独一无二, 无尽的爱

Taken shamelessly from Good Morning China!

BEIJING TRAFFIC: as American Football
To help you understand Beijing traffic, and perhaps to one day navigate its hazards, I’ve come up with the following analogy. I hope you find it helpful.

BEIJING TRAFFIC: as American Football

Traffic lights: BAD QUARTERBACK

In Beijing, a traffic light is like a quarterback- an extremely bad one. It’s so bad, none of the players listen to it. If they don’t get what they want.. they’ll just audible audibly and bullrush the intersection. Because of this lack of respect for Mr. QB, you find yourself in an interesting predicament.

You: RUNNING BACK

As soon as the quarterback huts and the light turns green, you might as well find some holes in the defense and go for the endzone. Here’s what you’re up against:

Buses: DEFENSIVE LINEMEN

Slow to accelerate and overweight, you can usually navigate around these guys pretty easily. They’re mainly dangerous because they can block you from seeing over the line of scrimmage, sometimes allowing a strong safety to sneak up on you.

Cars: BAD CORNERBACKS

Nimble, but usually polite, a car will usually cede if you walk in front of it. Bad tacklers. Unfortunately, they can be easily confused with…

Taxis: STRONG SAFETY

These are the guys you have to really look out for- they can really lay the smack down. Quick to accelerate and extremely aggressive, they will stop at nothing to “invent” lanes to tackle you. Beijing taxis make Rodney Harrison look like Michelle Kwan. Naturally, they love to talk trash, and honk frequently.

That’s it for the defense- let’s look at what’s protecting you from this monstrosity.

Other pedestrians: OFFENSIVE LINE

Strength in numbers, but I can’t tell if these guys are for or against you. On the one hand, if you can get sandwiched between a group of 5 or 6, you’re usually good. On the other hand, if you’re only with 1 or 2, they can be very hesitant. This might be because they perceive themselves as running backs and you as their offensive line. Luckily, there’s one last offensive player, and it’s the best.

Bikes: FULLBACK

Hands down, your biggest asset. These guys are big, bad, and have been in the league for years. I mean it takes balls just to WALK in Beijing… to bike here is Chuck Norris ballsy. So, if you can walk quickly with a bike protecting you from those nasty strong safeties, you’re all set. Touchdown.

Caught a cold on Saturday night, as I slept in the living room (tout nu) with the windows open. Still trying to get well, but my “dear” colleagues switch the aircon on in the afternoon since the SH weather is heavy, humid and very hot. It has been raining a lot over the last 10days or so (except the last 2 days), but the air is still stifling. I hope I get well by tomorrow.

Yesterday the electrician came AGAIN, because there was a socket that was not working in my room. He came slightly before 7pm, and left around 9.20pm! All the while I couldn’t prepare dinner. Darn. Anyway, my guest room now only has ONE socket that works. The other 2 has been condemned because the original current circuit was no longer working properly. What else will break down in the last 6mths contract I still have? I wonder.

My laptop was starting to crash last week, and I finally gave up and sent it for repairs on Tuesday. Still haven’t heard any news about it, although the first indications are that it’s the Graphics card that’s fucked up. And the laptop’s less than 1 year old. WTF?

It still has a warranty, but the cost to send the laptop to HK for repairs would far exceed doing it here in China. Oh well.

Went to Taizhou, in Jiangsu province last week, for business purpose. Arrived there on Thursday evening, had the meeting on Friday afternoon (the time was moved because one of the people attending was still out of town), took the coach back to Shanghai on Saturday morning. I had no time to visit the place. But I did learn that Mr Hu Jintao (the current Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China) was born in Jiangsu.

Anyway, a few pictures from my phonecam.

1. Take out the clothes immediately after the washing machine finishes the cycle late at night. Leaving it till the next morning results in the clothes smelling funny.

2. Stop being afraid to press the light switch on. Fuses blow up, it is normal. Just keep a candle around.

3. Keep trying to learn Chinese.

As it’s been well documented, the Chinese people are unhappy about the way ‘Western’ media portraits the Tea bet issues, and the ‘aggressions’ on the torch bearers (especially the one on the handicapped lady). As a result, they’ve pinpointed the French as the recipient of their anger. (This plus the fact that the French president said he wouldn’t attend the opening ceremony)

Last week I got a message on my QQ, of all people it was sent to me by my Chinese ’sister’ now living in America. It called for the boycott of Carrefour on May 1st. This kind of message has now been posted for on many Chinese forums and circulated via msn/QQ.

And today, the Chinese MSN users are displaying a (L)China (that’s Love China) on their name/message. See my picture below. It’s apparently a sign of Chinese unity towards the Olympic issue and against France/Carrefour.

Also, I saw on a website a guy saying the cops stopped him when he was illegally riding on his motorbike. And the question the cop asked him was “are you French?” before seizing the bike. He isn’t French, but it shows the animosity Chinese people are feeling towards the French.

Of course, it’s not all towards French. As I said, the Chinese are not happy with the Western media and China has apparently requested for a CNN commentator to apologise for having said bad things about China.

The anti-Western sentiment that has been brooding lately (even before the Tea bet thing) is now getting worse. Visa checks, registration, renewals etc are all getting tougher.

Will this keep going until the Olympics? Who knows. But some expats are starting to complain that because of the actions of people outside China, they (the foreigners in China) are suffering unnecessarily.

I guess we’d better keep low profiles this year.

Hurray! Wiki and blogspot are unblocked. But for how long? Hope this will keep going for a while.

As troubles flare in the Western area of China, and protests are organised in the region called Tea-bet (I guess you can figure out what the exact name is), the Chinese censorship strikes again.

Since yesterday, it has not been possible to access Youtube and for most of the yesterday you could not access Yahoo.com mail. For some reason it was only yahoo.com, not yahoo.co.uk or yahoo.fr mails. Probably because the Yahoo.com website had an article on unrest in Tea-bet. Although Yahoo is now accessible as well as the articles about Tea-bet, Youtube remains blocked. The reason for that is the existence of several videos showing unrest in Tea-bet.

Forums where the word Tea-bet comes up triggers the Netnanny and the Great Firewall of China gets in motion. Access to the sites become slow and time-outs become more often.

It is to prevent this site from suffering the same fate that I have changed the name of the region.

We’re days away from the celebration of the 40th year of independence and I’m not at all excited. Is it because I’m far away from Mauritius? No, I don’t think so. I’m feeling more and more like it’s no big deal and I don’t belong there.

Don’t get me wrong. Although I am not celebrating, it doesn’t mean I think the independence thing is crap or that we would have been better being a British colony. It’s just that the annual show we have back home for independence day is so bad and boring. And oftentimes politicized.

Here in China, the Mauritian embassy is inviting the Mauritians to a reception in Beijing that evening. Nothing much, but then it’s always been like that. At least they’re holding a little something. Under the previous Embassador, we sometimes didn’t have any celebration, and the explanation I obtained from unofficial sources was that the government at the time didn’t allocate any fund to that respect, and that our dear Embassador was losing face towards other Embassadors on that account.

Well, I’m glad to have received an invitation to the reception, but I will have to decline, as it’s on a workday, and (more importantly) I am in Shanghai, and not Beijing.

I just read an old article on the website Servihoo where the local national broadcasting station, the MBC, is pushing for the switch to digital TV.

À partir de 2009, tous les foyers mauriciens devront avoir un décodeur pour capter la Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) en numérique. “Les Mauriciens devront obligatoirement avoir un décodeur pour capter ces émissions” …. d’ici 2015 la télévision analogique sera appelée à disparaître dans le monde. Un calendrier a déjà été préparé par l’International Telecommunication Union. Pour l’Afrique, la date arrêtée est de 2011-2012. Mais pour Maurice, précise-t-il, cela se fera dès 2009.

I might be wrong, but the way I understood the article, analogue TV channels are going to be stopped, and the local populace will be forced to fork out to buy a decoder box. Maybe as from next year. (Note: digital channels already being offered by MBC for a certain fee)

I support the move to offer digital channels to the Mauritians, and to make them pay for that. After all, those who want better variety of programmes and entertainment are already subscribing to satellite channels, and they have no problem in finding that extra money.

But I am totally against the MBC’s plan to force people to subscribe to their digital channels. We are already imposed a monthly (quarterly? annual?) fee to have to watch real crappy programs (90+% of the contents sucks, no decent local production, the foreign movies are of yesteryears). Now we will have to pay for a decoder box? I don’t care if they say it’s a one-off charge, these things will need to be updated/upgraded constantly, and they can break down. No need to say that we will probably end up disclosing some info about ourselves on registering. They are an additional charge to the low-income families.

If there is no more analogical (sp?) channels, am I allowed NOT to pay the monthly TV fee if I only watch channels from other satellite providers? After all, I won’t be able to WATCH OR RECEIVE MBC if I don’t have the decoder box. Right? So would I still be charged for a service I can’t receive?

Will the people in Mauritius really care about what I just wrote? Probably not. Nowadays we have become really apathetic and just put our hand into our pocket to pay while grumbling about poor or useless services. We are currently paying a TV fee irrespective of whether we do watch the MBC on the charge that our TV sets can receive the broadcasted channels. We will just accept the changes, think the MBC is more crap than ever (because we will hopefully see the programmes more clearly), then get on with our lives. After all, that article is over 6 months old, and nobody said anything meanwhile.

Servihoo article: Here