Stanfords Finest

Not often I have to rush home to update my blog so make the most of it. I get a cab to and from work every day. The morning taxi I sit there mute and pissed of as I driven to impending death but the cab I catch home in the evening is a different story with me trying to engage the hapless driver into some kind of conversation. I always view any contact with the locals as a free Chinese lesson so I try and interact as much as possible. This evening I caught a cab home and had the pleasure of it being driven by a very jolly chap he laughed loudly and spat huge blobs of phlegm out the window. We had a chat about where I am from and how China owns all of Americas money and how much (surprise surprise) he hates the Japanese. The usual things that most working class Chinese people like to talk about. I asked him if he knew any English and he said no. Reluctantly he uttered a ‘hello’ and a ‘goodbye’ and that was it. As we approached my gated compound he said one other thing in perfect English ”We are studying for the revolution” which is, for whatever reason, perhaps the coolest thing I have ever heard. We both laughed as he said it but it struck me how close I am to those that 30 years ago were in a different place to where they may be now. China is cool, there is no doubt, but you have to dig for this cool shit.You won’t find the cool stuff by looking at it.

drove from my home in Lijiazui to WuXi for a Grand Opening today. Crazy scenes ensured. Basically this was like an Ideal Homes Show but in WuXi and with hundreds of Chinese developers all trying to get the average Chinese punter to buy some poorly built room for big bucks. We had a confrence where I read a pre-arranged script in front of cameras and an audience. I was interviewed for WuXi TV and had to answer some pre-arranged questions and then home. I was the only ‘westener’ at this show but I am so Chinese now I didn’t bat an eyelid. I feel at home surrounded by Chinese people and never feel awkward. I am assimilated. I do enjoy the long motorways of China – dull,grey, lifeless and punctuated with advertisement hoardings displaying new industrial parks. The are toll booths every now and then but on the whole the roads stretch out for ever and ever and you get an idea how vast this country is. Back home we ordered pizza and the delivery due had one of those faces that looked a thousand years old. Generations and generations of farmer now reduced to delivering fucking pizza.

I’m gutted. I should have seen this coming man. This is all a hex but brilliantly done. Just as I was warming up to dance on the graves of the parasitic money men they have to pull it out the bag. This time last week we were watching the fall of Babylon and its towers of paper money but today a unified world pumps billions into markets that should have gone to the wall. Let them crash and burn. Let those that work and have tangible results prosper in an environment where at last those that bullshit and produce nothing apart from more debt and pain to the poor of this world eat dirt. It was looking great but no, The Man steps in. Fuck you Iceland.

very interesting if somewhat unsurprising report generated by citizenlab. basically Skype is riddled with spyware that filter naughty words out and instead puts the naughty words on a server so that The Man can monitor your every move homeboy. Well I never. China? Censorship? I guess the surprising thing is the depths that they will go to to monitor your words. Major Findings of this report are as follows:

• The full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China.
• These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure publicly-accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to
decrypt the data.
• The captured messages contain specific keywords relating to sensitive political topics
• Our analysis suggests that the surveillance is not solely keyword-driven. Many of the captured messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting that there may be criteria, such as specific usernames, that determine whether messages are
captured by the system.

The only surprise is that they were so sloppy – in the west we do this stuff as well but its cleverer than this crude method. If anyone wants to know anything about you be you Chinese or British or American then they already do. Skype and China are more crude but not less sinister.

The opening day of Marks and Spencer’s new store in Shanghai was a thing of great beauty. Four floors full sweating laowai trying on ill-fitting slacks and flowery blouses. The fourth floor was the food floor and its with joy that I can report that it was like being back in London. A bit. No fresh food obv but nice to get some decent tea and pasta sauces from home and much cheaper than the imported food shop mafia that we usually go to. Afterwards a meal and as usual our son is the star of the show. There we literally four serving staff playing with him for the duration of our meal not because they had to but because they wanted to. When we moved here we were uncomfortable with this but after a while you get in a groove with it – its the culture.