Posts from March 2004
March 31, 2004
Do you know your porn star name?
Find out your porn star name!
I'm Peppy Tomari...
March 27, 2004
Spam as vocabulary lesson
Sometimes I get a spam with such an interesting subject that I just have to take a look...
March 26, 2004
Bringing home the bacon
The Chinese are very practical when it comes to food delivery.
March 25, 2004
Don't spill your beer!
I guess democracy also means that the people who aren't allowed to vote in an election are still allowed to get angry at the comments of other people who are also not allowed to vote in elections.
I enjoy the back and forth, and the extra eyeballs, but this blog makes no representations or warranties to please anyone. Sorry. I'm just writing about "quirky investigations into life in Asia" as they occur in my life. If your experience and "investigation" differs from mine, cool, I'll read your blog as well, but don't get all upset. You might spill your beer.
Some other interesting reads:
Michael Le Houllier's opinions...
Scott Sommer's "Politics in Taiwan Blog"
March 24, 2004
Friend Poll
I've been randomly asking my Chinese friends the following simple question: "Do you think it was fake or not?"
Results:
Chinese friend 1 (Tech CEO): "Oh, come on, this makes me sick. I'm disgusted. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. Maybe it's time to move to China."
Chinese friend 2 (Record executive): "C'mon, we all know it's fake. It's too obvious. What can you expect from Chen? That's the kind of person he is."
Chinese friend 3 (Design company owner): "Yeah, right. I guess that's just the way it is. It's pretty amazing that Chen could turn exactly the right way at exactly the right time, and the bullet ends up in his pocket after scratching the knee of Lu. Pretty amazing."
Chinese friend 4 (Tech company CEO): "Fake! It's all just a big joke. Ridiculous. Stupid!"
Chinese friend 5 (TV news anchor): "It is pretty strange isn't it? All these weird loose ends. Nothing seems to fit together very well."
Chinese friend 6 (Media executive): "Unbelievable. I can't believe I came back from China to vote in this joke election."
Chinese friend 7 (German car company staff): "I want to go get a gun, walk in front of Chen's face and shoot myself twice and die."
Chinese friend 8 (Artist manager): "Impossible! This is so incredibly stupid. I'm going down to the protest and scream."
Chinese friend 9 (Movie executive): "What a joke. Who's he trying to kid? It's too hard to believe isn't it?"
Chinese friend 10 (Media executive) "It just makes me feel so sad. I can't even eat when I go home to see my parents. None of us have an appetite. Another four years of this idiot. Oh my god..."
Chinese friend 11 (Surgeon) "No doubt, he was definitely shot. I'm a doctor, and there's obviously a wound. The head of the department from my school (Taiwan University) was the surgeon. The circumstances behind why and how he was shot - no one knows yet, we just have to wait. That's a bit unusual.
Chinese friend 12 (Cosmetics company CEO) "To answer your question, definitely fake. What do you foreigners think?"
Chinese friend 13 (Telecom executive) "Don't know. There's not enough evidence. Usually in this kind of event, the police are quick to gather evidence. It's strange that there's no evidence yet. If after a while there's still no evidence, I'll have some doubts."
Chinese friend 14 (China TV personality and model) "I came back from China for this election. I'm more concerned about my parents. They are both so sad and upset. Blue or Green, they all play by the same game rules. It's not being handled very well either way."
Chinese friend 15 (VC and marketing executive) "That's a good question. My gut feeling tells me it's fake - a little over 50% chance. Either way, if it was or not, the whole way Chen communicated and handled the situation is a manipulation. It was manipulated."
Chinese friend 16 (Entertainment reporter) "Fake. It was just a way to make sure he could get into office."
Chinese friend 17 (Movie company President) "It's real. Not really much to say there. Who would play with their own life? He's a victim, and now we have to find the shooter. Have you seen the movie Wag the Dog? Sometimes the conspiracy theory works, sometimes it doesn't. How can the shooter be so accurate, as to hit the window, but only graze the President? Taiwanese democratic behavior is suspicion. It's not right to automatically brand someone guilty until proven innocent. Isn't the judicial system based on 'innocent until proven guilty?' Whatever the situation, what happened, and the circumstances behind it need evidence first before assuming manipulation or wrong doing."
Chinese friend 18 (TV drama actor) "Fake. Too many questions surrounding it."
Chinese friend 19 (Investment Banker) "I don't really care. I don't watch TV, so I'm not influenced by the media at all. I only care whether or not it will affect my investment return."
Chinese friend 20 (Insurance company manager) "Their was a shot, and yes, there's a gunshot wound, but it's all acting. That was all staged. I mean there's four things that are just too weird. 1) The timing - It happens after the stock market closes, 2) The security - They didn't seal off the area at all, 3) the protocol - this is a serious event, for chrissakes the President gets shot, and it's handled only as a standard police case. There's no immediate expert investigation, or a rush to send it up to the highest law to find out what happened. 4) Money - they even hand out money to the people around the President!"
Chinese friend 21 (Motorcycle cop) "I don't know. I don't give a shit. Whoever gets elected is all the same. Just as long as the boss keep paying my salary."
March 23, 2004
Case of the wandering wound
Once again, the CNN photo. The President is bleeding on the right side.
But the doctors seem to be working on a wound that is on the President's left side.
Or maybe they are focusing their attention to the extreme far left of the wound.
Case of the disappearing blood
CNN shot of Chen standing in the back of the jeep immediately after getting shot. Blood is clearly visible on his jacket.
Security cam image of Chen entering Chi Mei Hospital about 10 minutes later. Blood is no longer visible on the right side.
March 22, 2004
A New Explanation to the "Shot"
New police drawings speculate on yet another possible explanation for the bullet trajectory...
March 21, 2004
Pictures finally
Ok, so now there are finally pictures of A-bien's belly connected to A-bien's head. Why that took so long is another issue. This will probably dispell the faking it part, and angry voters can start focusing on the issue of what's going on with those 330,000 voided votes.
What's really sad is that A-bien, if he's actually going to be the President, seems to hold no credibility at all. Half the country is still scoffing. He's going to have to eventually lift his shirt on national TV, expose his belly, and say, "Here look everyone, I was shot right here!"
What's really weird is that here's the President, the top dog, who this country pays millions of dollars to protect with a fleet of elite bodyguards, who apparently just got shot (which must hurt like hell, btw) and he's shown on the hospital's security cams walking in, unrushed, and seemingly in no pain, and without much escort. Just a couple guys around him. No panic. No commotion. No fiasco.
I mean I've had a bad cold and had to go to a Taiwanese hospital for an IV, and they literally throw you onto a stretcher.
Watching TV is really amazing, between Minority Report, AXN, and a really bad Van Demme movie, I keep getting drawn back to the enormous crowd still amassing in front of the Presidential palace. Thank god for remote control.
B and I were discussing the whole Lien way of handling things. The guy could've said, "If I lost, I want this country to see that I lost fairly. If I won, then I want everyone to see that I won fairly. Either way, we'll all sit down and figure this out." That was the Al Gore approach. But Lien doesn't show that kind of diplomacy. Maybe Lien knows that in this situation diplomacy might not get him the seat. B pointed out how Gore went out like a gentleman. I pointed out that no one remembers the loosers, and now GWB is the man in charge.
Whatever happens, this country is pretty pissed off, and knowing Taiwan, this will be a circus for a while.
This is really democracy
It was pretty amazing last night watching TV, and seeing thousands of upset people demanding a recount. When I first got here, 16 years ago, people were like, "Shhh, don't talk too loud. There's nothing we can do." Now it's ramming down the gates of the courthouse because the court refused to accept their complaints for recalling and sealing the ballot boxes. "Sorry, we're closed until Monday." Who was the moron who said that?
So why are people upset?
- It appears that the order to seal the ballot boxes, ensuring no tampering, won't be processed until Monday.
- There is video footage of 6 year olds voting.
- There's no picture of any of the gunshot wounds which are attached to a head.
- Hundreds of thousands of soldiers couldn't vote because they were put on alert.
- There were over 300,000 voided ballots.
- About half of those ballots were all from one area, Chen's hometown.
It's not so much a matter of, "He got shot, he faked it," but "Hey, we're tired of being duped by all you politicians. We demand an explanation."
Most of my Chinese friends and associates are really depressed. They feel that the past four years have been such a joke, and they are all eager for a change. They've had enough incompetent leadership. Most of these people voted for Chen in the last election because he represented change. Now they are voting against him because he represents another four years of incompetence.
Here is the irony of democracy. People want change, but they also want stability. The party that offered stability never could change. Then the party who offered change wasn't stable enough.
Because of all this the Blues are changing. They are waking up to the Taiwanese voice. Because of all this the Greens are waking up, they realize that change requires direction.
It's refreshing to see that people are now openly expressing their point of view. That's what this is supposed to be about. One thing for sure becomes clear in all this election chaos - There was an 80% voter turnout. People really do care about what happens to this country, and they demand to know.
This is a big change from 16 years ago when I stood there and watched 200 rows of tanks roll by and 2 hrs of low flying military aircraft zoom overhead, and wondered where the hell I was.
Right now (12:00), a lot of Chinese friends are getting up, watching TV again after staying up until 4am, and are on their cell phones getting together other friends in groups to go down and join the demonstrations at the Presidential Palace.
This is really democracy. Change is good, I just hope it can be fair.
March 19, 2004
Bang Bang
Ok, so instead of working this afternoon trying to figure out a way to create revenue, utilize my time, and increase my efficiency, I watched the coverage of A-Bien getting shot. What seems weird is the following:
a) if the shooter was up high like they say, and A-bien was standing high up in the back of an open jeep, the obvious most easy target to hit was his head. But he got scraped across the belly.
b) if you got shot, it would seem normal to do something like scream, flinch, duck, fall over, crouch down or collapse. But all A-bien does is move his hand to the jeep's roll bar. Weird.
b) then they point to the bullet hole in the windshield...which was a second shot. So trigonometry and some physics suggests that as the jeep moved forward, it would be more likely that the shooter was then on either side of the jeep, possibly still to the front a bit after having been passed, so how would it happen that a bullet entered straight through the right part of the front windshield to hit the VP sitting on the left side of the jeep in the back? This suggests that the shot was straight on from lower.
c) ...and if the shot was straight on, there was a big fat guy on a walkie-talkie sitting in the passenger seat right behind the bullet hole, but the bullet passed around his body and hit the VP in the shin.
d) A-bien is rushed to a Green hospital, and no one gets to know what is really going on.
e) ...and all this happens the day after the on-the-spot high ranking DPP advisor holds a press conference confirming that the first lady must have amnesia because he remembers very clearly being at her house 10 years ago when Party A happily donated money to Party B, who happily accepted. His press conference and judicial reasoning were the most amusing and biting commentary against the first lady on this whole election.
f) and one day before the election...very dramatic.
Hey, this guy has put together a pretty good bang bang fact sheet. Does he work for the government?
Bad cartoon
Three irritating things about business communication in Taiwan:
1) I always feel so frustrated with the way people insist on what it is that they want, and when you don't actually say, "Dude, it's not going to happen that way, that's impossible, you are wasting my time," they will assume that you have agreed with them.
2) After you have assumedly agreed to something, whether it's a price, a deal, a favor, etc., the said person then calls your staff insisting that you have agreed to their whatever demands, and they get all pushy and defensive when your staff rightly tells them, "Well, I'll have to look into that..."
3) Then your staff comes to you, annoyed because of the pushy whoever, and upset because you haven't told them about the assumed agreement above their heads, and have put them in the uncomfortable spot of being the bad guy, and you become annoyed because you are thinking why are you bringing this back to me, and why are we all sitting around wasting our time on this when nothing was even said to that effect in the first place and we all know it?
It's a classic situation that repeats itself over and over like a bad cartoon.
March 13, 2004
Who would you vote for?
I thought this was pretty funny. I "borrowed" it off of wayne's a better tomorrow site.
To lead this country, you have the "Please like us, we're happy and nice" guys...
...versus the "Guess who doesn't belong in this picture" guy.
Who would you vote for?
March 11, 2004
K9 works
I've been using this spam filter called K9 for a few months now. I got tired of digging through piles of crap everyday and tried a bunch of different solutions. K9 really works. Here are some interesting stats.
In the past 109 days:
Total number of emails processed: 5,041 (46/day)
Number of Good emails processed: 665 (13.2%)
Number of Spam emails processed: 4,376 (86.8%)
Number of emails re-classified to Good: 2
Number of emails re-classified to Spam: 37
Percentage emails misidentified as Spam (false positives): 0.0%
Percentage emails misidentified as Good (false negatives): 0.7%
Overall accuracy 99.2%
March 07, 2004
Political annoyances
I've been getting these poll questionaire calls every couple days. Usually they are about credit cards, or a TV show, and I usually ask them "For free?" when they ask, "Can I have three minutes of your time?" This confuses them, and they just hang up. Today a nice lady called to ask for three minutes of my time concerning the upcoming elections. I thought this was interesting since someone had to be paying her to call, and that someone was either Ah-Bien or Lien.
Essentially she tried to get me to commit to either Blue or Green. I kept telling her that they were both obnoxious thugs [true], and I as a Taiwanese back from the US after so many years [untrue], was so disgusted by their lack of statesmenship [true] that I wanted to move away forever until Taiwan got a real leader [true]. She asked like 30 questions, which were well written to get me to lean either Blue or Green, and she seemed a bit miffed that I kept falling off the tracks.
To answer question 25+, I told her I was ren zhu min, Aboriginal, and why should I be interested in supporting any party who has nothing but their own personal race issues in mind? "Where's the ren zhu min leaders?" I bemoaned. "Oh so that explans your accent!" the lady said. I don't know why I added this, but it seemed right. Maybe it was because the other night Gao Jin Su Mei stopped by the Living Room and we were playing songs and hanging out. But we never talk politics. Is this how I really feel? Interesting.
Bob One Eye
Just had a couple of good Belgium beers with Stefano and his bro from Chicago at a place opened by his associate Paul called "Bobundaye" which I thought read "Bob One Eye" but it actually is Taiwanese for "No Problem" and it never occured to me to think of it in English that way.
All foreigners, mostly with beards, sitting around drinking. Not too bad. A neighborhood bar. Good discussion with Stefano re: Why Chinese bands suck. It's really sad. Where are all the good bands? My take on this philosophical dilemma is that in Taiwan, it's not the player that is valued, but the song. That's why KTVs are so popular. No one ever says, "Hey lets go hear that awesome blues guitar player, Stevie Ray Huang, tomorrow night!" They instead say "Let's go sing Zhou Jie Lun songs at Cashbox." No one has ever told me, "I love the way you play," but lots of people have told me, "I like that song you played."
Food for thought on the whole sucky lack of decent bands here.
Last night, after a hard week of late nights, we decided to let our poor little lonely dog Cho Cho sleep with us, since we didn't get to spend any time with him recently. First and last time ever. He was so excited that he kept licking us awake all night. Then he hogged all the middle of the bed. Then he kept kicking me awake. Anyway, from now on he's stuck in the doggy bed in the kitchen where he belongs.
March 06, 2004
Money money everywhere...
Wow. The former wife of JOSEPH ESTRADA, the estranged ex-president of Philippines wrote me a letter to give me $18,000,000.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
