China joins 'spacewalk league' (whatever the fuck that is)

“China joins spacewalk league” blares the front page of today’s South China Boring Most, speaking impartially on behalf of Beijing.

Apparently the man who walked in space for China wore a suit that was made in China, and survived. The Boring Most does not say who his tailor was or if the material was a cotton-rayon mix or one of the advanced washable fabrics favoured by German designers for those awful tight trousers they make.

I’m not at all sure what the Spacewalk League is, or how you score points or win a trophy because the Boring Most doesn’t actually tell me that. I suspect this might be just more nationalistic hyperbole and flag-waving, but don’t want to be seen as cynical so I won’t write that.

My first thought then, as someone who came of age in the 80s, was Shalamar or Michael Jackson – you know, walking forward while looking like you are walking backwards? But apparently not. So the Spacewalk League is not a breakdance or bodypopping league. It is not clear what the Spacewalk League is.

What is clear from the Boring Most article is that China will be competing for points in spacewalking against the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Except the U.S.S.R. doesn’t exist any more. So, the U.S.A. plus Russia and the bits of Georgia that Putin recently bombed flat. I guess the Spacewalk League is somewhat like international athletics, where competitors travel different distances in competitive times, only now they actually have to be in space in a spacesuit. I wonder if they take steroids. Again, the Boring Most does not say.

The Boring Most does mention that China plans to go to the moon and build a moonstation. My guess is they will then enter a Moonwalking League, which is where they will compete with Michael Jackson and Shalamar, although maybe not. The U.S.A. used to go to the moon but there was no one to bomb there, and no one to preach to about right living, so they stopped going. Maybe China will build a series of widget factories. Maybe N.A.S.A. will bring Michael Jackson out of retirement. It is not clear. The Boring Most does not say.

Finally, and I must go now and have a cup of tea, I should point out that space technology is important because it has been responsible for many important scientific innovations that have improved life on planet earth for many people. One of these inventions is tinfoil. I can’t remember any others right now.

People tend to forget these inventions and focus on the cost of running a Spacewalk League and talk about how when people around the world are poor we shouldn't waste money on shit like this. They overlook the versatility of tinfoil, and focus instead on statistics like these:

• At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $1 a day.

• More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.

• The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.

Source for statistics: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#fact3

Suck on a Fisherman's Friend

September 22, 2008

Overheard on the ferry this morning.

A youngish, slightly doughy Englishman is sitting on the ferry at 08:25 wearing an ironed tee-shirt with a collar. It has one of those indistinct sporty labels that place you in a certain social category, though which category that would be I really could not tell you.

A youngish, slim, nondescript Chinese woman with a slight North American twang walks up in a tight black dress and stilletoes.

"Hi," she says enthusiastically, "what are you doing here?"

She sits down next to the Englishman while he mumbles something unconvincing about deciding to go to work on this ferry on this day, and sit in this particular seat on a whim, a prayer, a spur, or some such.

It's all rather cute in a Hugh Grant kinda way - all rather gosh fancy seeing you here, umm, well, you know, lovely day, like your dress, gosh, isn't the light so ... sort of ... morningy.

Mildly amusing but not very distracting, like a Hollywood film running quietly in the background. Until, that is, she offers him a sweet.

"Oh, yes please," he says enthusiastically. "It's always good to suck on a Fisherman's Friend."

I look over then.

From his face it's clear he does not understand the pun, and neither, bless, does she.

Privacy in Hong Kong

Sunday 16th March

Internet down at City Lofts, or at least, I can’t connect using the passwords they gave me.

I call Arman, the enthsiastically friendly Filipino who works for City Lofts and he says he will bring over their tech guy and check out the connection for me. I have to go out, so I will not be there.

He asks if I will leave my computer switched on.

I tell him no, and he is not to touch my computer. He can check the connection, and there is nothing wrong with my computer, it has worked with wireless connections all over the world.

He says sometimes there is a problem between their system and Macs.

I tell him not to touch my computer.

I turn off my computer and put it in my briefcase next to the glass desk which has the TV on so you can’t use it to write on.

I go out, take the underground, then a ferry, and walk across Lamma, the small island I used to live on. It is Sunday, and the sun has come out. I find myself walking a large concrete road that is all but deserted, apart from an occasional unfriendly village house with a collection of violent, unfriendly dogs which come out to bark at me.

The grass is scorched brown from the winter. There is a fecund smell of earth and leaf. The wind moves through trees. I find myself strangely aroused, and realise that growing up in the country in England, my earliest sexual encounters are forever associated with the smells of earth, of cut grass, of the cold chill of air moving over hot limbs coiled in long grass.

I drift in and out of thoughts, and whilst wondering whatever happened to one of my ex-girlfriends, the one who became a heroin addict, find myself on the brow of a hill, looking down over the island from a new vantage point. The hideously ugly power station dwarfs the tiny village below.

My phone rings. It is Arman. He wants to know if he can go into my room. I tell him he can, and I told him before that he can, to check the internet.

I stand on the hill and look down again at the village. I remember that the power station was built here because it was not safe to build it close to the city. So they built it right on top of one of the oldest fishing villages in Hong Kong, and destroyed the long, softly sweeping curve and white sand of Hung Shing Yeh Beach to do so.

The phone rings again. It is Arman. He wants to know where my computer is. I tell him that he cannot touch my computer. He says the tech guy would like to check that my computer is okay. I tell him my computer is fine, thank you, and hang up.

I remember that there was a pig farm next to Hung Shing Yeh Beach. When I first came to live here, 18 years ago, each morning as the sun rose I would awaken to the screams of a pig being slaughtered. It became a ritual of sun worship: the sun rose, the pig died. The pig had to die for the village to thrive. True enough, on my way to the ferry I would pass the butcher’s, a small shop in a narrow street, and see the steaming entrails and limbs of the fresh carcass surrounded by hordes of old men and women, prodding the parts and calling for cuts of this and that.

My phone rings again. Arman wants to know the password to my computer. So, he has gone into my briefcase, found the computer, and opened it, and now can’t get into the computer because it is password protected. My reverie is broken. I demand to talk to the tech guy. I tell him to leave my computer alone. It is private. It has work documents on there that are confidential. This is true. I do not bother with an argument about privacy. Clearly that is an abstract concept that cannot be dealt with from the brow of a hill, over the phone, looking down on the beach that housed the pig farm and is now dominated by a power station.

I tell him again not to touch my computer, that it works perfectly. I am coming back now, I say.

I find my way back into the village, onto a ferry, into the subway, up the ciggie strewn stairwell, and two hours later I am in my room.

My computer is back in my briefcase. I take it out and turn it on. It connects to the internet.

Two days later, I realise that my log files have been deleted.

By this time I have found that all the techie who hacked into my computer needed to do was to tell me to use a different wireless protocol.

So it goes.

A NATION MOURNS. Apparently.

20 May 2008

In the papers today, the press is filled with absurd platitudes about mourning the dead.

“A NATION MOURNS” blares the South China Boring Most, with large font and cliché upon cliché to support the official party line.

Not since the death of Mao have so many people stood still in China to mourn at an officially designated time, we are told. This is apparently a wonder of the age.

“They will never be forgotten” says the Boring Most.

By about page 4 the dead have been forgotten and we have moved on to the reckonings that must be due to corrupt officials.

Perhaps they’ll execute them in the shiney new stadia built for the forthcoming Olympics? Assuming, that is, the stadia don’t fall down because they were built by corrupt officials using substandard materials, like the schools in Sichuan that crushed and suffocated the tiny bodies of the children of the poor.

Over on the back page, a Reuters article reveals that prostitutes in Afghanistan are often young Chinese women. They risk the obvious threats of death to make more money than they would have at home. The downside of China’s economic miracle, it seems, is mass unemployment as state industries are closed, and workers thrown to the dogs.

Or in this case, the Taliban.

The nation does not mourn this.