To Alcohol!

Many people have asked me if I like Beijing or New Zealand better. This is a difficult question to answer and possibly I am never able to answer it. But I clearly know that New Zealand life style suits me better and I enjoy the most while I am traveling and staying in New Zealand. I have left my footprint at many places, both North Island and South Island, in New Zealand; but in China, I hardly travel. It is almost a week since I have arrived Beijing, and now both my body and my mind have reaction to the environment.

I went to “Zhong Guan Cun” yesterday, a place called China’s Silicone Valley. My grandparents used to live there more than 15 years ago. In my memory, the place had a small street with about a meter deep channel on each side of the road. I used to run down to the channel and then climb up to the top, over and over again with my cousin who is a year younger. Now it becomes a modern place full of business apartments and shopping centers. “Hai Long”, one of the (possibly the oldest) electronic markets here contain thousands of small shops and you can find the latest technology products range from ipods, digital cameras to laptops. They sell those products as selling vegetables in the morning market, seasonal, cheap and fresh; but remember to bargain because most of their quotes are still overpriced especially if you are not familiar with the market price.



I bought a GPS receiver for the company. It perfectly shows how technology can invade people’s privacy (there is no privacy in Beijing anyway) and ruin our lives. Besides normal use, the product can be used in the following ways:

1 If you doubt your partner having an affair.
2 If you want to chase someone who owes your money.
3 If you want to know what your business partners or competitors are up to.
4 Of course cops can attach it with a criminal or someone who received home detention.
……….let me know if you can think about more



Great! Google knows what we are after, Amazon knows what we like, GPS knows where we are, RFID tag knows who we are, what a fantastic world to live in. I believe in the near future, there won’t be any prison and all we need is to adopt Holmer’s philosophy, “if something is hard to think about, it does not worth to think about” -------“To Alcohol!”

If there is no wind, it is a luxury thing to see blue sky. I bet the depression rate is higher here than other places that are smaller and less polluted. It is difficult to know what makes us truly happy, at least here with all the materials, I feel something missing. I definitely need to go back to bush soon….but right now I have to stay in Beijing, a giant machine.

I start missing New Zealand.