Sandy's Ramblings

Change of scenery

2008-04-11T18:39:00.002+08:00

It's been a while since I wrote anything on here and it's also been a while since I was in contact with most of you. For those who don't already know, I am in Nottinham (been here about 10 days now) in the UK working for a company called Monumental Games and really enjoying it. We're working on a MMOG called Football Superstars which is due out in the northern hemisphere summer.

Let me explain.

Gabi and I were in Sao Paulo, looking for work and honestly finding nothing of much interest. Gabi found an interesting job but the pay was terrible, and I found a couple of companies that looked interesting but also terrible pay and bureaucratic issues - always delays, delays. It started driving us mad, having a positive interview and then being told "We'd love to hire you, but it's going to be take several weeks (months) before we can do anything. Oh, and we can only pay you 2500 reais (about R10,000 in a country roughly 50% more expensive that SA)."

So, I decided to apply for some jobs in the UK to see what came of it and managed to organise a couple of interviews. I flew across around mid-March and ended up getting a job here in Nottingham. I flew back to Brazil to tie up loose ends and whatnot, and then flew back here on 2 April to start work on the 7th. I must say that the quality of the work here is really high, much more so than anything I have encountered before and so I'm going to learn loads - and I truly believe that I'd have struggled to find work of this nature in Brazil and also in South Africa. Those countries just do not have a games industry of the same scale and similarly do not have people with 20+ years of game development behind them running the shows.

Gabi is still in Brazil waiting for her UK visa to come through. It's a crap process (I could go on about it for ages but won't) and finally her application went in yesterday so it will hopefully be ready within a month. Hopefully. So in the meantime I am staying on my own in our apartment here, furnished with a bed and a table with 4 chairs. I also bought a kettle and a toaster so I'm rocking along. The kitchen is furnished with fridge, stove, oven, washing machine and dishwasher though, so I am in good shape.

So yeah, just to let you all know where I am and why, and that there's a spare bedroom in the house (currently empty, but that'll change) and you are all welcome anytime. You just know you want to find out all about Robin Hood...

Anyways, I'd best get back to work.

Later.

Breaking the Silence

2007-11-07T07:04:00.000+08:00

Apologies for being so silent so long, but I've been both busy and lazy. Bits and bobs here are coming to a head - my police clearance finally arrived from SA and so I can start applying to become a Brazilian. For those who have never acquired a South African police clearance before - beware that it takes about 2 months to get and simply states 'Blah blah no record of anything blah.' Could someone let me know why this is such a complex process for them? Surely a quick pop of my ID number into their database have brought that information up instantly? Anyways, it's here and let's hope it's not expired.

Becoming a Brazilian is a fairly simple process but sadly requires me to provide a complete copy of my passport. A complete copy, I'm told, means a photocopy of EVERY SINGLE page there is in there, blank or otherwise. That's about 34 pages. I have 2 passports, so that's 64 pages or so. I think I'll take a book to the copy shop. One upshot of this process is that once it begins, I cannot leave the country until it's complete which is about 6 months. So I'll be a political hostage in a sense. I don't think anyone'd strongarm me at the airport but it'd probably just cause the process to abort which would mean having to get a new police clearance. So no.

Otherwise mostly just killing time here in Brasilia. The weather's generally hot (35ish) and super dry, although the rain is starting up now and serious rains last Friday coupled with hard, dry ground was a perfect recipe for floods, which we had in abundance.

We went off to Cordoba, Argentina's second city, for the last 4 or 5 days and I ate way too much meat. There's not much to see and do in the city proper so we (Gabi, Gabi's mom and I) rented a car and did some 600 kilometres of missions around the place. It's on the outskirts of the Argentinian great lakes and the opportunities there for camping and trekking are fantastic.

Our flights to and from Cordoba were a nightmare - www.voegol.com to see my tormentor. We left Brasilia at about 8pm on Friday and flew to Porto Alegre (near the Argentina border in the south-east of Brazil) and got there just after 11pm - over an hour late due to delays and so we were scheduled to miss our connecting flight. But no worries - our connecting flight was also the connecting flight for several other flights that we scheduled to have arrived by 11pm as well, but one of them decided to break ranks and only arrive at about 2am. So instead of leaving Porto Alegre at 11.30pm or so, we ended up leaving at 2.50am and arriving in Cordoba at 5am instead of the planned 1.30am or so. Since we got to the airport in Cordoba so late, after baggage collection and immigration etc it was after 6am and we were knackered and unfortunately so was the taxi driver - he fell asleep several times on the drive to the hotel, and at one point began accelerating towards the rear of a car stopped in front of us. Lots of screaming and shouting from us woke him up, for a few minutes, and we managed to get to the hotel in one piece, albeit a little adrenalin-charged.

The flight back, although rather uneventful, was horrific - we had to be at the airport in Cordoba by 3am to catch our flight at 4am which went to Porto Alegre again where we waited an hour or so (most of which was spent queuing to check in again) and then had a stopover at Curitiba on the way back to Brasilia, finally getting in at about 12.30. I am going to write a strongly worded letter to Gol airlines here and let them have it - hoping to get a free flight...

Here are some photos of Cordoba and surrounds...

Go figure - it reads 'Do not forget them - they are not negotiable', talking about the Falklands

Big cathedral in the centre of town

Main plaza

One of the many lakes nearby

Another one

Che Guevara's house - lived here for a bit to improve his asthma

African Travels

2007-08-03T06:09:00.000+08:00

After a long hiatus, I thought I'd post something on here - although not much. Since about 20 June or so, I've been travelling through southern Africa with Gabi and two friends of mine from Korea, Nick and Anna. We borrowed my mom's car and starting in Cape Town, worked our way along the southern and eastern coasts of South Africa, trying to outrun the storm that was chasing us, and then went via Swaziland to Mozambique, then to Malawi and now we're in Zambia.

Lots has happened and lots to tell, but I don't have the time now. Nick and Anna had to return home to England to see the families before going back to Korea, so they left us about 5 weeks into the trip. Gabi and I are planning to go to Victoria Falls in the next couple of days before heading into Botswana and then Namibia before going back to Cape Town, sometime in early September I reckon.

Anyways, will (maybe) post more soon - I will at some point, it just might not be too soon.

Felicity

2007-03-05T00:58:00.000+08:00

Last friday my sister passed away after having been really sick for years. To those of you who knew this won't come as too much of a surprise, but when it happens it is always tough. She passed away quietly in her sleep in her bed at home, what better way?

If you'd like to come, the funeral is going to be on Friday 9 March at 10.30am at St James Church in Kenilworth. Best to drop an e-mail though for details because that church is huge and you might get lost.

I'm still in China but tomorrow Gabi and I are flying back to Cape Town, arriving at 7.20am on Wednesday morning. I'm not sure what contact number I'll have there (probably the same as before), but e-mail is always a good option. I'll be in touch with the Capetonians among you when I can.

When you left us you took with you a piece of my heart.
As your name suggests, you were nothing
but happiness and you will live on
forever in my heart and memory.
Enjoy your newfound and much awaited
perfection my beautiful sister.

I love you,
your brother,
Andrew

See you soon.

Leaping Pandas

2007-03-02T01:17:00.000+08:00

Before I start, my apologies to those of you with dodgy internet connections for the number of photos in here. I've made them small so hopefully you'll be ok, but I know South African internet all too well.

I'm going to cram two things into one here, purely for lack of effort. About 10 days ago we (Gabi and I, and our Israeli friend Lihi) were in Lijiang and went on a hike to a place known, rather romantically and ridiculously, as Tiger Leaping Gorge. The name apparently comes from an old legend of local hunters out after said tiger and failing to catch it because it leapt across the gorge - a highly unlikely feat considering that this is one of the deepest gorges in the world, but anyway. Legends are not supposed to make sense.

We initially planned on a 2-night, 3-day hike but found the walking much easier than expected (except for one place known variably as the 24 Bends, 26 Bends and 28 Bends, depending on which map you use) and got to our destination comfortably within 2 days. We also completely miscalculated the amount of money to take with us and so we actually couldn't afford to spend the second night there, so we hot-tailed it back to Lijiang on the second afternoon/evening. Apart from the slightly earlier-than-planned return, it was a beautiful walk complete with waterfalls, goats and magnificent views. My biggest complaint about it is the intense competition by the various guest houses along the way to cover the trail-side rocks with advertising graffiti. Oh, and some random old woman who has claimed a rock at one point of the trail where she demands 8 yuan (about R7.50) for you to stand on the rock and take a photo - is she not aware that you're walking 25-odd kilometres through stunning scenery and are most likely not going to pay top dollar for yet another photo? Each to their own.

Gabi and I at the start of the trail

The backdrop for the walk

Midway

The beautiful advertising graffiti competition

Lihi and I

Gabi and Lihi

Ferdinand Magellan?

My attempt at a vertical panorama to show the height, doesn't quite do it

The end of the road

Anyways, days passed and, as mentioned in a previous post here, we got to Chengdu. Chengdu lies in Sichuan province which is home to 85% of the remaining wild panda population (the other 15% lies scattered in 2 neighbouring provinces) and is consequently home also to some major panda research and breeding centres - one of the very few things the Chinese government seems to be doing right in terms of environment.

We spent the morning at one of these research centres where they rear and breed giant and normal pandas, as well as the so-called 'red panda' which I personally think is not a panda but rather an oversized badger or fox, see the photos that follow. I was amused by the blatant contradiction in the park of one of their signs on the way in that badly misquotes a quote that I'm going to badly paraphrase - 'People that pet animals love them, but people that let animals live their natural lives love them even more'. Can't remember who said it, but it is pretty self-explanatory. Towards the back of the park where the red "pandas" are kept the staff keep bugging you to pay 50 kuai (R45 or so) to have a photo taken of you holding a baby panda or a red "panda". Surely by way of their sign about it being better not to pet animals they should not be offering this service?!

Pandas are awesome creatures to watch, and I must admit that I am now extremely impressed by Tekken's rendering of the panda character - the model they have and its movement is super-realistic, including the sitting posture he uses. We were luckily at the park at the morning feeding and watching these chaps eat is grand. They sit on their arse or lie on their backs and strip the leaves and bark from the bamboo before munching through it at great speed. Apparently they can eat up to about 50kg of it a day, only actually ingesting around 10 to 20kg. Good thing bamboo grows so fast.

Pandas are also crazily endangered and according to signs in the park there are either 1000 or 1590 pandas left in the wild. They also claim that world-wide there are only 184 pandas in captivity, of which either 42 or 48 are in this park (depends which sign you believe). That's not many pandas no matter where you come from. The two main reasons for their scarcity these days are that the Chinese are expanding and land grabbing like only they can do, and also the panda is very fussy about which bamboo it will eat. They eat only 23 or 29 or etc (here we go again) of the 50 or 55 or etc (....) species of bamboo found in the region and so they are extremely limited in their ability to move around and change habitat. Add to that that the give birth to 1 or 2 cubs every few years (they kill the second apparently, preferring to look after only 1) and are prized for their skins (and meat in places), and you have a problem. Clearly the panda is an animal evolved not to coexist with humans. Ok, enough biology lessons about them, here are some poorly shot photographs (we got up at 7am).

Red "pandas" up a tree

Red "panda" - how is this a panda????

Pandas either fighting or playing

Me on a bamboo-lined path

Pandas having breakfast

Having a seat while eating

Why not to travel by bus unless you must...

2007-02-27T11:07:00.000+08:00

I am a smoker. Recently, however, I am on a campaign to cut down quite dramatically and so far so good... I was smoking roughly a pack a day and last week I decided to try to smoke a maximum of 10 day for a week, then 8 a day for a week etc. The 10-a-day week went well (some days I smoked only 8 or 9) and yesterday was my first 8-a-day day. I had 6. Anyways, this is relevant.

I've now travelled on many a Chinese bus. Generally speaking, if the trip is 4 hours or less you're onto a winner. Sadly, China is big and short bus trips rare. The other day we were in Lijiang and needed to get to where we are now, Chengdu. The only option (due to the mountains getting in the way) was to bus to a small industrial town called Panzhihua and then hopefully catch a train to Chengdu. To our great dismay, it is the tail-end of the Chinese New Year week-long holiday, and everyone is trying to get home.

We arrived after almost 8 hours on the bus in Panzhihua quite grossed out. The trip was very winding and up and down the mountains (200km took almost 8 hours...) and someone vomited half-way into the trip. The smell was pervasive and stuck for the rest of the trip. Apart from that though, the trip was good and the scenery quite spectacular.

We got to Panzhihua and we on local bus 64 to the train station when we met an Israeli couple who had arrived (doing the same thing as us) a few hours earlier and reported to us the sad news that the first available train ticket to Chengdu was 4 March, about a week's wait. The only accommodation we could find was the Panzhihua hotel which is somewhat beyond our usual budget we decided to spend one night and then, by hook or by crook, get the hell out.

The next morning we got up early, had a sterling breakfast in the hotel (one plus side, although salted duck eggs are not nearly as good as they sound) and motored off to the bus station to see what tickets we could get. We got one for 1pm and were thrilled. Short lived.

At 12.30, having returned to the hotel, checked out and returned again to the bus station, we waited eagerly for 1 o'clock to come our way. The bus station waiting is fairly jacked up, although filthy, and they have nice electronic signs above each door showing which bus goes where and when. Not one mentioned ours. We kept bugging the luggage check guy about it and he kept responding mutely to us with a hand motion that seemed to indicate "Wait here", with increasing annoyance. So we waited. At about 12.58pm a kind soul, looking stressed, came running up to us and asked if we were going to Chengdu. "Yes" was our obvious response, and he shepherded us to our bus which was marked with a different destination on the front (but did mention two of the main places we'd be passing through). Somehow all the other passengers had managed to divine their way to this bus, but either way we got there. 20 minutes late, the bus departed. I must mention that the seats were pretty comfy.

It was a typical bus with a television, about 40 seats and windows that you can't open. We got going and immediately all the men on the bus light up cigarettes. This never stopped for all of the 18 hours it took to get to Chengdu. It's really fun, despite being a smoker myself (I never smoked on the bus, gloat gloat), to be breathing in second-hand smoke in a confined bus. Add to that that the guy behind us kept using our seats as a means to stand up and every now and then would whack us accidentally on the head in doing so. There was a small window at the far back of the bus on either side which could open, and an old man who looked like a monk was sitting at one a few rows behind us and seemed to have this habit, or a tic, or perhaps he was sick, of churning up a big phlegm-ball and spitting it out the window, every 2 or 3 minutes, the WHOLE WAY. I don't know how he managed this - I was impressed by his stamina and his ability to produce so much moisture in his mouth. Of course, in true Chinese style, this churn and spit skill is not a silent one, it is in fact unbelievably loud. Great fun to listen to while you're fanning smoke out of your face.

On the plus side, no-one vomited on the trip. On the down side, they used the television to show us hour upon hour of Chinese karaoke at full volume. I'm starting to recognise, and despise, many of their songs. We did have about 2 hours of peace at one point when they switched off the TV - perhaps it broke? After a dinner break, we got back on and were treated to a movie that was actually not dubbed into Chinese called 'The Marine'... anyone seen it? If you haven't, don't. It is the worst film I can remember seeing.

Gabi and I took some stomach nausea pills which had the handy side-effect of extreme drowsiness (our reason for taking them) and so, at around 1am, we sort of slept through the rest until we arrived at 7.30 or so this morning in Chengdu.

So, don't take a Chinese bus unless you must.

Of the Chinese toilet...

2007-02-27T10:40:00.000+08:00

Hmmm. This is a topic I've been avoiding almost as much as I try to avoid Chinese toilets. But, as with the toilets themselves, it cannot be avoided forever.

Firstly, there is a big distinction in China between a toilet and a "western" toilet. A "western" toilet is quite simply a toilet as we know it - a ceramic seat-like thing with (when you're lucky) a seat and a flushing mechanism. The provision of toilet paper is almost entirely unheard of. When you find one of these toilets, you sit down and push with all your might because it is a luxury that is hard to pass up.

Chinese toilets come in a variety of flavours. The most common of the lot is a simple ceramic-lined hole in the floor which, oddly enough, has a flushing mechanism - it is not a long drop. Did you know the Chinese invented the flushing toilet? Hard to believe. Anyway, the ceramic hole is, in my opinion, backwards. You do your business on the ceramic ledge near the water pipe and then you flush. If you're lucky, most of the goodness actually flushes away but generally only 50% to 80% actually does, leaving a treat for the next customer. Also, since it is a hole in the floor, you need to squat over it. I cannot squat, I am simply not supple enough - but if you watch the Chinese people they are masters at this. They choose a squat position as a standard waiting pose while I prefer a chair. They squat with both feet firmly planted flat on the ground and so for them it is actually comfortable and they can sit like that for ages with no problem. I have about 20 seconds before my legs start giving way. Interestingly though, apparently it is better for you to crap in a squat position than seated on the throne.

Moving on. The next Chinese toilet reminds me of some old Roman toilets I saw a few years ago in some ruins in Turkey. It is basically a gutter running around the room at a slight incline. You pick your spot and go for it (no privacy here, no doors, just dividing walls). Naturally, the flushing mechanism here is not nearly strong enough (if at all existent) and so there are plenty of faeces for you to examine at your leisure (or take photos of, in my case, don't ask). These rooms generally don't smell so good.

My favourite toilet of all though is the one you find at stops along bus routes - the ones which are really more like long drops that are never cleaned.

I close with a photo.

Enjoy your lunch.

Somewhat unexpected news...

2007-02-07T08:01:00.000+08:00

Back on the road again after a few weeks in South Africa. I left SA on 31 January and got into Hong Kong after a very exciting 3 hour coffee break in Singapore airport. In Hong Kong I met up with Gabi, Lihi (Israeli friend from Beijing) and Deepak (Indian Hong Konger also met in Beijing) and spent two pretty crazy days running around sorting out visas for China and seeing the sights. Gabi, Lihi and I then caught a ferry over to Macau for another 2 nights (we actually won some money in Casino Lisboa...) before a mad series of buses and a ferry to get to Sanya in Hainan island, the big island just off the south coast of China quite near to Vietnam. This seems to be China's beach resort place and is actually quite nice by Chinese standards. Basically just bumming about on the beach here and enjoying the sun. Chinese new year and spring festival start in just over a week and so we need to start making some plans and bookings because I believe that things get somewhat out of control at that time. We're thinking of heading north to Guilin which the Chinese call 'heaven on earth' and which is apparently one of the better places to see the new year in here.

Anyway, enough travel humdrum.

The aforementioned unexpected news is that I am now officially engaged! Believe it or not, as I'm sure some of you will be somewhat incredulous, but it is true. Strictly speaking I've actually been engaged since just before I left the Philippines, but I wanted to chat some more with Gabi in person before running about telling people. We were out on the beach in Sabang on Palawan Island in the Philippines just after Christmas and having dinner at a styling bamboo restaurant, drinking rum & coke and eating a vast array of seafood (and oh so cheap...) when conversation led to the future and one thing led to another and well, we started to seriously discuss the idea and so we said 'well, shall we do it?' and so we did.

Apart from a change of status, nothing else is changing. Our travel plans are as-were (is that a word?) and so we'll still be out this way until Septemberish. After that we'll see.

A side note - how hip and modern am I announcing this on a blog? Makes one cringe.

Anyway, I'm off. A shower and some weak Chinese beer are a-calling.

Laters.

A slight hiccup and subsequent changes of plan

2007-01-04T01:00:00.000+08:00

Swak! My brother was in a bad car accident just before New Year's and so I'm heading home. He rammed into the back corner of a bakkie on the N2 near Mossel Bay on his way home from Moçambique and got hit in the face by the bonnet of the car he was driving. His friend who was in the passenger seat I believe broke some ribs but is generally ok. Andrew went into surgery last night, 3 Jan, and presumably is ok - I don't know yet. The bakkie in question was doing a U-turn in the dark on the national road. Smart man.

Anyways, I am in Manila today but have a flight back to Seoul booked for tonight at 20 past midnight (so strictly not tonight...) and will be trying to get my ticket home reissued there with the aim to fly home on sunday. We shall see. I am thinking of spending about a month at home (still completely in the air though) and then I plan to return to the Orient to meet up with Gabi in China and continue roughly where I left off.

Will keep you posted.

Pub Quizzes

2006-12-20T17:38:00.000+08:00

Just thought I should inform you people of our recent addiction here in Beijing. A bar/coffee shop/restaurant does a pub quiz on wednesday night each week, offering a bottle of Jack as first prize, a pitcher of cocktails for #2 and a six-pack of Qingdao beer for #3. Our team has won the thing once, but of course that was during one of the weeks that I was away in Mongolia. Telling fact.

I don't know if pub quizzes are big in the US, but the ones here are modelled on a very vague notion of the British idea and work ok. The only issue, and it is a big one, is that the people who host it are always Americans and so the questions tend to have a distinctly US bias. What a surprise eh?

There was one week, the Halloween week, when 2 American girls did a 'Halloween Special' quiz for us and it was quite frankly the worst quiz I have ever attended. They tried to use topics that are fairly particular to Halloween and therefore, quite obviously to us non-septics, one of the topics was candy (their word, not mine). The 2 questions I remember were: What chocolate bar is the most popular in the USA? and What is inside a Poptart (not the real name, I don't remember - but something like a Twinky)? For us aliens, no clue whatsoever - although I had the dubious honour of correctly guessing 'Snickers' for the first one.

Anyways, the reason I'm writing about this is that I'm sitting right now in the pub with my laptop holding a table here with Gabi and Deepak and this is going to be our last one. Tomorrow we leave for Hong Kong and I won't be back in Beijing - although Gabi'll be coming back post-Philippines and will have a few to go.

Here's an exciting picture of us holding the table.

My photography skills continue to astound. Thinking caps on...

Manpower

2006-12-10T20:31:00.000+08:00

Greetings, it has been a while. It usually is a while, so nothing new. I've just been out to the shop to try to buy some bread and failed miserably - two shops (both usual stockers of the luxury product) but neither had any "bread" as we know it. They had coconut bread, meat bread and fruit bread, not not just bread. Settled for some croissants in the end. Anyways, while I was out walking I got thinking about China and its manpower and how they work it. Didn't think much, it wasn't far to walk, so this isn't a particularly in-depth post. My apologies in advance.

China has 1.3 billion people. China is a big country. China's population is primarily based in the north-east (the regions around and between Beijing and Shanghai). This means that, when you consider the relative lack of people in areas like Tibet and Xinjiang (the silk-road western China which is really more Arabic, Uighur to be precise) and even in the south (apart from Guangzhou which is the zone around Hong Kong which has received an industrial boom because of Hong Kong's expansion across the "border" into the world of available land and cheap labour) you realise just how densely populated this north-eastern region is in reality.

It's an exercise in trivial interest that most of you can probably name the vast majority of the world's major cities - let's say cities that have more than 10 million inhabitants. I'm using figures that include the so-called 'metropolitan' area of the city - that being the surrounding suburbs since I feel that this really is part of the city and gives a more accurate account. Let's have a look here at the top 20 and see how many of these you do or don't know...

(this comes from worldatlas.com)

1. Tokyo, Japan - 28,025,000
2. Mexico City, Mexico - 18,131,000
3. Mumbai, India - 18,042,000
4. Sáo Paulo, Brazil - 17, 711,000
5. New York City, USA - 16,626,000
6. Shanghai, China - 14,173,000
7. Lagos, Nigeria - 13,488,000
8. Los Angeles, USA - 13,129,000
9. Calcutta, India - 12,900,000
10. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 12,431,000

11. Seóul, South Korea - 12,215,000
12. Beijing, China - 12,033,000
13. Karachi, Pakistan - 11,774,000
14. Delhi, India - 11,680,000
15. Dhaka, Bangladesh - 10,979,000
16. Manila, Philippines - 10,818,000
17. Cairo, Egypt - 10,772,000
18. Õsaka, Japan - 10,609,000
19. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 10,556,000
20. Tianjin, China - 10,239,000

Well, the top 10 are all pretty famous cities - for the geographically challenged Mumbai is the modern name for 'Bombay'. Notice how Shanghai is the ONLY Chinese city in there. Moving on, the next 10 are all famous too with the exception of Tianjin, China's 3rd largest city. It still has over 10 million people but most people have never heard of it! I hadn't before I came here. I could copy more of that list into here but I won't - if you don't believe me go look for yourself.

The following 10 cities include not a single Chinese city, but do include Paris, London and Chicago. The next group (from 31st to 40th) contain no less than 5 Chinese cities - Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin. The next set of 10 includes 4 Chinese cities and the next group just 1. There are 5 more Chinese cities in the list before we hit the 100th largest which is Fortaleza in Brazil and has just over 3 million. If I counted correctly, that's 18 Chinese cities in the top 100. That's quite a lot if you think about it, but at an average of, say, 6 million inhabitants that gives up 18 * 6 =108 million people. There are sill about 1.2 billion unaccounted for. These are either rural folk or the millions of migrant workers (I doubt they're included in these figures).

How, as a government, do you deal with this? You're experiencing a crazy industrial revolution of your own and you have so many people to deal with, somehow you need to keep them busy and happy. Enter communism. Communism has worked wonders here (in my opinion) and apart from a few fairly major mishaps (Cultural Revolution being #1), it has been a successful system. The advent now of capitalism is having a marked and dramatic effect on the country and can only be said to be for the worst. It's like they're trying their damnedest to catch up with the west and are desperately trying to make all the same mistakes.

There is not a highway nor byway, causeway nor street that holds 2-way traffic (I still haven't found a one-way street here... if you exclude the alleys which are strictly not streets anyway) that isn't undergoing construction right at this moment. This statement is always true, if they're not demolishing that building today, they're doing the one next door perhaps, or maybe across the street. Either way, something is always being destroyed and another (re)built. If you stop and watch the Chinese build (or do just about any labour outside of the service industry) it is a marvel to behold. They use the idea that if you stick 10 people in to do the job of 1 then it'll get done quickly. And it works. With their manpower available, it makes sense - creates loads of jobs and keeps people happy. The communist party even puts of billboards around town telling you all about how they've done great things for you.

It seems to work - the people are not bothered by the many things that us fickle westerners disapprove of - things like a lack of sanitation, hygiene and table manners - and just accept their lot and move on. People are remarkably accepting of their lot and just get on with it. People do not complain (to my great chagrin) when things don't work... case in point - the television feed for our apartment block died a couple of months ago, not completely dead but unwatchably staticky. It took several weeks (almost 2 months) for it to get fixed. When we eventually contacted our landlord about it the problem was fixed with surprising expediency - makes me wonder if perhaps we were the first to complain. Strange that if it's true - we don't really watch the tv since it is almost all in Chinese, but the Chinese do watch it a lot.

This, I believe, is where capitalism is going to really hurt China - and might have a lot to do with China's reluctance to open up to the rest of the world outside of providing cheap products (and hence giving them the opportunity to create vast swathes of jobs). Once people start thinking western-style, ie the quantity of money in my pocket dictates the quality of lifestyle I can live, and there really is no upper limit, people are going to start getting pissed. If you, and previous generations, are accustomed to everyone being on much the same footing and then suddenly you start seeing a select few (with good connections, of course) suddenly moving so far up in the world, what do you think? Is it going to go the way of Africa with madly corrupt officials (already a big problem here) who feel that being in power gives them the right to enrich themselves above all else, or will the communist party manage to hold the fort? The party is apparently trying to crackdown heavily on corrupt officials, but it's hard to know since so much happens behind literally closed doors. Could there be a revolt and possibly even a revolution? I find it hard to believe with the military and police presence, but you never know. People are shit-scared of the police, and with good reason.

What would happen if the people got up and stood up for (what the west deems as) their rights? What if the communist party was overthrown? Surely what would happen then would be some of the inordinately wealthy gang running for office and promising what the people are beginning to think they want: money, US-style freedom, material goods, cheap and unhealthy food, etc. This is all easily promised but would be impossible to deliver on in China. But I reckon that if it were promised the people would jump at it, and to their peril. How you can govern a nation like this with capitalism?

Viva the communists I say.

Chinese Numbers

2006-11-10T14:33:00.000+08:00

We have some weird numbers in English, 13 is unlucky and whatnot, but they are few and far between. Chinese, however, is a different pot of meat.

As mentioned in a previous post on here, the Chinese like to reuse sounds - as a result, a lot of their numbers sound like other words and a sequence of numbers can even make a sentence, and they put a lot of stake in this.

These are the ones that I am aware of:

1 - normally pronounced 'ee' but when saying a sequence of numbers, like a phone number, it is pronounced 'yow'. This happens to sound the same as the word for 'to want'.
4 - pronounced a bit like 'sung' without the 'ng', which is almost exactly the same as the word 'death' or 'to die'.
5 - pronounced 'wu'. The word for 'I' is 'wo', which is fairly similar.
8 - pronounced 'ba', which they claim is similar to 'fa' which means 'to become rich'.
9 - pronounced 'jior', exactly the same as the word for 'just'.

Consider the following sequences:

514 - I want to die.
5914 - I just want to die.
518 - I want to become rich.
etc

Since 4 is 'to die' and hence unlucky, lots of buildings in China do not have fourth floors. Also, a bit more strangely, when you buy a cellphone package that comes with a phone number - the price is heavily determined by the number itself! It can range from about 30 kuai up to 300+ kuai depending on whether the number contains '5914' or '518' and so on. Madness.

The Power of a Politician

2006-10-31T18:00:00.000+08:00

Powerful men these, even African ones it seems...

I just read this article...

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=288314

The district they talk about where nurses and doctors are supposed to be patrolling the streets (Why I wonder?? Might be a good time to get hit by a car, if I can find one with the new traffic restrictions...) is where I live, Haidian. I didn't even know this big delegation was coming this way! I reckon I might head into town on saturday to have a look at the pretty pictures and to enjoy the lack of traffic.

Isn't it amazing how much they can disrupt the normal flow of things just for some visiting politicians?? I am afraid to think of what they'll do for the Olympics... there are so many street vendors, beggars and whatnot about that I'm sure they'll consider unsightly for the hordes of expected tourists and so some scheme will be thought of. I believe that for the Olympics in Seoul many years ago they had some operation where they literally bussed the vagrant population out of town for the duration of the games. South Korea is a fairly liberal and democratic place that cares (a bit at least) for the well-being of its peopl - we shall see what China's solution to this pending problem will be.

Hold thumbs.

Mongolia

2006-10-16T10:11:00.000+08:00

Got back to Beijing this morning at 4.30am, nice and fresh after 2 full days on buses, trains and waiting at the border. A mate of mine I met in Mongolia and I pulled off our own mini Tiananmen Square at the Mongolian border by standing our ground on the sand at the side of the road to stop 2 Mongolian jeeps from driving past and cutting into the queue - so many had already done this and after so much time waiting we were tired of it and decided to put an end to it. The one Mongolian driver was saying 'They don't own that ground' according to someone with us who was translating - I wonder what owning the ground has to do with cutting into the queue? Anyways, we'd arrived at the border crossing at around 7.30am on Sunday and only got onto the Chinese side at 2pm.

Ulaan Baatar itself is a bit of a dump, but the rest of the country (the parts we saw at least) were spectacular. It's amazing how such a large percentage of the locals still live their lives in the traditional way (if you excuse the motorcycles and the satellite dishes (which are for telephones, not TV)).

I now have the dubious honour of having visited 2 of the 3 most sparsely populated countries on earth - the list goes ...

1. Western Sahara
2. Mongolia
3. Namibia

I believe that the status of Western Sahara as a country is contested so I might be even more honoured than I think.

I spent a couple days in Ulaan Baatar organising the trip, and then through the guest house we rented a van (license 5669yb - got it immediately, Richard you'll be pleased to know and probably the only one who knows what I'm talking about) and guide / mechanic / driver (how he navigates god alone knows, but he does) and set out for 14 days driving about and staying in local ger camps (see the pictures below). All in all, it was roughly US$20 a day per head which I think is pretty damn reasonable and our arses were all sore and bruised afterwards. Apart from a couple stretches near Ulaan Baatar, there are no paved roads and so the going is rough. Luckily we had dry weather (which is the usual case there) and so the roads were in "good condition".

As a result of many things including the dodgy roads, fresh produce is not common outside of the capital. They basically subsist off mutton, potatoes, carrots and pasta/rice. That's the stuff I could eat at least - they are also big on airag (fermented mare's milk, tastes like vinegar) and milk curd cookies (which are like stale biscuits made from weeks' old milk). I tried them, that's all I can say. Never again. Ah yes - and tinned sardines - they have lots of those too. Needless to say, it's pretty good to be back in China where food is fantastic.

Erik take note. After our first night in one of the ger camps, I left my hiking shoes behind (I suspect attempted theft to be honest, since we'd searched the ger thoroughly before leaving) and that left me with open sandals and my slippers. Mongolia is not hot at this time of year, and the temperature regularly slips to around about zero, so sandals were only ok sometimes during the day. I ended up spending most of the remaining 13 days in my slippers which began to stink, as they do, and I even climbed up a volcano in them (another mountain to those shoes' repertoire). I also climbed up sand dunes and ran back down in them. Good old Woolies slippers!! Only about R60 when I bought them... On the second day after driving about 8 hours away from where the shoes were left, I realised upon unpacking that they were gone and so we called back to the guesthouse to ask if another group could possibly collect them and so it worked out ok - they were waiting patiently for me back in Ulaan Baatar.

Lunch break

Deserty cliffs where dinosaur bones were found

Typical Mongolian town

Me looking ever-cool and flustered in the Gobi

Camel riding - did you know that they shit and piss themselves near constantly??

Inside a ger - the fireplace, sleeping area and car battery for the light. Some have beds.

Nomad family doing what nomads do best

Our guide, Nyama (pronounced nyeh-ma), and I overlooking modern-day Kharakorum

The ger camp where I left my shoes

All that remains of old Kharakorum - the monastery (which has been partially renovated)

Typical countryside scene - approaching a ger camp in the distance there

On a totally different note, the cat here has grown in my absence, and his eye has somewhat improved. He's still blind and occasionally walks into things, but he's otherwise pretty good and has ice-picks for teeth.

Laters.

Ulan Bator, Ulaan Baatar, whatever

2006-09-27T17:09:00.000+08:00

Just a quickie. I arrived this morning in Ulan Bator and found a crowd of 6 (including me) and we've been talking about doing a 2 week trip from here starting on friday. It would involve going to the Gobi desert to the south and to the central highlands to the west and north-west including the old trading post of Karakorum. It works out at $20 (about R150) a day all-included. Not bad.

There isn't much internet out in the Gobi, understandably, so I'll be completely and utterly out of touch until the 13th or 14th of October, give or take. Try not to cry.

Weird one for you though - Ulan Bator is miles west of Beijing, and yet it is 1 hour ahead!! Bizarre, something to do with summer time and China's insistence on having 1 time zone for the entire country.

Laters.

Time to move

2006-09-24T15:49:00.000+08:00

After ages in Beijing, I'm off to Mongolia on Tuesday morning. I'm going to have to go and stay at a hostel that is right next to the train station because the train leaves at 7.40am. Ouch. Anyways, it's a long train (it's the first leg of the trans-Siberian express) and goes directly to Ulan Bator, with a long stop at the border I'm sure, arriving there on Wednesday at 1pm or so. The scenery should be great.

The plan is to stay out that way for 2 weeks, maybe 3. Then it's back to Beijing to collect my things and whatnot before catching a plane (yes, a plane) to Shanghai. I want to fly there since it is only a little more expensive than going by train (like R400 as opposed to R200, and 1.5 hours compared to 12ish) and apparently the train going from Shanghai airport into the city is some bizarre magnetic suspended high-speed thing. I'll spend some time there and the backpacking gets going properly. I've a vague route in mind, and I'll keep you posted as I go.

I had a bicycle here a few weeks back - my housemate Richard's girlfriend had a bike here before she went home, and so she kindly bequeathed it to us. Sadly the lock was rusted and didn't work, nor did we have the key, so we used to just prop it up to look locked, and this worked well, judging by the fact that the bike was not stolen. Might also be due to the bike being a complete piece of shit. One night, a dark, blustery, stormy night, we arose to find all the bikes downstairs (there are lots of them, almost Amsterdam-like) blown over by the wind, and lo and behold! Our bike was down, but the impact with the ground had pushed the propped up lock through and properly locked it... as I said, we have no key.

Anyways, must be on my bike.

Chinese Language Insanity

2006-09-13T13:09:00.000+08:00

Let me teach you some Chinese - this won't take long. Bear with me... I'm only going to teach you 2 'words'.

The first word for today is 'Ji'.

激 Verb: surge, dash, Adjective: strong, fierce, violent
跻 Verb: ascend, mount
积 Verb: amass, store up, accumulate, Adjective: long-standing, age-old
击 Verb: beat, hit, strike
基 Noun: base, foundation, Adjective: basic, key, primary
奇 Noun: odd number
几 Noun: small table, Adverb: almost, nearly (for numbers), Question: How many?
讥 Verb: laugh at, ridicule
机 Noun: machine, engine
叽 Radical: to chirp, to make a soft sound
肌 Noun: muscle, flesh
饥 Adjective: hungry, starving, Noun: famine, crop failure
鸡 Noun: chicken

Okay, there are still another 5 or 6 pages left of my dictionary for 'Ji'.

The second and last 'word' for today is 'shi'.

湿 Adjective: wet, damp, humid
诗 Noun: poetry, verse, poem
师 Noun: teacher, master
狮 Noun: lion
失 Verb: lose, get lost, break a promise
施 Verb: put into practice, implement
尸 Noun: corpse
虱 Noun: louse
实 Adjective: solid, true, real, honest, Noun: reality, fact, fruit, seed
识 Verb: know, Noun: knowledge
十 The number 10
什 Adjective: assorted, varied, miscellaneous
石 Noun: stone, rock
拾 Verb: pick up (from ground), collect
时 Noun: time, times, days
市 Noun: market
式 Verb: try, test
是 'to be' when predicate is a noun, emphasis when predicate isn't a noun, indicates existence ('there is', 'there are'), indicates concession, before a noun indicates fitness and suitability, before a noun indicates each and every one of the kind, pronounced emphatically indicates certainty, affirmative response to certain questions ('Yes')

As with 'Ji', there are still several pages left for 'Shi'.

There's one thing I haven't mentioned yet and that is that each syllable has a tone attached to it. There are 4 tones: high, rising, falling-rising, and falling. To the untrained ear and when the Chinese speak it is almost impossible to distinguish between them - so all the words above that are pronounced 'Ji' sound the same, likewise for 'Shi'.

Notice how a given character has a certain pronunciation (usually one syllable thank god), but of course one character can have many pronunciations and many characters can have the same pronunciation as I've tried to illustrate.

The strange thing for me is that the Chinese language is not short of a variety of sounds - they have a fully fledged set of phonemes at their disposal (roughly the same number as English, which has a lot by general standards) yet they tend to reuse the same sounds over and over again. I could easily have produced more lists like the ones above for the words 'yuan', 'jian', 'qi' etc.

Crazy language.

Plastic...

2006-09-13T12:02:00.000+08:00

Nothing to say, just bought some biscuits last night that highlighted my earlier point about the complete waste of plastic here... these ones are Korean of course, but the Chinese ones are the same idea.

Mao

2006-09-11T15:31:00.000+08:00

We picked up a cat the other day, but still haven't decided on a name. Toying between three options at the moment - Mao / 猫 (Chinese for cat, nice pun too - the 'Mao' from 'Mao Tse Tung' or 'Mao Zedong' is 毛 which means 'hair' but is pronounced the same as the 'mao' for cat), Tueto (Spanish for 'blind in one eye') and Buyo (Inuyasha). Any suggestions?

Clearly his right eye is not in great shape - I'm still not certain whether there is a white thing over his eye or a white substance inside his eye. We took him to a vet the other day and he got well tanked up on medication... dewormer pills, anti-anaemia (due to the worms apparently) pills, and an injection every day for a week (which I have to give him myself) to combat the infection in his eye. All of that medication plus a good hour at the vet came to a whopping 80 Kuai (about R75).

I think he's about 4 to 5 weeks old - I read somewhere online that a cat starts growing teeth at 4 weeks and he's got 4 small ones, and they are bastardly sharp. When I leave here, which is getting fairly soon, then Gabi'll take him over.

We're now 3 days into his injections and his eye is already improving somewhat. The whiteness around the outsides is not so opaque, and according to the vet it might go away altogether (his words were 'it might fall off spontaneously' - hope he didn't mean the eye itself).

Of cheese, bread and plastic

2006-08-30T21:06:00.000+08:00

Before I start, a disclaimer: I might sound angry or jaded in what I write - sometimes I might be, but generally the annoyances experienced out here become strangely endearing and you just have to laugh at them. It's good to vent sometimes though, and hell, I believe you people should know these things. Might help you make informed decisions in the future.

My kingdom for cheese on toast. A difficult proposition though, considering that China's not big on bread, nor cheese nor toasters. Houses don't have ovens. All this makes having some cheese on toast tricky at best.

We've tried buying some cheese - but it all comes in slices, each individually wrapped in plastic, and at about R16 for 12 slices. Bought some anyway - it's not really cheese I don't think, but it'll have to do. Also, milk is a tough one - the Chinese don't seem to drink milk, and milk in shops is unpasteurised - might have something to do with the cheese crisis.

Bread. A loaf? Forget it. You buy a few slices at a time, usually 4 (wrapped in plastic), or if you're lucky you can maybe get 6 or even 8 slices at once. All the bread is sweetened to varying degrees, and makes having some toast feel like you're eating a really bad cake. Not having a toaster nor an oven makes making toast a challenge - the best we've managed so far is to stick the bread into a dry frying pan and putting it over the gas stove for a very short time to 'toast' it. Sort of works, but inevitably burns the toast. You get used to it. It also leaves a nasty residue on the frying pan. Did I mention that our sink is nearly perfectly level? You guys take for granted that when you pull the plug the sink drains. Enjoy the luxury.

We were pondering how to melt the cheese slices once they're on the hot burnt piece of bread. So far no idea. We've tried angling it near to the flames of the gas cooker, but no effect. We've tried putting the toast back in the frying pan on a low heat for a while but it just makes the burning worse. We've tried putting a lid (or rather a plate) on the frying pan to contain the heat and heat the cheese from above, but once again the burning on the bread worsened - presumably this would melt the cheese eventually but you can't risking losing a precious slice of cheese by congealing it to a charcoal slice.

I spent some time online looking for info on how to make your own cheese. Looks like fun actually, but you require some basics before you start. A cheese cloth, rennet (to separate milk into curds and whey), proper fresh farm milk (or pasteurised milk from the store at worst). Don't know where I could find the first two in a country that isn't big on milk in the first place. Apparently using unpasteurised milk (like I would have to) means that your cheese will take an extra 4 months or so to make because you have to make sure (and keep treating it) that there are no pathogens in it. Another issue is that cheese making is very sensitive to temperature - you need to get the right bacteria doing the right things for the right amount of time at the right time, and this of course requires controlled heating and cooling and a good thermometer. Generally shouldn't be a problem here, but the Chinese aren't big on respecting other people. For example, when there is building going on in the block of flats here (and there is always building going on) they are prone to switching off the water, gas and electricity (in whatever combination they please) for an hour or so at a time at effectively random times (no-one informs you of course) so this would throw the careful temperature-maintaining of the cheese out of the window. You generally have about a 3 degree celsius window to work with. So forget that. Maybe another day in another country.

Plastic. As I said before, everything comes wrapped in plastic. A couple slices of bread, each slice of cheese, every biscuit in a box. They love their plastic. Most of it ends up in the street too, although they are good at getting the manpower out to pick the stuff up in the early hours of the morning. I just can't help wondering why they use so much of the stuff. When you think of the wasted plastic and the population of China, and you do some simple sums, the numbers get scary. I sometimes wonder too just how much rice the Chinese consume as a whole every day. And how many chickens are eaten every day. And so on. I have to take my hat off in many ways to the Chinese government for managing to run a place like this. I can't imagine South Africa having a chance.