Ippoippo

China

Last night, Yuko and I got back from Shenzhen, China.

I was there for work, which went reasonable well. Yuko just tagged along, allowing her to see China for the first time.
Yuko’s conclusion… she doesn’t want to go to China again. Polution really set off hayfever type symptons. Also, she found it hard because of language problems. Not enough people speak English.

She also got a bit frustrated in the hotel too. A lot of the staff kept assuming she was Chinese, rather than Japanese. So it’s just not us silly white-folk who can’t tell the difference!!
In fact, I was finding it a little annoying too, because I think some of the staff were assuming a ‘Chinese’ girl hanging out with a Western guy on business must be some floozy I paid for!! I hope the staff felt suitably embarressed when they realised she was my wife instead! Probably not.
Having said that, the hotel we stayed in was very, very nice. We got to stay in the Club Suite, because it was the only room available (there was a big conference in Shenzhen last week).
Shame about the surrounding area, which seemed to be full of girly-clubs designed to cater for Japanese business men (they all had Japanese names, like クラブ・ロマンス, ["Kurabu Romansu" or "Club Romance"]).

Yuko also hated the driving standards in China. I’ve sort of got used to them, but I still feel like I’m really risking my life whenever I get in a car there.

Anyway, if we ever went back to China, it would probably be Hong Kong S.A.R instead.

Holidays

This coming week, it’s Golden Week in Japan. Hurrraahhhh. A week off work! Mind you, we need to prepare for the move to Australia, which looks like it will start in May 15th-ish.

More Peak Oil ranting

Looks like Kuwait are looking at introducing a Deletion Protocol!
Other news here and here.

Thanks to Englishman in Osaka.

Hmmm. Not sure what to make of Cameron (UK opposition party leader).
Seems to me he’s just trying to be more Blair than Blair!

Mind you, he did have some interesting green ideas, though one wonders if he’s just doing it to look cool, and get some great soundbites for the press.

This made me laugh though.
Right, so you FLEW!!!!!!!! …. to see the effects of high carbon emissions. Hmmm. OK then.

Back in Japan today, got back last night from Shenzhen.
Yuko and I will fly out to Shenzhen tomorrow, where she’ll have a bit of a break down there, while I work.

Shenzhen is a much nicer place than Shanghai (well, the Pudong area of Shanghai where I was working) and Changsha. A bit hot there though.

What I was impressed with though, is Hong Kong (well, what I saw of it via transit to Shenzhen on the mainland). You can really see the British influence there. All the road signs are the same as the UK (billingual like in Wales, except second language is naturally Chinese). Driving standards are pretty high (i.e lanes are actually used), and they drive on the left of the road. As soon as you cross the border in Shenzhen, it’s high-speed chaos again!!!
Hong Kong airport was very nice too, and is up there with Singapore as being one of the nicest airports around. I was most happy to find a bottle of Wolfblass Platinum label wine. 125 quid a bottle!!! However, Yuko and I have tried the Black and Grey labels (the next two levels down) when I got them in Singapore airport. Apparently, Wolfblass only make 300 bottles of Platinum label available to the whole of Asia, and that batch had only just arrived at Hong Kong airport. So I was a very happy chap, despite the expense, and Yuko was really happy when I got back.

Well, at the moment, I’m catching up with the news. The BBC website is banned in China, and BBC World News on TV is heavily censored. I lost count of how many times certain news items were censored. In fact, I never knew this happened during Hu’s visit to Washington DC.