Joro between Europe and China

2006-12-27T02:36:00.000-08:00

INTERESTING INFO ABOUT CHINA: PART 2

Statistics show that at least 200 million out of China's 800 million rural people only bathe once a month. Tens of millions were found to only bathe once every quarter or every six months.
...In western Chinese villages some farmers and herdsmen do not bathe for a whole lifetime because of poverty and lack of facilities.

Source:
Solar energy bathing to revolutionize hygiene habits in rural China
18 December 2006
Xinhua News Agency

2006-11-24T05:48:00.000-08:00

INTERESTING HIGHLIGHTS about CHINA, Part 1

The death penalty was briefly banned in China between 747 and 759 AD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty

Royal and Imperial cannot be part of company names in Hong Kong.
(Other company name registration details: http://www.ils-world.com/library/datasheets/hong-kong.pdf)

2006-11-22T02:17:00.000-08:00

FUN IN CORPORATE CHINA - PART 2

Supermarket wars flare up whenever a new shop opens in China

Local rivals respond ferociously. Crippling price discounts can be accompanied by dirty tactics: some stores send fake “customers” to rivals' new stores to snap up all the promotions before genuine customers can get them. Another trick is to jam the doors of the lockers used by shoppers to store their purchases.
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7246087

And something else that might be of interest:
“There are thousands of uniquenesses,” says Wal-Mart's Mr Hatfield. People in Zhejiang like toilet paper “as rough as sandpaper”; the top seller in Kunming is spicy chicken feet; and Shandong natives like to buy whole steamed pigs' faces to slice up and dip in soy sauce and vinegar.

2006-11-18T06:53:00.000-08:00

FUN IN CORPORATE CHINA - PART 1

I have decided to run a series of stories (more often quotations) about funny aspects of CORPORATE CHINA

Here is my first one:

One traveller found a reversible jacket with "Adidas" on one side and
"Nike" on the other. This might be an interesting curiosity, but it
definitely is not a genuine example of either brand.

2006-09-02T03:35:00.000-07:00

Immigration to Britain Should Be Boosting Education Levels in A Strange Way

This occurred to me only today and I don't think anyone has so far dealt with this issue.

A major way in which, I suspect, Britain is benefiting from the flow of immigrants is the pressure that low-educated immigrants pose on the local population and make Brits strive for better education. This pressure comes in the form of immigrants taking up almost all poorly paid jobs and leaving almost none to the locals. As a result, young Brits are more likely (than in the past) to feel hard-pressed to improve their chances of success in life by studying harder at school and university, while older Brits with low qualification can improve their chances by seeking further qualification.

I have two very good examples for that:
1) My high-school English teacher, Peter, was from Blackpool. He had been a docker in Gibraltar for quite a while before realising that stevedoring was not a profession for a lifetime. He took some courses and got a certificate for a professional English teacher to foreigners (TEFL/TESOL, I guess) and started travelling the world over and earning a decent income by way of teaching English.

2) My second example is Paul, whom I have known for five years. He was working at a petrol station in Northern Ireland before realising his advantage as a native-speaker of English. And he did exactly what Peter did. Now he is very happy to be living in low-cost Bulgaria with a western-level income.

Britain, as an epitome of liberalism and free competition, would make a mistake if it restricted the flow of immigrants, because the pressure on the young middle-of-the-road Brits to develop and excel would decline. These very Brits would hence generate less value-added in their lifetime. And they would not only be poorer, but also less happy because, in rich countries, the rich are generally happier than the poor.

Immigration to Britain is definitely not robbing Peter to pay Paul.

2006-08-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

Useful Chain Letters?
It happens once in a while.

I was very surprised to receive the other day a useful chain letter. I hope I will never really have to use what it said but still... Here it is:

A three-step approach to recognizing a stroke, called "STR."

S -- Ask the person to SMILE.
T -- Ask the person to TALK, saying a simple sentence coherently (for example,"It is sunny out today").
R -- Ask the person to RAISE BOTH ARMS. If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call the emergency phone number.

And something more in this vein - a surprising old article in the New Scientist:

'Irish coffee' injection prevents stroke damage
11 April 2003
Shaoni Bhattacharya

A caffeine and alcohol cocktail similar to an Irish coffee could prevent severe brain damage in stroke victims, new research has revealed. The experimental drug, called caffeinol, has the potency of two cups of strong coffee and a small shot of alcohol. When injected into rats within three hours of an artificially stimulated stroke, brain damage was cut by up to 80 per cent. ...
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3619

Now I know why I like Baileys with some extra coffee, even though I generally do not like hard drinks. It is simply...hm, healthy!

2006-04-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

My hat goes off to The Economist for this precise description of the intertia of continental Europe:

Charlemagne: Ducking change, the European way
Apr 20th 2006

"Risk does not go away because you are averse to it; trying to make yourself invulnerable to small risks can end up leaving you more vulnerable to larger ones. You can, to a considerable extent, insulate some, even many, people from the risk of losing jobs, or being forced to work more than 35 hours a week, and so on. But you leave the country as a whole more open to other, more dangerous risks: creating fewer jobs, creating an underclass of people who have never had a job, and seeing your economy bypassed by those willing to take bigger chances than you are."
http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=6823686

If you still haven't got it, the last line is about China.

2006-04-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

Quotations / Цитати

Probably the most detailed collection of favourite quotations in Bulgarian (на български) can be found at the personal website of Dimo: http://www.dimodi.com/quotations.php

Granted, quotations are the abstract of somebody else's wisdom that somehow gained popularity (could be by chance). But having your own favourite quotations means you are making your own steps towards wisdom.

And my personal favourite, by Winston Churchill:
"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."

2005-07-25T22:53:00.000-07:00

Quality of Life versus Adventure

Material things are not the only object of aspiration nowadays. Love and happiness seem more important. So most people try to combine the material and spiritual under the term: quality of life.

But I see a strange quirk in the term quality of life: to me it means leading a calm and orderly life, without danger, without risk, without passion.

If you are a "southern type" of personality, you need passion to feel that your life is meaningful. Passion can come in the form of love. But it can also come in the form of adventure. In an orderly, "western" country you do not get much adventure. But in the rest of the world, oh yes, you do get a lot! It is around you every time, in every place. You just have to stretch your hand and grasp it.

Seek the adventure!