What the Ho?

Macau, from my small knowledge of the it, is an interesting place filled with interesting people.
For example, a son of Kim Jong-Ill's apparently lives there a lot of the time.

Paul told me about how Stanley Ho made heaps of money by owning the license to run a casino in Macau- apparently for a while he was the only one in town who had the license. Forbes say he's the 84th richest man in the world.

So what's he doing paying the New South Wales Labour Party AUS$109,000 in donations? I thought capitalist tycoon billionaires gave to the right, not the left.

Whilst he does apparently have 'significant property holdings in Queensland', where the ALP is also (thankfully) in power it seems an odd move. Perhaps he's going to start buying big in Sydney. Even stranger is that he payed AUS$48,000 for lunch with Premier Morris Iemma of NSW, and then skipped the lunch!

Billionaires. They're a foreign people.

Media Watching

I used to dismiss those who said you can't believe what you read in newspapers.
To be sure, there are plenty of paranoid conspiracy theorists who form crackpot ideas to counter what they read in the newspapers. But sometimes it's bleedingly obvious that reporters are doing a woeful job.

Thus I began to realise, of the many hideously frustrating things in this world, crap newspapers are up there amongst bamboo torture and novelty mobile phone ringtones.

I speak of course about The Courier Mail and the Cairns Post.

The Cairns Post is too easy a target (which I will no doubt attack in a later post), but The Courier Mail somehow commands respect here in Cairns.

Here's why it shouldn't.

Taken from The Courier Mail 10/1/07:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21035290-3122,00.html

Sports retailer hits the spot

Justine Turner

January 08, 2007 11:00pm

Article from: AAP

TARGETED advertising in the lead-up to Christmas helped Rebel Sport lift sales by almost 15 per cent in the first half of 2006-07.

And then, taken from The Australian 10/1/07:

Rebel run slows as retailers hit hurdle

Blair Speedy

January 10, 2007

RETAIL group Rebel Sport reported slower sales growth in the last three months of 2006, as the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that department store sales had declined for a fifth straight month.

Seems the Courier Mail article was rather poorly researched then. Nice one.

I suppose it is worth the time to read more than one newspaper, so that we may realise that what some people take as truth is often far from it.

And to all people out there thinking of becoming a journalist, don't worry if you're a moron. The Courier Mail (and AAP by extension) has plenty of space for you.

Twilight on Mars

Indirectly I happened upon some recent photos from the Mars rovers (not so recent actually, August this year). There's not much style to most of the photos as they're mainly for scientific benefit, it seems, but this twilight photo struck me as being the most poignant of them all.

It's probably a while before we'll be able to see this on a holiday.

Australian Youth Delegation to China part 3

Picking up where we left off: at the top of a tower in the center of Shenzhen.
From this point you can actually see the first McDonalds in China- much symbolism to be found there if you're that way inclined. Also says something about the Special Economic Zone, no doubt. And Paul's moving there.

After this interesting, confusing skyline tour, we headed to the hotel.
Although it wasn't a big name, it was actually the most impressive hotel we stayed at. A little hard to describe the feel; a 1930's vision of the future hotel, very much something of the The Gernsback Continuum. The restaurant maintained this feel of future Art-Deco, and had a great buffet going. Multicultural cuisine which included sushi, sandwiches, creme brulet (probably some French e's needed there), and Borsche (борш, if my Russian spelling is correct- which it probably isn't). It was my first time trying борш but unfortunately Alexandra told me later that it tasted nothing like the 'real' thing, and she was born in Russia so she'd know.

After lunch we set off for the LNG factory. It was quite a long bus journey to get there, but I didn't mind. We passed some of the nicer spots of Shenzhen, as it was a coastal road (though I'm not sure we were actually in Shenzhen proper).


Arrived after about 2 hrs or so in the bus.


We were given a quick word to exercise caution when entering the factory (basically no smoking), and the an informative lecture about the agreement signed between Australia and China for the exportation of LNG. I'm not very familiar with the process, but we were told that basically they developed a new method of shipping gas (liquified?) which allows it to be stored 400 times more efficiently. They had a cool model of the factory, and the engineer explaining it had particularly good English (and he'd never been outside of China apparently).


When we toured the factory proper, I was struck by the thought that the factory had the strong image association of a James Bond film.
Especially when we were shown to the control room....


Complete with attitude-packing guards....

At this point, in the control room, Thomas was actually able to interpret better than our provided interpreter!
Very, very impressive...


We were then taken on a bus tour around the rest of the site; unfortunately sleep deprivation had caught up with me by this point, and I fell asleep the moment that tour started and woke up as it ended. So much for that.

We then returned back for our farewell dinner, but were held up for about 1 hr in another of Shenzhen's traffic jams.

The farewell dinner was lovely; I believe the mayor of Shenzhen was there, the food was good, and we were all dressed up for the occasion.

Afterwards, we went up to Greg's room for an unofficial awards ceremony; we awarded Thomas for his brilliant interpreting, James for...something (photos I think), Fuchsia for organising our social events, Warren for his musical virtuosity and I took out the Greg Hunt award for using the phrase 'to keep the rabits out' in a speech.

Went off looking for a pub street but instead found something much dodgier with rip-off prices, crap music and a tacky beach/cave setting.

Since we had to be awake at 3.30 am or thereabouts, we decided sleep was hardly worth it.
So must of us stayed awake the whole time, had a good debrief on the trip and plenty to drink.

The bus trip to Hong Kong was interesting for the time I was awake, and indeed there was a feeling of a strange sort of relief when we crossed the border. I feel asleep before we got to the airport, and so blearily checked in and said goodbye to Lawrie and Fiona, who stayed on an extra day. We had arrived at about 6.30, but the flight wasn't until 10.30, so there was time to kill in HK airport. My shoulder-bag's carry strap broke, and there was no one who could assist me in the entire airport (apparently). So that was annoying. But, on the positive, they accept RMB at the cafe I went to, at an acceptable rate, and it was good to see copies of The Private Life of Chairman Mao for sale.

I managed to walk all the way down to gate 60 pr something like that (the furtherest point in the airport), had a 'no-liquids' search on my bag, whereby they took the beer off me (well it was really Jacky's) and threw it out, and then realised I'd come to the wrong gate (a USA flight). So I had to take the 20 minute walk back to the proper gate (15), and realised I had just lost a can of beer for no real reason!

And finally, on the flight home, did I catch up on all that lost sleep.

Now where, you might ask (especially if you're Paul) is the photo of us with Premier Wen Jia Bao?
Was it not afterall he who invited us?

As it turns out, we never did meet Premier Wen, though it was him who invited us over. I suppose Premier Wen had a busy schedule; there's always next time, anyway.

So the best I can offer is a photo of a hypothetical meet of myself and Wen....this is what it WOULD have looked like, perhaps.

He's very tall, as you can see.

And so ends the Youth Delegation to China. It was definitely the most exciting and interesting week of my life. I'm sure most of the people in the delegation will be involved with China in significant ways, in the near future.

I for one would love to go back as soon as possible.

Attention Vegetarians

This message concerns all vegetarians alike who would take to the moral high grounds, sneering and yelling down insults at the eaters of meat down below, accusing us of being inhumane.

Hear, hear.

Hitler was a vegetarian.

Where's your moral high ground now?

Interlude

I'm still working diligently (though that's subjective) on Part 3 of the China Trip.

Until then, however, there's been plenty going on.

Firstly: The examination period is almost over. This is something which results in a bizarre feeling of anti-climax, because there's a lot of preparation, and then it's over differently for each student. My 'end of exams' day is different from my friends, and so on. And there is a period of adjusting to what life consists of without having to prepare for an exam. Futhermore, language students are in a unique position where they don't actually want to forget what they've learned throughout the year.

This is not entirely different from a gym patron who doesn't want to lose their progress by taking too much time off. With Chinese this seems especially true, as it's rather easy to forget characters and tones.

So with the holiday season approaching, I suspect I'll actually more or less keep doing what I've been doing. That is, going through Chinese and Russian textbooks.

But even then that still leaves quite a few hours in the day. I'll be spending the majority of the holidays in Cairns, so I'll probably work most of it, and of course there's plenty of friends in Cairns to catch up with.

Secondly: I'm still pretty uninformed about politics, particuarly American politics. But it's good to see a better balance of power in the States. This may lead us to ask, Who should be the next Presidential candidates? I'll go with Barack Obama (who is also my personal preference for the next President) over Hilary, even though Time's article on him was not without criticism. Not sure who the Republicans will pick. Rudy Giuliani would probably be a smart choice.

Thirdly: Children of Men. This is by far the best film of the year. So I'd advise everyone to see it if you haven't already.

Lastly: Spiders. Not the Ralph Fiennes kind


but the arachnid kind. Now, as all who know me can attest, I'm a practicing arachnophobe. This is no joke. A photo such as this


makes me gasp, my chest tighten, my skin crawl, and my body shudder. The other night I came home late, and while I'm brushing my teeth I suddenly am overcome by dread, as there's a horrifying, fuck-off-big spider behind the aftershave bottles.
I had not the courage to do battle with it. I spat out the remaining toothpaste from my mouth and fled back to the relative safety of my room, all the way shrieking like a crazed chimp.

The spiders and their webs have been growing and spreading in the bathroom ever since. It's the storm that brought them in. Is it possible that they arrived as a part of some sinister over-arching plan? Every time I micturate or bathe, the dread grows stronger. I can feel multiple sets of 4 and 8 eyes watching me with unthinkably evil, sadistic urges. The bathroom mirror is now covered with grotesque spider hairs, evidence of their predatory hunts. It's only a matter of time before they reach my room. They'll be threading a special, hideous web just outside my door, a web to engulf my entire body. And if they don't succeed there, they'll come in the night and wrap me up whilst I sleep, creating for me a cocoon of blind, constricted horror and dread.

As far as I can tell, theres only one answer.

Move house.

But, as I always say, no point worrying about something that will only probably happen.

Australian Youth Delegation to China part 2

I was rather tired whilst typing the last post and I did indeed miss some photos as Paul pointed out; I've since added the missing photos to the previous post, so check those out. Also, I'd like to give you links to Thomas' and Fiona's blogs.

And now for part two.

The flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was really entertaining, as I sat next to Eric and David, and we discussed, amongst other things, The Spiderman and The Moose- if anyone knows what they are, feel free to express your disgust or delight in the comments.

Touching down that evening in Guangzhou, I was firstly impressed by the recently built airport, and then by the incredible humidity; it was a nice change from dry Beijing. Warren and Henry busted out the guitars while we were waiting for everyone to get ready (another photo courtesy of Fiona).


The Guangzhou hotel was a Ramada, very nice, although with a lot of the staff there, their grasp of Mandarin was far from perfect. This made it much harder to make yourself understood than in Beijing (or maybe lack of sleep was making me speak like a stupid 老外).

There was a small dumplings stall right near the hotel, which also sold fairly reasonable Zhu Jiang (Pearl River) beer. The dumplings were damn good, and it most appropriate that we would drink Zhu Jiang beer, as we were later to visit the very factory which produces said beer!
It was another night of laughter, perhaps even 'dark laughter', as Kerouac wrote.

The next morning, Thursday, it was again asked of us to be up early for breakfast and then on the road. Our first destination was Sun Yat-Sen University (中山大学）. This campus was both nicer and dirtier than Tsinghua's campus. Nicer because I personally find tropical plants to be very beautiful, and the campus had lots of such plants, and a large insect population that delivered a majestic ambience to the otherwise quiet campus. However, it was also dirtier because of all the pollution; and Beijing isn't exactly clean, so this was really bad. It was noted by David that the pollution actually appeared like a mist, which did give the place a mystical vibe, but our collective lungs were not to be fooled, and the pollution manifested itself in the most irritating ways. For example, at the soccer stadium, the chairs were coated in thick blackness, a direct result of all the smog. Eric, who recently delivered a speech on Chinese Economic History, explained to me that a lot of factories have been built over the border of Hong Kong since the HK Government placed restrictions on HK factories; so the HK companies just went and built their factories over the border, polluting as badly as ever. What they didn't account for was that the pollution would make it's way back into HK; the resulting acid rain apparently does millions of dollars damage each year to the buildings in HK, so the pollution is actually hurting economically. Also, Eric also said that errosion is a problem throughout many parts of China, and that the Gobi desert is expanding rapidly. Thus, regardless of politics, this is a problem that needs to be solved.

These two photos are from a website James Morris set up after the trip, www.theomelette.net (I'm not sure why he chose the name either).



We firstly had a forum and smaller discussions with the Sun Yat-Sen students; it's still a very highly regarded university which usually comes in at number 10 in China, although Tsinghua often comes in at number 1! The students, however, were extremely laid back and fun loving, and the head of their university was a cool guy who gave all the students who attended the discussion groups a holiday the next day, to come with us to the beer factory.
After the group discussion, we were shown around the campus, were treated to a lovely lunch and then it was time for The Soccer Match.

I was a little sick at the time, and moreover I'm an uncoordinated, useless piece of reptillian shit when it comes to football games, so I refrained from gracing the field. However, we had a formidable line-up...

As did the Sun Yat-Sen team...

We lost, however, by a close 3-2 or 4-3, no one can remember.

Warren got a head injury, which was skilfully handled by nurse-in-training Fiona...


That evening we went to a nearby restaurant, and then, we went again to Sun Yat-Sen university, this time for an evening of cultural performances from both countries.

The Chinese performances were the most impressive, in particular the guy from Xinjiang province (if he was indicative of the lot, the Xinjiang people have a very peculiar, distinctive appearance), the various gorgeous female singers and dancers, and the duel of the two brothers, based on the historical story.

The Aussies, however, didn't disappoint; Warren was easily the star of the evening, playing various accompaniments on guitar, and also a solo Chinese flute performance. Also noteworthy was Laurie's opera rendition, and of course the absolultely rocking power trio at the end of Warren, Henry on guitars and Laurie providing Elvis from Beijing on the vocals (if you can imagine that). I was looking forward to playing some drums that evening, but a kit was not able to be arranged.

However, we have decided that at some point in the future, we shall definitely need to form the All Australian Communist Youth Band.

Warren and Henry, just before Laurie (大江）leapt onto the stage...(these 2 photos also courtest of James Morris)


and Warren about to start accompanying Alex, who sun a Chinese song...


Had many night-caps that evening again.

The next morning we had our first late start of the trip; we were able to wake up at 8.30-9.
And it was a very special day, as it was the fateful trip to the beer factory. Whilst we were greeted in a fairly standard fashion, there was one guy in particular who stood out. I asked him where the toilet was, and he shrieked back at me in a voice which was equal parts eunuch and lunatic, "WELCOME TO THE ZHU JIANG BEEEEEEEER FACTORY!", before bounding youthfully and joyously up the stairs in such a way that could only be described as crab-like.
I thought, what manner of position could a man of this nature occupy in the beer factory?
The bosses son? Asylum escapee? Test subject? Oompa-Loompa (picture Cooper and the Beer Factory)? He was perhaps of all of these things, and more, as it turns out he was the Party Representative of the factory.

We were given free beer for the duration of the tour, which was nice of them. It was quite an impressive factory (although I don't really have much to compare it with). Notable was their employment of Germans to oversee the operation. Thomas took a great photo of the factory production line...so much beer...


Went for a really nice lunch afterwards, and then we went over to a shopping district; more market-place than designer-label. One might deduce that not many tourists go there, for the salespeople all assumed we were foreign students; they didn't approach us in English, but rather affronted us with Cantonese or (poorly spoken) Mandarin. Granted, that might just be because they couldn't speak much English, but they didn't seem at all surprised when Warren responded in his rather good Cantonese (he lived in Shantou for a year). I bought a weirdly sexual implicit shirt, which I will probably never wear, but it's nevertheless got comedic vaule. I'll take a picture at some stage.

That evening we went to the best hotel in Guangzhou to meet the Guangdong provincial leaders; it was very special, and CCTV were there to capture the occasion again. Laurie did a fantastic speech, and the food was great. After the dinner we had a cruise down the Pearl River; this was a highlight of the trip. I hadn't realised how pretty Guangzhou is at night, it seems they've really put in a lot of effort into the lighting of the city. The lasers off the buildings were particularly great, and probably only look so good because of all the smog.

Here's the said lasers...(these 3 photos, again, taken by Fiona)


Guangzhou almost resembles Hong Kong or Shanghai at night...

And here, 007 and 008 are debriefing on the mission...




Saturday morning we went to Shenzhen. Previously, I'd only ever been to the Lo-Wu shopping mall in 2003, so I barely had an idea of the city. Moreover, I think Shenzhen is one of the fastest changing cities in China. There was a cool moment crossing the border where one of the guards stopped us for our passports, which we didn't actually have with us at the time, but then one of our government minders told the guard that we didn't need to show him our passports. The guard didn't believe that our minder was from the government, so our minder whipped out a phone, called a number, and handed it over to the guard.
In an instant, the guards expression changed from anger to meek, smiling submission- it was very funny.

The traffic was pretty crap; I took this photo when were crossing a lane when we shouldn't have been- all these cars had a green light..


We first went to a skyscraper in the middle of Shenzhen, up to the 64th floor I think, which gave great views of the city. It was a surprisingly clear day for what I've heard of Shenzhen. The viewing level also had various sections of displays, sort of like exhibitions, but very peculiar ones.
Such as this one of Deng Xiaoping and Maggie which you can see behind myself, Henry, Thomas and Laurie. (thanks Fiona)


There was also a strange display with a robot, and some pirates.

And we'll have to leave it there. In part 3, we visit the LNG factory!