卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

No-one likes paying tax, but it can at least be made easier. Online payment is convenient - when it’s done right.

I spent a long time last night  trying to submit my Singaporean tax return. My last employer had entered all the necessary details, so that was already on the system. Very convenient. However, the job before that had overlapped into 2007 slightly, and that employer hadn’t been connected with the tax system, so I had to amend the form to add on that income, subtract CPF, etc.

Except - it wouldn’t work. Every time I tried to submit, I was stopped by a pop-up that informed me “Only positive numbers are accepted”. Try what I might, this stumped me. There was nothing in the FAQ.  Why on earth was the system thinking that I was inputting negative numbers?

Eventually, after much frustration and wasted time, I had an inspiration. What if I took off the 67 cents from the end of the amount..? Bingo! It worked!

Note to the retard who wasted my time - find a dictionary, please! “Positive number” and “round number” are very different things!

Sometimes I really have to wonder why Singapore persists in calling itself an English-speaking country…

Are we heading for a global recession? All of the signs are that the US economy is now in recession. The next thing we find out is how much knock-on damage this will cause in developing markets. Are the Asian markets sufficiently decoupled from the US economy for India-China trade to keep everyone here afloat? We’ll find out in the next few months.

This recession, which was sparked off by the US housing bubble and compounded by bankers’ recklessness, has been a long time coming. Steven Roach at Morgan Stanley was warning about it even before I took my MBA, so it’s not as if we haven’t seen it coming.

What has come up swiftly and without much warning, and may yet bite us hard, is the shortage of food staples - rice, especially. With a number of media sources warning of food riots and social instability as a consequence, this is likely to be tough all around.

The people who are going to suffer the most are the ones Niti is investigating at the bottom of the pyramid - and this is going to be very different from anything we’ve seen before.

I remember, as a child, seeing the pictures of the famine in Cambodia, and the appeals for public donations. I helped to organize a Blue Peter Bring & Buy sale at my primary school to contribute. Soon afterwards, the focus shifted to Ethiopia. Here I oversimplify horribly, of course, but in essence the famine victims here had to be essentially passive, waiting for external food aid to arrive.

In a lesser case of food shortage, citizens in the old Soviet Union had to opportunistically join queues as soon as they saw one forming, hoping it meant that a delivery of food or other scarce goods had just arrived - even when (famously) they often didn’t know what they were waiting for until they reached the head of the queue. This would just be luck of the draw.

What difference will it make when the poor, who are most desperately affected by food shortages, all have mobile phones? Will governments and aid agencies use it to inform people of deliveries, and in this way alleviate anxiety? Will be see spontaneous, SMS-directed “hunger mobs” flash-forming on the rumour of food availability (either delivery, storage or hoarding)? And what will it mean for us when instead of seeing appeals for donations on TV, the hungry millions are calling us for help personally?

So… the Spice phone, with no screen or non-voice call functions will cost the equivalent of RMB 141? With basic but full-featured phones available at RMB 199, or even RMB99, new - where’s the market, again?

RMB99: advert next to public newspaper board. These boards are still pretty common around Beijing, with the day’s paper there for passersby to read.

RMB 199, in the window of a phone shop at Wudaokou. With a constant influx of new students - Chinese, Western, and (in large numbers) Korean - the phone market is intensely competitive here. A cluster of shops make it a great place to look for that new phone, regardless of budget.

A Cylon Centurion:

A Motorola Smart Rider Phone:

Mao Zedong’s famous dictum says that “the guerrilla lives amongst the people like a fish lives in water”. Without the people, the guerrilla cannot live.

To survive, a large-scale guerrilla movement, or insurgency, must have a message, a purpose, that resonates to at least some degree with the feelings and beliefs of the population in which it exists. There must be enough people who are broadly sympathetic, in order to supply recruits, shelter, and material support.

What does it take to turn the people against the guerrilla?

The people of Afghanistan know what the Taliban are like. The Taliban used to rule the country, and their treatment of women, their bans on popular culture, their public executions, and so on, were not enough to make the people turn against them and stand up to them.

After the American-led invasion, the Taliban were forced to retreat to their heartlands, and the areas of Pakistan where they had deep support. And yet, people there are suddenly prepared to stand up to the Taliban, with force if need be.

What happened?

The Taliban destroyed mobile phone masts.

Claiming that the Pakistani military, and Western armed forces, were tracking militants by locating their phones, the Taliban opted to take down the network - and provoked an immediate and forceful backlash from the ordinary people, for whom the mobile phone has been a life-changing technology. Even the Taliban’s own fighters are angry.

According to Afghanistan’s Minister of Telecommunications:

“The people said please … repair the infrastructure and we will guarantee the security of the tower,” Sangin said. “We believe that if the Taliban continue with these kinds of activities the hatred will increase against them, and as a result we are awaiting a change in their policy.”

Of course, mobile phones are no panacea. We’ve seen plenty of examples of their use to enable terror and death. However, this example clearly shows how the mobile phone is successfully improving the lives of impoverished communities in developing countries, and bringing them the benefits of integration with the wider world.

Over the past four years or so, I’ve written a number of posts on China’s role as a destination and a source of cultural influence. China hasn’t just been drawing the MNCs, the investors, the outsourcers, and the rest of the big battalions of globalization. It’s also been drawing the artists, the freelancers, the global nomads, and the dreamers - all those who recognise that change is brewing and want to be a part of it, no matter how small, or who seek the opportunity to reinvent themselves, or to find a niche for themselves that they couldn’t find wherever they came from. It’s this that separates China from Singapore, for example, where they prefer established artists who are already successful, and where up-and-comers are co-opted early on because there’s no way to get a platform without government or corporate sponsorship.

Amongst the foreigners here in Beijing - I hesitate to say ‘expatriates’, which is too loaded a term - there’s a common meme that Beijing now is like Paris between the wars, a society in flux, open to new ideas, prosperous whilst still cheap to live in; I have to agree, and it means that this city - and Shanghai, and Kunming, and Xi’an, and many others - are drawing in young, creative, adventurous people, who are engaging in a fertile exchange with the local scenes. Many of these people (I suspect) will be culturally influentual in the future, and are being shaped and influenced by China.

So, having felt all that for a while, it’s really interesting to see something on the same lines appear in the IHT today: For a new generation, land of opportunity may lie in China, not the US.

Just a few photos, taken to test my new Nokia N73; I decided that what I wanted was an affordable phone that can take good quality pictures, and the N73 seemed to fit the bill.

The very first, taken at the counter where I bought the N73. Note the prices of the local-brand phones; even cheaper ones were also available.

Brand names are so important.

Construction and (not so) clear air.

• The Times: Ditching the office is the most modern way to operate these days, it seems.
• Paul Graham: In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally.

When I was still at school, taking my O-levels, I was really keen on science fiction. For many years, I had been reading the likes of Larry Niven, Joe Haldeman, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov… plus, of course, Arthur C. Clarke, who was born just across the Bristol Channel (more correctly, Y Môr Hafren) from me. I still remember reading in one of his memoirs that, as a child, he looked with fascination across the sea at the dark hills of Wales, and realising that he meant the hills where I lived.

I was fascinated by Deep Space, space travel, and the concept of exploring the void.  At that time, I was starting to think about A-levels and, beyond that, university. From my reading of university prospectuses, I thought that Astrophysics would be a good area to study. However… I had no idea where would be a good place to study.

So, in my youthful naivety, I wrote a letter to Arthur C. Clarke, care of his publishers, to ask for his advice.

Some months later, a dog-eared air-mail envelope arrived, with some advice, hand-written.

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t follow it; it’s just that by the time his letter arrived, my life had already forked onto another path. Still, I won’t forget that the already eminent writer took the time and trouble to write back to an obscure Welsh schoolboy. I wish I’d had the opportunity to meet him and thank him in person.

RIP, Arthur C. Clarke.

Why are some wrapped, and others not?