Christopher

I checked "Do not intend". Do I need to send it again? You do intend to sponsor, however you have no specific length of time or amount of sponsorship. You could mail a corrected one over to China to be brought into the consulate, or your Fiancee can simply white out that check box, initialing next to the correction. However I have seen all sorts of different ways people handle question #11 due to the confusion it causes, and I doubt the consulate really cares how #11 is filled out. I don't know whic is worse, the 001 harpies or the people who write these forms. It seems that all of 001 went after my girl telling her how stupid I am and that I don't really love her, etc. I've just had to spend the last 2 hours dealing with the fallout from this crap and take a 1/2 day off work that I could put to better use.

I checked "Do not intend". Do I need to send it again?

I intend to pay everything. So to me, that means "not specific". But you know the Deppartment of State uses their own dang dictionary.

Human nature is the same everywhere. No country or race have special virtues--if they are doing better, it's pretty much because of good luck. So the problems faced by Chinese people in their relationship with their government are the same problems Western people face in their relationship with their government. The only arrogance we can offer, is to pretend that our solutions to our problems can't be improved upon.

I am quite aware of the process. NingNing has no loyalty at all to any employer she has ever had. Given all the young people, perma temps and employees in the US who change jobs every few months, the pattern of having many jobs is familiar enough that listing even 15 or 20 employers couldn't possibly be a red flag. On the other hand, the deportation grounds checklist includes "preparing any immigration application or evidence with knowledge or reckless disregard for the fact it was falsely made or does not apply to the person referred to". I can't possibly weigh the risks here; all I know is that white on the K1 we can cope with, and deportation would suck a lot more. I consider the whole notion of "relationship risks" rather silly. NingNing appreciates that I always tell her the truth, even when it's not so comfortable. Not accepting the first version of the form affirmed that I live that way all the time and not just when it's easy. NingNing appreciates that I give my best and get the job done. Disagreeing with her about the best way to fill out the form tells her that I won't knuckle under when it comes to supporting her and our future family. Ningning also appreciates very much that I am gentle with her. Insisting on changes without being an ass about it, showed her we could have disagreements and things would be OK. No sir, minor disagreements are meaningless in the big scheme of things. On the other hand, keeping the peace at the expense of my values, that will kill the relationship dead as a doornail.

I will aggree with this. Yes under the table jobs need not be listed. And yes if a job required party membership then YES list it. DO NOT HIDE from the CCP issue, if was a member for work, then expose this red flag and DEAL with it. I agree with this keep it simple cup cake has a name ? The Cupcake is known to others as NingNing. We have come to a compromise I am comfortable with. It won't involve listing every job she ever had, just every job I know about. I told her that remembering who got told what and keeping it all straight is very hard work and I'm just too lazy for that.

Today, that might be the case. Tomorrow, who the hell knows. Leniency for immigrants is at an all time low and still trending down. Why take chances?

Bottom line is this: no matter how I much I love her, I'll not risk having kids with her and seeing her get sent back to China on account of breaking stupid rules to made up to fluff some demagogues feathers. That visa application isn't going in until her complete work history on that form.

D--n straight. So it seems, it's herself [willfulness] alone who is not willing to give the entire employment, despite a chinese friend with experience says it's not a problem; and she has an american fiancee she always listens to want. So... what's the plan to convince this 'shy' girl? I make a big deal about it, which I haven't done yet. Her Chinese friend can go fly a kite. She has every incentive to tell her customers what they want to hear; when these issues come to light for her clients she's always going to be long gone.

D--n straight.

That's what you think. you have much to learn my young grasshopper Guess I'm lucky. If I make a big deal about something, she has always said, "OK, I listen to you, dear". I was lucky enough to watch other men reap the consequences for trying to have everything their way in their marriages, so I'm just not going there for every little thing.

You know, this was my first instinct as well. But now I have enough ammo to convince her without a huge bruhaha. Thanks, y'all.

2 points: 1) No one is pointing a gun at these companies forcing them to make lavish offers of employment. Even more so, in that there are no unions whatsoever in the picture. These factories are just doing what comes naturally in when nothing stands between them and tens of millions of yuan but labor priced at 11% of cost of goods sold versus 10%. It's an eminently rational decision, and one you would make in the same situation. 2) Robots have great appeal for people who need someone who: * can slave away 24x7 and not get tired or ever screw up * can't be poisoned, injured or killed * can do small stuff more accurately at blazing speed I suppose some people are just fine with making crappy goods, replacing sick, dead and hurt employees, or 30 year old technology. For the rest of us, there are robots. Big question in my mind is: what will we do when fully automated factories do everything better and cheaper than humans working at starvation wages? That day is guaranteed to come in the next 50 years or so: only so many service jobs to go around, not everyone can be a designer or robot maintenance tech, and not a manufacturing job in sight. Hooah! I guess the fit will really hit the shan then.

Weird. The Cupcake has it pretty bad. She will tell me she loves me out of thin air. The she asks me how much I love her. Then she asks me why I love her. Since part of my responsibility as her man is to make sure she knows I'm hearing what she says and I'm on the same page as her, of course I go along with it and and turn it about as well.

my lady and I are getting down to brass tacks and doing our paperwork for a K-1. Cupcake, having a reasonable command of the English language, is highly employable in her small northern China city. Moreover, she's smart, ambitious, frighteningly competent and a bit demanding. Therefore she switches jobs whenever she feels bored, underutilized, not used for what she was hired to do, or just pissed off at her boss for gross incompetence, and she's now starting her 4th job since I met her 8 months ago. The problem is that feels shy to put her full employment history for the last 5 years on the g-325a. Instead, she put down 1 company where she feels sure that turnover will result in no one there remembering her, and another company where she remains on good terms with her old boss. I think she would normally take my lead on this, except that a good "visa agent" friend of hers from her first job doing translations for a marriage agency has told that no one will check her employment history. On the other hand, I have bad thoughts about someone checking up on her employment history, and her getting barred from ever entering the US or being thrown out after she has kids with me. Bottom line, if this is a real problem, then I will spend the emotional capital to get it done right. If not, then I'm happy to save that capital for getting something really important to me.

Sorta like the Boston Tea Party? That was a lovely example of street justice. If you put a conservative style spin on it, as the Loyalists of the time did, then a bunch of our revolutionary heroes were nothing a bunch of hooligans destroying property and resisting the lawful authority of King George III and the Parliament. Just a shift in perspective is all it takes. And if the authorities don't? Sit there and be good little boys and girls suffering quietly in the dark? I suspect that many Uighyurs have decided there is not going to be any justice for them. The dangerous ones always feel they have nothing to lose: the Jewish zealots and sicarii in Roman Palestine to William Wallace to Americas founding fathers to Geronimo, Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, all the way up to Michael Collins and the Viet-Minh. All you have to do to pacify people, is to give them something to lose.

here's another riot: Hui Minority Beats Lanzhou Chengguan Onto Knees Crying another: China fears riots will spread as boom goes sour another: Nerf factory riot in China another: Riots in southwest China over girl's death: report another: Birth Control Crackdown Sparks Riots In Rural China another: The Story of Hankantou (Part 1): Abused, betrayed, and angry another: Unpaid workers clash with riot police in eastern China I didn't have to look far or hard for these articles. I gotta say, I understand that living in China you have to be circumspect, but I've never understood why you keep pretending that everything is hunky dory.

The documents were correct, checked many times by me even with lawyer submitting them... I was honest about everything....this is my concern though because everytime I go through customs the system flags me and sends me to a back room..where I wait for 30 minutes or so and then they tell me "ok you are all cleared". When I ask what the problem is they never reply to me or tell me how to keep this from occurring the next time (has happened the last four times I came back to USA). The last two times the customs agent asked me how tall I was and how much I weigh...he laughed when I said "you are going to send me to the back room again" and tried to get a supervisor to come over and clear it up..but I still had to go to back room... Hey, I feel for you. Just to add fuel to the fire: The Things He Carried TSA Administrator's non-response

A certain, foolish type of administrator might think this. The same type that can be convinced that checking IDs against a no fly list stops terrorists from getting on airplanes, I guess. Someone in the business of getting people into the US under false pretenses, will roll up his sleeves and probe the system until he finds a method that works. Most likely, it wouldn't take them 4 months before they are back in the full swing of things, with a slightly lower success rate. Hell, if I were in that business, I would pay off the person in charge of the visa office in GUZ to do exactly what they are doing now, except that I would also pay him to let me know how to get my "clients" to slide through. Should result in a mich higher Christopher

I took the American Airlines ORD/PVG flight, which is also a 777. I dunno about how the seats are arranged on a UA plane, but having been on several AA 777s, I recommend the window seats on rows 41 and 42 which give you a few inches extra room between the seat and the bulkhead. Other fine points for coach seats: * Row 41 has cigarette style plugins for laptops if you want to watch movies on that. * I'm a rightie, so I prefer A seats, which also seem to exit a little faster. * Avoid seats facing bulkheads or the first row of 4 middle section seats in the back so you have armrests that swing up. * If availability looks very high on your flight, try to get into an empty middle section, with a lot of luck you can score a ghetto lie flat. On my last 4 777 overnights, I saw this happen twice. Have a comfy flight. Christopher

What I want is a 'lectric scooter that will go 50 mph, and give me a range of about 100 miles. I'd halve the miles I drive on my '91 Corolla.

E-bikes are pretty nice. The problem with using the in the US is that everything is so spread out ... my daily commute is 18 miles, I live anywhere from 5 to 15 miles from where I like to spend my evenings.

I was a Windows system administrator in the mid 90's. After Windows proved it couldn't be trusted to provide reliable service (actually, it screwed me majorly), I walked away from the mess and converted to Linux. For a couple of programs that I can't get the equivalent of on Linux (Adobe Audition and some other sound engineering programs) I use XP in a virtual machine in Sun VirtualBox under Linux, since Windows can't be trusted on the bare metal. I suppose I could try Windows 7, but what's the point?

Deflation is not good. Depresses wages, which further depresses incomes. See Japan in the 90's.

http://www.cheapoair.com/ - good prices, you buy right off that site. http://www.tripadvisor.com/ - searches many sites and sends you to the site with that fare.