Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

So it seems I have believed for a long time. The manual labor job that probably has one of the highest date rates, the coal miner is the ultimate blue-collar job. In China, thousands of them die every year, only to be replaced by thousands more who come from the countryside for a quick buck (and a quick death). The lack of regulation in the mining industry (not just coal) means that laws cannot protect the workers and can't be used to improve their conditions. Popular belief (not just here but also everywhere) think that no matter how "safe" laws make the mines, mining is a dangerous, boring job without any prospects for brighter future. But the ongoing media coverage on rescuing 30-some Chilean coal workers trapped underneath a collapsed mine tunnel for a few months shows that maybe to simply consider coal miners are hapless and unfortunate pawns of gigantic mining companies is becoming a thing of the past, at least in certain parts of the world. There seem to be da

Living under the shadows of Internet censorship, here in China we are used to the fact that foreign websites are inaccessible and foreign Internet companies are treated as if they are all secretly working as cyber-spies for the American government. But when it comes to Microsoft and Google, two of the world's probably best known companies involved with the Internet, the attitude of the Chinese government have been quite different. While Google has been in a constant fight to get itself greater market share over Baidu, Microsoft's MSN has seen strong growth in instant messaging despite strong domestic competition. At the same time, while Bill Gates is quite an honored personality here in China, the higher ends of Google has not seen strong following in either the Chinese government or the public. As the Chinese Internet market heads to its destiny as the world's largest, Microsoft versus, one of the most peculiar yet influential rivalry in the human civilization increasin

To this day, the idea that I am in a foreign country while in China has not really sank into my mind. While I understand that (as I will rant on about in the following paragraphs) citizenship, more often than not, is a display of pure opportunism rather than some deep-hearted and sincerely nationalistic loyalty, a mental change, after all, does need to accompany a sudden change in national status. Recently in China, a fishing boat colliding with a Japanese patrol vessel in disputed territory has been subject of nationalistic outbursts. Especially considering the elections in Japan that marks another shit back toward pro-American stance and September 18th being the anniversary of start of Sino-Japanese War, tensions run high here. As much as I stay neutral on these issues, I wonder that, if similar situation were to occur in the States on July 4th, would there be as big of a reaction? Some priest threatening to burn Korans on September 11th and the popular support for such an act show

Even just going to a supermarket with your grandmother can be a learning experience in China. As a relatively new phenomenon that did not really take off in China until the early 90s, supermarkets are still a sort of middle class luxury rarely experienced by elders and people in the rural areas. In fact, for everyday shopping (especially for food), supermarkets of any kind are considered rather high end (and prices reflected this), with most Chinese preferring to buy their raw vegetables and sorts in open air markets with small stalls rather than get them all packaged from local supermarkets. Even the middle class thinks that those open air markets (sort of like "farmers' markets" in the States) have fresher local produce directly from the fields, whereas the goods in the supermarkets are commercially produced, meaning that they are made with high quantities of chemicals and are shipped from areas far far away. Of course, once you go to the open air markets, you know t

As someone (nominally) adhering to a leftist political ideology, the continued existence (and strengthening) of social class differences is quite a major issue for me. Obviously, as all leftists, I believe that the lack of equality in opportunity (or rather, the existence of double standards in which people at higher social classes get better access to education, job training, and business relationships that enable them to have greater chance of obtaining higher incomes...elitism, in short) is the fundamental reason for class gap to emerge. With elitism, social mobility that allows for descendants of lower class to move upward in social hierarchy exists just as an idealized principle. But at this point in time, I would like to question a basic premise of this argument. In modern society, we define social class as simply as a matter of income, as we assume that better educated people with jobs that require more sophistication is bound to make more money. Furthermore, we assume that t

Approaching a 10-day count until I finally depart for my job in Japan, I am thinking about what kind of hell that I will be expected to raise once I actually start working. No, really, otherwise why would I be hired in the first place? A Japanese company's business side compels the newbies to do some sales in the beginning. And obviously, a foreigner, whose spoken (not to mention written) Japanese has some serious problems, has no way to out-compete Japanese employees in talking Japanese customers in Japanese into buying random stuff (unless its a white/black guy doing door-to-door, then the Japanese people might actually be amused enough to listen...while, at least initially). And that explains why I get rejected from practically all Japanese companies with which I applied for a job. There is no need for many multilingual dudes claiming to know foreign markets considering these big conglomerates hire local talents in different localities around the globe. The local talents do