Just kind of familiarizing myself with Word Press. Never used it before.
Anyways, I found this trailer browsing through Youtube during work.
Apparently based off of some manga called “Catshitone”. For some reason, I thought of the book “Watership Down”, except these bunnies had assault rifles. Also reminded me of Maus.
I must say, using this was easier than I thought it was going to be.
After being here for 3 weeks, I am beginning to understand some of the finer points of working for a local Chinese firm.
Authority and status is very important here. Its always crucial to know your place in the firm. For instance, every attorney here is referred to by their last name and the attorney title (Chen “lv shi”, Li “lv shi”, etc). Unfortunately for the accountant, she is simply referred to directly as ”kuai ji”, or “accountant”. Her name isn’t even mentioned, but she doesn’t seem to mind. The cleaning lady is referred to as “ah yi”, which means something like auntie. I have tried to ask everyone to simply call me by my first name instead of the full ”lv shi” title, but i now feel that in doing so, I may have reduced my status and authority in this firm from attorney to perhaps an assistant or intern.
Of course this all makes sense. The US is founded on individualism, and we like to be distinguished by our person rather than our current placement in life. We don’t like generalizations because we find them limiting. But China is a place of structure and tradition, and understanding your place in that structure allows everyone to save face, lest you tread upon the toes of a superior.
So the logical way to think about working in China should be to 1) know your place then 2) do your job.
Of course situations occur when doing your job may require you to abandon your station; such as when you are proposing certain changes to the current business model or concept. Well tread lightly when you do so. While in your mind you are only thinking about improving the company, your superiors may perceive it as an effort to undermine their authority by uprooting the work they have done. Chinese employers are often extremely defensive and very slow to change due to this.
I have noticed that Chinese employers often allow a certain leeway to a foreign who looks distinctly un-Chinese. I believe in this case the Chinese employer feels that because the foreigner is not really a part of the Chinese social structure and therefore nonthreatening. In this case the Chinese employer might even manage to get to know the foreigner as an individual person rather than just another minion. Its all about expectations. If your boss expects you to be a part of the structure but you don’t adjust well, then you are going to struggle. If the boss doesn’t expect you to be a part of the structure, then you are suddenly free to fully utilize your own creativity.
The end of night has arrived. The dream of an uneventful night came to fruition once over the 31 nights, but did happen. Now is time to move on to different responsibilities. Now is time to integrate back with civilization, during the times when the sun arises. And enjoy the comfort of my own home and mattress. Alas back to normal circadian activity.
During this month, this popped up in the news:
“Women in Denmark who developed breast cancer after many years of working night shifts have received compensation…”
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/338/mar18_1/b1152
Does this mean that every single physician, whom in training and in practice, have frequently worked night shifts, or any other job that has required night shifts, will be compensated in some way?
two funny and unrelated videos I came across just now:
Working on some ideas for my PT project. Maybe I’ll turn it into an online comic /graphic novel…
i’ve been meaning to post on this, but didn’t find much surprising in the data. this is an interactive immigration pattern explorer from census data. i’d say only the mexican immigration was visually surprising even if u knew the stats. still, it’s interesting to see immigration to some of the counties w/ smaller ethnic populations when you’ve lived in them b/c u probably know a good fraction of the immigrants of your ethnicity.
also this from the “predestined to post about this” dept:
source
All of the heavenly elephants were in a tizzy.
It was Wednesday, and a fourth elephant had fallen down to Earth from Elephant Heaven. Unlike the previous elephant falls, this one missed the vast oceans below and crashed in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa, killing a family of three. The small village, highly superstitious as most rural communities are, took the elephant crash to be a sign of the End Days and had begun to prepare themselves for the inevitable Armageddon to come. First elephants. Then maybe giraffes, or alien space-gods next. An elephant falling down to Earth opens the door to a lot of free thinking.
Elephant Heaven wasn’t in good shape either. Global warming had begun to thin the once stable clouds which formed Elephant Heaven’s floor. Things had gotten to the point where an unlucky elephant would step onto an incredibly weak part of a cloud and come crashing down to Earth. Heaven was beginning to lose its transcendental appeal. Something clearly had to be done.
A petition was sent to God directly, but petitions often took 6-8 weeks to process. Decisive action had to be taken in the meantime to minimize unwanted falls and subsequent second deaths that had befallen four of their own. None of the elephants in heaven knew what a second death would be like. Furthermore, none of the fallen elephants had returned to Elephant Heaven. This was a fact that deeply disturbed even the most pious of elephants.
The typical Shanghainese weekend for an expat generally concludes inside a quiet coffee shop. Sitting across from you is most likely a stranger you met Friday or Saturday night. Because you probably first met this drifter in a very loud and dimly lit environment such as the local club Muse, this second meeting, over coffee, is really the first opportunity to listen to and observe this stranger.
You probably came to this meeting with excitement and enthusiasm, hoping to meet someone you can really connect with. But you also realize that your track record hasn’t been very good ever since you moved to this city. New relationships form quickly and easily here, especially for an expat. Whether they are locals and foreigners, people want to meet you and connect to you. Bonds are created in the first night, and just as often, broken after the second.
Too many people to meet, too many opportunities to pursue.
So here you sit, sipping another over-priced coffee, smiling, and looking upon her unfamiliar face. You reproduce your life story for this stranger, and are once again, totally and unwittingly, absorbed into the culture of the city around you.
Success, I am able to log in and post on our community site. to be sure, this is i think the most ambitious idea we have ever went forward with, along with our production company. It really would be interesting to see how our combined interests and creativity come together in this blog.
Homewood Porsche 935
This is pretty awesome, the square in the picture is about 5 minutes from my house. I ate there last night :)
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/27/another-alabama-force-gets-porsche-police-car-this-time-a-935/
hmm. well this isn’t good news as i’m pretty prone to this response. good thing i don’t drink often.
Alcohol ‘flush’ signals cancer risk
BETHESDA, Md., March 24 (UPI) — A red flushing facial response from drinking alcohol may signal a genetic susceptibility to esophageal cancer risk, U.S. and Japanese researchers said.
“It is very important for clinicians who treat patients of East Asian descent to be aware of the risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol consumption in their patients who exhibit the alcohol flushing response, so they can counsel them about limiting their drinking,” Kenneth R. Warren, acting director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said in a statement.
Heavy alcohol consumption greatly increases the risk for esophageal cancer among such individuals, who comprise about 8 percent of the world’s population, Warren said.
First author Philip J. Brooks, of NIAAA’s Laboratory of Neurogenetics, and colleagues note that a clinician can reliably determine whether a patient is at risk simply by asking about previous episodes of facial flushing after drinking alcohol.
“Cancer of the esophagus is particularly deadly, with five-year survival rates ranging from 12 (percent) to 31 percent throughout the world,” Brooks said. “We estimate that at least 540 million people have this alcohol-related increased risk for esophageal cancer, and we hope that, by raising awareness of this important public health problem, affected individuals who drink will reduce their cancer risk by limiting their alcohol consumption.”
The review appears in the journal PLoS Medicine.
here’s a link to the paper for those who want to read it. tell your east asian friends who have a flushing reaction to alcohol. it might save their life.
peter schiff is an economist from the austrian school of thought. he delivers a few one liners on how the US is obviously not gonna pay china back.
At last, my dream has come along. The hectic darkness at rest tonight. It could come at not a better time. As there is a balance of sleep that needs to be compensated. Now that the dream has come to fruition once, I know that it exists. The hope of it coming true again is slim, but there is hope.
i recently mentioned the idea of getting immigrants to buy a house for a green card. it looks like that idea is picking up steam. MR mentions a WSJ article and some other writer’s support for such a move.
the wsj even mentions that it’s been done before in vancouver:
There is a high correlation between education and incomes, and in today’s uncertain economic climate, many wealthy foreigners desire U.S. resident status just as a number in Hong Kong secured residences in Singapore and Canada before the British handover to China in 1997. They rapidly became over a quarter of Vancouver’s population, and brought in billions of dollars to buy houses and make other investments.
it should be noted that one of the wsj writers is a real estate dev whose financial interests lie w/ keeping home prices from falling further. personally, i want prices to decline further. let’s see prices drop another 20% and i’ll help bail out the country by buying a house.
but instead we’re going to take taxpayers’ money and bailout a bunch of homeowners and businesses and get nothing in return. well hell, why take my money when they can take rich foreigners’ money? these ppl won’t even be competing against me for jobs b/c they wouldn’t be citizens. there really are such things as free lunches.
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