Giraffine

Qingdao or Tsingtao means the green island, which is actually a peninsular colony built by the German in the last 19th century. With Olympic 2008 sailing games and annual international regatta and flood of Korean and Japanese investment, the beer town has quickly evolved into an international coastal city with latest luxury department stores and residential skyscrapers at sky high prices. K-Towns and J-Towns are mushrooming from every corner of the city, English speaking only people are decriminalized. This is also one of the hottest summer holiday destinations for domestic tourists, ever since the city was ruled by the German and later on Japanese. Which means the beaches are all packed by domestic farmers who might see the ocean the first time in their life, and will spend the whole day on beach with very domestic swimsuits/underwear/pajamas. If you have been to some of the beaches in Turkey, you know what I mean exactly. Or you might want to compare with the waterfront in India. The difference is that in India women keep their sarees on and it's actually very sensual as wet saree is one of the fundamental elements of Bollywood movies.

The Beer Festival is probably the most festive event in China, since all the other festivals are be related to the birth or death of one of our one million saints in one of our 25 dynasties during our 5000 years history, and all suppose to be treated very seriously with worship rituals with only special food to be served at special time with the blessing of our ancestors. The beer is foreign, the seafood B.B.Q. is exotic, and we here in Qingdao are all grassroots (or sandroots more appropriately?). And it seems we don't have the normal insecurity as all Chinese or Asians have, we don't try to copy the original Oktoberfest and we even don't bother to compare with the ancestor, we are all too busy having a great time with our own 1001 sets of beer drinking games and group karaoke on giant stage and dancing on beach then walking home bare feet or just sleeping under the star. And the WE here are not the teenagers dressing in low lose jeans and funky Tees, my WE are midlife guys with tanned bellies and might be executives in suits or cab drivers at $0.60/mile at day time.

It's always great to see my parents... for the first two hours. When all the fine words are over, it's getting dangerous... From the latest scraped scar on my face from last hike to the latest wedding in my extended very large family, everything works as the best boomerang and always comes back to the same end: I should take care of myself and I should try to end this solo life and la vie en deux would be the best solution for myself and my parents and my extended family and the society and the whole human being... yarn. But I still love them, no condition, no reason, till the end of the whole human being. And I know when I leave tomorrow for the airport they still both get dressed and hold my hand and walk me to the station and wait till the bus turn at the end of the street and probably have tears in eyes...

I love my home.

by Robert B. Reich

You may remember when the world was divided between communism and capitalism, and when the Chinese were communists. The Chinese still call themselves communists, but now they’re also capitalists.

In fact, visit China today and you find the most dynamic capitalist nation in the world. In 2005, it had the distinction of being the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

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Jonathan Steele

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Miscalculations by Israel and Hizbollah have weakened Lebanon's fragile unity. A ceasefire is needed immediately.

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Now it's real Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai lah...

It's somehow understandable in China although it's not justified, but India? The world's biggest democracy?

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"Later that day I got to thinking about relationships.
There are those that open you up to something new and exotic,
those that are old and familiar,
those that bring up lots of questions,
those that bring you somewhere unexpected,
those that bring you far from where you started,
and those that bring you back."

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By ETGAR KERET
Tel Aviv

YESTERDAY I called the cable people to yell at them. The day before, my friend told me he’d called and yelled at them a little, threatened to switch to satellite. And they immediately lowered their price by 50 shekels a month (about $11). “Can you believe it?” my friend said excitedly. “One angry five-minute call and you save 600 shekels a year.”

The customer service representative was named Tali. She listened silently to all my complaints and threats and when I finished she said in a low, deep voice: “Tell me, sir, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? We’re at war. People are getting killed. Missiles are falling on Haifa and Tiberias and all you can think about is your 50 shekels?”

There was something to that, something that made me slightly uncomfortable. I apologized immediately and the noble Tali quickly forgave me. After all, war is not exactly the right time to bear a grudge against one of your own.

That afternoon I decided to test the effectiveness of the Tali argument on a stubborn taxi driver who refused to take me and my baby son in his cab because I didn’t have a car seat with me.

“Tell me, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” I said, trying to quote Tali as precisely as I could. “We’re at war. People are getting killed. Missiles are falling on Tiberias and all you can think about is your car seat?”

The argument worked here too, and the embarrassed driver quickly apologized and told me to hop in. When we got on the highway, he said partly to me, partly to himself, “It’s a real war, eh?” And after taking a long breath, he added nostalgically, “Just like in the old days.”

Now that “just like in the old days” keeps echoing in my mind, and I suddenly see this whole conflict with Lebanon in a completely different light. Thinking back, trying to recreate my conversations with worried friends about this war with Lebanon, about the Iranian missiles, the Syrian machinations and the assumption that Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has the ability to strike any place in the country, even Tel Aviv, I realize that there was a small gleam in almost everyone’s eyes, a kind of unconscious breath of relief.

And no, it’s not that we Israelis long for war or death or grief, but we do long for those “old days” the taxi driver talked about. We long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray, when we were confronted not by armed forces, but only by resolute young people wearing explosive belts, years when the aura of bravery ceased to exist, replaced by long lines of people waiting at our checkpoints, women about to give birth and elderly people struggling to endure the stifling heat.

Suddenly, the first salvo of missiles returned us to that familiar feeling of a war fought against a ruthless enemy who attacks our borders, a truly vicious enemy, not one fighting for its freedom and self-determination, not the kind that makes us stammer and throws us into confusion. Once again we’re confident about the rightness of our cause and we return with lightning speed to the bosom of the patriotism we had almost abandoned. Once again, we’re a small country surrounded by enemies, fighting for our lives, not a strong, occupying country forced to fight daily against a civilian population.

So is it any wonder that we’re all secretly just a tiny bit relieved? Give us Iran, give us a pinch of Syria, give us a handful of Sheik Nasrallah and we’ll devour them whole. After all, we’re no better than anyone else at resolving moral ambiguities. But we always did know how to win a war.

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - None of the usual fanfare greeted China's high-level delegation to North Korea when it returned to Beijing over the weekend.

Yet the official silence spoke clearly enough of the predicament bearing down on China after it backed a U.N. decision targeting its long-time friend Pyongyang.

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