Random statistics #23

(I usually randomly repost things here that I've written elsewhere - hence Stirfried. This usually means that a) they're not funny anymore, b) don't make much sense anyway and c) not very interesting to most people reading them. Ah well)

Statistical result of arguing with a group of Americans:

Number of Americans who despise France for not wanting to invade Iraq: ~90%

Number of Americans who now despise their own leaders for invading Iraq: ~60%

Number of Americans willing to agree that France had a point: ~0%

Now on a Flickr page near you

Despite being in many ways fundamentally talentless, I do own a camera.
Which means I feel the urge to upload any pictures that are not horribly ugly. Or ones that are particularly ugly.

Anyway, feel free to have a gander at my flickr page. Go on, its got handbags made from dogs.

Great Firewall of China part XI

The Chinese Olympic circus has come and gone, leaving vast squeaky-clean swathes of Beijing in its wake, and moved on to London where its too much to hope that it'll achieve the same.
Miraculously, the internet restrictions that came into force just before the games started have been lifted - most people here resignedly thought that they'd be here to stay, now the journalists have left and no-one cares anymore. Wikipedia is available, as are some of the UK news sites that were blocked. No doubt information on Tibet and religious groups is still censored - I haven't searched for them, and the "Chinese Wikipedia" is still blocked. Thankfully the censors still don't know about, or just believe most people don't know about, anonymous proxy servers. Probably the latter, if people understand proxies properly they can most likely find a way around most barriers the government can put up.

Anyway, that's all fine an' all - but the important news is that I can play Final Fantasy XI Online again. Well, kinda. Just in time for the Olympics there came an announcement from Square-Enix that they would begin to block access from 'certain access points'. So now I can't anymore, at least from home. I'm limited to hour-long sessions playing on a laptop from the local Starbucks, which as any MMORPG palyer will tell you, isn't fun.
I don't know how Starbucks, which uses the same ISP as me, has avoided being blocked. I assume its run through a different group of net addresses that escaped the Squeenix block. So the only question is: How do I get me some of that?
I see I'm not the only one - I see a lot of howling from US servicemen stationed in Korea that they've been blocked too. Not that we've ever seen Korean RMTs - it doesn't make much economic sense for them, in the same way it doesn't for people in the US. That doesn't make me feel any better though.

The question is, how long do I keep paying for a service that they're trying to stop me using? The obvious answer is "Not another minute", but I can't bring myself to cancel my 5,000+ hours just yet. Another important question is, since Squeenix has another next-gen MMORPG in the pipeline: Why would I even start playing it, given that they'd possibly cut people off without warning again?

The bottom line is that SE can do what they want, they can cut off any region they want, and in this case they probably solve some of their headaches, without affecting a significant proportion of their playerbase. But its an ugly and blunt solution, as well as a short-term one. Judging by my fellow fishermen on the Selbina Ferry, Fdgajfg and Xiaopigu, the RMTs have already set up their proxies. So the question is, which is the next part of the world to be banned?

Keyholes

So I'm in Korea. That in itself is OK, although its really hard to get too excited about it after China. Maybe its because I'm not in the throbbing heart of it, as it were, or maybe because I'm on new-experience overload after the last month. Or just maybe its because the damn place is more expensive than the US.

So, after a hard day at work - actually half a day - I come back to the hotel for an afternoon kip.
I get to the room door and...can't find the keyhole.
OK, I'm tired. I can get that. So I take a deep breath, then try again. Nope, no keyhole. I'm pretty sure I'd been able to find it alright the day before, but wherever it is I can't see it.

So its back to the front desk with perhaps the strangest complaint I've ever made.
"Excuse me, the keyhole on my door has disappeared".

Now, I supposed I'd been hoping for a small laugh and a quick reply of "Ah yes, of course sir. We have all the keyholes cleaned and reamed out every Thursday afternoon. If you'd like to relax for 10 minutes in the bar with a complimentary gin and tonic we'll have it replaced immediately". What I wasn't hoping for was a blank stare for a very long 10 seconds, then a slowly-raised index finger pointing at my key, which I was holding up hopefully as if to prove that I had been able to open my door at some point.

"You use this key, sir".

"Err, yes. Its been fine up to now, but now I can't seem to find the keyhole".

"Your key is not working?"

"No - no. I'm sure it works fine when I put it in the keyhole. The problem is I...err...can't find the keyhole".

--Blank Stare-- (and not just the concierge, the couple checking in are now staring at me with a mixture of pity and...well, mostly pity).

But whatever - I'm pretty sure by now this is all their fault somehow. "The problem is that my keyhole has disappeared. I'd like it back, or at least if you could open a window or something so I could get into my room".

"Just one moment sir". And he rushes off, presumably to call an ambulance.

Well, as it turned out they were replacing all the keyholes on my floor with electronic locks, and no-one knew. There's at least 30 rooms on that floor, and OK, maybe I was the first to notice, but surely one of the guys behind the desk, or the manager they called, or someone knew?

Anyway, I'm much happier now, as I know that I can trust my own judgement as to whether a keyhole has suddenly vanished or not. In addition, I don't have to carry around a large key which was, as these things often are, tied to what appears to be a dinner plate (I can only assume in case you get hungry while searching for your keyhole).

DB

Teething Troubles

So..I'm here. Landed in Shanghai last night - by the time I got to the hotel I collapsed, but woke up after a few hours. Through my fuddled brain I wondered why the light was so bright at around 4am...turns out the window of the room looks out into a corridor inside the hotel. Luckily I was so tired I went back to sleep depite the number of people walking around shouting into their phones. How things have changed - last time I came here the travel agent from my company in Israel booked the room, and I spent a week rolling in 5-star luxury. Now I wondering if I can pluck up the courage (and the Mandarin) to ask for a second towel...

Ah well - whatever - there's a bed, a bathroom and a internet jack. I'm happy. Time to settle down, read my daily online funnies and download the software I need from my company's ftp site.
Except - I run smack into the limited Chinese web access. Horror of horrors: sinfest.net isn't available here. That's really going to mess up my mornings. Plus the hassle of finding a way to bypass that. Dilbert (and more importantly 'Pearls') and the Order of the Stick are still up - but they're not Sinfest.

Actually, although I'd agree the censorship in principle is a Bad Thing, I'm not automatically against censorship on the net, in some cases - and I think China at the moment might be one of those. The problem is that although we talk about the web being awash in information, then although that's true we all know that what the web's really chest-high in is opinions, rants, screeds and the like. Not a problem in the 'western world', where we've become somewhat immune to online drivel. But in other places, its not the case.
Remember the phrase 'It must be true, I saw it on a web page'? Outside of your grandma's house, you don't hear that a whole lot. But some people (or peoples) are just not used to having 150 different viewpoints to filter, think critically about and find the reality somewhere in the middle. I've felt this was a big problem in the middle east while I've been there - "Oh great, Iranians can now access the White Supremist web sites in the USA. I'm sure that'll help".
Surfing without going mad is hard enough as it is...maybe we don't just want to throw everyone in the deep end right away. Maybe let them get used to reading differing opinions in the newspapers first.

Still - At least I seem to be able to install my FFXI (Final Fantasy XI - online MMRPG that I've resisted mentioning so far) without any problems. That still doesn't get me me my daily Sinfest, but at least my Bonecrafting won't fall behind.

Oh - and the ftp site for my company? Blocked as well. That means no company email, calendar or contact info for the next three weeks. I guess I should probably do something about that at some point. Maybe next week.

What's in a name?

There's nothing wrong with my name. I like it, as much as anyone likes their name. The problem is, its a little....well, I'll come clean: Its Welsh. Not a problem in the UK, but give it to someone who doesn't speak English as a first language, and they'll mess it up.
In Israel people would look at it, then think for a second, try to pronounce it and mess up. In China, they don't even try. My name is basically a collection of all the letters that its hard for a Mandarin speaker to pronounce.
All this has a certain charm - unless you've spent the last few years in a country where people can't say your name anyway, and the novelty of looking different to everyone else (and being started at ALL the time) has worn off SO much already.

So - time for a new name. After some discussion with Chinese friends, I finally picked one (well, they did - I agreed). Of course, it couldn't be a normal common name (who here, when picking an English name for someone, would suggest Bob Smith? Yeah, thought so). Problem is, it being an oncommon name, coupled with my terrible Manarin pronounciation, means that no-one understands me when I say it.

So - going from having a name no-one around you can pronounce, to having one that you can't say properly...is that progress?
In addition, half the people I'm going ot be working with are Korean, so they won't pronounce it properly either - Bob Smith is looking more attractive by the minute.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of names: DaBai means literally 'Big White'. When I first met my Chinese friend, I had long hair, and she called me 'da bai lao hu' = 'big white tiger'. This got shortened to dabai.
And no, that's not my 'real' Chinese name ^^

DaBai

A splatter of background

Its a tradition for students in the UK, at least for the more adventurous ones, to take a little time out after a degree, and go see something. So they pack their backpacks, put on a nice pair of boots, and wander off for a year. Usually they come back after a few months, when either the money or the ability to cope with sleeping on trains runs out, with longer hair, dirty boots and a thick photo album (or a few Gig of photo's).
The problem is - they had a great time, and a lot of memories. But when they talk estatically about, for example, their time in Japan - you realise that actually they were only there for a week, which was spent mostly on a train. In fact, they've travelled through 36 countries in 4 months without getting to know much about any of them. Then they get an office job in Sheffield and spend the next 40 years there.

No thanks.
Not to mention not having the money.

What I needed was a job. On the other hand, I hated Sheffield (I lived nowhere near there, but many of my friends seemed to get jobs there, in the end). So I had a plan (another late-night one) to look for work in other countries, spend a few years working 1-2 years in each, and actually get to know something a bit different.
After some filtering, it came down to New Zealand, Israel or Antartica. All cool places, but in the end I headed off to Israel for a year.
Which became 3. Which became 5. Which suddendly (in what seemed like a week) because 9 years, and I see the rest of my life here in a comfortable job, with comfortable pay and a comfortable house, being well - comfortable. But that's not the same as happy.

So I'm off again, this time to China. I just got held up for 8 years.

DaBai