Life in China

For the tax-n-spend'ers out there, here is a thought experiment for you: if taxes are such a good thing, and money well-spent, why don't you contribute even more then the tax man asks of you? Have you ever done so? Why not?

Thought experiment #2: why does anyone have the RIGHT to take the belongings of someone who is richer them themselves? Using violence (police and courts) if necessary, I might add? Which is what welfare is, basically, once-removed through the intermediation of the government. Could this be just another "Might is Right" argument: the government, representing the will of the (poor) people, has a monopoly on force and takes what it wants simply because it can?

I am not saying that all of all forms of social programs are bad, but I am saying the needle in most of the Western world has swung way over into unhealthy territory where many think they are entitled to be taken care of by their government (ie. by their neighbors) and they need put no skin in the game. This is a corruption of both democracy and the human spirit, IMO.

I know people who are perfectly healthy who live on "permanent disability" and get away with it. Many people in this poisonous cultural environment will take welfare over working a difficult, low-paying job. This is a social disease, not the way the world should work, IMO. I am glad I no longer pay taxes in such a place. I will watch from afar as they go bankrupt.

Being compelled to pay 1/4, 1/3, even 1/2 (there is a point at which this number becomes too much for almost any normal person) of one's productive output to a government that one regards as corrupt or go to prison starts looking like just another kind of serfdom. With the difference that in most countries us serfs are still free to move to another country. BUT: I believe the USA currently has a law on the table whereby the IRS may ADMINISTRATIVELY (no court process required) revoke a US citizens passport and prevent him from leaving the country if he is regarded as a tax "problem". Sorry, no link at the moment.... The USA is becoming quite a scary place, and Obama Is a Fascist-in-Chief who will be remembered in the history books. And not kindly.

I have recently parted ways with Questrade[1], a Canadian brokerage, as they have joined the ranks of N.American financial institutions prone to outrageous, anti-customer behavior. I no longer do business with Questrade because: (a) they are incompetent; and (b) they cannot and should not be entrusted with anyone else's money.

Competence: I just wanted to wire some money to one of my US brokerages (something I had just done the previous year to the same brokerage!) and sent an e-mail to that effect since their website was suddenly no longer capable of such a thing, nor even mentioned it(!) About a month later, after many back-and-forth e-mails and chats, and rules that were visibly being made up as they went along, they finally said "no". The final response aside, any competent financial institution should be in a position to figure out whether or not they can complete a transaction within hours, or at least days. Weeks? Absolutely, incontrovertibly incompetent.

Trust: they claim that "Canadian regulations" require them to be nosy and "know their client". I do not care much what the regulations may or may not be, but I do care about the tone and content of how I am treated by someone who works for me. (Yes, Questrade, I am the Boss. It *is* my money.) With Questrade, all clients are criminals and money launderers unless they prove themselves otherwise. Further, Questrade's "highly trained" employees do in fact know more about their client's lives and businesses then their clients do. I am not sure why they even ask questions that they patently cannot verify, when they already know what all the answers are. Bottom line: what more damning indictment can you make of a financial institution, then to say: "I started to feel like I might never get my money back out of their claws."

Just a sample of what it is like to do business with Questrade:

• I would like send a wire to _____ brokerage in the US
• Certainly, sir, we just need a copy of your financial institutions recent statement or a void check
• Ok, I don't like the statement idea, here is a void check from another bank in another country, let's send the wire there.
• Sorry sir, but the rules suddenly changed and we now need both a void check and a statement for that bank, and oh, your name *must* be printed on the check.
• Oh really, lets go back to the US brokerage and just do the statement, I am getting really tired of this.
• Certainly sir, I will send that wire right out. --> Nothing happens.
• Hey guys, what's happening with that wire.
• Sorry sir, but it is hung up in our "Compliance Department". The wire should go out in the next day or two. --> Nothing happens for a week.
• Hi dirt bags, so what is the problem now?
• Sorry sir, but we cannot send the wire. We don't like people who have more then one address in more then one country, and we simply do not believe you are who you say you are.
• F**k you, brain dead, I am outta here.....

The above is an abbreviated account, with many steps left out. Especially note the requirement to see a statement from another financial institution, an UNBELIEVABLE violation of financial privacy. Do other people actually put up with this stuff from Questrade? I finally extracted the money with a series of small checks issued to the address of record on the account.

In the end, I do not know if I would have been ever able to make their "Compliance" Department (does that name give anyone else the creeps?) happy. The whole experience was just too Orwellian.

[1] http://www.questrade.com/

Today I just put my finger on one of the things that I really like about Hong Kong: no one laughs at me when I am training in the park. I mean no one, ever. As opposed to the daily comedy fest when I am training in Mainland China. This is quite a big deal, since I spend 2+ hours every day training. And I think a measure of the power of generations of Chinese Communist Party propaganda which belittles and denigrates all aspects of Traditional Chinese Culture. One does not have to train in the park to see this. All you have to do is watch Mainland Chinese television, and see the ridiculous, dare-I-say humiliating way in which Chinese Martial Arts are portrayed in your average television program. It looks more like some kind of strange Chinese voodoo then Martial Arts, and obviously (at least to me) is intended to discredit.

As a long-time Minimalist[1]/Conservationist, one of the things I really like about China is how easy and economical it is to fix things. Recently at a tailor: 2 RMB to stitch a disintegrating hat back together, 3 RMB to replace the zipper pull on a fleece vest. At a cobbler: 1 RMB(!!) to stitch back together the parted seams on an old pair of leather shoes I use for working out. Total: less than US$1.

Repairing electronics like televisions, mobile phones, and laptops is also very accessible. Even for an irretrievably broken laptop, there are people at a local market who will give you real money ($5-$30 depending on antiquity) for it's recycling value. There are itinerant recyclers on three-wheel bicycle trucks often passing through small side streets who will give you a couple dollars for just about anything except food waste.

[1] http://www.theminimalists.com

This Christmas one of the things I am feeling very grateful for is my health. I have been through quite a lot of Christmases already, to the point where I would normally expect to start feeling, and certainly seeing, my age. For the most part, not so. The only really strong counter-example is that my skin has lost a lot of its elasticity in the last couple of years. But even with that, though I am pushing fifty, people regularly guess my age to be in the "thirties" or even "twenties". (The latter boggles even my mind.) And in some respects, I actually feel like I am getting younger, not older.

This post's title refers to the main source of my delight: my respiratory system. For as long as I can remember, certainly since I was a young child, a cold for me has been a sentence to Hell for several weeks: head cold & sniffles --> sore throat --> severe cough --> sometimes mild pneumonia. Several times a year. And minor symptoms of asthma. In recent years the certainty of this progression has all but disappeared, and I feel like a normal human being: a cold is usually just two or three days of mere "sniffles", and then it goes away. I am not really afraid of getting sick any more.

Zero gray hair. I still own, and at this very moment am wearing, a pair of jeans purchased when I *was* in my twenties. Very little facial wrinkling. No more motion sickness when I read in a vehicle (where does that come from?).

My maternal grandfather also had a very youthful appearance, right up until the moment he decided to retire and wait for death, at which point he began a steep decline. So no doubt I have some genes on my side. But I also like to think I am getting payback for some of the choices I have made:

• I have worked out vigorously, and almost daily, for my entire adult life
• my workouts go way beyond "just exercise", as they are Chinese Martial Arts. Again, my entire adult life.
• meditated every morning for almost as long
• (re. my respiratory system) in recent years my meditation has been a very specific, lung-oriented breathing exercise
• mostly or completely vegetarian since my twenties
• consumed daily mega doses of vitamins since then as well
• zero smoking, and aside from a couple of years in college, very little alcohol consumption
• in the last ten years since I stopped working full-time, I almost always get ample rest
• I have always been sensitive to the sun, and covered my head (and protected my face from direct sunlight) with a hat.
• I have never considered work to be worthy of putting up with long term chronic stress. That or else I have been lucky. I have simply never had to deal with this.
• "Growing up" has also never been a value of mine. On the contrary, I do my best to remain naïve and flexible and freedom-loving, and expect the best out of people and situations. (Though living in China for so long has made this one really difficult to sustain.)

This post[1] on "gutter oil" finding it's way into one in ten Chinese restaurant meals is interesting on a couple of levels.

One angle is how often this subject (someone making a fast buck by poisoning the food supply) comes up in China. Constantly. Published by government media who probably really do not want to publish it, but are forced to by circumstances, so let's safely assume these kind of things are being UNDER-reported. One might be led to believe that "ethics" (as we conceive them in the West) are often not to be found in the conduct of Mainland Chinese business. I actually believe that to be true, and have seen a lot of empirical evidence of it myself, this being one example.

Another thing that REALLY made my eyebrows hit the roof when reading this article was the following:

• "But businessmen will make a rational choice between the cost of violating the law and the potential for profit", in other words it is perfectly RATIONAL and understandable for a Mainland Chinese business to choose to make profit by poisoning people. That *is* the context of this article.
• "Business ethics will not be automatically applied to them, at least not at this early stage of development." Is this a government publication saying that ethics do not apply to businesses in developing countries? Is it the government's position to not require ethical behavior from Mainland Chinese businesses? Sure as hell sounds like it, and would certainly explain a lot.

Needless to say, I am EXCEEDINGLY careful when I do business with locals.

[1] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-09/14/c_131138019.htm

(I walked out of a Café today without my laptop, and came back an hour later to find that the staff had found it and were holding it for me at the front desk. One does not expect that in a place with so much poverty....)

After my last post, a friend sent me an e-mail asking for an opinion on the difference between Chinese managers and Western managers. I am definitely not an authority on the subject, but am beginning to form an opinion:

In this, as in most aspects of living in China, there are plenty of nice people and nice experiences, just like life anywhere else. What distinguishes life in China from elsewhere I have lived is the extreme intensity and relative frequency of negative experiences. I think this is also true in the business culture.

A few things I have noticed about the locals, and probably have mentioned elsewhere in these pages:

• a tendency for people to speak very loudly
• many people have a very minimal filtering mechanism between thoughts that come in and then words that proceed out of their mouths
• a tendency to be very vocally critical of other people
• a tendency to look on people of lower social strata ("servants") as dirt beneath their feet.

(The latter is very commonly observed in the unpleasant and rude behavior directed at waitresses in restaurants.)

Add up all of the above, and a certain amount of unpleasantness is not unexpected in power relationships like work relationships:

• I did not use the word "poisonous" in my last post lightly. I have *never* had such an unpleasant relationship with someone whom I worked beside every day. Never.
• I have never seen a manager stride into the middle of an open office full of dozens of engineers and start screaming and shouting at one of them, at length, in front of the whole room. Shocking.

Only in China. And the total amount of time I have spent working in Chinese offices is *much* less then that spent in offices in Western countries.

As it turns out, this[1] full-time job was a stinker, and a classic case of how vastly external image can deviate from internal reality. There was nothing wrong with the work itself, but there was something quite sick about the management culture of the place. Personal relationships with some managers were what I can only describe as poisonous. (And since the two worst of the lot were ethnically Chinese, well.... enough said.) If I had not been holding out for the visa, I would have been outa there in two months, rather then four.

It is already quite some time now (two months?) since my last day chained to that desk, and I have been waiting and observing my own reaction to the change. You know that feeling of bliss that follows after you come back from a really good vacation, that feeling of renewal that quickly and sadly fades away within just a week or two of getting back to The Job? Well, my bliss is still going strong at two months out from returning to my independent ways. I pretty much thank God every day for being free of that ugly environment, even those days when I feel somewhat lonely working at home.

And I have not even had to look for work since then, either. For the past two months, almost on cue, I have been constantly receiving unsolicited job proposals from both old and new clients, and have as much work as I want, at a higher hourly rate then The Job was paying.

I have also decided to stop calling what I do "freelancing", and will refer to myself as a contractor in the future. (Though I have yet to figure out what that would be in Chinese. Maybe 包工? Or maybe there is nothing better then 自由职业者?)

[1] http://life-in-china.nfshost.com/node/124

(This[1] is a seriously awesome post for would-be writers. So, I should write a little something....)

I have been reading glowing reviews of the Amazon Kindle for it seems years, so having bought one a couple of months ago I will most emphatically add my my voice to the chorus:

From my pre-teen years until shortly after I started University, I read voraciously. Mostly science fiction, adding more and more classical literature and some non-fiction into the mix as time passed. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Hugo, ....my friends. During summer holidays, trapped on an extremely isolated farm with an extremely dysfunctional family, I would sometimes go through a book a day, in between the daily chores. Reading, inextricably entwined with my dreams for the future, seemed at the time to be the only thing in my life with any worth.

And then I made my first of several moves to a different planet, from hillbilly to officer training at a military university. At this point, I think what happened was that I decided I was now having an actual life that needed and deserved to be attended to, and labelled reading as an escapist activity best (at least for me) to be avoided. In the many years since then, my rate of reading actual books, for the pleasure of just reading, has dropped from one per day, to probably less then one per year. Sometimes I have picked up a book when on vacation. Sometimes not.... There were certainly some very memorable titles in there ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" comes to mind) but my reading habit as an adult has been not even a pale shadow of the past.

Enter the Kindle. In the last two months, I have already finished two novels, multiple short stories, and am picking away at a biography and a scholarly sociological work. There is a tremendous amount of out-of-copyright material available free[2] to download. Even Amazon publishes a lot of free[3] content, and a lot more that only costs a buck or two to download. I just made my first purchase[4] for $2.99, the second in a series that began with a very fine piece of Science Fiction, and a free Amazon download, called "In Her Name: Empire"[5].

The Kindle has a wireless card, and you can make your Amazon selections right on the Kindle, or on another computer, and either way they will automatically download directly to the Kindle and magically appear in the book list. I believe this is also why the Kindle apparently cannot be sold publicly, or delivered by mail, within China: the government cannot control what you are downloading and reading. But, in the local electronic book market, most of the merchants have Kindles under the counter, sealed in their original boxes, available for a modest premium above the price Amazon advertises on their website.

I suddenly do not seem to have a lot of time for even good video. I do restrict my recreational reading to the evening though. Days are for training and working.

What is different about the kindle?
* unlike most computer screens, the e-ink screen is very good to the eyes
* the device is very easy to hold and operate while reading
* light and compact, you carry your whole library with you wherever you go
* one charge will last weeks, typically
* it is cheap

[1] http://zenhabits.net/voice/
[2] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/
[3] http://www.daily-free-ebooks.com/
[4] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004IPQDZE/ref=docs-os-doi_0
[5] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0026RI9TO/ref=docs-os-doi_0

From the almost dead, that is.... My Martial Arts teacher is back in the park teaching this summer, after a six month ordeal by pneumonia that had us all worrying that we would never see his 80th birthday. I must say, he seems much more cheerful this summer then the past couple. His leg is not any better, ie. he is still too lame to train. But I think there is a little "just glad to be alive" happening right now. He made it all the way to about his third visit to the park before finding an opportunity to tear a massive strip off of one of the Park's security guards for shining his flashlight at us after dark. The silly ass had the poor judgement to lip him off then, and Laoshi chased him away on foot / cane, at full throat, as a crowd followed....

In his usual fashion, he spent just a few seconds sharing his opinion of a couple of small points about my training, and completely de-constructed and transformed what I am working on to something quite different, and quite a bit more painful and difficult. Seems I am going to practice very slowly, in a very deep and painful position for two hours a day for the next few weeks or months. And guess what: it feels like exactly the perfect direction to go in right now. Within days I am already getting some insights that I had never stumbled upon before. Maybe I will be ready for my ten year anniversary after all....[1]

[1] http://life-in-china.nfshost.com/node/107