China China China

Well, I'm in Shanghai, although all I've seen of it so far is the hotel and the office. The hotel is fine, but nothing special. It's the Rainbow Hotel, out in Hongqiao. But it is just a hotel - the only advantage is that it's only 5 minutes walk to the office.

I'm still not thrilled about being here for work. I'd love to come here and explore on a holiday, but getting thrown into the project like this at the last minute is not something I wanted. Ah well... it's a new city, new job. I'll get out and explore a bit over the weekend.

As for this blog - I can log in and add posts. But I can't actually just view it as a web page. Or any blog, for that matter. Any website that has blogspot or wordpress in the address doesn't work from here. I guess that's the Great Firewall in action. There's probably a way around it but I'll just live with it for now. Got to love that firewall!

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Voting done - can we just finish the election now?

While I was in town getting my Chinese visa the other day I also went and voted. I'll be out of the country on election day and so will miss all the excitement (what a shame!)


I didn't realise it was so easy to vote early, but they had a polling station set up at city hall. They didn't even ask for any ID - just rocked up, filled out the form which they checked against the electoral roll and away I went. I guess I could have voted for someone else too if I had their name, address, and date of birth. Too easy.

Anyway, I voted. It's done. First preference for the Australian Democrats - vote 1 for Andrew Bartlett in the senate, and the local Democrats candidate Jennifer Cluse in the lower house.

And then I preferenced the Greens and Labor in the lower house. In the senate I voted above the line for the first time. There were 65 candidates. I could wallpapered the booth with that form, it was so big. I've always voted below the line before, but that was when I was living in Tassie. Numbering the 20-30 candidates in that form isn't too much of a strain, but numbering 65 here in Queensland is asking a bit much. Anyway... its a good thing I liked the Democrats ticket.

So good luck to the Democrats. It'd be a sad day for Australia if they lost all their seats, I think. They've done an excellent job over the years.

Still, it's not looking good. 1996 was the first election I voted in, and I voted Democrats then too. That was the year they lost their Tasmanian seat to Bob Brown. Now this is the first time I've voted in Queensland, and it looks very much like the Democrats could go down to the Greens here too. I must be a political jinx of some kind... maybe I should have voted for Howard after all!

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Election pending

One of the good things about going away is that I will miss the final week of the election. But here's a fun piece of election commentary that puts the entertainment back into the game.



In other news - Queer Penguin is writing a series on why he's preferencing Labor at this election. Its a pretty good list of the reasons for not voting Howard this time around. Parts 1,2 and 3 are up so far.

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What a crazy week

Well, it's been a bit of a crazy week around here. Sometimes work just sucks, you know?


It began on Monday, when one of our company managers rang and asked me (again) to go to China. Normally I would jump at a chance like that - company sponsored travel to somewhere I haven't been before is always a nice perk. But I'd been trying to avoid this job, because of the chaos that seems to be happening over there at the moment. I'd been asked before to look at some of this project work, and had decided I really didn't want to get involved. They're at a point in the project where they are presenting the results to our customer, and basically it doesn't work. Or so I've heard. So - results? One unhappy customer, some very stressed project staff, no time to sort it out. And that's when they ask me to go there - just in time to present it to the customer again without any real information or preparation. How fair is that? I wanted to stay as far away from this sort of mess as possible.

If they'd actually asked me a couple of months ago, when I could have made a difference by getting in early and working on it, then it would all have been ok. I could have prepared, maybe even helped them avoid some problems. Who knows? But its all a bit late now... anyway...

So I'm off to China on Wednesday. I guess I am excited about it - I do love travelling when I get the chance. I rushed into Brisbane on Thursday and applied for the visa. Fortunately they can do it overnight, instead of the normal four working days. I picked it back up on Friday morning. There were fairly long queues each day, which I wasn't expecting. Apparently China is quite the destination at the moment. But they were fast, and pretty efficient. Only complaint - they wouldn't accept my company AMEX card as payment. Just a minor pain, when it comes to reporting the expenses for the trip.

On top of all that excitement, I've been rushing around putting the finishing touches on my current project, trying to do some troubleshooting for a site in New Zealand and dealing with another strange request from a local customer. They always want to do things that are just not part of the standard system. Which is fine, because we get to charge them lots of money for making it work the way they want. Its just the timing that sucks.

So I'll be away for a few weeks. Good fun :)

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Sorry means... not sorry??

John Howard at his best - again! Yesterday he said he was sorry that interest rates have gone up again. But now he's saying that he's not apologising for it. So sorry no longer means sorry, in Howard-speak.

Sounds familiar, though. The last time he said sorry for anything was when petrol prices were rising. He was very quick to say sorry then. And he was very quick to say it now, too, even though he has just admitted he didn't really mean it.

It's interesting that he chose to say sorry both times for something that isn't technically his fault. There are plenty of things he could apologise for (even in the Howard-speak sense of the word!), but he's chosen to say sorry only when something has hurt voters in his marginal seats. So much for demonstrating leadership, Australian values, morality, taking responsibility...

The guy is a fraud and I really really want him gone from government.

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Interest rates rises are good for you

Interest rates rose today, by 0.25%. And since this is an election campaign, Peter Costello has to jump in and tell us this is a good thing. Or, ate least, that rising interest rates are a sign of good economic management.


Well, if everything is so good (as the Labor party ads keep reminding us, according to John Howard we've never had it so good) then maybe Peter Costello and John Howard can pay my mortgage for me. That'd be nice!

And anyway, if rising interest rates are a sign of good economic management, what did they mean when they promised to keep rates at record lows during the last election? Does that mean Howard and Costello were promising to give us bad economic management?

These guys really need to pick a line and stick to it. At the rate they're backflipping at the moment they'd outperform most circus acrobats!

Thanks, John Howard!

(Of course, I know the government doesn't directly control interest rates. But when they claim low rates as their responsibility but try to dodge the blame for higher rates, then they deserve everything they get! I really really hope they get voted out)

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The Liberal Party tells the truth!

Found on Road to Surfdom - a good laugh. And a lot of reasons not to vote for John Howard.

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