Posts Tagged ‘Chinese Culture’
September 27th, 2009
In Macao trying my hand at a little low level gambling (I only have 200RMB in my pocket.) At the hotel they charge for internet – thought they were nice enough to include a 15 minute free access card with our room card. Gee thanks! You also need to go down to the lobby to use one of their computers. I refused to do that. So how you might ask am I writing this post from said hotel? Well I am in that lobby and I noted their computers were password protected. Ah ha! that must be their point of controlling access. So I yoinked the ethernet cord from the back of the tower and put it into my laptop. Mwahahha. Aye I can even access facebook from here sweeeet. Life outside the GFWC is grand.
What exactly is one supposed to do with 15 minutes of internet access.. well wait before let’s think about the experience of a potential user. In this day and age isn’t internet access right up there with access to water or air? It’s an essential part of our everyday lives and these places (this hotel isn’t unique in their practice) seem content to try and squeeze a little extra cash out of you for access to what has become a daily necessity. I would rather they say they don’t have internet access than to notify me that they do and then after insulting me with quotation on a daily/hourly rate to further irritate me with a “complementary” free 15-minute access card. Do you want me to sign in and out with my name and room number for this service? Are you going to chaperone me while I use to ensure I don’t go over my alloted 15 minutes. Viva la net!!! Someone needs to remind me to do something scumbaggy before I leave here… I know it’s a silly thing to get too aggrevated about but I’m venting.. safer than talking about other problems hehe.
For those of you that don’t know it’s a national holiday in China right now. They have from the 1st to the 6th off from work. This two day trip to Macao is a “team building” kick-off for our new staff and I guess an excuse for me, Mike, and John to go a little crazy – and probably not sleep. I’ve heard stories about this place 
. Let’s see if I can make some of my own. I’ll be sure to leave any juicy bits of my adventure on here when I sober up.
September 20th, 2009
It’s a developing trend I’ve been noticing in my communication with others, and my preference for communications from others. Is what your saying useful? If it’s not why are you bothering to say it in the first place. If what you say serves absolutely no purpose that either you nor the intended listener can immediately discern why are you bothering to open your mouth in the first place. I call this type of talk and communication (phone, e-mail, chat, instant messaging, etc.) noise. More and more I notice that when i get fatigued my tolerance wanes quickly for this type of useless chatter.
China, in my experience, is notoriously aggravating when it comes to noise. So many times I ask a simple question that can be answered in one or two sentences and in return I have to comb through two to three paragraphs of fluff to get to the meat of the matter. The language barrier is helpful when it comes to talking to some Chinese through mediums such as e-mail but if I dare approach them with my Chinese that is a horse of a different color indeed.
It’s funny because I used to be and still occasionally am a noise-maker. As I’ve gotten busier and my perspective on life has adapted in this new environment I’ve learned the uselessness of some of the things I used to bother talking about. There simply is not enough time or energy to go around to waste blabbing about things people don’t want to hear about. If I ask you how much your product is – just tell me how much the goddamn thing is. I don’t want to hear about minute details of your products quality, that your family has owned this shop for generations – that the shop down the street underselling you by 10-15% is no good. I don’t care if you think my Chinese is good or that you think it looks good on me. Shut up – just tell me what I need to know!!!
Ah that reminds me of another thing that really gets me going. I love Chinese people you can ask anyone that I know on a first name basis – but one bad habit that tends to push my buttons is their avoidance of saying “I don’t know” when they don’t have the slightest clue what your talking about, looking for, asking about, etc. You don’t know how many times I’ve walked in 3 or 4 different directions only to find out when I asked the next person that my destination was nowhere near where I was walking. I literally need to stress 2 or 3 times + “are you sure” to figure out if they actually know what they are talking about. I have to soften them up to the idea of saying “I’m sorry I don’t know.” I understand some of the why behind the habit – but my soft skill capacities are better spend on profitable endeavors… I guess its difficult to realize that by telling me false information due to inexperience is actually more aggravating and makes you look like a bigger asshole than telling me you have no idea. Maybe I’ll make a T-shirt about it – write it both in Chinese and English.
Anyway back to my Noise rant. I think this is a lesson that can be applied liberally pretty much everywhere. Get to the point – order your sentences to reflect their relative importance and keep all the useless fluff to yourself. Maybe I’m too hard – thinking too much like a company man than an accommodating human being, but really, who has enough time in life to examine the minute details and nuances behind every interaction and exchange of information. I think like a businessman. My time is precious and my mind is already full of other shit I have to deal with and when I take the time to ask you a question I am looking for the answer to the question so I can solve that problem and move onto the next. If you want to be successful you need to be useful – not loud, not overly informative, not well-spoken, nor attractive, not even accommodating and filled to the brim with soft skills – first and formost you need to be USEFUL. Nurture the mindset of solving people’s problems and you’ll have a lot less trouble getting ahead in life.
Anyway I need to get back to pumping out this worksheet for my Chinese corners this afternoon. Hopefully I’ll have enough time to eat properly – that way I can take the inevitable noise-storm of bs I’m going to run into as soon as I step outside in stride. -end rant-
August 10th, 2009
Last Sunday as my “Chinese Corner” came to a close one of my buddies pulled up an interesting set of pictures from several different online sources. The pictures were associated with articles claiming that Babies were being eaten in China – there were claims that eating fetuses would increase ones fertility. The pictures were disturbing to say the least.
June 24th, 2009
So I began well intended, looking for some software that would translate chinese text to english when placing your cursor over the text in any application or webpage. The winning candidate turns out to be one Powerword created by Kingsoft a Chinese based software company which has been combating Microsoft on various fronts for more than a decade. Problem…. apparently the software was designed to aid Chinese learners and was therefore designed with a Chinese interface. Having downloaded and installed that version I found the functionality I could use acceptable but most of the applications power was unavailable to me because of the chinese interface. So began the search into an english interface version of the software…
This article springboarded my learnings surrounding this matter. If you tire of my ramblings Wikipedia has a well thought-out entry you may like to peruse. Now to clarify there are several versions of “Powerword” I have seen mentioned back and forth online. The software I initially downloaded (zip file named ‘powerwordlite.25269.3009.exe’) was infact the free software developed by the Google/Kingsoft joint venture (using that term loosly – haven’t researched the official relationship between the two entities). All other versions of Powersoft (I lost count of how many I found – ranging in years from 2000-2009 version numbers 3.0 to 5.5 and a languages Japanese, Chinese, English) were/are produced by Kingsoft and are not freeware. As I’m in China the fact that they are not freeware simply means its a little more difficult for me to effectively transform it into free ware.. [A. Search online for a full download and crack OR B. Go down to my local electronics shopping area and pick up a hacked copy for 10 yuan]. Though I’m sure these behaviors would be frowned upon by many it is an unfortunate defacto law of the land here in China. Some acts are in motion in an effort to circumvent this trend but believe you me for now they remain in full swing.
3 hours later….
Decided to call it quits on account of frustration and lack of desire to pull all the hairs out of my head. Looks like I may have to go the route of steal/copy/crack in order to get what I want. Thats ok – I’m in the right place for that 
.
June 16th, 2009
Bye Bye Blogger *sniff*
This is old news at this point but for those of you that are unaware blogger has been being blocked in China for somewhere in the neighborhood of a month. Proxies are allowing me to access and post at this point. I have plans to relocate this blog to my own domain using wordpress to circumvent this unfortunate mishap. I hope my posting of some “controversial” material pertaining to Tibet and Tian’an’ men square hasn’t provided justification for their blocking. Anything is possible – perhaps I should change my locks and adopt a disguise *chuckle*
A handy tunneling/proxy tool that I’ve heard was developed by an MIT engineer specifically for Chinese netizens is called Freegate it provides the fastest secure proxied connection I’ve seen. Even if your not located in China it may be useful to you for its ease of use. Opening the program automatically updates your network settings in IE/Google to utilize the proxy – closing it restores the original settings (thats usually just “Automatically find settings” in my Lan settings) Give it a go if your curious I’ve already passed it off to anyone I thought could make use of it.
My Apologies! Hot Hot Hot
So sorry for the long absence of posts, I promise to make up for it in the coming weeks! It’s really beginning to get hot over here – time for the body to adjust to the stand and sweat climate. I was out the other night with my American buddies and our discussions revolved around the appeal of saunas in this climate. There was a moment of agreement on how unnecessary they were and then Brent commented a collegue of his jested that he prefered sauna’s because their were no poor people in them (beggers etc.) Some mild-mannered chuckling followed – its true that even I have grown to lack any and all sympathy for beggers.
I suppose its not fair to say that on an individual level – the people who are on the street begging are truly unfortunate. However the sad fact of the matter is that they are most often employees of an inhumane enterprise that preys on the humanity of their fellow human beings. Taking children from birth and dismembering/burning/disfiguring them so as to increase returns when they ship them out to beg on the streets. I guess the correct thing to say would be that I will never give them money – perhaps food if I happen to be carrying any (O! we did give an elderly begger a bottle of beer several weeks ago) – there is very little righteousness in supporting an organization profiteering off of pity.
Here are some pictures illustrating some of the tactics, unfortuantely I’ve seen worse – I believe a man with a gaping wound on his leg, no skin at all covering 1/4 of his shin, you could visibly make out the difference in thickness of flesh covering his leg from the wound to undamaged level of skin – sad, sad, sad.
According to my very limited research and experience there are beggers who are legitimate, those of the organized type (often the most disgustingly disfigured) and those who really have no reason to beg save to make a little extra money on the side. It’s an ugly part of life that I hope will disintegrate with China’s rise out of poverty. P.S.- don’t buy flowers from the underaged salesboy who frequents the hooker bars, he will always find you again… 2nd hand experience of course, come now am I that sort of fellow! *chuckle*
