Hiatus

Dear readers.



People who are from Japan and or have lived in Japan may recognise this tune and what it signifies......

This blog is on hiatus for a unspecified amount of time, initially I had considered closing it and deleting it completely but blogger hides the delete button somewhere.

Closing it also is kind of bleak and permanent. And sometimes very infrequently I get the urge to simply splatter my thoughts all over a post to rant and rave for a moment.

But having read this from the Pinoy guy

I have not written for months and been really remiss in answering the questions that are piling up because

(1) I have been so busy with work and family and (2) I simply have not been in the mood to write lately. This blog, as you know, is a “moodly” – I write and answer questions when I’m in the mood. That’s why even my loyal readers have abandoned my blog because of the absence of new entries. I don’t blame them – I too would do the same (and in fact did over the last few months).

I've simply decided to take a Sabbatical from this blog for a multitude of reasons. This may well be permanent who knows what tomorrow will bring, but I've spent the last few days typing out responses to a few interesting questions to sort of draw a line over it. Other responses which do not appear here are answered by email.

If anybody wants to take over the reins or be an author here then email me and I'll get round to setting permissions when I get a moment.

Firstly I don't really feel in the mood to be doing this anymore. When presented with something else to do this takes a backseat a lot of the time.

Secondly I'm going adventuring for a bit, who knows when I'll be back, if ever...

So thats it for now.

May I recommend:

The Korean guy
Jocelyn
www.Chinasmack.com

reverse racism

Dear Chinese guy

What is reverse racism? I sometimes see you mention it on your posts in [another place].

K G


Dear K


Reverse racism is racism but in reverse. I.e. instead of discriminating against say a minority group the majority is discriminated against. Its sort of like positive discrimination. Where to ensure equal numbers of black, indians etc get into a work place or something. Rather than the principle of merit whereby best man or woman for the job.

Much like American Basketball has token white guys playing for them..

In the context of China reverse racism is old style lazy thinking. That is to judge a book by its cover...

I.e. a persons ethnicity determines their ability in a particular activity.

Such that a lot of people think oh look he's Japanese/Chinese he must be better at Kung Fu/Wushu than a white person teaching it.... when in reality its not always the case. There is a Tong Long master in Manchester who I've seen spar against Mr and Mrs Lee... yes both at the same time. He is exceptional in his ability and nobody has been able to land a hit on him.

Back to China, anyway quite often in China PR exercises in backwater towns hire white people as actors to pretend to be international company directors or what not, thus convincing the locals oooh this must be a massive company.

Same with teaching, ah he's white must be a better teacher than a qualified non white person.

This is not unique to China of course, back in the 1990s a friend of mine went to Japan, he bummed around for nearly a decade as a fake clergyman. As it'd look better in the wedding photos.....

50 cent

Dear Chinese guy

[Snip]


How can I stop being mis-represented by 50 cent party members? People on China firums keep on making new accounts very close to my user ID. How can I stop this?


Richard


Dear Richard.

This strikes a chord with me tbh...

Simply although this isn't what you want to hear, you can't. You can only make it unprofitable and or uneconomical for them to pretend to be you.... heh interesting coincidence tbh. A few years ago I shared the user name of somebody down to one letter. Everybody kept mistaking us for each other. So we changed avatars and sigs so people could distinguish between us.

Anyway my points are these:

Firstly make it not worth their time to duplicate you, you know like antitelemarketer tactics, this means long winded posts and or nonsensical opening statements. The kind that make people have to look in the dictionary but make perfect sense to your target audience. In that 50 cent types, including the western Sockpuppet and spying tech used on western civilians have critical weaknesses in that simply it is a very labour intensive process even the sockpuppet requires a person to actually look and process what it says. AI isn't THAT advanced yet. Thus if you use complex words which even natives have to use a dictionary to look up it wastes the time of the astroturfer if they are defaming you or whatever.

This is just a variation of the tactic used against aggressive telemarketers (telesales have gotten really rude recently I suppose it is because of the unpleasant job, no pay unless you get a sale and the sheer dire market conditions of the UK).

Anyway with telemarketers if you slam down the phone the call is over in <5 seconds, this is good even though they didn't get a sale. As it allows them to move on to the next mark..... if they can make a call every 20 seconds that's 3 per minute.... usually they have some sort of hit rate (TCG once sold stuff door to door in his teens, there was a 1/250 hit rate). Therefore this allows them to move onto the next one and eventually get the hit.

But if you waste their time then it disrupts the hit process and means it takes so much longer for them to get those hits. Online we can use TL:DR and also use complicated unoften used words which native English (or whatever you are typing in) it means the person who is pretending to be you has to actually stop and think as to what the hell are you actually saying:

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Is replicated by:

Do usrsine animals defecate in the forest?

We know defecate and forest are synonyms of shit and woods. Therefore quite quickly we can work out what it means even without knowing what ursine happens to be. We can probably guess as to what ursine happens to be. But for non native speakers and readers they'll look up defecate and ursine.... which takes them time...

This does a TLDR on them and it makes them less money = you're less likely to be target ted... low hanging fruit and all that.

Of course this may or may not work... but it is merely my own opinion.

Murder law

Chinese guy. I read this:

In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands. The husband's lover may be killed in any manner desired.

Is this for real?

David.

Dear David.

Nope, it is an urban legend. One of those which is repeated by lazy journalists and writers over and over. Such that it has somehow gained credibility. The kind that are based slightly on people's prejudices.

Like the NASA pen urban legend

I saw this put around on Chinese TV on a mainstream TV channel stated as fact. They asked children how to make pens work in space....

Such websites and writers participate in a group wank by citing each other as reliable sources of information. I've been reading these sorts of things in Fortean times. FHM, Nuts, Maxim you know men's magazines, I haven't touched a men's magazine in about ten years. Perhaps because I'm a bit of an outcast and suddenly realised hold on why do I need somebody I don't know to tell me how to live? Heh its things like the curse of the mummy, or the Crystal skull stories. OR even the NASA bollocks story about how NASA spent billions developing a pen that works in space. While the USSR used pencils. Its bollocks! Christ I heard this on Chinese TV the other day and it is still paraded around as fact.

Anyway I am no expert on law. Well I do have some training on consumer and contract law for an old career I once pursued. But I know where to look.

Anyway Hong Kong law pretty much followed British law after the British won the opium wars around 1840. Under British law, Murder isn't legal mostly, bar archaic laws which are on the books but in reality do not apply. Like shooting a Scottish person with a bow and arrow in York. I'm sure it may well say that somewhere, but if you did this you would be tried under modern law and thus you would be found guilty of murder and subject to this:



For example British law apparently allows you to settle disputes using trial by combat. About eight years ago a bloke attempted to challenge the DVLA (to Americans think DMV but even MORE useless if this is even possible, then reduce the usefulness and competence by 1000% then reduce it another 100000% then you have the usefulness and competence of the UK DVLA)

Here is the link BTW


In 1997 although PRC law sort of gained primacy over British based HK law, the laws of HK are pretty much the laws of the UK today but splintered off in their own way in slightly different directions.

Anyway the section of law is 212 which nowhere states that a betrayed wife is allowed to kill her husband in such circumstances. There is section 212.8 which says excusable homicide like self defence or misfortune. But nothing specific on wife allowed to kill her husband with her bare hands.

Hell Hong Kong is a grave yard for marriage anyway. With high divorce rates 99 out of 1000 (By contrast the USA is 6.8 out of 1000)

And if this was legal it would be a blood bath daily.... and Hong Kong would look like those Chinese gangsta type movies but without the guns. I mean for starters in Asia the prevalence of working women, is enormous and if there is supply there is demand (what was it those American Lawyers say?.... erm no judgement).

In Mainland China due to illegality it is slightly covert. There are 'barbershops and massage centres'. In HK it is legal under certain circumstances (again like UK law) and quite overt go walk around Mong Kok. Jordan on a evening and see how many times pimps will proposition you. In Macau it is completely overt. And there would be much much death if this law was real Hong Kong would look like this between husbands, wives and mistresses.



And although it would be mildly cool for a while the constant sound of gunfire would get annoying.