Reflecting on Shakira in China

After Shakira’s performance in Nanjing the Chinese bbs posts were almost unanamous. Shakira did an incredible job but China is so far behind the rest of the world in terms of hosting internaional events- they are clueless. You can go to youkuo and see the comments. Shakira was gracious and braved 30 degree cold while dancing smiling and entertaining. The Chinese crowd was semi-comatose and Shakira deserved better. As for the Chinese MC’s, their English was horrible, leaving her in an uncomfortable state at times, they lacked confidence and acted sophomoric. Another example would be when she attempted to teach them the dance from the FIFA world cup and two of the four MC’s merely watched, didnt attempt to join in and on their faces seemed to be a look of scorn. I felt sorry for China, thought they looked pretty foolish and not ready for prime time. The bbs posts seemed to corroborate my feelings. This is China, instead of getting qualified people to do the event, and competent translators, they figured that they can do international events justas they do in local events. The result was a half-assed attempt at bringing super star to China , but in the end they fell flat on their faces.

Great Chinese Gift Ideas

Its almost new Years , so maybe I will lighten things up with some photos. Check out this site. Iwill post some of the photos below, but go to it and you’ll see many more.

Not that cold, maybe I’ll put on my Birkensticks instead…or my Hike sandals.

May as well pamper myself with a tan and some coffee while I’m doin’ the nails.

Shakira in China

Shakira is in Nanjing and did a great job as usual. The funny thing is that she sai she is happy to be here and wants to come baack. I’m sure that may be true, but I bet she also wants to sell dvds. I\Someone probably said “hey shakira cjina has 1 300 000 000 people, lets go and intro your music to them, imaine if each one buys one album…”. No one bothered to tell her that Chinese haveno need to buy DVDs they can listen to songs for free on Baidu or many other sites. I just asked some friends and none of thme has ever bought a real DVD in china . (they are all Chinese – btw)

Chinese Bridge

from this site:

Funny T-shirt

Saw this on weirdasianews.com

Beautiful Shot of Beijing from Space

From this webpage:

Taken by the Expedition 26 crew, this photograph shows two of China’s most populous cities at night. Located in the northern part of the country, Beijing and Tianjin are estimated to house, together, nearly 20 million people, with 12 million in the Beijing metropolitan area and over 7 million in Tianjin.”

Oldie But Goodie- China Accuses Taiwan of Promoting Corruption in the Region

This is old but funny. A while back a Chinese official accused Taiwan of spreading corruption in the region. The rest of the world must be scratching their collective skulls and muttering, “wtf? A Chinese official calling someone else corrupt..” then they probably dismissed it as a joke and ate a burger and fries.

excerpt:
“NADI, FIJI —- China today stepped up its campaign against Taiwan — a country it sees as its own province not a sovereign state — when its delegation met representatives of the Pacific Islands Forum here.

“Taiwan is using chequebook diplomacy to spread corruption around the region,” He Yafei, China’s assistant foreign minister told reporters outside the conference room of the exclusive Westin Resort on Denarau.”

China Getting Tough on “Import Milk” WTF???

Uncle Chicom (chinese comunist party leaders) are a funny lot. Its not as though they wish to be funny, but in their frenzy to make China appear to be on the vanguard and a credible nation, they do some odd things. I just saw headline in the China daily. The communist party is vowing to get tough on UNSAFE IMPORTED MILK !!!!

After re-reading the article, I merely shook my head in wonderment. How do the fathers of the melamilk crisis ’08 (in case you’ve been living under a rock, the chinese have been adding a toxic material called melamine to milk powder and many children have died and gottne kidney stones), the mela milk crisis ’09, and the mela milk crisis ’10. Yeah , in all of the past three years, the chicoms have discovered hundreds of TONS of infected milk that has not been pulled form the shelves.
I guess it makes more sense for them to check incoming milk samples, than face the brutal reality of the harmful stuff the typical Chinese person consumes in a day.

excerpt:

“Beijing – Domestic buyers will be responsible for recalling unsafe dairy products imported from overseas and for making the recall information public, a draft regulation has proposed.The regulation, proposed by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), will remain on the administration’s website for public input until Jan 8

Chinese Houses

from the book

Interesting Post on the US Military From Loadingdata.nl

Interesting post below about the US military strategy and that of China.

From this website

excerpt:

Military defense: US versus China

Today the following article was brought to my attention via @raykwong on Twitter:

If the DF-21D ASBM ends up working as advertised, however, it may (potentially) effectively obsolete U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the event of a future direct conflict with China over Taiwan. It will mean that the Chinese can essentially sink our aircraft carriers at will, turning them into huge, massively-expensive above-the-water targets (multi-billion-dollar targets, when accompanying aircraft are taken into account) for the taking–easy pickins, if you will. (Source: Defense Review)

“”

This reminded me of a story I once heard about the difference between the American and Soviet space program. While preparing to go to space, the Americans realized that a normal pen wouldn’t work without gravity. To solve this problem, they invested millions of dollars to come up with a solution: the permanent marker. The Soviets on the other hand simply brought a pencil.

This story may, or may not be true, but the analogy is clear. In this case again the Americans invest trillions of dollars to build the most state-of-the-art naval fleet (which, by the way, can hardly be used for anything else than offensive purposes) not realizing that each and every one of their ships, including their multi billion aircraft carriers, can be sunk for less than a fraction of the costs.

The Chinese missile that the panic-du-jour is about, has an effective range of 2000km. For your reference: that means they can reach the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal in the West, anywhere up to Malaysia, including the entire Philippines in the South, the entire Philippine Sea and all of Japan in the East. (And for the Americans who have no idea where those places are, that’s the distance from Boston to Miami)

Also interesting to know, since the supposed reason why the US would want to deploy their fleet against China is the Taiwan issue, is that the Taiwan straight is 150-200km wide. Less than a tenth of the range.”