The SOGO protest
12:30am Sept 29 #OccupyCentral Causeway Bay SOGO
5pm Sept 28th 2014 @ #OccupyCentral #OccupyAdmiralty
If Scotland Says Yes The World Will Be Less Funny
Again, the one right I have is given to me because I love movies like In The Loop. The media consumer's right. With Scotland Independent, there will be no more movies like In The Loop, for what makes that movie is the outrageous, internecine feuding that takes place only amidst the intimacy of family members- in this case Scots and English.
Read More2iB: Practical Examples
The ART of the DEAL: Chinese and Western Approaches
I think that Chinese, however, do have a different mindset, an approach that encourages gamesmanship in negotiation, one that relishes it. Negotiation is to business what sex is to reproduction. Negotiation, in fact is the fun part. In trying to get a deal done, the Chinese way involves feigning, indeed a measure of misdirection. The Chinese way might involve a lowball offer, just to get things warmed up, or indeed, just to tip the other party off balance. There might be an agreement on the price, in lightning speed, but with a twist, that the terms have to be heavily modified, i.e. “I’ll agree to $500,000,000. But, I have to be able to pay you in eight quarterly instalments over four years. Oh yeah, and my nephew needs a job.”
Read MoreEthnicity as Laundry List
Sure, most people don’t think that by naming 5 ethnicities they have claims to 5 different club memberships. But then again some people are that vain. The warming notion that there is something hip about being a child of the world, by being born into this world love of multi-ethnicities, well, I guess people decide, shucks “it’s kinda cool; I’ll just play along.”
Read MoreUnderstanding ISIS: What is Clan-like behavior?
You could get a darn good idea of ISIS from what it is NOT, but then again, as my 10th grade English teacher, Mr. Smith always said- "if your thesis statement is against something, there are still an infinite number of things you could be for." Well, there isn't that much wiggle room for ISIS, given the pigeonhole it has carved for itself- I can't imagine they are donating much of the seized gold taels to Orbis, or Breast Cancer Awareness, or the Girl Scouts of Lebanon.
Read MoreRebuttal to Eric Liu's 8/29 Piece in WSJ
I was browsing the WSJ, on its very capable iOS app, and came across the headline: “Why I Can’t Just Become Chinese” by Eric Liu. A headline like that jumps out at you, especially if you are writing an upcoming book on Chinese and Western culture as I am. So, naturally I clicked on it.
I didn’t know what to expect, really, but I think Mr. Liu gets it wrong. I think he gets both China and the U.S. wrong.
Read MoreCauseway Bay 19:30 August 12 2014: RAIN
A quick update on the weather in Hong Kong: it is wet, wet, wet.
Floating City
Bo is referred to as 番仔, meaning "foreign kid." "番" is the character that precedes Potato 番薯 and Tomato 番茄, making new nouns out of "Foreign Tuber" and Foreign Eggplant," to describe the curious produce that the Portuguese had originally introduced to China via Macau a few centuries ago. Bo, it turns out, is half-Chinese. A mild spoiler: Bo discovers late in the movie his mother (played by Josie Ho) was raped by a British Seaman (pun not intended). That biological mother tearfully gives him up for adoption. A family of fisherman, who ply the waters of the South China Sea, living and fishing on/off their vessel adopt Bo and do their best to give him whatever attention and care is possible, amidst some rather hardscrabble circumstances.
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