No, I do not have change : It’s ok, you have a calculator for that purpose. F.Y.I. it can do math, as well as display numbers to show me the price, which you poke into it and point mutely at the screen like some village idiot. You might have noticed that I just conducted the first part of the transaction in your native tongue — believe it or not, I learned the numbers too. Go on, test me.
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Canadians in a Nutshell: In a classified ad in KScene, a free biweekly magazine, World Class describes itself as a group that "brings together all nationalities to discuss world issues and break down cultural barriers and prejudices."... When contacted by a Korea Herald reporter by e-mail, the organizer of the group, Bernard Carleton, elaborated further, "The thing is, CANADIANS ARE SCUM! They are self-loving, welfare supporting, over taxing, work ethic hating scum!!! They are not welcome in our group." Biff- hahaha....
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Why the Chinese love Seattle: Starbucks in January won a trademark lawsuit against a Chinese company that had used its name and logo, translated into Chinese, without the Seattle company's permission. A court ordered the Shanghai Xing-Bake Coffee shop to pay Starbucks 500,000 yuan ($62,500) in damages (see A victory for Starbucks in trademark war, January 20). ...Boeing said it had officially named the series the Boeing 787, adding the numeral 8 because of its significance in Asia as a symbol of prosperity. (However, the 787 was the next number in the Boeing series, the last aircraft being a 777.) The first Chinese Boeing 787s should be in service by the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.
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Court comes down hard on sex-starved 76-year-old: he said, he wished to live with his girlfriend, who is in her 40s and able to offer him a more fulfilling relationship. The newspaper reported that the court rejected the request, arguing that the love tying the couple together, although platonic, must be strong and stable as they had managed to remain married for half a century. Biff- failing to see morality as a social governing system, the court views a traditional moral lifestyle as more valuable than one which is productive in today's world. Traditions are always cute when they're making a living Third World hell out of someone else's life. That's what poverty tourism in the Third World is all about.
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In his essay Marrakesh, Orwell wrote: In a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human beings. It takes in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm-tree and the distant mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less interesting to look at. (Biff - That at least, has changed) It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas (Biff- in the UK I presume). But where the human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed. What does Morocco mean to a Frenchman? An orange-grove or a job in government service. Or to an Englishman? Camels, castles, palm-trees, Foreign Legionnaires, brass trays and bandits. One could probably live here for years without noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an endless, back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded soil.
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Chinese student killing accused appears in NZ court: One of the accused is charged with murdering Wan, 19, who was found in a suitcase dumped in Auckland's Waitemata Harbor on Good Friday. He is also charged with kidnapping. The second man is accused of being an accessory, after Wan's death.
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Dokdo Riders. Yeah. THAT’S The Ticket! : I personally agree that the rocks in question should be recognized as belonging to Korea. As far as I am concerned, Dokdo is Korean territory. However, I think that many people, including the Dokdo Riders, are trying to make their point in exactly the wrong way. Let’s check in the the Dokdo Riders again. Let’s see how they have been spending their time during their around-the-world vacation crusade to spread the word about Dokdo to the people of Earth. Biff- Too funny. It's mostly photographs of student clowns going through the motions of working up sympathy for a nationalist cause overseas. Doomed? Not for them it ain't. Not when it's a junket. Yet another window on activist scamming...
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The State of Education in Korea: One other thing I could never get them to do was to ask questions. Finally , a student explained it to me: "If I ask you a question during the lecture, afterwards everybody will be telling me, 'What are you wasting our time for in the class? We're trying to learn something. And you're stopping him by asking a question.'" It was kind of a one-upmanship, where nobody knows what's going on, and they'd put the other on down as if they did know. They all fake that they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude, acting as if it's not confusing at all, telling him that he's wasting their time. Biff- Fascinating, fascinating post. I've threatened my Taiwanese wife with divorce on several occasions in an effort to get her to ask questions. This sort of socially-approved culturally-generated stupidity is rampant in the developing world. A deliberate form of ignorance cultivated in the nation's best and brightest which also leads to that other pillar of the developing world: the conspiracy theory. The only way to move into the First World is via the slow process of uprooting this sort of degeneracy, primarily, I suspect by virtue of hard work and economic surplus which in turn engenders wealth, leisure, and that form of self-esteem shunned and feared by folks who wear their hearts on their sleeves: confidence.
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