And while I was away, the election happened. It was good good news! The Liberals lost, and lost big. John Howard lost his seat!! I wasn't expecting that, but it's great news. The Labor party is in power, and Kevin Rudd is prime minister.
Already they are dismantling the Howard legacy - they're ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and talking about bringing down the disclosure limit on political donations.
I'm so relieved that John Howard lost - I thought he was going to creep back in. I'm so happy to be wrong about that. Now its' just a matter of waiting to see how the Rudd government goes - will it keep its' promises, how much of the Howard legacy will it undo, how will the economy run, will the country start to take back its values of fairness and honesty etc?
Interesting times...
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Celebrate good times!
Home again
I'm back! Yep, made it home from China in one piece. What a trip - I'm very glad to be home.
The job was a bit of a mess. I spent most of my time in the office, unfortunately, up to 11 hours a day for 6 days of the week. I got my part of the work done, and managed to help out slightly on some other parts but its still a mess. And I'm glad to be back out of there.
I couldn't access blogger while in China - or rather, I couldn't view my blog, or any blog with the words blogspot or wordpress in the address. Oh well, I guess I didn't miss too much there, but the Great Firewall of China exists, and it doesn't like me.
Shanghai is an impressive city. Dirty, though. I couldn't believe how polluted the air is. While I was there, there were quite a few days that weren't cloudy. But even on the clearest of days with the sun shining the sky wasn't blue. All I could see was grey skies, with a faint blue tinge directly overhead. All around the horizon was grey and hazy. The buildings just faded away into the haze, and visibility was very bad. The day I went up to the viewing deck of the Oriental Pearl TV tower I could barely see across the river to the Bund. Anything beyond the Bund was invisible in the haze. Very disappointing. It does make me wonder how the olympics will go in Beijing next year, though.
The other thing I really didn't like was the aggressive approach taken by street selles. Wandering along Nanjing Road I just couldn't get away from people trying to sell me watches, dvds, t-shirts, shoes, belts, bags or in some cases, girls. As soon as I got rid of one seller, another would appear beside me and follow me down the road. If I got rid of him, then there would be another by my side in a matter of seconds. It really took all the fun out of just wandering around the city. I was always having to fend off their approaches. That happened pretty much everywhere I went in shanghai by myself - Nanjing Road, the Old Town, the French Concession, anywhere with shops and tourists.
The city does have an amazing history, though. I'd have liked to see a bit more of it, but didn't have a chance on this trip. Too much work going on for me to play the tourist. The shopping was good, but not as cheap as other parts of Asia. I did buy a few dodgy DVDs, which I haven't actually tried out yet. They work fine in the computer but whether they play on the dvd player I don't know yet. I bought a couple of items at BlueShanghaiWhite, which does a modern take on traditional Chinese pottery. I bought a vase and a couple of coffee cups that I thought were quite attractive. They had some lovely candle holders too, which I should have bought. Ah well - unfortunately it doesn't look like you can order them over the internet. But apart from that I didn't do much shopping because the aggressive approach of the sellers on the street just turned me right off. In some cases, in the Old Market area (YuYuan markets) they'd even come out of the shops and try and drag me in. I just wanted to browse and see what I could find but they kept throwing things in my face and dragging me here and there - I don't like that approach at all and so just didn't buy anything from them.
Still, I'd like to go back and take a longer look at the place. As far as Asian cities go its one of the better ones to end up in, I think.
Friday, November 23, 2007
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!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
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!
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.
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 :)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
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.
