Two techniques to add to your urban sport-walking arsenal

After enduring/enjoying a self-imposed 3 day quarantine in my dorm room (except for trips to the canteen and to the water fountain downstairs), I joined my aunt for afternoon tea in Causeway Bay today. Since today is a public holiday - most people in Hong Kong WORK on Saturdays - the crowds were heavier than usual. Stores, malls, restaurants, and sidewalks were packed with people.

It is exactly when sidewalks are packed that people shouldn't walk at a leisurely pace or to try to "own" the sidewalk. Unless you're a toddler or you're old and/or incapacitated, you should try really hard to stay out of peoples' way, especially where there may be bottlenecks. Today, I rediscovered two old friends of mine: "kicking heel" and the "no-look hit".

"Kicking heel" is a technique I perfected in Taiwan. Whenever slow-moving people walking in front of me blocked my way, I would aim my step at the heel of one such unfortunate pedestrian. Believe me, these people felt it. They would inevitably stop in their tracks while their friends would keep walking, leaving me a gap wide enough to walk through. On my way through, the victim would give me a glare, and I'd pretend to apologize, but I often give a menacing parting glance. Was it an accident? Maybe. Probably not. Don't block peoples' way, BITCH!

You may have heard of the "no-look pass" in basketball. My not-yet-patented "no-look hit" is similar. If I see oncoming people walking straight into my path, and if I consider them hit-worthy, I pretend to be looking at a girl across the street or at a store window, and KABLAMO! Again, a falso apology, but a menacing parting glance. Was it an accident? I certainly don't think so. Watch where you're going, bitch!

I'm pretty sure I wasn't like this before I moved to Asia.

Lazy CNY post

I'm still recovering from my cold, and still haven't been able to bring myself to write. Anyway, I'm going to cheat and paste an email I sent to friends this time last year:


Happy Chinese New Year! Farewell, Year of the Monkey, and hello, Year of the Rooster! Despite having plans to leave town during the holidays, I decided to stay in Beijing.

Beijing is a bit less crowded than usual because a large proportion of the population has left to go home, home being the countryside or smaller cities, both near Beijing and from all across the country. Seeing one's family is the most important aspect of Chinese New Year, the most important holiday in China. This usually involves long distance travel, usually train travel. According to China's Ministry of Transportation, train passengers made 680 million trips between January 25 and February 5. By the time the 40 day travel season is over, travellers will have made 2 billion train trips! Train travel, which is usually already a bit of an ordeal in China, can be unimaginably and agonizingly torturous at this time of year. I will continue to merely imagine these unimaginable images because I'm unwilling to experience them firsthand and would probably fly if I need to travel.

On Chinese New Year's Eve, a former classmate invited me and her boyfriend (also a former classmate) to her parents' house for dinner. After chatting over tea, nuts, seeds, and candy, we enjoyed a very pleasant home-cooked feast of about a dozen courses. I honestly can't recall what we ate, but I CAN say that dinner was tasty. Like my year and half year stints in Taiwan, I've been living almost exclusively on restaurant food and takeout, so any home-cooked food is a welcome break for me. We returned the next day to enjoy home-wrapped dumplings and another feast.

After dinner, we sat down to watch the CCTV Chinese New Year Gala Show. First broadcast in 1983, the gala show had an audience of 500 million viewers in 2004! By contrast, 86 million people watched this year's Superbowl and 125 million people watched the final episode of M*A*S*H. A 6 hour long affair, the show includes performances by pop artists from around Greater China (such as Hong Kong superstars Andy Lau and Jackie Chan and Taiwanese pop idol Jolin Tsai), dancers, martial artists, and comedians. The comedy skits and dialogues made up about half of the show, and unfortunately, it was the dialogue-heavy word plays that I had the most trouble understanding. I found the show to be a much more serious affair than the more ridiculous and often low-brow Hong Kong and Taiwanese variety shows, though then again those shows are weekly shows and this is a big bang once a year sort of deal. Unlike the less serious Hong Kong and Taiwanese shows, the stars of the show are not "flavour of the month" celebrities and the comedy skits are not as racy and cheesy. However, a few "flavour of the month" celebrities such as Olympic gold medallists and Jackie Chan's lacklustre son did make cameo appearances.

This being the first Chinese New Year I've spent in China, I've noticed some things here that I've never really seen in Vancouver. For example, I've noticed that there are numerous "temple fairs" in and around the city, perhaps as many as 170 of them. I went to the Changdian Temple Fair, one of the larger ones in Beijing, near the Liulichang antiques district. I read later that it reopened in 2001 after a 37 year absence, and that in the past, it was the most popular of the 8 largest temple fairs. It was a lively affair, with various performances on makeshift stages, hawkers peddling knick-knacks that no one really needs, and foodstalls selling snacks that have been exposed to Beijing's dusty wind and peoples' cough and sneeze particles. It may surprise you, but I actually ate a couple of things, including honeycomb candy, grilled egg pancake, and deep fried ice cream. As for the performances, there were singers, puppet shows, traditional Peking Opera, martial arts performances, and even acrobats and contortionists. I also went to a smaller temple fair, which had more or less the same stuff, so I assume most of the temple fairs are the same. In other words, I didn't bother going to any others, haha.

In China, where gunpowder was invented, people everywhere have been lighting fireworks and firecrackers. Every night, I hear the unmistakable cracks, whizzes, bangs, and booms of fireworks, some of the booms so powerful that they set off car alarms! All this happens despite the fact that there is a ban on fireworks, but like most laws, the ban is ignored. I've learned that in China, people break almost all of the laws. People run red lights, violate building and zoning codes, cheat on tax payments, etc. Companies cheat employees out of their pay and foreign firms out of their fair share, and violate health, environmental, and quality regulations and intellectual property laws. I'm convinced that you can violate any law in China, aside from murder, as long as you don't join a banned cult or criticise top officials. Anyways, I've avoided going out at night in case an errant firework blows off my digits or explodes in my face.

While people seem to celebrate old and relatively new traditions, it seems that even newer traditions have emerged. Throughout the evening of NewYear's Eve, I noticed that my Chinese friends kept sending SMS messages to me, all of them wishing me joy and luck in the new year. If you don't know what SMS is, it stands for Short Message Service, and is known as "text messaging" in North America, and oh, it's a cellphone thing. I also noticed my classmate's sister helping her dad send dozens, maybe hundreds of SMS messages to friends, family, and business associates. According to Xinhua News Agency, China's 330 million mobile phone users will have sent 10 billion SMS messages, known in North America as text messages, during the Chinese Year holiday. Beijing Mobile alone reported handling 1 billion messages on New Year's Eve! Wow, Xinhua News Agency sucks, because I've honestly never heard of Beijing Mobile. In case any of you are wondering, NO, I did NOT buy red underwear to wear on New Year's Day. As for spring cleaning, I hired my cleaning lady to do that for me. She comes every 2-4 weeks or so, and I pay her 30 yuan (less than $5 CAD) for 2.5 hours of work. The going rate is actually 8 yuan per hour, but I figure that a happy worker is a productive worker.

Sorry I didn't send e-cards, but you know me - I'm not a very festive guy. Still, do drop a line. It seems that news alert email far outnumber email from friends (hint hint!). Come on! Say hello to poor, lonely Ken! Happy CNY again!

Ken(ny)

Back, and I brought a cold with me

I got back from Bangkok a couple of days ago, and brought with me a most unwanted souvenier: a case of the common cold. Fortunately, I got sick on my last day there, and I wasn't really sick until I got to Hong Kong. Also, my girlfriend took good care of me during the worst of it - bringing me food and plenty of hot water, checking up on me, booking a doctor's appointment.. what a wonderful girl. Unfortunately, she left Hong Kong today to spend Chinese New Year with her family, and she'll be gone for 2 weeks. Sigh..

As for Bangkok, I think it's a wonderful place that I'll definitely visit again. The food is cheap and tasty, the temples and palaces are stunning, and the people are friendly and attractive. I only wish I could read and speak some Thai so that I could eat a greater variety of food, find more bargains, get around town better, and of course, be able to meet and chat with more Thai people. You should definitely visit if you haven't done so already.

Confucius says...

"Confucius says: Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok."

Haha, this one really cracks my buddy Ivan up! Anyway, I'm off to Bangkok! Ciao!

"China's New Architectural Wonders"

Click on this link, scroll to the bottom, and click on "Slide Show: 10 Wonders of the New China":

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2005/id20051223_903049.htm

I think all of these projects are pretty cool, and hope none of them collapse or anything. I tend to be more merciful than others when it comes to praising or condemning architecture. Buildings that most consider eyesores (e.g. Taipei 101, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong) aren't too ugly, if you ask me, but are bold and distinctive. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of garish monstrosities, such as when a Texan attempts to re-create a French castle.. in pastel colours, or when things are done on the cheap. When I went to Tianjin (Tientsien) with my dad and my girlfriend at the time, I noticed that a lot of the neo-Classical buildings had Greek columns made of plaster!

I'm a bit mixed on China paying top-dollar for name-brand foreign architects. I think it would be better for China, and anyone else, for that matter, to spend more on utilitarian, environmentally-friendly structures than these monumental bold designs. Furthermore, if China is going to spend so much on structures, it would be better to build structures that last centuries or millenia, rather than mere decades.

Pros and cons of producing in China

I read these two articles on the same day. It's quite interesting to read about both experiences.

This lady has done VERY well after shifting production to China:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jan2006/sb20060101_311177.htm?campaign_id=asia_Jan6&link_position=link21

This gentleman, on the other hand, has been much less fortunate:
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=9&art_id=9900&sid=6238951&con_type=1&d_str=20060116

If you're going to do business in China, learn from the mistakes of others, keep an open mind, and think of creative ways to solve your problems effectively. I was once told that when doing business in China, rule #1 is "Nothing is impossible", while rule #2 is "Everything is difficult".

Kim Jong-il in Guangdong

Our "Dear Leader", President Kim Jong-il, is reported to be just across the border in Guangdong Province on a "secret visit". Supposedly, he's in southern China to learn capitalism from the Chinese.

The South China Morning Post reported that the entire White Swan Hotel - the hotel where foreigners stay when they adopt Chinese babies - has been fully booked, and that guests who were staying there were suddenly forced to check out (EDIT: this hotel has 28 floors and 842 guest rooms). Shamian Island, the 24 square kilometer island on which the White Swan Hotel is located, has been closed to traffic. Fortunately for the US State Department, the US Embassy is no longer located on this island on which European factories were confined and Europeans were allowed to settle for part of the year in the days before the Opium War.

Reporting has focused on how secretive the trip has been, with a media blackout in China, and with no press reports from either the Chinese or North Korean governments. Also peculiar is how heavy the security measures have been.

I almost wish I were on Shamian Island, just to spot the short, pot-bellied guy with the huge bouffant hair.

Bangkok bound!

I'm going to Bangkok! After years of being prodded by friends who've visited before, I've finally decided to visit Thailand.

I never went to Thailand in the past because I was more interested in visiting China. Now that I've lived in China for a year, and since I'm a bit sick of travelling within China at the moment, perhaps it's a good time to go to Thailand. Another reason why I never went to Thailand in the past was because I was never interested in the debauchery that many foreigners tend to enjoy there. It's not that I'm a prude or that I live my life free of vices, but I've never felt the need to get drunk off cheap beer and pay women to keep me company. Anyway, it would be silly to ignore such an interesting place just because of some silly foreigners. In fact, I've been interested in Thailand in the last few years. I even wrote papers on Thailand during my undergraduate years, on topics that include the relationship between the state and religion and economic development in recent decades.

I think I'll stay in Bangkok this time. I'll visit northern Thailand, the beach areas like Ko Samui and Phuket, and former royal capitals like Ayudhya and Sukhothai next time.

While in Bangkok, I intend to eat, shop, eat, visit temples and palaces, eat, wander the streets and alleys, eat, and to go to go-go bars. I'm glad my girlfriend is open-minded enough to go to a go-go bar with me. We're not going to go-go bars because we're perverts, but because they're there. Where else can you see women shooting ping-pong balls out of and opening bottles of soda with certain orifices? Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to watch a Muay Thai fight. My girlfriend isn't very fond of violence, and besides, a Muay Thai stadium is no place to bring a lady.

Anyway, I hope you guys can give me some tips on Bangkok. Please tell me how to avoid getting ripped off, places I should avoid visiting, and things I should avoid eating. And let me know where the bargains are. I'm leaving Thursday.

Diabetes

In the last few days, the New York Times has been reporting on a dramatic rise in the number of people with diabetes, with one in eight adult New Yorkers now afflicted.

Honestly, I was scared shitless when I read that some diabetics go blind, that some lose limbs to amputation, and of course, there's the heart disease, etc. An old buddy of mine who's now studying medicine is a bit annoyed that I wasn't alarmed when he warned me about diabetes several weeks ago, but that I'd be alarmed the New York Times. And the thing is, he told me that many diabetics could no longer have sex! No longer have sex??!! MY GOD! Who would I be without my fuck-stick?? While I do anticipate some equipment failure and a drop in sex drive later in life, I'd hate for my tool to be defective while my sex drive is still high.

I should be scared, very scared, because I have a family history of diabetes. I guess you could also say that I'm obese. How many 5'8" guys do YOU know weigh 220lbs? Oh, yesterday, I was 223lbs. Damn. What makes this worse is that I have a serious sweet tooth too.

I'm damned glad I don't live in the US and have to deal with "the byzantine world of American health care, in which the real profit is made not by controlling chronic diseases like diabetes but by treating their many complications" (like amputation!). However, I'm not sure how treatment is in Canada or Hong Kong, or in China if I choose to live there later.

In the last few months, I've started to exercise somewhat consistently (but not last month, when the badminton courts were closed for exams). It seems that's the easy part. The harder part will be changing my diet. Cutting down on sweets really isn't easy. Watching what I eat won't be easy either. But whenever in doubt, I just have to ask myself if I want to be able to make love when I'm 40.

Retirement - not for all

Check out what I read in The Standard (HK) today:

"A 68-year-old unemployed man who claimed he was the most "extreme victim" of police, government and judicial conspiracy has been convicted for an arson attack in Admiralty MTR station in 2004." (emphasis added)

What's wrong with this sentence? People are expected to work even when they're 68 years old?? Wow, Hong Kong can be a very very sad place.

In Hong Kong, I seem to see a lot of people who would be retired if they were living in Canada, but who occupy some of the least desirable jobs in this city. I've seen grannies who clear tables at McDonalds, gramps who deliver take-out, and elderly men and women alike who pick up garbage off the streets and clear garbage cans. No, they're not usually scavengers, but they are hired to collect garbage. They usually push long, narrow carts on which three large straw baskets sit. Most of them are so old that they hunch over these carts when they push them.

I know that Hong Kong is so successful partly because it's NOT a welfare state, but I sure hope people can retire, or at least have the choice not to work, when they're that old. I also hope that people can save so that they can save enough to stop working at some point, but property, food, energy, water, and transportation costs are so high in Hong Kong that it's impossible for quite a few people. I guess this is the ugly side of capitalism, just like never being able to become very rich is the ugly side of socialism in Canada.

Bus riders who piss me off

Today, my girlfriend took the afternoon off to take a stroll, and we ended up walking all the way from HKU to Hong Kong Park in Admiralty. When took the double-decker 5B bus back to Kennedy Town, we decided to sit upstairs. When we got to the upper deck, we noticed that every single pair of seats, of which there were 30, was occupied. Not fully occupied, but each pair of seats was occupied by only one person.

What could my girlfriend and I do? We wanted to sit together, but rather than sit cheek-to-cheek, we ended up sitting across the aisle from each other. As we scanned the upper deck for an unoccupied pair of seats, not a single person offered to sit with someone else so that my girlfriend and I could sit together. This reminds me of a joke how Singaporeans who ride the MRT: whenever a pregnant lady enters the train, everybody who has a seat seems to suddenly fall asleep.

This also reminded me of riding buses in Beijing. Every time someone sat down in an unoccupied pair of seats, he or she would sit in the aisle seat, even if they are travelling for considerable distances. Not only would they occupy the aisle seat, but they would make absolutely no effort to stand up to let me sit in the window seat. About 5% of the time, people would move into the window seat, but the other 95% of the time, they simply shift their legs into the aisle to let me get to the window seat.

This, of course, angered me. If the rider wasn't an elderly person, I'd make sure that my filthy and usually full (and sometimes sharp) backpack would hit them in the face as I tried to get to my window seat. I'd put on a show and make sure they knew how difficult they were making it for me, a person with considerable bulk, and who usually carried a lot of things, to sit down. If you were carrying a backpack full of things, plus maybe even a bag of groceries or two, wouldn't you be annoyed to have to push your way through someone just to sit down? Anyway, for the few foolish people who dared to put on an annoyed face, I usually put on an annoyed PLUS an angry face. The only time this sort of incident came close to escalating to any sort of conflict was when I did this to some really tall guy, who tried to stare me down for 5 seconds, then backed down, then tried to stare me down for another 5 seconds. Well, I can tell you that when I have my angry stare, my usual 220 lbs looks more like 330 lbs, I look fully capable violence, and I give them a sense that I'd rather be beaten to death than to back down.

I won't comment on how often this happens in Canada because I stopped taking public transportation in Vancouver in 1997. I also can't seem to remember if this happened in Taipei or not. I don't even remember what Taipei's buses are like, except that they're only slightly nicer than buses in Beijing, and they pale in comparison to Singapore and Hong Kong's buses.

Oh, don't even get me started on young people who don't give up their seats to the elderly and to pregnant women..

Coal miners - lessons in the value of life in China and the West

It's amazing how much press coverage there has been on the deaths of 12 coal miners in West Virginia. I suppose what strikes me about this heavy amount of coverage is the sense that this was a real tragedy. Judging by the amount of press coverage I've seen in newspapers and news websites (I don't own a television), it seemed as though 120, 1,200, or 12,000 miners were killed.

While North Americans and Europeans don't usually hear about their coal miners dying, those of us in China are constantly reminded that coal mining is a VERY deadly industry. In the past few years, nearly 6,000 Chinese coal miners die per year. And this is only the REPORTED number, reported by the Chinese media, that is. Who knows what the real death toll is.

Why must so many die in China's coal mines? Well, China needs energy, and importing energy costs money, so the use of coal (and in China's case, high-sulfur coal - BAD coal, that is) is a good choice for a developing country with lax environmental laws (and lax enforcement). In the last couple of years, mines that were shut down because they were unprofitable or deemed unsafe were reopened due to a rise in energy prices.

Which brings us to something that really really pisses me off. Mine owners aren't very concerned about their safety of workers because frankly, life is cheap in China. While American miners earn $25,000 to $50,000 USD a year, Chinese miners make 1000 yuan ($125 USD) a month, or $1,750 USD a year. For peasants-turned-migrant labourers, this isn't a bad salary, if you don't mind working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, with minimal safety equipment. But it IS bad when these miners die. A lot of the time, mine owners are real scumbags who won't pay any compensation to the dead miners' families. In fact, a lot of mine owners, as with factory owners, construction bosses, etc., don't pay their workers. They hold back pay for months, maybe even a year or more, and when the workers ask to be paid, they are fired. And if these workers try to appeal to the authorities or take matters into their own hands? These bosses hire thugs to fight them off, or kill them. Oh yes, this doesn't just apply to unpaid workers and the families of those who die on the job, but also to those who are fired because they're injured on the job.

EDIT: According to the South China Morning Post, about 130 million migrant workers in China were owed 33 billion yuan ($5 billion CAD) in 2003.

A friend of mine who works for a Chinese news agency (guess which one, haha!) told me that the rich people I see in Beijing usually aren't Beijingers, but are outsiders. He wanted to buy an apartment in Beijing, but can't do so with his shitty salary. He blames the Shanxi coal mine owners that move their families to Beijing after striking it rich, usually at the expense of their workers. My disdain for the ultra-wealthy in China intensified three-fold after my buddy told me this.

EDIT: I meant to imply that it is often the same bosses who owe the 33 billion yuan who buy up valuable property, buy BMW's and Audi's, send their children (yes, they have extra children and pay the "fines"), and buy all sorts of luxury goods - usually in bad taste.

Unlike a lot of my friends, I don't consider myself a leftie, but I know social injustice when I see it. Another project I'd like to start later in life is a team, or a network of teams, that identifies such scumbag bosses. These teams would kidnap these bosses and force them to pay their workers, under torture (not 'threat of' torture). Of course, I'd practice responsible vigilantism, and would do sufficient research to confirm these peoples' guilt. Hey, if Simon Wiesanthal could do this with Nazis, why can't I do this with these scum of the earth coal miners?

Friends

Last month, I was very very busy seeing friends, old and new. It's particularly nice to see old friends who are back in town for short visits and friends I haven't seen in years. I've also been seeing some Hong Kong friends who are usually too busy with their work, but who have had a couple of days off during Christmas.

It's not always easy to arrange gatherings with friends. There are so many considerations such as when and where to meet, what we want to do, what we want to eat, how much we want to spend, etc. Honestly, I no longer care about satisfying everybody. As long as my suggestions aren't offensive (but fortunately, I don't know many vegetarians in Hong Kong - it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to accomodate vegetarians in Hong Kong!), I'm just happy to be able to gather everybody together.

Unfortunately, this can be a costly time of year. I usually spend less than $20 HKD (around $3 CAD) per meal while eating at the on-campus canteens. When I go out with friends, however, it usually costs anywhere from $50-100 HKD per person, and that's if we're careful enough not to choose the REALLY costly places. Sometimes, I treat my friends, which can double or triple my expenses, but most friends are considerate enough to go Dutch with me; those who are working are usually generous enough to offer to treat me.

Compared to my friends who are working and who live with their parents (so they don't have to pay rent or buy groceries), I'm a bit more sensitive to prices, so I usually choose cheaper alternatives, or at least choices that offer better value for money. We can't go to the cheapest of the cheap, e.g. $10 HKD ($1.50 CAD) wonton noodles because those places rely on high turnover; in other words, they want our asses out of those seats in 15 minutes so that others can slurp their noodles. Some friends of mine who've been working for at least a couple of years are a bit more fussy about the environment too - after all, they don't work from 9am to 8pm, 6 days a week, in order to eat in crowded, noisy, and dirty places. Some of them probably feel this way because they are snobs. Too bad for them. I know millionaires who eat at such places all the time, incognito. Anyway, what puzzles me about my friends who dislike cheap places, even places where we can sit and relax for a while, is that they have no objections to going to bars that are noisier and even more crowded, but where drinks cost $50-100 HKD each. That's one reason why I suspect that they're snobs. Anyway, whether they show it or not, I think my friends are grateful that I always come up with ideas to do things on the cheap.


Seeing old friends makes me think about friendship. I feel fortunate that I've been able to make so many friends in so many places over the years. Living alone in new environments forces me to meet new people, and I'd like to think that I've learned how to and how not to approach and talk to people. Though I've met hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, I've managed to identify nice, considerate, sincere, interesting, and trustworthy people whom I can now call my friends. Whether we only hung out for a couple of days or for several years, the magic of the Internet has allowed me to maintain contact with my friends of all time zones. Even though my best buddy in the whole world since high school is damned busy studying Medicine in Toronto, we chat on MSN Messenger perhaps once a month or so, and if we're lucky, we might see each other once a year. At least that's how it's been in the last few years, when we almost never lived in the same city.

When I meet friends I haven't seen in some time, there is usually much to talk about. We usually update each other on new developments and share our aspirations, thoughts, and feelings with each other. My most genuine friends not only give me encouragement, but also care about me enough to criticise me if I am wrong, though they try their best to do so without hurting my feelings. By contrast, some so-called friends may give plenty of empty praise, but hold back on the constructive criticism, even if it would save me from harm. On the other hand, other so-called friends hold back on encouragement, but instead criticise me endlessly, probably in order to make themselves feel smarter or better.

I continue to make lots of new friends, and now that I'm a bit older and wiser, I sometimes wonder whether or not somebody is worthy of being my friend. I try to be friendly with everybody, and I like to help people who would help me if I were in their shoes, but to bring a relationship to a new level of intimacy and companionship requires some careful evaluation. A good indicator of whether or not someone is genuinely nice is to see how he or she treats other people. I've known people who treat me with the utmost courtesy, but treats everyone around them, including restaurant staff, classmates/coworkers, parents, siblings, etc., like crap. I've learned that some of these people treated me nicely because they wanted something from me at the time. I don't claim to know all of the ways to gauge whether a person is worthy of being a friend, but I CAN say that I learn from my mistakes. Now, I'm even trying to learn skills such as how to hint to unkind, insincere, inconsiderate, uninteresting, etc. people that I'm not interested in being friends with them. I have to be especially careful if these people are neighbours, coworkers, friends of my friends or relatives, etc.

Anyway, to all of my friends, I appreciate your friendship, and if I gave you the URL to this blog (or if I paste these entries into emails and send them to you), it means that I consider you worthy of my friendship, and I sure hope you feel the same way about me.

Dumb Japanese scientists

Japanese marine biologists, particularly whale experts, must be the dumbest scientists around. While whale experts from other countries don't need to find such large numbers of samples (i.e. hunt for more whales), Japanese whale experts need to harvest hundreds, nearly a thousand, whales every year.

Of course, the whole harvesting whales for scientific research thing is a big joke, a front for Japan's whaling industry. These specimens end up on Japanese dinner plates, or bowls, or whatever the hell they eat out of.

I object to reasoning along the lines of "whaling is part of Japanese culture" or "whale meat is an essential part of the Japanese diet." There are lots of things that we used to do but no longer do. Like beheading.

It angers me that China is severely rebuked for the damage it does to the environment while countries like Japan and the US get away with sneakily evading a whaling moratorium and refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol - actually, I guess they're criticised too. I'm not saying that China is right to pollute its rivers, turn a blind eye to trade in endangered animal parts, or burn more and more fossil fuels, though. And to be fair, Japan does a hell of a lot more than the vast majority of countries when it comes to environmental protection. Even several decades ago, when US carmakers were making ONLY gas guzzlers, Japanese carmakers were already making cars with great fuel economy.

I must also admit that the minke whale, of which Japanese whalers catches several hundred per year, is not considered endangered. Also, we must give Japan SOME credit for being a member of the International Whaling Commission, the body that issued a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. We can't say the same for Norway, which does not abide by this ban. However, Japan's use of scientific research as an excuse to harvest whale meat sets a dangerous precedent for other whale species and for environmental protection laws.

Anyway, if I become a billionaire, I would hire hundreds of quick and maneuverable boats that would follow these Japanese whaling ships. These boats would be equipped with underwater speakers that would announce pre-recorded messages in different whale languages - the message would be: "Stay away from the big ship. Watch out for the harpoons." Is that possible? Can we record whale language? Can we synthesize it? I suppose I could also hire Indonesian pirates to board these whaling ships, then tie-up the "scientists", put them onto hot air balloons, then sell the ships to poor African countries for cut-rate prices. I normally think that eco-terrorists are quacks, but combining environmentalism with a big "fuck you" to Japan should be fun.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, my dear friends. I must say that I'm a bit sad to bid farewell to what has been a wonderful year, but I'm optimistic that 2006 will be a happy year for me. The past year was more eventful than most. Rather than bore you with a review of what happened to me last year, I'll just say that I am happy to have been able to explore Beijing, to have the privilege to work on my PhD in Hong Kong, and to have had more than one love affair (though one would have sufficed - but not any one). While I was single at the beginning of 2005, 2006 started with me dating the girl of my dreams, and it just might... well, let's wait and see.

Anyway, I hope all of you will be as happy as I will be, or even happier, unless I don't like you, in which you can go to hell.