Sounds kinda Sci-Fi

The subject of one of my items of my spam box at gmail this morning:

Hymen Destroyer
I want to meet the people who make these things. But from behind one-way mirrors.

Intarweb, I heart you so

My email was down at work today. This is a regular occurence in China, apparently. Someone decided to send me a 4mb picture, and my computer spent 6 hours (and 4 failed attempts) trying to download it. I hate Outlook because you can't choose what emails you want to download. If someone decides to forward their work to the whole company (a regular occurence), then I have to download and sift through steaming piles of useless email.

So, no email = no work here at the moment, so I had to kill most of the day looking busy while not getting bored.

The Top 5 Websites I Visit While Bored At Work (while trying to look busy)
1. Wikipedia ("Geek's Paradise")
2. Yellowfever.co.nz
3. About.com
4. Isohunt
5. YahooXtra

Number 5 is to keep up with news at home, fullstop. Number 4 is to *gasp* download shit at work! I know this sounds naughty, but for all the strict rules run at my company, one thing they don't do is monitor net traffic. The connection is far from lightning, both here and at the Osaka office, but I can get most of an ep of 24 at work, to get the rest and watch it that night. Fabulous.
About.com, which I have been neglecting of late, is to learn Spanish (why else?). "But shouldn't you be learning Chinese, Timothy?" I hear you inquire. Firstly, it's Tim, please. Secondly, Spanish is an awesome language, my girlfriend speaks it, and I'd like to add another notch to my language belt, if only to have private conversations with her. I have far more motivation to learn Spanish, but that's the way my whole life has been run: every major decision I've ever made was decided by a girl. It's worked out so far (well, sure there's hiccups, but all in stride).
Number 2 is the fansite of the newly born Wellington professional football team, the Phoenix. I don't really do board posting, but I think I may have finally found a board I am willing to share my opinion with. Sure, there are other boards that share my interests, but techno music boards just aggravate me because everyone is slightly arrogant over how much they love their electro.
Wikipedia, which would be dethroned by YouTube if I had access to sound at work, is the most fabulous invention utilising the net ever. Freedom of information on a mass scale. YouTube is the most entertaining site, but Wikipedia is the most interesting by a long shot. Maybe its just cos I'm a geek. I even use wikipedia regularly as a work reference, and for translation research. So you can imagine it completely busts my balls that you you can't access Wikipedia from China. I mean, that kind of attitude can make a guy hate a country in a heartbeat. Or at least hate the guys who run it.

I thought it was awesome that the last 3 days I've been unable to access my blog from the net here (as in, I could edit it, but I couldn't view it). I thought I'd been censored nationally for my comments on the nation. As it turns out, the net was just screwing up. Sad; here I was thinking I had a fairly impressive impact factor.

I'm a postmodern and popculture whore - sure, not as much as Chris, I can't stand Britney or Good Charlotte and I won't buy a Louis Vuitton wallet, but I love me my movies, gigs and fashion, yay I do's. So here in Anti-diverse-culture Central, where sure there's ads for Coke and make-up, but I'll be damned if I can find a film festival or drumnbass gig, the net is worth its weight* in gold.

*Wikipedia says the net weighs a mere 35.24 metric tons**.


**Of course it doesnt. Or maybe it does. How the hell should I know - I'm NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK IT UP.


~~Oh, you weren't laughing at the question, just the colour of my shirt~~

Trip to the city

Walmart: Breaking borders in the name of capitalism.

Got home late from work tonight for the second night in a row - was 9.30pm when we rolled into the hotel today. Its not like I have anything to really come home to, and working late here sucks far less than in Japan, but its still nice to have "Me time". Means I'd have more energy to write here. Still, I decided to post once every 2 days, and I'm trying not to break that - at least, not yet. After working at a computer all day, however, the last thing I really want to do is come home and, well, work on the computer. I feel like a member of Kraftwerk.

So I'm staying in a "town" in south-east China, but besides the large number of people, there's not a lot of things to suggest its a town. I mean, where does it end? And where the heck is the centre? Its more like a series of housing complexes constructed around a bunch of factories, and of course a hotel on a hill. So on Sunday when I heard we were gonna trip into the city, I was all about it. Bring on some shopping!

And thus, shopping was brought oneth. We hit Dongguan central, and the reason I know it was central is because they actually had facilities for living! Not to mention a bunch of big-as would-make-America-proud department stores. I spent most of my day in the Walmart "Supercenter". The wonderful thing about Chinese stores is, they look big and flashy, but they still sell the same knock-off crap you'd find in any street market in Asia. Lets take an inventory of what I bought and how much it cost me, eh?

If this was the movies, that guy would have
a sniper rifle hidden among the balloons.

"Armani" Jeans/"Levi" Jeans 120yuan each
"Puma" T-shirt 50 yuan
"Dunhill" cardholder 40 yuan
"Armani" Belt 80 yuan
3 "DVDs" + 1 "box-set" of Heroes 35yuan
"Bvlgari" Sunnies 230yuan

Now, consider that this is actually expensive by Chinese standards. Also consider that 10yuan = 1.30USD or thereabouts. I spent NZ$100 bucks on a new wardrobe and entertainment. Which may, or may not, fall apart on me in the next 4 days (the zippers on the jeans are particularly suspect). I am a fake-shit consumer whore, and how.

I love Chinese salesclerks. I mean, they're this hybrid of street merchant and standard shop assistant, which means they have that "Can I help you?" approach, steeled by some backstreets resilience. I told this lady 5 separate times to leave me alone, but she kept bringing out new stuff for my approval. Didn't help that she didn't really take into account my size, and when I said I liked something, she said they didn't have it that big. That's just teasing.

Traffic highlight of the day was seeing a guy on a moped trying to cut diagonally across an intersection full of cars, with his young daughter on his lap, and his wife on the back. He wouldn't get pulled over for that though - after a week's observation, I've concluded that the minimum number of passengers on a 50cc bike is 2, not counting the guy holding the handlebars. Its a grey-area rule, just like the one that says all drivers must have 2 wheels in the adjacent lane at all times. If you don't check your blind spot and change lanes into another car, it's not your fault, it's their's for not warning you to bugger off with their horn early enough.

On a final note, I think that Pepsi is winning the cola wars over here. It certainly tastes better than Japanese Coke. And looks like something from outerspace when it's written in Chinese. Check it out.

That can't be right. "Pepsi" is 5 letters.