shushuweiwei

I hope my Weiwei doesn't come here and tell about silly things I say in Chinese! Maybe Weiwei will tell Amanda some funny story of my crazy Chinese to share here. Her Mama likes to talk to me for a long time in Chinese. She doesn't care if I can understand the word and she feels our hearts can know without words. I feel very close to my ayi from this. Sometimes when she talks to me I repeat some sentence back like a child just learning to talk, then everyone has a big laugh! This is how I learned to say ni lei bu lei. After everyone laughed at my repeating it back to her, Weiwei taught me the meaning. I knew of the sentence structure of asking if I am or am not something, but weiwei told me what lei meant. This was after a very long busy day of photos!I turned back to her mom and said "Wo hen lei!" Then we all had a good laugh.

I'm a pascifist but I vote shoot!

Yes, I think that there will always be two camps, those that see the cheating as a problem and those that see noticing the cheating as the problem. Whether it's Olympics, politics, foreign policy, those two camps don't seem to approach dishonesty in the same way. To each his own! I'm happy the Chinese are doing well also. I suggested to my sweetheart that it would be nice if China and US finished with the same medal count. She looked at me like I was crazy and said no, China should have more! At least I tried for a little compromise there! I also noted at one point that China had more Gold and US more medals. She said China don't care about being number 2 or number 3, only care number 1!

If you see her thumbin' through the life insurance policies after that debt is paid, you better start eating out more often!

The customs official who can be named is not the eternal customs official.

The International Olympic Committee accepted their proof of age and there isn't much anyone can do unless they can prove otherwise. It's not a matter of accepting anything. The IOC is actively setting policy by stating that age verification is entirely up to the country sending the athlete. They've stated that they will not check even if proof is offered. America is following the rule of age requirement while China is saying that if it's up to us we'll say whatever age we want. Some people will call that cheating, some will not. There is absolutely no question that the girls are underage. That isn't even an issue. You can't compete in the Chengdu games of 2007 as a 13 year old, receive a passport saying you are 16 in 2008, and compete in the Olympics as a 16 year old. Unless China has developed some sort of time manipulation technology, there is no question about the age of the athletes involved. (Anyway, I thought Chinese women aged slower not faster! ) I'm mainly surprised that China didn't realize that google caches pages and people could easily compare the old pages with their new edits. If you've followed it today, as another cached page is found and compared to the present page, China disables the link to that page. Something they should have done before the Olympics if they were planning to get away with it. Of course, maybe up until May 2008 she mistakenly believed she was born in 1994 and only just remembered when getting a passport to provide the China Olympic committee that she was born in 1992. I think the only reasonable response to the IOCs stance is to openly compete with underage athletes from America and hand the IOC falsified passports and make no bones about it since they said its up to China and we won't check. As for Bella Karoli, I think if what he was saying was not true, he'd be a sore loser. He's speaking the truth and it upsets him. If you feel bad because someone who broke the rules beat you, I think you have a legitimate gripe. I don't think that would constitute a sore loser. Of course underage athletes only really matter in a few sports where decreasing flexibility and increasing size with age can hamper performance. It is a bit wierd that IOC would be so extreme in their dedication to avoid doping, presumably to avoid unfair advantage then basically say that breaking the rules in other ways to gain advantage is basically up to the countries themselves. If thems the rules of the games then I say just send all our tiny flexible 13 & 14 year olds to the next games with false passports as the IOC suggests. The girl who won uneven bars for China in 2000 has admitted she was underage and given a falsified passport without any repercussion so the US should just acknowledge the fact that this Olympic rule is just for show. Of course, if they decide to suddenly enforce the rule once we catch on...then I'd be pissed.

Whether it's China or the US, I doubt that the human rights abuses are going to be going on out on the street corner for the entertainment of tourists. That one hasn't seen any abuses on their visits seems to be a pretty useless piece of data from which to draw any conclusions about China or our own country. Even under the most oppressive, violent regimes people are generally going to just be going about their business day to day. The real show goes on behind the scenes and all that walks the street with the people who are going about their business is fear. Whether it is the fear that a party official will overhear and you'll be whisked off to re-education camp or the fear that someone is listening to your phone calls and you can be "rendered" to a foreign prison for a few fun filled months or years, the effect is the same. What is noted is the absence and the report of what can happen. The people's behavior is changed by it, gradually and often without them even noticing. If you ask them, all is well, life is just life, we just go about our business. If the abuse was out in the open the people would notice. They would push back. The whole game relies on people saying "I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I've never seen any. It all looks normal to me." Whether the regime is ostensibly communist or democratic, the game is the same. Fear is used for control and demons are created out of cultures we don't understand. The form of government is irrelevant. The whole communist vs capitalist thing is just a tool of control. If we thought rationally, we'd just use socialist techniques where those work best and capitalist where that is stronger. Neither one is perfect. Like any medication, their benefits come with a batch of possible side effects. I don't strive to find one med that will make everyone miraculously better, but to use them judiciously in the proper combination, to the greatest benefit of the patient, with the least adverse effects. It is also hard for me to imagine how one declares a whole culture "better off" when that culture doesn't feel better off. On what basis does one substitute one's own definition of better off for that culture's and then ask who appointed our country to decide for the world? Doesn't that make the whole comment an oxymoron? Hopefully, you can see that the US fancies itself the world's policeman by the same reasoning that you use to insert your judgment for the Tibetan culture's own assessment of its situation. Since we know best, since we know who should feel better off and who shouldn't, why shouldn't we aggressively apply our omniscience? We'll only stop being the world's policeman when people stop thinking in the way you think about Tibet. We don't know who is better off and who isn't. We should stop trying to tell people that they should feel better off...or else. The Tibetan's don't feel better off. Work with that reality. I don't pretend to know what the correct course of action is for Tibet nor do I think the US should intervene in Tibet in some forceful way. I do think that the viewpoint of the Tibetans is more important than ours on whether they are "better off." That comment reminds me of people who think an abused wife shouldn't complain because she's "better off" financially and socially in the marriage so why doesn't she shut up? Why should she care about the abuse when I've declared her better off? If that woman asks for help, do we just explain to her that she appears better off by the standard we've chosen to apply, so her opinion of the situation is not important?

Back when Reagan outspent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy on military hardware the US thought it was great... Now we are broke and the INSANE amount of $$$ continuing to be spent on the military goes on and on... Oh ROG!!!!!! It got results! Coca Cola made millions in Germany after the wall came down, no??? Now for the sermon Regarding the equipment under Reagan and since... I for one feel safer knowing what I know the money is spent for and just how good some of that equipment is. I will never forget the reaction that a team of highly paid experts/consultants were taken in to McDonald/Douglas by myself and others in St Louis back when F-15, F-18, and a few other things were being built there to talk to some mucky-mucks. They were shown a lot and it was explained to them how important my business was to them and what they needed from us to better assist them. They got to see the capability of the equipment and what threats that equipment can defeat. They saw how MacDac managed their own business as well. One commented in the limo ride away was how impressive it all was and that it almost makes her want to become a Republican. I was surprised at her words and the deep realization she came to. In other words, it isn't frivolous spending. It is for better technology. Most of which winds up in your daily life a few years later as a result of the R&D you could call the military industry and NASA. Over the years I got worried, like not spending to make equipment for sand in the 80s before the first gulf war, and later not spending money on gorilla training of our own forces and the equipment they need, and more espionage. And I have been totally worried for years about no military along our borders and jets not armed and on alert on our soil. 911 changed the latter, now where are the basses? What is done with the equipment, and good training, is another matter and political. Unfortunately I fear some needed training is or has got the ax due to our dependence on good equipment in some military areas, and budget cuts. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Dwight D. Eisenhower Yea, and I think that guy was in the army once. Maybe even some kind of big deal!

Hey Dylan, Add my K1 please Thanks Joe

Congratulations!!

None of the above. No vomiting, no blood, no diarrhea and no fever. In gastric and intestinal bleeding, there would be black stool. She did not say anything about that either (She said she did not know. She did not pay attention) My gut feeling is that she ate something bad and she had a tummy ache ! She tells me that there no govt hospitals. There may be some small clinics. But all big hospitals are private. ken88 Ken, Don't know if you have a medical background or not so excuse me if I'm telling you stuff you already know. The black stools of GI bleeding are pretty hard to miss. They are loose but "tarry" and stick to anything. They also have a distinctive odor that one never forgets and can't be mistaken for normal. I would push to get them to tell you what her Hemoglobin is. If there is more than one done that would be great. If her Hemoglobin is normal and stable, I'd feel a lot more comfortable suggesting she leave. It would be doubtful there would be any significant bleeding. If there is a doctor there who speaks English and you want me to try to get some info from them, let me know. Of course, if you are a medical professional you may have already tried that. I hope that things straighten out and that your wife is well but I have heard of the hospitals there running this kind of thing for money. Joe Thanks Joe. I am also in the medical field. But I can definitely use a second and a third opinion in this case, especially when we are making a diagnosis without seeing the patient and without knowing enough about the symptoms. I do not know if you talked to chinese doctors. I talked to several, not in this connection though. There are two barriers in communication with them. One is the Chinese-English language barrier. Secondly, there is medical barrier. They are taught a mixture of Chinese and Western medicines. As I heard it, they only spent about 25% of their time in medical schools learning western medicine. For example, the majority of them do not know about diabetes, insulin or blood glucose levels. Only a small % of diabetics who need insulin get it. Anyway, I hope they do the Hgb. She was told that she would die on July 23, if she did not have an operation on July 22. That did not happen. I can not think of any reason why one should have an operation in one days notcie for a stomach pain. Can you? Peptic ulcer or some bleeding tumor would be a slow disease. None of these would require an overnight surgery ! I will just wait it out for 2 days. Your comments would be appreciated. Ken88 Yes Ken there is a gap. I have only found that picking some parameter an harping on it, like get me a hemoglobin damn it, tends to come across. It can depend on who you get. Some have a chip and what does a western doctor know attitude but some feel oh I can talk to western doctor, maybe I learn. The only emergent surgeries would be if she had a perforated ulcer or a penetrating ulcer with a severe pancreatitis. Both of those would be acute abdomen, emergency surgeries, not something you'd want to delay overnight. If you can get a hgb, maybe you can convince her you have 2 opinions at home that she can safely go home. Good luck and I hope she is well. Joe

Is that expressed in equivalent USD or did we spend 36 billion 1960's dollars while they spent 40 billion 2008 dollars? Yeah, that's what I was going to ask... what about inflation? Yea, I edited to give an idea of the difference but the number is actually 200 billion to 300 billion depending on what indicator you use. That's a big spread there but it's only a matter of whether $1 fropm 1969 is worth about $5.50 to $8 2008 USD

Congratulations!!!!!!!!

Is that expressed in equivalent USD or did we spend 36 billion 1960's dollars while they spent 40 billion 2008 dollars? If it isn't, 36 billion 1969 dollars (I know a lot spent before '69 so this underestimates) would be about 200 billion 2007 dollars (last year for which data is available)

We communicated through a translator at the site where we met for the first 3 or 4 months while she took an English course. We also signed up at www.livemocha.com and she took the English course while I took Chinese. We had fun "correcting each others exercises. She can occasionally talk to other English speakers there so it isn't just me she feels confident that she understands. Since communicating directly we us www.jajah.com, if you both sign up calls are free and they provide a local number for each of her numbers so I can call from my cell anytime I need to. We videocall on Skype, usually twice a day. I keep the babelfish.com window open but her English is getting pretty good so it's just the occasional word we put through there. I second the opinion that it is very exciting to see her cute writing on a box covered with China Post tape. On my last trip I brought her a 5" x 5" notepad with our picture in one corner, hearts at the bottom etc. I just got 5 pages of it back with a very long handwritten note in English. Very very nice.

None of the above. No vomiting, no blood, no diarrhea and no fever. In gastric and intestinal bleeding, there would be black stool. She did not say anything about that either (She said she did not know. She did not pay attention) My gut feeling is that she ate something bad and she had a tummy ache ! She tells me that there no govt hospitals. There may be some small clinics. But all big hospitals are private. ken88 Ken, Don't know if you have a medical background or not so excuse me if I'm telling you stuff you already know. The black stools of GI bleeding are pretty hard to miss. They are loose but "tarry" and stick to anything. They also have a distinctive odor that one never forgets and can't be mistaken for normal. I would push to get them to tell you what her Hemoglobin is. If there is more than one done that would be great. If her Hemoglobin is normal and stable, I'd feel a lot more comfortable suggesting she leave. It would be doubtful there would be any significant bleeding. If there is a doctor there who speaks English and you want me to try to get some info from them, let me know. Of course, if you are a medical professional you may have already tried that. I hope that things straighten out and that your wife is well but I have heard of the hospitals there running this kind of thing for money. Joe

An interesting article China: A Love Story Apologies if its been discussed before

Wow Are you sure you want to post this? Richard Yeah, no harm done. This is actually very common, most out-sourced CCTV installations are very similar in doing this, that they can be accessed from a remote installation. No one knows this happens, but I don't mind sharing it. I don't install for anyone but 1 company now, and I am loyal to them and the good people I hired there. So I'd say its pretty safe, however you never know what person you might be handing your security's keys to... and that is why I said it. Just to keep an interesting though. So... if I can do this, and me being no genius... think of what things could be done in the hands of those much more skillful than I. Hoho. Dylan, I think he meant are you sure you aren't publically admitting to breaking the law, even if others do it. I don't know the answer to that question but its something to think about. Joe

Yea I know, the reason for the post is, I know some here use it, and might find the information "interesting" I'm not doing anything illegal, but I don't relish the thought of someone listening to the conversations between my wife and I. Richard If your not doing anything illegal.. then why worry about it.. it most likely never happens anyways and can create alot of unnecessary anxiety... People webcam all the time... I think chatting is the least of anyone's worries A very common myth that people who aren't doing anything wrong don't need the protection of laws against people who might gather and misuse "evidence". Famous last words for many wrongly convicted people behind bars. I hadn't done anything wrong so why not let them search, interrogate, etc. The assumption is that the truth is more important than getting a conviction. Sadly, not true in reality. We reward those who get convictions and feed our false sense of security not those who seek truth, even if it means no resolution to the case. Of course, living in a nation where the unitary executive now has the power to lock you up indefinitely for any reason he chooses, where several innocent people have already been "rendered" to foreign jails for torture, the statement "if you're not doing anything illegal, why worry about it" might even be considered a bit naive.

Yes, the medical field can be draining and volatile. Multiple rounds of cost-cutting are common and techs are often the ones to go, while other techs are asked to do more for the same money. Also, "good salary" can be a relative term. One man's great salary might not seem like a great investment to another. When you consider a job you might want to go to salary.com and look at the spread of salaries reported in your area. For example, a radiology tech in my area makes a median salary of just under 45K in a place with a relatively high cost of living. Starting salary could be less and starting jobs might be the night shift, which in some cases could mean doing studies for the ER all night (some pretty interesting characters can be encountered in ERs at night) That salary is probably a decent wage for an associates degree but may not be the level that some people are looking for. You can go on for other training, if you do interventional radiology (assisting the radiologist with ultrasound or CT guided injections, placement of indwelling central catheters, etc) the median increases to about 55K, but you need to be comfortable with blood and big, long needles! If you go on to be an ultrasound tech it can jump to 60K, but you'll need to be comfortable doing intra-vaginal and rectal ultrasounds. Again, not everybody's cup of tea. It strikes me that the process is not unlike the one that brings us here. Trying to take enough time and effort to know the reality of a person or a job from a distance. At salary.com you can put in the job you are considering and your zip code and see a bell curve of salaries for your area. But you have got to be cut out for the job too. Having the occasional drunk vomit on you while you try to get him in position for his abdominal xray is not everyone's cup of tea. I think it's a great idea to look at what you're interested in then see what the range of jobs and salaries are on salary.com, then look at the length and cost of the education you'll need, and determine what the best investments might be. Take your final choices and talk to people in the field so you know the reality of the job. What are the negatives. Are you likely to be stuck on the night shift for many years (it's not only taxing on a relationship, it carries significant health risks to work nights). I think that can help you make the most informed decision.

Ah, compassion. Was it Dave who spoke of being a reality-based, pragmatic, realist? I, myself, am a reality-based cubist, but to each his own!. Obviously, the statements made here are so obviously false that the poster could have only posted this to magnify the point about the issue that causes the problem being discussed. I think he did a masterful job. We could all take a moment to reality test our ideas before posting. So many problems could be avoided! We can all see, I think , how this poster has skillfully packaged all the errors into one brief post as a lesson to us all. We can see that if one just took a moment to ask yourself if these statements have even the remotest possibility of being true (Anything one posts? Let's go find the personal attack in Toplaws thread "This is so good...") or if you are writing about CFL or yourself (CFL is bad because some people hold liberal or progressive views that differ from mine?), you probably would have realized that what you were about to post couldn't possibly bear any relationship to reality, and one might have refrained. If one had reality tested those two ideas, then they would have likely realized who they were talking about (projecting) when they mentioned members who think they know everything! If all of us were to do this before we post, we could dramatically increase the percentage of posts that were on topic and dramatically decrease the number of posts that were merely expressions of our own non-reality-based prejudices, about China, et al. I think this poster is a genius for showing us so much in such a brief post and I hope we all take the lesson he is offering.

I vote to just put one member out of his misery...the one who's made two personal attacks in this thread, so far. It does seem to be getting ungentlemanly. I'm not a christian or a jew but I have read their books in all their various permutations. If I'm not mistaken that "Old" book starts off with a very chen (zen) story. There is a warning not to ingest into oneself the fruit of a tree called "the knowledge of good and evil." I believe some presumably wise being says that if ingested you will go from "paradise" into various unpleasantries such as sweating to plow the lands and having pain with childbirth, along with engaging in long, sometimes ungentlemanly discussions on CFL. (really, I think it says that) We all have our unpleasant side, as do our countries. To discuss them is not neccesarily disloyal or incorrect. For those who must file everything under good or evil, that compulsion will lead them to talk of China bashing and unfairness. Let our observations of China or America be what they are, our observations. No one needs to force them into categories of good or evil. Like most of us, my observations of this huge, diverse country are limited to a few large cities and one small city. Many of you have spent much more time in China than I. We have all seen things that others have not. Good? Bad? Who gives a ...? The power of listening without judging gives us all an opportunity to learn more deeply about the vast country that nurtured our SOs. If you feel the compulsion to put everyone's observations into good or bad, that is the listener's problem and choice. It isn't China's problem or the observers problem. Maybe the observer chose to call it good or bad. Do you really believe a single human posting on CFL can impose goodness or badness on China? It is just another person who has eaten that fruit. If you find it upsetting to hear a negative comment about China, that information tells us about you and not about China. There will always be deluded people who feel, for whatever reason, that they know China. We might consider just chuckling and moving on. I am a buddhist and there is a story in buddhism of the western buddhist scholar who travels to China to meet with a great sage. He is invited into the sages home and immediately launches into questions and commentaries on his understanding of buddhist thought. The sage merely asks if he'll join him in having tea. As the scholar goes on and on the monk hands him a cup and pours his tea, and pours, and pours, and pours. When the hot tea overflows and burns the mans hands he cries out at the monk, "What are you doing, you crazy old man?!" The monk tells him this cup is like you, so full that no new tea can enter. Being so full of what you think you know, you are incapable of learning anything about buddhism. It is said that at this moment the scholar began to understand buddhism for the first time. Can we empty ourselves of what we think we know about China? Can we empty ourselves of preconceptions and approach everyone's posts about China with beginner's mind? For those who can't there is only one respoinse - compassion. For those who can, let the learning begin!

Joanne, All women's brains are wired to forget suffering easily. Otherwise women would have created "one child policy" long before China!" Joe

Yes, Weiwei's sister has been asking her to come stay in Beijing for a few months and she could take an advanced English course but she's hesitant and I'd feel better if she stayed in Yingkou until the Olympics are over.

Welcome. I suspect that if a local hotel is telling your fiancee that foreigners can't stay there, it is probably the hotel's decision and not any govt policy. Joe