独一无二, 无尽的爱

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

That’s my main question right now. Forget the income tax seminar (that I didn’t attend because I got sick), never mind the list of duties that the Chinese accountant just gave me (it looks like I will have to setup and take care of the whole thing). All in my mind is the question: Wii or Xbox? Which one to buy?

Wii - more ads, looks more ‘fun’ with its stupid games, more ‘in’?
Xbox - better game resolution.
Both have Guitar Hero 3.

Some miscellaneous pictures I had in my handphone. Not very nice, but was bored.

The glaring yellowish thing on the floor IS snow. Picture taken of the train depot opposite my house.

Misty pictures of the Ferris Wheel in Jinjiang Amusement Park. That’s how most days are in Shanghai currently. Try to find the wheel in the daylight picture. Haha.

The Caffe Latte I like to drink. Except I drink from the bottle model instead of can.

That’s my keyboard. Well, no. Actually that’s the wall of a block of houses. Cool, eh? I will try to take a better picture another time. It’s near Xujiahui, about 10-15mins walk maybe from the station.