Newsflash from the Middle Kingdom

Today the Chinese government issued a decree that all foreigners who wash themselves more than once a day must leave Dalian. So in an effort to save water I believe that Dalian will become deserted, devoid of Russians, Japanese and Irish. Actually I'm being banished to the nether-regions of the United States, namely Atlanta, by my Chinese masters. 

It would seem that I'm leaving Chinese soil tomorrow evening around 5pm. The company I work for really leaves things for the last minute, not flights sorted out yet, expenses I presume are going to be thrust into my hand from the runway onto the plane with the frevrant hope that the air-hostess who catches the bundle doesn't pocket it. So yet another day passes and I'll be visiting yet another country. Next stop: Korea. I wonder if they have a larger selection of dogs to consume there...

To the family who might be reading this, I should be landing in the States sometime on Saturday so I'll give ye a call when I get there, hopefully not from prision due to Visa issues. I wonder how many countries I pissed off with that post.

Open source advocate gets “re-educated” in China!

God dammit. I always seem to miss the best parties. Thanks to a friend of mine I was on the list to attend the Microsoft conference in Peking University. The guest of honor was Microsoft’s founder and all round philanthropist, Bill Gates. Supposedly he was going to discuss “Innovation in China’s future”. I wonder if that includes spyware, malware etc., all of which is synomonous with the Microsoft brand name.

Anyone who knows me for 5 minutes knows that I am a complete advocate of Open Source software. Anyhow I bailed out of not going to Bill’s speech for a few reasons.

Anyhow, a friend of mine warned me that if I was going to go that obviously my rotten eggs would be confiscated at the door, so that would obviously lead to a piss poor party. What is a party of Microsoft without a little egg throwing anyhow?

I’m really kinda regretting not going right now. It appears that someone else was undeterred and crashed the party.

Bill is looking thoroughly amused n’est pas? Is this the best way to represent the Open Source movement? Off course not, it’s not even sensational, it’s idiocy at it’s height. If you want to support open source then run Debian or Ubuntu or one of the other plethora of free operating systems out there. Both organisations have released fantastic systems this past month that blast Vista out of the water.

Now this man appears to be an middle aged gentleman. Back in Ireland this kind of stunt would have been purpotrated by a teenager with perhaps a slight slap on the wrist. However remember that this is China, is this unknown gentleman’s whereabouts currently known? Does he still have organs? Has he been or is currently being “re-educated”?

It appears that the culprit reportedly darted across the stage, “loudly shouted against Microsoft’s monopoly,” proudly displayed a sign of “Free software, open source,” and was promptly “tackled by security and removed for questioning.”

Anyhow, all jokes aside, anything that is done to bring awareness to the open source movement is only a good thing. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to throw some eggs and evade capture. Viva la revolution!

Irony of two states

This week saw the release of a report from the United States sharply criticizing many countries human rights efforts. Interestingly enough the US has omitted many middle eastern countries from their report and one of the omitted countries includes itself, the good old U.S of A. As a sharp rebuttal for the 7th year straight China has responded to this report citing America's own human rights violations.

Is it just me or is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black only for the kettle to do the same thing? Both countries have terrible human rights records, and neither country seems to be doing anything about them. Both countries have largely ignored advice given by Amnesty international on many occasions. Both countries endorse censorship when it suits them, both have appalling prison conditions, both have bent the rules when it mosts suits their cause of the day.

The idea of the nanny state that America is portraying itself to be is ludicrous to be quite honest. To declare that only themselves and their allies are alleviated from blame is ridiculous.

Perhaps both countries should stop criticizing other states with these kind of statements and further examine what they can do to further the cause of human rights within their own countries. To me the only judge on human rights should be a third party organization that is not tied to any state or government. Its quite ironic in my opinion that both countries have largely ignored advice by such an organization in the past, namely Amnesty International. I wonder will they heed such advice in the future?

By the way, more details about the reports may be found here

Daily Life in China

So my ADSL line was finally installed in my house yesterday much to my delight. It was quite amusing to see the Chinese engineer's confusion when he saw what operating system I was running and even more of a delight when he attempted to run a windows executable program on a Linux machine. I nearly feel out of my chair with laughter.

Anyhow I have one piece of advice to people attempting to get ADSL here, buy your own Ethernet router. The one that came with my connection was a ball of complete and utter crap so I simply gave it back to the engineer who was still scratching his head wondering why the program wants working. He thought it was some version of Windows that he had never encountered.

Anyhow right now I have a 1 Megabyte line which peaks around 1.5Mb. So its not too bad. Pretty crappy for gaming however begger's can't be choosers. I could have bought a 2MB line at around double the price but seeing as I was going to be paying a year in advance there was simply no point in doing so especially seeing that foreign traffic is still restricted to the Great Firewall of China.

So last night I decided to install the last version of Ubuntu however there are some features that I am not happy with at all so I have made the decision to use the new beta version of Ubuntu known as Dapper. Dapper's development should be hopefully completed by June so at least I'll be on the cutting edge. But in the meantime its a toss up between dapper and the last Debian release.

So right now I'm working a 12 hour day trying to keep in line with American business hours whilst in China. The result is not pretty. For the next two days I have meetings at 2am - 4am, I actually am at my most productive at night time but this is really taking the piss. Perhaps the reason for my productivity stems from working for so many years in various bars around Ireland as well as working split shifts for Colt Telecom.

Anyhow the office is still a buzzing at this mid evening hour (8pm) but I'm sure it will quieten down shortly, even the Chinese have to get some shut-eye. So whilst working at this witching hour I've been coming up with a short-list of places that I'm thinking of visiting. They are as follows:

• Hainan
• Thailand
• Henan
• Tsingdao
• Beijing

If you have any suggestions for where I should go next just let me know...

Note - I ended up in Beijing, best holiday EVER!

I could sleep right now...

So over the past 4 days I've clocked up about a 50 hour working week. How is that possible I hear you ask? Welcome to the other side of the wonderful world of outsourcing in China. Well when you’re the leader of a project you can literally come into work at any time you so please, however leaving the workplace however is the difficulty. At least twice this week I've had meetings with people at 2am in the morning Beijing time, 2pm for the Americans.

So while the American's wrap up the meeting conveniently at 5pm it is 5am over in this side of the world. Supposedly it is very hard to get a time for these people to meet up together however just after lunchtime seems to suit them....well they are half asleep at this time and hence are usually much easier to manage.

But all this is not in vain. By some creative administration I shall be working 15 solid hours straight today from 9pm to noon on Friday. I shall then be taking the rest of the weekend off until the following Monday where the normal work hours will resume I hope. However it is with great anticipation that I shall be taking some badly needed time off from Wednesday, 3 entire days I shall have to recover from the madness that I am anticipating my birthday to be.

So I'm going to be turning 24 years old this week and it was quite funny that a group of interns asked me how old I was yesterday. When I replied that I was 23 they seemed to be quite shocked. I was very far ahead of them in both experience, thinking, maturity and confidence, which they seem to be lacking however the funny side was that most of them are older than me by at least a year. Its great being their boss and giving them direction and I can see them improving each day in different area's however their confidence is still very much lacking. Can you imagine coming out of completing 6 years of university and then signing your life away to a company for a minimum of 3 years? Well that is what is happening here to a multitude of young graduates out here.

Although I only graduated last year I have come on in leaps and bounds through what I have been experiencing out here. Exposure to many different technologies has been of great interest however I believe that if I stayed in Ireland I would never have gotten half of the experience and responsibility which I am given here, quite possibly I would be holding a small programming position without the chance to influence key points on design, quite the opposite here. So. should anyone be interested in coming out to China to work here for a year or two after graduating I would definitely recommend it. You will be amazed how exposure to a new culture and travel broadens the mind.

Anyhow, I'm rambling, time to get back to work.

Back To China

Well this is mainly just a shout out to my family just to let them know that I have arrived safe and sound in the land of China. I arrived here on Wednesday afternoon after travelling more than half ways around the world. And guess what I did when I got here? I went straight into work. So right now I am on my 3rd day back to work and this is my 3rd consecutive day of doing overtime. I also have to go and work this weekend as well which is quite annoying to be honest.

So this weekend my plans have gone to mush but however I plan on enjoying myself as much as I can while I'm over here . Travel is also definitely on the cards. My flat was like a building site hit it when i returned, some pipe burst while I was away and completely covered the floor in a caked layer of grime and dust, not a pretty site. So anyhow I spent all last night trying to rearrange the apartment to give me as much space to myself as possible. I'm going to go and try and pick up a couch for my new found freedom within the apartment, hopefully I'll get something decent for a cheap price; ya have to love China.

One of my friends Derek took some pictures of what wonderful weather I've been missing since I went to America. Included in the picture are some of the lovely people I've been working with since I arrived in China. A big shout out goes to Eric, Lewi, Zita, Simon and Derek for stepping outside and braving the subzero temperatures and the Siberian wind chill.

Anyhow I found this post here and so it is my article of the day, how your love of online gaming may make you a genius when it comes to real life business. Quite enlightening really, enjoy.

Gmail-lite

Well I found a way to get by my proxy at work to access my gmail email account. Here's the URL. Enjoy! By the way, it's quite stupid for any company to block personal email sites. Employees will just simply waste precious work time to try and find a way to gain access to it. Thanks gmail-lite, you brought joy to yet another oppressed person.

Note - I no longer advise the use of this service, your credentials may be used for evil at any stage.

How far will authorities go?

A friend of mine just informed me that a Chinese person was fined in France for simply wearing a pair of fake Adidas brand running shoes. I can only imagine what would happen should Chinese authorities try to enforce similar bans. Imagine the chaos. lol..

But on a serious note is it fair to impose measures on the individual purchasing the product, perhaps they were unaware of what they were buying. Should this act be persued as if someone was buying drugs? Can we expect to have someone locked up, jailed and possibly executed for purchasing fake counterfit Ben Shermen shirts? Its a strange ol' world and nothing is beyond the realms of possibility.

Harsh, very harsh...but fair? Comments welcome...

Beijing and public urination...

Saturdays and work should never be involved in the same sentence. Unfortunately it is common to work either the weekend before or after a national holiday so that you get the entire week as a vacation. So this basically means that I have to work constantly for the next 7 continuous days.

Fortunately I have had an amazing vacation in Beijing where I've had one strange coincidence after another after another happen to me. Could anyone reading this who was not in Beijing that I know please raise your hand, you are possibly the only person that wasn’t let me assure you. 15 million people in one city and I bump into a heap of people that either know me or I know them from all over the world. It kind of freaked me out. But fortunately that didn’t stop me from enjoying myself immensely.

So after arriving in Beijing last week I ended up in a fantastic hostel that I will recommend to every single person going there. Its the Red Lantern House, Beijing,No.5 Zhengjue Hutong, Xinjie Kou, Xicheng District. What a place to meet people and have the craic; it’s pretty cheap and great grub, great location and a really nice environment. Anyhow, I'm expecting my next stay to be free so that’s the reason I'm plugging it so much. :)

Walking around Tienanmen square humming "Let's go fly a kite" while drunk is a hell of an experience. I almost expected to see Ms. Poppins jump out and lead the 10,000 or so Chinese in a verse whilst flying their marvellous gliding contraptions. Having had enough of the people coming up to annoy me while trying to get photographed with foreigners I decided to head into the Forbidden City. I know I'm famous and all (I don't have a big head at all) but that was a bit much even for me. So of I traipsed to the forbidden city and encountered kid after kid engaging in public urination. They really must think a hell of a lot about the place to treat it with such respect. The FC was pretty wedged, actually it was like being unable to breathe at times, so after having endured the throng for a few hours I tried to get away from the tourist trail of tour groups, colourful baseball caps and flag loving psychopaths. I'll try and get back to Beijing sometime during the year and do a tour of the city when it's not so busy.

So after seeing a hell of a lot of Beijing I came back to Dalian last Thursday night with a full suitcase. After spending about 1000 RMB I felt like I could open up my own shop. After getting to the airport it was a nice surprise when the airliner told me that I was to be upgraded to 1st class (China Southern). First class was always packaged as a different way of life however it really left much to be desired. The only added comfort that I experienced was a larger seat, no single movie screen, no pre flight beverage, no hot stewardesses. Get your act together China Southern.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish my Dad, his brother and my sister a happy birthday. Hope the heads aren't too sore from last weekends festivities.

World of Warcraft et al. get’s regulated by the P.R.C.

“The Chinese govt is requiring game houses to modify MMOG’s to restrict under 18 users to 3 hours “productive” gameplay per day. This “anti-addiction” software must be in place within 4 months, with games not compliant by July 15 liable to be shut down in China. Net9, Shanda and NetEase will be moving to comply with the government regulations. Users will have to register with their real names and Chinese identity card numbers to be allowed access to the games.”

This however is only for people gaming in web cafes and not for personal use at home. Can someone explain the reasoning behind it? Is it due to the government feeling that this age group is ripe for rebellion and gaming communities are ideal places to congregate in order to cause some type of strife?

People always had to show their ID at these establishments anyhow. I wonder is there a friend of a friend of a government minister who has a stake in the so called anti-addiction software being licenced to gaming houses? Action A + Action B = Profit?

Anyhow, how long will it take before hacks, cracks and all manors of malware take advantage of it. Will people mine accounts specifically for these addicts?  I’m sensing a good business opportunity here.

Currently in order to play Warcraft or Guild Wars in China I believe that you must first be registered with a company known as the9.com. This bunch are making a fortune out of registrations for a product they did not create in China. The interesting thing is that you also must have a Chinese ID number to register. Will the9.com be implementing this policy also from their login pages?

It can only benificial for ISP’s and companies such as the9 as it would mean a reduction in users which would lead to a reduction in bandwidth and resources on their servers during high-peak times. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months so if you are a gaming “addict” then go out and get your fix while you still can.

Disclaimer: When I was under 18 I was on the computer coding for over 12 hours a day.  Now I’m a qualified software engineer/architect.  I spent many of my teenage days and nights blowing the crap outta pixels and robbing corpses.  I think I’m a well adjusted individual but who can tell eh?

Talk Talk China

I would like to nominate Talk Talk China for website of the year. The one and only reference point regarding all facets of pet peeves people have experienced first hand throughout their time in the Peoples Republic of China. TTC provided me with hours of fun today while I went plodding along through my mundane existence. Be warned though, comments are not moderated and can be increasingly scathing to the uninitiated, but that's where the fun is.

Anyone is welcome to come and comment about their own experiences of the topic at hand. Fair play TTC team on a job well done.

Note - the website shutdown at their height of fame...no-one stood in to fill in for them... :(

Typical Weekend in Dalian

So last weekend was a complete whirlwind of activity. After working considerably late Thursday morning (6am) I crawled into bed with the intention of going back to work that same day. Unfortunately my stomach and my head wasn’t feeling too healthy and I figured that seeing as I had almost done a 50 hour week in 4 days anyhow that no-one would miss me too much in the office. Anyhow I woke up around 10pm and proceeded to take a wee trip down to the local Nepalese bar where beer, pizza and Cuban cigars rolled on the thigh of a virgin was the main focal points of the night.

So 4am came and I eventually stumbled home with the intention of waking up the next morning to show my new maid what she has to do in my new apartment. Yes I have a maid, completely awesome, mothers me to death though. So anyhow after showing her and her husband my new flat they proceeded to start cleaning the place thoroughly, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it would be extremely messy later tonight after the party I was going to be having.

So anyhow, the rest of the morning was spent buying some serious amount of crap for this party, fish that resembled chicken that tasted like both, Oreos, Pringles, oven, blah blah blah, the list goes on and on. Anyhow I spent the entire morning just filling my trolley with stuff, I should have hired an assistant to carry it all for me.

So around 2pm I had to rush off to do a magazine interview and photography session with an IT magazine that is distributed nationwide. What an experience. After being told that to wear a suit I spotted a rather yellow looking costume in a bag by the editor’s side, it explained the shiver that went down my spine. Next thing I knew I was being spirited to a really cool teahouse with lots of old Chinese books, got to drink some tea, do some calligraphy and get plastered in makeup. God how I hate it when good looking women put makeup on me, its not a nice experience I tell ya. So now over the next month there are going to be really, really strange pictures of me plastered over this magazine all over China. I'm going to be a star, but a very strange looking star.

So after this afternoon long photo session I rushed to the Olympic Square just to see the people who were involved in the GAA training. Seems to be getting bigger each week, perhaps we'll field a team where there will be no Irish involved in the lineup, now that would be class. So I had to dash off to do some final bit of shopping in Walmart and then had to arrange to be in the house to get the DJ equipment set up.

So with all the planning in the world, after telling everyone that the party kicks off at 9, everyone comes to my gaf at 10. Within minutes the bass is in gear and a great session starts. Not long later neighbors start coming to the door complaining, the landlord starts calling to complain and eventually the cops arrive. At this time the beer is still flowing and no-one is showing any sign of leaving. Master DJ's Peter, Wayne and Timmy did a great job with the tunes and we all eventually bailed out to a different bar. (Note to self, Dave’s bar is not a great spot to be sober in).

Anyhow crawling to bed for another late night in a row I was feckin exhausted, I think I attacked Mr. John Daniels when I got back. Oh well its Sunday tomorrow, I can sleep all day, head to lunch with the lads sometime in the afternoon and then watch some anime the rest of the night. Yet another great weekend in China over.

New apartment

Well I'm currently still in Dalian. Its been a very long week. As I've been having many problems with my apartment I decided to take the plunge and go look for some real estate that is closer to the company and suits my many needs.

Basically the place is a bachelor pad, my den of sin, welcome to all who wish to come and visit. Basically this is an open invitation to all friends, family and even friends of friends. After spending over an entire day with a realtor I found myself a beautiful 2 bedroom apartment, with a study, living room / kitchen. 110 square meters with a view that I would and possibly have sold my soul for. I can see both the sea as well as have a birds eye view of the city of Dalian. It's got some great public transportation nearby but unfortunately I'm still using taxi's. I'll take some pictures of the place tonight as well as the view I have and upload them to the gallery.

Going to be having my first party in the place on the weekend of my birthday in order to break the place in and make it feel like home. Also I'd like to thank Tony Bao (workmate) who did all of the translating for me, otherwise I would have been completely lost. So all of last weekend I spent moving all of the stuff that I've collected in China to my new apartment. Actually I ended up hiring a truck and 5 workers for around 15 Euro to move all of it for me, bad back ya know ;). Big thanks to Greg for helping me out with that chaotic scene.

So Friday night was spent listening to one of my good friends here, Peter, spinning up a storm on the decks in the newest club in Dalian, V5. Was a great night which ended up in a extremely bad hangover the next morning. Whoever was calling me that morning, just to let you all know, I have no recollections of any conversations past 7am.

Anyhow, I've been back to work since Monday and I've kept fairly good on my promise to do as little overtime as possible, with the exception of last night, and possibly Thursday night, oh as well as a late night meeting on Friday. But other than that, I'm sticking to it rigidly. le sigh...

So anyhow while seeing as I have moved to my new apartment I no longer have access to my personal email. Going to go and get the Internet set-up today sometime during lunchtime so that will be a whole new experience.

By the way, I've got my holidays from the 26th April - 5th March, so if anyone has any good suggestions where I should head to on my holidays in China I'm very much open to suggestions.

Work in China, aquariums and linux

Hey blog readers. Well I've been pretty bad at updating this for the past two weeks but I've just been so busy. I think my last update has been over a week ago so I must let everyone know what's been going on. So since I last signed off I've been working 12 - 14 hour days. 12 Hour days are extremely common here in my line of work. It of course does not help that I have to accommodate the American working week as well so it ends up that I have meetings around 9pm at night.

Anyhow two weeks ago I ended up heading to the local Aquarium in Dalian. It was quite a very Chinese experience. People who have been to china will know exactly what I mean. It was quite gaudy however the saving grace of the aquarium was the short dolphin show (which we almost missed) and the shark feeding. There was a Chinese man feeding about 12 sharks from a small cage. It kinda gave the illusion that they were quite dangerous however instead of the cage being lifted out of the water as you would expect the diver instead dove down to the bottom of the cage, wiggled his way out (tanks and all) and bravely swam through the swarm of ferocious man-eaters.

All was not what it seemed as it was pointed out that these were no great whites (much to the relief of the local Chinese) ;) So as I mentioned earlier we also caught a small dolphin show. Actually there were more entertainers than there were dolphins, between acrobats, clowns, beautiful girls and pirates I believe a few dolphins were also squeezed in there somewhere. All in all it was quite an enjoyable afternoon but it did cost 100 RMB. 100 RMB = 10 euros however that would be a much larger equivalent in China. Perhaps they should think about lowering their prices?

Unfortunately with all of the excitement the batteries in my camera had not one iota of juice within their cells so I didn't get the opportunity of taking any of my own pictures. Fortunately Yukiko, my fellow aquarium adventurer did manage to get a few shots, which she has promised to send to me at a later date. However if I was able to take a decent picture of the day I would imagine that it would look something like this:

So that following Monday I went back to work, a slave to the almighty yuan. It wasn't to last as that Wednesday I came down with a mysterious illness, anyhow I was confined to my bed for about 3 days and didn't really leave the house once. One benefit of being sick is that you get all this time on your hands. So what do I normally do when I get sick I hear you ask? Well first I cleaned the flat spotless (messy 5 mins later), read a book and then started re-installing Linux on my computer for what I swore was the last time. Luckily I have now found a distro that I actually like, Fedora Core 5 is now running like a man possessed, i.e. its purring like a lil' pussy cat :). Everything is up and running on the machine just the way I like it however there is one glaring exception. A few months ago I bought a subscription to a software application known as Cedega. Cedega is a continuation of the great work that the people over in wine hq started on. However Cedega is primarily focused on the application of game playing on Linux systems. So here I was with a distro I liked, everything tuned to perfection, however now came the shocker! Cedega didn't work, run, it didn't even crawl.

From what I can understand there is a new facility in Fedora Core 5 that is known as gnome-mount. This function has caused me an enormous amount of grief over the past few days. Gnome-mount allows CD's, DVD's etc to load easily in the Fedora OS. However Cedega uses the manual option within /etc/fstab. Basically if you change fstab then gnome-mount screws up and vice versa. SO anyhow while Cedega is busy working on a fix for this problem I am left gameless. It wasn't as if I had the time to play them anyhow however it was certainly nice to have the option. So right now I am unfortunately transgaming.com's bitch. In the meantime I'm thinking of switching back to my debian roots. Ubuntu is slowly downloading over bit torrents streams...Fedora core 5 beware.

La Duzi strikes again...

It's been a long, long two days. After finishing up rather late at work on Saturday night I decided to head straight to the gym and work off some of that holiday excess that I had noticed building up. Anyhow to cut a long story short I ended up eating or drinking something fairly dodgey that night. So fast forward to 2 days later, Im lying in bed while I type this, barely able to move any of my muscles, constantly making a dart for the loo and drinking as much water as I can get my hands on. Its a case of the 'orrible dreaded Chinese stomach bug.

So to alleviate my boredom of staring at the ceiling while this bug courses through my innards I started reading Band of Brothers, a gripping story about Easy Company (one of the first ). Great story which has been converted to a mini-series produced methinks by Master Spielberg and Monsignor Hanks. Next on the book list is Les Miserables, a story by Monsieur Victor Hugo. Hopefully I'll be back in work tomorrow, I never thought I'd say it but I do miss not being busy.

Whatever you do, do not walk on the grass

So its official, I've had my first professional interview in China. Some software engineering magazine thinks it's a great idea to interview two foreigners in China about the life we lead over here and we were the two suckers that got picked. Anyhow the first interview was today, I know well that my comments are certainly going to be edited and changed to suit the governments ethos so I want to make one thing straight. GRASS IS FOR WALKING ON.

In case you do not know it is forbidden to walk on grass in China. Maybe that is why there are so many astro-turf pitches here, but its next to impossible to find a good grassy flat area here where you can puck a ball around. If our outburst about grass changes current policy I shall be well pleased. By the way, I'm not talking about the smoking kind.

So this magazine wants to take us both out to see us while we "work, eat and play"; whatever that means. I wonder what kind of a lifestyle the Chinese imagine that foreigners are having out here. Eating, drinking, smoking, prostitution and hard core drugs? Well 2 out of five would be my lifestyle. Perhaps I'll bring them down to the local brothel, or to the nearest 5 star hotel for a slap up meal. Such is the choice a foreigner has in China. But above all, do not walk on the grass, otherwise prepare for a swift dose of "re-education". God how I love that word.

By the way, re-education was/is China's way of changing a persons beliefs through the form of harsh labor. I am unsure if this practice is still actively being endorsed. I first came accross this phrase when the government wanted to clean up the city of Shanghai. They got rid of the race-course and advised that all of the local prostitutes should be re-educated. Re-education usually took place outside of the large cities in the countryside. The people were kept under strict supervision with the understanding that if they reformed they could re-enter public life however many people accepted their fate and simply settled in the surrounding area.

Twenty Major is banned from China

So it looks like Twenty Major has rubbed the Chinese up the wrong way. He has been recognized as one of the plagues of the communist government of China. I wonder if his mother is proud that his website has been utterly wiped out by the great firewall of China and hence has lost access to about 1.5 billion people. Then again, I wonder if he also realizes that if he blogged in such a fashion over here a smack in the gob would be the least of his worries. So that's the reason why Twenty refuses to reveal his identity, in case the Chinese get ya; I'm sure that you're well known walking down Mao (Moore) Street though.

Fair play Twenty, keep fighting the good fight.

Note - Probably more down to the fact that blogger/blogspot was also banned. Think he moved to a new host not long after though

GAA comes to Dalian, China

Yes my Irish brethern, GAA has spread it's reaches out to a new area of the world, a region left un-tapped for centuries is finally going to do Ireland proud. I'm talking about the newly formed Dalian Gaelic Football Club and how it is going to take its place in GAA history by attempting to win (more likely compete/drink) in the Asian Gaelic Games this coming September in Shanghai.

What is Gaelic Football I hear you ask?
It's not soccer, rugby or Aussie rules, but it has elements of all three and it is powered by a small but dedicated - one could say addicted - fan base that plans to spread it anywhere it can get a foothold. Gaelic football is Ireland's most widespread contribution to the world of sport.

It is played with a round ball similar to, but a little heavier than, a soccer ball. Use of hand passes is expected and encouraged. It is a fast and high-scoring game. Gaelic football is played on a pitch about the size of a rugby field. Official pitches are 150 metres by 90 metres. The ball can be passed with hand or foot and points are scored by either getting the ball into a soccer-like net for a goal that's worth three points or above it, between a pair of rugby-like posts for a single point.

Gaelic football is not as rough as rugby or Aussie rules but is rougher than soccer. Most of the people who play in Asia are expatriates used to the more violent games, although for this competition the organisers are especially willing for locals to join. In China, the sport is spreading. Beijing has two teams. Hong Kong has enough teams to have a league of its own. Around Shanghai, new teams are expected in Hangzhou and Suzhou next year.

Few of the players - except for Irishmen who played in school and have a national tradition of Gaelic football - have much experience. Everyone is new to the game and everyone is considered an amateur. So if anyone reading this is interested and is in the Dalian area just come along to Olympic Square around 6pm on Saturday for a training session. Beginners are more than welcome.