rip-off

I went through my "H$ bc" statement last week. Wow.... What the f&%*..... ! I was charged over HKD 2500 in financial charges for my CC. Ummmm..... According to my transaction record, I pre-paid a 58K balance with 30K at the beginning of the month. Then at the end of the month, the bank still took out 58K from my account to pay for the balance. Wait, where did my 30K go? The bank could not explain. Apparently, its banking system could not reconcile credit and debit!!! Can you believe that? The bank did not know I paid!!!! I called the bank. Stonewalling... Saying I did not have enough funds. Right... The lady on the line said I was short 20K to pay. Huh? The transaction said the bank took out 58K not 20K. What math did she do on that. There was nowhere that said 20K shortage. Finally couple minutes, she said "what would you like me to do?". I said "reverse the financial charge". 3 days later I got it. Man, what service this bank tried to do?

My Rel Mgr was so helpful. He called HK directly to find out. Basically - useless with the automatic monthly payment system I subscribed. Ha!

Now, w/ my company account.. Just discovered that they charged me over USD 200 for a wiring deposit that used to cost USD7.00. Had to find out what end was up with that. And it went to the wrong account ........ Sender error or the bank error...... I hold my Sincere opinion. Stay tune.

new

Scary... This is one of the poorest province in China. With the new 10-year plan, there are lots of "super highway" now in Guizhou province. This highway we were traveling was so new, it was not on g----gle m@p at all. Just opened on May 1. Yes, over 300K worth of tunnels and bridges.

This new highway had connected some major towns (500,000 population or so) to commercialization. The last pic was a major town famous for tea.

O yeah, Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou has about 3 million people. What are the biggest city in C@nnuck ville?

translation

Taken at our hotel room in RongJiang (榕江) in Guizhou. Straight translation - word by word. "Free" equals to the two Chinese characters above it. "present" equals to the other two Chinese characters above.

You can still see this type of interesting translation. Rather than saying "Complimentary", the hotel just did a straight across Chinese to English translation.

toilet

Last night at Guiyang. We were in this restaurant famous for rice porridge. In the man's toilet, there was an urinal installed a bit taller than the rest. OK, quite a bit taller! There was a plague placed on top of this urinal. It said " Waiting for Yao Ming's visit ". Ha! Really....

body

I thought I have seen all sorts of scams walking along our famous Nanjing Road West. Last night though, topped it all. A guy was kneeing on the ground franticly asking for money. Next to it, was a "body". Apparently it was his wife. Feet showing, head covered and right hand stood up slightly. Interestingly, the hand was still rigid - rigor mortis hadn't set in. And the fingers looked very clean compared to the "body"s feet which were a bit dirty. The guy had no tears.

Didn't know where they came from. People just walked pass the "couple" without paying much attention. I was on my way to the gym. Hadn't been out all day and now this. Ummm..... 40 minutes later as I walked pass the same location, they were gone. It would have been interesting to see if the "body" moved on her own.

iPad 2

Shortage? What shortage? I can get any spec I want here - NOT in the App!e $t0re here of course. Too many restriction and developed by a bunch of people from across the Pacific Ocean that thinks the speed was fast enough for here. Took me forever to load as the $erverS are located in the mothership central. And inconsistency - yes, one page said you can get 5 new model at any one time. And on another page, you can get a maximum of 2 only. O yeah, didn't work on Chrome for the reservation site. And.... you need to get on its website every night after 9pm for next day's booking or whenever day there is a supply. Yeah, all managed by the good location from mothership that thinks no one from here are qualify for highend jobs. Am I bitter from the last round of fruity company? Nope, just laughing my head off. These were the operational issues I raised during my previous dialogs. Ha!

Couple funny things happened just this last week. My friend needed to replace the harddrive. I diagnosed the problem and told her to get to the G88nius B@r and get it done. The support guy there initially said, "no, we do not do replacement drive here." Huh? That was a standard service. Then, he changed his tune saying "here is too expensive, go buy one outside and bring it back, I'll install it for you.". What? O good screening for "qualified" employees. Then yesterday got a iP**ne 4 cover for iron-wife. I told them to email me the receipt. I gave my fruity subscribed email address. The employee questioned me about my email address! She thought it was fake! Huh? What a funny experience.

Anyway, time to get a iPad 2 for iron-wife w/ 3G. I called my trusted supplier. No problem, all models and specs were available. Both colours too!!! I went there, paid USD 90 extra as listed in the US fruity website. Done deal. I even got myself a 3G card for the equipment. Plug in, started up, worked like a charm. Sorry to hear about the Rogers frustration. O yeah, the 3G card was a pre-paid. RMB 1,100 for 12 months (CAD 160.00) for 6G. Not bad a deal. Unused rolls over from month to month. Beat that @T&T, R0Ge R$.

I might go get one soon. Load them up w/ 3G cards and I am really wired.

For people to visit here in the future w/ iPad 2 and unlocked 3G phone. China Unicom man!!!

more restriction?

Wonder what is going on with our motherland banking. What's the point of online banking if you can't do it. This message was posted on my homepage after I signed in on the motherland account. I have to personally visit my branch to do an exchange despite the $ HAS BEEN IN MY OWN ACCOUNTS! FCY is the Foreign current account and CNY is the motherland currency account.

Something is funny in Denmark and I am getting a black-box feeling. More control. More rules. And it's all for the protection of the motherland stability! Or could be there was regulation being "discovered" now and must comply.

Life

While waiting for iR0n wife, I snapped this picture at a busy high end shopping street corner. See what the couple was doing? You see it all the time in Shanghai. The couple was salvaging left over items from shop renovations and selling them for scrap to make money. The three-wheeler on the right was the "cargo carrier", the manual kind.

What I am showing here is another life in $-h@ngh@i. People do struggle. The couple were most likely from out of town. They had a son, he was playing around in the background.

$crewed

This only happened here.  Don't give a $h!t about anything because I am "bigger" than you.  A world event, the only !ronM@n r@ce in this country, being held in two weeks time ....  The host city government, despite approved the venue a year ago, had $crewed the swim event. The reservoir approved for the swim part was suddenly closed "for major project" 10 days ago.  Welcome to dealing with our m0th--er-----L@nd offici@l$.  

This type of "$crew you" attitude is very in your face everywhere here.  I am afraid with the big c@$H on hand inside the protection of the m0th----er!@nd, the people are getting more rude.  Just so every know, NOT everyone is that rude.  It seemed to be the "sudden wealthy" that were not really educated and "civilized" that are being exported from this land to "show off" the wealth.  The rude way.  Very ungainly sight!  

In the picture this guy (to the left) brought his family - his wife, his son (to the right) and the son's future wife for a two-day shopping trip in HK last week.  Guess how much he spent?  In two days, RMB 1Million.  Yes, that was six zeros behind the "one".  He bragged that he worked in the finance industry.  They didn't care about quality of food or quality of hotel, just shopped high end products like LV, rolex, Prada, you name it...  Worst was that this picture was taken while he was being interviewed by HK TV station.  

Back to the race.  In our city club, there was over 80 people signed up for this race.  All withdrew.  I for one, just paid fully for two hotel rooms yesterday.  Cancel the trip as soon as I heard the swim part.  Good that the club informed me about fully refunding the hotel payment.  Phew.  This event was sold out in 8 weeks!  I estimated close to 1,000 athletes would have been there.  Nope.  They all got screwed including the surrounding hotels, the tourism department, and the local busine$$e$.  Wonder the foreign athletes that booked the trip a year ago are happy with this sudden change!

Welcome to the moth-erL@nd.  The land of opportunities - one sided, not yours.