Is it Love or is it Infatuation?
Test #1 - TIME
Love grows, and allgrowth requires time. Infatuation may come suddenly.
My first trip to China in 1991, I was pretty turned off. Eight years later, I came back with a changed heart of wanting to go back...
Test #2 - KNOWLEDGE
Love grows out of anappraisal of all the known characteristics of the other person. Infatuation mayarise from an acquaintance with only a few or only one of thesecharacteristics.
Nearly two years in-country for me... certainly, I've seen some of the dark side of this land beyond the glitzy documentaries in the international media. Am I honestly appraising these imperfections, or am I only focused on the "nice" parts?
Test #3 FOCUS
Love isother-person-centered. It is outgoing. It results in sharing. Infatuation isself-centered.
For whose glory am I working here for? Is it just so I can have a nice expat position to enhance my resume?
Am I allowing myself to be influenced, inspired, enlightened, and changed by those around me that I'm purportedly "loving"?
Test #4 SINGULARITY
Genuine love is centeredon one person only. An infatuated individual may be in love with two or morepersons simultaneously.
OK, I'm guilty of this as charged at times -- mistresses going by the names of Japan and the DPRK... =)
Test #5 SECURITY
An individual in lovetends to have a sense of security and a feeling of trust after consideringeverything involved in his relationship with the other person. An infatuatedindividual tends to have a blind sense of security based upon wishful thinkingrather than upon careful consideration, or he may have a sense of insecuritythat is sometimes expressed as jealousy.
Am I confident of my own work here, that it will have efficacy and yet be grounded in my own reality?
Test #6 WORK
An individual in loveworks for the other person or for their mutual benefit. He may study to makethe other person proud of him. His ambition is spurred and he plans and savesfor the future. He may daydream, but his dreams are reasonably attainable. Aninfatuated person may lose his ambition, his appetite, his interest in everydayaffairs. He thinks of his own misery. He often daydreams, but his dreams aresometimes not limited to the attainable and are given free rein. At times thedreams become substitutes for reality and the individual lives in his world ofdreams.
Is my work grounded in the reality of my own imperfection and my own brokenness? Am I thinking of myself more highly then I should be, especially vis-a-vis locals?
Test #7 PROBLEM SOLVING
A couple in love facesproblems frankly and attempts to solve them. If there are barriers to theirgetting married, these barriers are approached intelligently and removed. Suchas cannot be removed may be circumvented, but with the knowledge that what is doneis deliberate circumvention. In infatuation, problems tend to be disregarded orglossed over.
Do I brush aside the country's problems in various aspects? Am I engaging my local friends in discussing them and challenging them in finding solutions?
Test #8 DISTANCE
Love tends to beconstant. Infatuation often varies with the distance between the couple.
I do think about this country when I'm gone... but in what sense? Do I miss my friends, and the relationships, or just the superficial stuff (cf two entries ago)?
Test #9 PHYSICAL ATTRACTION &INVOLVEMENT
Physical attraction is arelatively smaller part of their total relationship when a couple is in love, arelatively greater part when they are infatuated. When a couple is in love, anyphysical contact they have tends to have meaning as well as be a pleasurableexperience in and of itself. It tends to express what they feel toward eachother. In infatuation, physical contact tends to be an end in itself. Itrepresents only pleasurable experience devoid of meaning.
I like to think of the equivalent of physical lust as that of the material variety, living like kings here, and letting the "novelty" of the so-called "expat" lifestyle get to me. I certainly have not been immune to this...
Test #10 AFFECTION
In love an expression ofaffection tends to come relatively late in the couples relationship. Ininfatuation, it may come earlier, sometimes from the very beginning.
Do I have an "affection" for this place? Has the reason behind it become more well-defined as I've lived here?
Test #11 STABILITY
Love tends to endure.Infatuation may change suddenly, unpredictably.
If this country suddenly reverted to the way it was back in the 1970s, would I or my other friends still be so gung ho about being here?
Test #12 DELAYED GRATIFICATION
A couple in love is notindifferent to the effects of postponement of their wedding and do not prolongthe period of postponement unless they find it wiser to wait a reasonable time;they do not feel an almost irresistible drive toward hast. Infatuated couplestend to feel an urge toward getting married. Postponement is intolerable tothem and they interpret it as deprivation rather than preparation.
Am I sowing the seeds here in China, without being under a results-oriented mentality waiting for them to bear fruit immediately? Am I disappointed if the Bride does not come immediately in the way I imagine she would be?
Adapted from Marriagefor Moderns by Dr. Henry Bowman
An official throws a dog that has been clubbed to death onto a collection truck in Mouding. Photograph: AP
Police and public health officials in southern China have clubbed, hanged or electrocuted almost 50,000 dogs in a week-long crackdown on rabies, local media reported yesterday.
Squads in Mouding, Yunnan province, grabbed pets from their owners while they were out for walks and beat them to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily reported.
Dog owners were offered a five yuan (40p) reward for killing their animals. Those who attempted to hide their pets indoors were flushed out by late-night squads who made loud noises outside to make the dogs bark.
The cull was ordered after the death of three local people, including a four-year-old girl, from rabies during the last six months. State media said 360 of Mouding county's 200,000 residents had suffered dog bites this year. Pigs and cows have also been attacked.
Despite the vaccination of 4,000 animals, the number of dog attacks continued to rise, prompting the cull.
"With the aim to keep this horrible disease from people, we decided to kill the dogs," Li Haibo, a spokesman, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency.
The slaughter began on July 25. Of the 50,000 dogs in the county, only army dogs and police dogs were spared.
The official newspaper Legal Daily blasted the killings as an "extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal with epidemic disease," it said.
"Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn't do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place," the newspaper, which is published by the central government's Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition. The Xinhua agency said, also in an editorial, that the killings would not have been necessary if the local government had been more attentive, but called the slaughter "the only way out of a bad situation."
In a statement to media, president of the charity People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk, said the group had cancelled orders of merchandise it sold that was made in China. "We are urging everyone to actively boycott - not a word we use lightly - anything from China given the bludgeoning killing of thousands of dogs" and examples of cruelty toward animals, she said.
Meng Xiaoshe, the editor of the Dog Daily website, described the cull as barbaric. "Among the dead animals there must be some with a licence and a vaccination certificate."
According to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of rabies cases in China has risen in recent years, with 2,651 deaths reported in 2004. The centre's figures suggest it is a bigger killer than Aids and hepatitis combined.
The rise is partly down to a boom in pet ownership. Many families keep dogs but only 3% vaccinate their animals.
Piracy has also made the problem worse. Last year, two boys in Guangdong died of rabies, a disease against which their parents thought they had been inoculated. Police then found 40,000 boxes of fake vaccine.
Social networking and community meets shared bookmarking -- think Friendster/Orkut plus del.icio.us. An rather interesting concept, and it gives me the perfect diversion while I'm rebuilding code amidst this craziness. Join the fun!
You can find me there, at the usual username... =)
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The video game industry, more so today than ever, is allabout creating and maintaining illusion. Now this is somewhat true of any form ofentertainment media from ancient oral folklore onward but its ironic that with all this gadgetry, were focusing more andmore on the means Photorealisticgraphics! Gut wrenching sound! --rather than the end: i.e., providing entertainment and enjoyment for the player.
No, I wont pass a value judgment on this blog after all, saidindustry does pay my bills and lets me be here. ;) Andits certainly not unique: from advertising to investment banking to politics, themeans employed by their practitionersare ultimately designed to artfully create and manipulate perception of atarget audience in order that some end can come about.
But I think I can say this as an insider: its really alljust smoke and mirrors even with todays hardware and realistic games. A modern game graphics engine is designed andarchitected with one primary goal in mind: finding ways to create visual illusions not in a way thats remotely real or scientific but rather for thelaziest amount of effort and energy so that the critics and the players arewowed.
Sometimes I just want to sceam to everyone that oogle overour graphics listen up you fanboys! Its not magic! You think that your $300 crappy mass-producedconsole you got at WalMart can really handle a finite-element form-factor based
But never mind cause well get that extra half-point inthe GameSpot rankings and get those reviewers all worked up, thats for sure!
And thus with that treatise, the stage is set to continue myrecent bout of introspection, for illusion has been a major aspect of life heretoo
No matter what your occupation, being in
Oh, hi, Im Joe Expat! From
As with video games, people seem to give more credit thanits worth when people say that I or anyone else knows a whole lot ofpeople
its a natural result of just going with the flow. As people, strangers in a strange land, wenaturally seek and are attracted to people wearing our same shoes. This is of course, universal for any location,but
And yet, much of this is also external illusion -- the averageexpat's cellphone probably has hundreds of entries, the majority whom will be calledonce or twice, if at all. People come tome, shout out Hi Mark! and I have honestly no idea who they are... "Do Iknow you? Ummm... yeah, maybe! What was it again?"
The stark fact is that tons of people here I could call myacquaintances and even friends, but I can probably count on one hand those with whom I can share anything without reservations issues ofjob, faith, the opposite sex, life goals. What is hard are parlayingthese connections to something deep. Quality vs quantity an almost daunting task when it's so transient andpeople come in and out all the time.
Whether locals or expats, people often focus on the means of increase but not thinking of the end goal of these relationships, andFather only knows that Ive fallen victim into this mentality as well; continuingin a vicious cycle of breadth over depth, and often making my words and actionsbe for earning the praise of men (or women
)
I realize that more than sheer numbers or any popularitymetric, I admire my friends who are honest and genuine not because Inecessarily agree with their ideas, but because I admire their courage to goagainst the flow and stick with their convictions -- and thus I want to make itso too... be open, honest, transparent in this world where its to easy fornoble goals to be subjugated by the pursuit of waibiao and guanxi.
I remember something that Min hyungtold me during a GrX mens session at Mikeys old pad
that in our one on ones,we should be focusing on life transformation, not just catching up... ultimatelysharing Truth and being bold. That isthe end. In my desire to getplugged into
And I can attest that the need for fellowship of depth is a need that even non likemindedexpats have. Its an interesting fact that often my non-likemindedfriends are more willing and able to do, say, dinner on a moments notice, orwho are looking for a small group -- perhaps deep and authentic life on life is what people here arereally unconsciously needing, regardless of creed.
This was what attracted me so much to GrX initially can weemulate at least this aspect here in this unique environment? It all starts small
This is my thought, my request to break this mold and togo deep. To be set apart from the crowdby showing genuine interest.
Such is are one of the main challenges in living here for agreater Purpose and such is my request in my thoughts
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Getting into the swing of things...
Congrats, sis!
Special guests...
My meimei is married!
My uncle striking a pose... =)
Being an uncle is fun... =)
My dad, sister, and bridesmaids.
When I first saw this sign, I immediately thought Warcraft III -- sad, huh? =P
Besides the usual "how's Shanghai" and "are you dating anyone yet" FAQs, folks usually wonder: if games are our work, then what do we do in the office for fun during these 80+ hour/week crunch times? Well, here's some new ummm... gameplay footage from our title:
Yes, this is what my coworkers manage to come up when I'm not around... who says we don't have a sense of humor? =)
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