Sunday, January 4, 2009

What's up...

I was a bit quiet the last while. Wasn't because I was tired of writing but have been busy involving with various things:

1) I got the old iPhone 3G (bought it two months ago for Audrey) unlocked last night. So we are a iPhone family. Took me several tries on and off for since Jan 2. Persistent paid off. Last night at around 9pm, success! Iron-wife commented that I must be a mad scientist in my previous life.

2) Been involving with this project: creating a proposal to build a Green awareness web portal for the Shanghai science promotion branch; this is a new policy from the Central gov't. Two more days and we will submit; apparently it has been approved but now just have to see our presentation of the $ amount. If things work according to plan, will be for the World Expo and beyond.

3) Over New Year's Eve dinner with friends who are "connected" some what, this is what is happening around...

- Biomedical field is booming. Shortage of experts and staff.

- Corporate income tax paid, a portion is a bonus to the tax officer in charge of your file. This friend showed a lost but the tax officer changed the official tax rules so the company must pay! That way someone's bonus is collected. However, with the connection, this tax officer will now get a phone call from some higher up. Be careful doing biz here! This is common.

- Another experience: another friend's office was "raided" closer to the end of the year. Reason: it was close to the end of the year and the tax collection quota was not met. So a group of tax officers stormed in and demand all the "books" to be collected. If handed over, the company just could not work. So my friend stared them down. They left. But there were some "difficulties" afterward. Just could not "paid" as you will become a continual target: "You have demonstrated that you have something to hide".

- The billions being spent on infrastructure, beware, none will actually get to the multi-nationals revenue streams. RFPs were issued and closed two days later. If due diligent was to be met, RFP would have taken 3 to 4 months to submit. This was geared toward just handing out $ to make local companies going. So most just submit couple pages with couple things checked off. Approved. $ transferred. After that, where is the money gone? Well, I saw lots of 4-door Bentley (top of the line), Porche Cayenne SUVs, BMW 7series, Ferrari Spyders, Aston convertible Vantage, LV bags, Cartier. There you have it! Seems connected are getting richer, the white-collars are getting poorer.

That's about it for now; got to get back to work.

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