ryan's birthday.

[1] A statue by the river, advocating peace I think - ironically the three girls look remarkably caucasian. [2] What would a city be without Mao greeting you at the train station? The positioning of the statue does give you the sense that he's telling you to get right back on the train.
Tuesday was the day we had to do it all - thankfully there was not much to do - again, this isn't exactly Shanghai or Beijing. We took a bus (4 kuai) out to Tiger Mountain (Hu Shan) where the most eastern section of the Great Wall (Chang Cheng) lies. The wall itself is really only a 'representation' of what the old wall would have looked like if a good number of centuries hadn't had their way with it. It's only about 15 years old and a kilometre long. Essentially you climb the wall up Tiger Mountain and take in the surrounding scenery - which justifies the 40 kuai entrance fee (30 for the wall, 10 for the manditory museum at the other end). It's a bit weird, after being to the 'real' Great Wall that majestically rolls off for untold miles in the distance, to be able to comfortably (like without straining) see both ends of it.

The [not so] Great Wall, the surrounding view.

The best bit, in my opinion, of the trip was being so close to another, semi-forbidden, country. After you do the Great Wall you hike around the side of the mountain and are literally a stone's throw away from North Korea (and men with rifles keeping a VERY close eye on you).

Local wildlife.

[1] A steep but fun climb around Tiger Mountain. [2] The side with the boats is China, the side with the bushes is North Korea.
We returned to the city and again went down to the river to see about taking a boat ride along the other bank to take a better look at the Koreans. There are a number of boats that will take you out on the river, and the standard fee seems to be 10 kuai in a crowded boat or 30 kuai if there's no people. Due to it being rather late in the day we had to take the 30 kuai option, but having a big tour boat to ourselves was kind of nice.

Dandong shore - North Korean shore

Boat from Dandong - Boat from North Korea
The Chinese and North Korean banks are complete contrasts. Dandong is a big, developed city with a beautiful treed street that runs along the river, the Korean shore is just a collection of old boats, some cranes and a factory. We did see some people fishing, but they only returned my wave with steely stares.

Satisfied we'd seen all there was to see in Dandong, we had some food, crashed and caught the bus first thing in the morning back to Dalian. All in all it was worth the visit, but as everyone I've talked to says, it is easily done in a one day, one night trip.

The smile that kept me in China.
Well, I'm going out today to take a look at a new laptop. This one has been acting up lately, and it is a little dated, so I'm considering getting a new one. It'd be nice to have a more powerful machine, but the cost will largely decide whether or not I'm willing to part with the hard earned People's Money I've been saving. I've been tossing around the idea of getting a new laptop or a new digital SLR camera... I'm not 100% on either yet, but I think the laptop is a more practical purchase, even if the camera is a bit more coveted.

It's been strange not having direct Internet access at home, and to be honest, perhaps it is for the best because I've not really missed it. I checked my e-mail nearly a week ago and really haven't been too bothered to go and check it again even though I'm only a block away from the Internet cafe. However, I have finally gotten around to sorting out a number of photos, so feel free to re-browse the following entries for their newly garnished visual appeal:

Shanghai'd
All Thai'd Up
Bye Bye Bangkok
Rain Rain Go Away
Diggin' The 'kok
Farang? I'm A Lao Wai Thank You Very Much

Eventually I might get those zoo photos up too...