Tag Archives: China

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The Far Out Job Report

Help Wanted: Island Cat Keeper,
Beach Bookseller or Tourist Ninja

You hear about the great gig economy and how ‘robust’ is the job market right now, and wonder what are they talking about. The reality on the ground is far grimmer, and the last call you got was for a go-getter, as in getting lattes for the millionaire 25-year-old star-up boss.
Fear not, you’ve got options. Understandably, you’re now a creature of habits, so change is laborious. But you’re also broke, which is bad regardless of age. So, given all life experiences you’ve accumulated so far, it’d be foolish not to consider the alternatives.
Granted, that’s a cliche of advice-given book writers. But besides doing better than say, elderly dishwashers, their brand of counseling has at least one B.S.-proof factor on their favor: they sell it. So have you already got duped by job listing boards? the Web will see you next.
About those listings: don’t sign up for them. All they want is to collect your info and compile a massive database, so to attract funding from investors, and provide golden parachutes to top executives. Plus, if you check one, you’re checking them all; the market is the same.

OUT THERE BUT NOT MUCH
But you knew that. As you did about asking tips from people who short of picking you apart, just don’t mind saying anything to actually get rid of you. Which, granted, not even you can blame them for. By now, your ‘pitch’ sounds as exciting as going to bed at 7pm.
Speaking of which, you could be a NASA ‘professional sleeper,’ if you weren’t up so many times at night to pee. Or go to China to be a ‘mourner‘ for hire, or a ‘panda fluffer.’ Those bears are notoriously fussy, though, and other people’s grief is not easy to handle either.

BETTER THAN SUMMER READING
No. Instead, such well-honed skills you’ve mastered for so long may be better served for more imaginative tasks. Like selling books in a tropical island. That pricked up your ears, didn’t it? Minimal wages but what perks. Say, do you like summer, sun and sand? You’re hired.
As for the competition, let us let you in on a secret: they want pretty young things, and frankly, that’s a huge mistake. No offense, but the young will take it as easy as vacation time, and wind up neglecting their duties. That’s when a pro like you have the edge. Go for it.

SWORD & MASK, YOU’RE A STAR
Know what happens to ‘pro queuers,’ who stand in line, waiting for somebody else’s newest iPhone to come out? they get beat up. Often. And ‘chief listening officer‘ is another name for customer service rep, that human punching bag that gets it from everyone and everywhere.
May we suggest instead fighting back and becoming a ninja in Japan? We know, it sounds outlandish but if you think about it, it’s not that you’ll need to obliterate deadbeats like a Yakuza and swear allegiance to some shady boss. Believe us, it’s all mostly for show.

THE GREEK GOD OF KITTENS
You’d be working for the City of Tokyo, and your job will be to entertain tourists. No Asian relatives? no problem; just think what an ice breaker for striking a conversation that would be. Which is just as well: your spouse will never tell you to get out again.
But the real cherry on this pie is taking care of 55 cats on an idyllic Greek island. You, walking on a beach like a god, with no one but the demanding, albeit wise, felines to report to is as close to (more)
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Read Also:
* Run for Cover
* Small Classes
* Help Unwanted

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The Crying Games

Five Rings Above Misery (Telegraph/Getty)

A Bruised Rio Hosts Its
Low-Expectations Olympics

What a difference 10 years make. A decade ago, when Rio begun its cavalcade to host the Summer Olympics, Brazil was swimming in optimism. Unprecedented economic growth and a hard-earned period of political and social stability suddenly gave Brazilians much-sought global respect and the drive to dream that yes, they could.
In a country suffused with body culture, nothing would’ve marked that spirit as winning the bid for both the games and also the 2014 World Cup. From that point in history, only those two mega-sport events could represent a fitting coronation to what turned out to be an exceptional but miserably elusive moment.
The Olympics and Paralympics competitions that start officially Friday, however, are taking place in a radically different country. Long gone are the joy and effusiveness that fueled the celebrations for being chosen, in October 2009, by the International Olympic Committee, in Copenhagen.
It seems as if Brazil run out of the luck it never really had. Or that was too disappointingly brief. In one moment, it was a model of sustainable growth and the text book for social promotion policies, only to become, in the next, a continental-size pool of resentment and regret.
Not unlike voters for Brexit, Brazilians woke up suddenly and realized they may have thrown away the baby along the dirty bathwater. Two whole years of street protests against corruption, and all they got was a group of lousy politicians with police records who now occupies the government.
Competitors Will Jump in the Guanabara Bay, no Matter What. (Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)
WAIT, WE MAY STILL WIN THIS
Deeply divided, Brazil is already suffering another global-scale public humiliation, just as it did two years ago, when the then celebrated national soccer team got thrashed by Germany in the World Cup. A look at global headlines about these games has been source of even deeper embarrassment.
Every media outlet, including the country’s own, has reported a corollary of staggering woes brought to light by the magnifying glare of the games. From raw sewage in Guanabara Bay, site of most water competitions, to fears of disease-carrier mosquitoes, it all looks pretty bleak now.
We will return to foes that everyone is hoping against hope won’t tarnish the innate Olympics beauty, but first, as if almost duty-driven, the focus must be on a few good, or fine, or at least, interesting and even inspiration things about the games, even before they start.

SOME SHINING POINTS OF LIGHT
Ok, so we found three, but worth mentioning all the same. Like the 10-people Refugee Olympic Athletes team. Plucked from millions around the world, they will compete in several categories as independents. Since there should be many more, and there aren’t, they will be our own good-for-gold team.
Speaking of athletes, youth bodies, downtime, and a party city like Rio, it all may mean one thing: they’ll get laid. A lot. That’s why nine million ‘Rainforest friendly’ condoms will come in er handy. They’re sustainably-produced, made in Xapuri, the late Chico Mendes‘ hometown, in the Amazon state of Acre, and they’re free. Help yourself.
Finally, like many top world competitors, the third point of light is a cheat. Guilty as charged. But no less meaningful: it’s the (more)
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Read Also:
* Marvelous City
* Fly me to the Alemão
* Games People Play
Continue reading →

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We’ve Kept You Posted

Yearly Recall Takes
a Blurry 2015 Picture

It was a year of record refugee waves, with boatloads of heartbreaking stories landing en masse on European shores. Greeting them, equal parts of compassion and vile political pettiness, and a stunned world reacting as it usually does: with violence.
As usual too, there were plenty of staggering deaths – massive, laser-focused, or undiscriminated – due to terrorism, war strikes, stampedes, and in the U.S., racism and too many guns. And, of course, a fair share of encouraging news about climate change, for instance.
This post hardly covers them all, though. For these Colltales stories we’ve picked are more of a counterpoint to what was going on then. Rather than rehashing what was on everyone’s devices in 2015, they run a parallel track of commentary, criticism, and even comic relief.
Just as global temperatures kept rising, our pulse on the year’s events was better reflected on the weekly editorial Newsletter/Curtain Raiser. So we were free to report another kind of news, neither Pollyanna nor downright depressing. You know, the Colltalers preferable way. Enjoy.

ELVIS, CATS & RIO IN WINTER
The terrorist attack that killed nine journalists at the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo, on Jan. 7, was arguably the biggest news of the first three months of 2015. But the following day, we featured Elvis Presley‘s 80th birthday. And never looked back.
Stories about crows, unemployment, that old fave Voynich Manuscript, and a quirky take on Valentine Day followed. A personal darling was the 450th anniversary of Rio, our city of birth. Bandit Maria Bonita, cats, caturally, and life after death, online, completed the bunch.

A SPRING OF RACE & TIME
By then, the biggest refugee crisis of our era was already creeping in, but within the U.S., an old scourge was robbing the headlines: racism. Our own second quarter, though, was deep into Continue reading →

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In Their Own Rites

Brides, Babies, the
Dead & Your Ex-Lovers

And now for something completely different: need to cry a lot at your wedding? Check. Thought about giving the bones of your deceased relatives a brush? Check. What about dropping your baby off a balcony? Check that too. Aren’t we dizzy yet? Wait, the best is always last.
Ever thought of introducing your lover to your former partners? There’s a whole fair for that. Not to worry, though; each of these rituals is confined to a different culture; few partake of more than one of them. Besides, most of the population, of course, simply skip them all.
It’s not that we’re about to go all NatGeo on you, after the week we all just had. But this being Friday, reading about what people do around the world to give their lives meaning may feel just like putting out our own skin to dry: we have no choice but to be ‘us’ most of the time, but no one says we can’t get out of ourselves and enjoy the pasture.
Or something, we’re not sure. The only thing that may be undeniable about all these, though, is that none of this community rites you’re about to read below are harmful to those who enjoy participating in them. On the contrary, they’re are important cultural signposts that bring everyone together, and boy, don’t we need more examples like that?
So let’s get to it without bias, shall we? After all, heaven knows we all have our share of strange and mostly hardly logical rites and little Continue reading →

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I C U

Mad Colors, Invisible Hues
& a Boy Who Sees in the Dark

A lot of misunderstanding can follow a simple question: Tell me what you see. When it comes to our so called shared reality, each one of us seems to bear witness to a different set of shapes and colors.
Wars were fought over the hue of someone’s skin, for crying out loud. To further complicate things, there’s now research on color preferences of the insane, and light frequencies you simply can’t see.
Ah, yes, and then there’s that Chinese boy too.
Without delving too deep into the chiaroscuro world of pictorial reality (you liked that?), let’s just say that, as far as what we know about cognitive vision, what one sees is a complex, manufactured composite of light and shadow, made sense by information gathered by the person’s brain.
In other words, if you haven’t ‘learned’ how to see, even with a set of fully functioning eyes, you won’t be able to make sense out of what’s ahead of you. Devices that have been developed to ‘restore’ vision to blind people are usually deemed a nightmare by those they are supposed to help.
Time to invoke that old, beaten Indian parable about the blind men and the elephant. By touching it, each man built a completely different description of the animal. Their experience wouldn’t improve much if they could suddenly see, judging by what we know now. We admit, this Continue reading →

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Spoiled Dinner

Animal Lovers X Pet Eaters:
But Don’t They Eat Cows Too?

When a truck was forced off the road by a passing driver in China, the content of its cargo became a catalyst to a whole incident involving hundreds of animal lovers and activists.
The truck was carrying 520 malnourished mutts crammed into its small carriage to restaurants in the northeast of the country, a legal trade that’s under increased criticism. Yes, the dogs were heading for the dinner table.
The driver called out his friends, they called the local media and a team of veterinarians, and at the end of a 15-hour standoff, the animals were saved from their terrible fate. The April incident struck a chord in the Chinese society, and it’s now an ongoing debate, Continue reading →

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Three for Tuesday

The Boy, the Father
and Old Monster Mary

CHINESE BOY EXCHANGES KIDNEY FOR AN iPAD2
In the week since this story broke, we’ve read it with slight variations on a multitude of news publications and in an assortment of languages. From tabloid to research papers, from panel discussions to tongue-in-cheek reports, every one seems to have an opinion about it.
Zheng, a deeply misguided 17-year old who came up with a not so novel way to raise funds on the Internet, got $3,100 for one of his kidneys. And went shopping.
The story, which may still turn out to be a hoax, apparently Continue reading →

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Tell the World

His Courage Still Stands At

the Heart of Tiananmen Square

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Land Mines

Exploding Watermelons Add
to Chinese Food Safety Woes

A couple of years ago, Cracked.com published another one of its interesting, albeit almost always disturbing, lists: non-weapon things that may explode. Next to the usual suspects on that list, such as lithium batteries and volcanic-active lakes, there was some pretty unremarkable-turned-deadly objects such as an innocent-looking office chair and a powdered-milk factory.
You may now add another surprising explosive-prone thing, a fruit, no less: watermelons.
It happened in China, a country in such a hurry to grow fast that Continue reading →

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Accessorizing

Recycling Stray Hair
For the Truly Fashionista

Two designers came up with very creative ways to reuse hair, feline and human: working independently, they developed a full line of beauty products that strike anyone for their originality.
Taiwanese hair salon owner Tsai Shiou-ying had already created some unusual brooches, a life-size pineapple and a rat sculpture, all using hair left over from her daily work.
But nothing pleased her as much as the pair of high-heel shoes she’s recently completed. It took the hair of three people (not all, just the hair they had already decided to cut, we hope) and a Continue reading →

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Foreign Objects

When Surgeons Find Knives
and Chopsticks In Your Skull

We hate to be the ones to tell you but when someone complains about intense headaches for years, they may have something lodged in their skulls. For knife blades, chopsticks, and all sorts of blunt objects are more commonly found in the heads of people from all over the world than you’re led to believe. And most of the victims don’t even know they are carrying them.
Take Li Fu, from the Yunnan Province, China, for instance. Continue reading →

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The Rice Is Wrong

China’s Poor Being
Fed By Plastic Rice

Now here’s a story we keep hoping it’s a hoax but so far there’s no sight of that being the case. Reports from Singapore and Vietnam have been documenting a number of food intoxication cases traced back by they eating fake rice.
The staple of Asian cuisine, rice is never missing from the daily Continue reading →

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Can of (Global) Warming

The Green Side of One
of World’s Worst Killers

It took over seven centuries but researchers are finally coming around to identify redeeming qualities in the “work” of feared Mongol General Genghis Khan. Up to now, everyone was convinced that when he got busy creating his vast empire in the 13th and 14th Centuries, invading and pillaging nations, and pretty much annihilating anyone standing on his way, he was doing that just for his thirst for blood.
Oh, how wrong we all were. For yes, he did kill about 40 million of his closest enemies, either because they opposed his plans of world domination or didn’t like his hairstyle, but all he had at heart was the best interests of future generations, we know now. You see, years after his Continue reading →

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Circus Fired

China Bans Acts
With Wild Animals

Perhaps the announcement was made to coincide with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the U.S. Knowing the topic of human rights violations by his country would be on the table, for example, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to imagine some political wrangling over how to divert the pressure, at least for now.
But be it as it may, the recent ban on circuses’ use of wild animals by the Chinese government does represent a step closer to a new attitude in our relationship with wild animals. In fact there’s a growing movement advocating an end for all instances of captivity of great beasts, regardless if it’s for educational or entertainment purposes.
China’s ban on all wild animal shows in some 300 state-owned Continue reading →

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Horny Elders

Chinese Grow Horns
But the World Ignores

Some say it was bound to happen. What, with its 20% of the world’s population, statistically it shouldn’t come to no one’s surprise that some things happen only in China. And New York, of course. But it’s not everyday you see someone spotting a hefty horn say, on 5th Avenue.
Well, in China, no one knows why, it turns out that there are several people growing horns. Some on their foreheads, some in the back of their heads, some just somewhere on the top. One thing they all share: Continue reading →

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Eye on the Year

RECORDS BROKEN &
VERY LITTLE CHANGE

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The Earth Shook & Burn But
The World Only Moved Sideways
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A year of extremes but no breakthroughs. Records of the wrong kind (U.S.’s longest armed conflict in Afghanistan and worst environmental disaster ever, highest temperature indexes in several regions of the world, increased infection diseases mortality rates in the Caribbean and Africa, and staggering drug trafficking casualties in Latin America) plagued the world, with the additional bonus of a certified freak: a snowstorm in the middle of the Australian summer.
But there was no progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks; no curbs on Iranian and North Korean authoritarian antics or scary nuclear ambitions; no meaningful proposals to solve political impasses in the Ivory Coast, Sudan, Rwanda, Nigeria or Zimbabwe.
Disturbing tactics did get deployed, though, by the world’s superpowers but with the only intention of curbing whistle blowers and freedom of information acts such as WikiLeaks. It gave civil rights activists of every stripe a chilling pause to see Continue reading →

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Warring States

A Pot of Soup Made
 Before Jesus’s Birth

It’s 2,400 years old, it’s obviously cold and the bones in it are green. On the upside, it’s still liquified, it may’ve been cooked for a member of the land-owning class and it’s paired with a glass of an odorless concoction believed to be wine.
That’s the latest discovery of a group of Chinese archaeologists excavating an empty tomb in Xi’an, China’s capital for over a Continue reading →

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Hungry? Grab a Crab

Live Seafood in Vending Machines
 Hits the Spot for Chinese Commuters

They’re alive, they’re packaged in custom-fit boxes, and they’re available in three sizes. An unusual idea by a Chinese entrepreneur, to sell individually wrapped hairy crabs in automated machines at underground stations in Nanjing, has become a hit with train riders.
The crabs, which are considered a delicacy in Asian cuisine, get sedate in the 5 Celsius degrees of the machines, but are ready for consumption. A selection of bottled sauces are also available, to season the snack, that comes in small, medium and grande sizes.
Now, before you go around bad-mouthing the Chinese because of their eating habits, do we need to remind you of the several food shows on U.S. TV Continue reading →

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Almost Got Away

Asian Refugee and Crab
 Share a Common Dream

The elderly man on the right boarded a Vancouver-bound plane in Hong Kong. The young man on the left inhabited the man on the right’s face and neck mask disguise. They both, er, the man on the left got caught after slipping way too soon into something more comfortable, while still on the plane.
Confused yet? Let’s start it over. The Asian man did almost everything right to get to Canada, reasons unknown. Had he waited just a bit longer, he would’ve been successful, what with an American passport and a legit-looking boarding pass in his pocket and all. But maybe it was too hot under that movie-quality rubber mask, so he didn’t. And got caught big time.
Afterwards, the plane crew claimed that it had indeed suspected his “young looking” hands (Haven’t they ever heard about the wonders of Pond’s?), and that he claimed two suitcases too short. When he said he had just one, they instantly produced the other two, one of them with the discarded disguise inside. Which, mind us saying, looks like that of an old sailor man, doesn’t it? Whatever.
Of course, everyone is hyperventilating about the obvious implications to security screening at airports and all. Would those new X-rated HD screeners be able to spot the mask, besides his genitals? Who cares? We’re kind of sympathetic with the poor guy. And, like the terminal staff, impressed with his acting skills; apparently his body language was pitch-perfect with that of an old man (from the sea).
No second chance for the stray crab, though. Spotted Thursday in New York, the doomed sea creature was desperately trying to flee his crowded tank at one of Chinatown’s live seafood stores. It made as far as half a block away, before a fast-thinking (albeit indifferent) man scooped it up with a discarded coffee cup and kept walking. Snack time, perhaps? Truly disgusting. Needless to say, we’re kind of sympathetic with the poor crab, etc, etc.

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Change the World

TED Award for J R,
Street Provocateur

If you’re not well acquainted with the agitprop world of graffiti expression or street art, or don’t live in one of the slums of South America, Asia and Africa, you may never have heard of J R, the secretive Parisian artist who just won the TED’s 2011 “Wishes Big Enough to Change the World” award.
But to scores of impoverished communities around the world, it’s Continue reading →

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Caturday Fever

Scientists Finally Prove What Cat
Lovers Already Knew: They Do Rule

Ok, so we got carried away with this headline. Then again, haters need not to apply. The fact is, we’ve got impressive news to report and won’t let a small detail, such as who cares? get in the way.
Breaking: Cat lovers are being controlled by a parasite that ‘manipulates’ their personality. That’s why we’re so weary of rats. Just in case, the Chinese have an imprint of a cat hidden on their money.
It’s all true, honest to heaven. Or, as a dog lover would say, that figures. No wonder these people go berserk at the sight of kittens playing on the Internet. There’s got be a name for that. Oh, yes, it’s called insanity.
Yes, cat people do believe they’re the ones who’re owned, not the other way around. That’s why they run when the masters call, but can’t make a single command work to their advantage.
Hopefully these three examples will settle once and for all this matter. Of course, you’ll hear loud barks against it in weeks ahead, but not to Continue reading →

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Vanishing Goddess

Fight to Save Wild Tiger Pits the
 Shoeless Against the 4-Wheel Drive

Several nations have recently gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a last ditch effort to prevent the imminent extinction of tigers. Big cats face threats to their natural habitats, which shrink as the human presence increases, are hunted relentlessly for the black market value of their skin and body parts, and are down to an ever-diminishing genetic pool. Captives living in private reserves, which outnumbered those in the wild, don’t have the necessary biological diversity to guarantee the species’ survival.
Without a global, effective and consistent strategy to preserve them as they’ve lived for millennia, neither their mythological charisma nor the powerful allure they’ve always exerted over our Continue reading →

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Time to Go

Dinner Is Served at the
Second Door to Your Left

There’s an unforgettable scene in Louis Bunuel‘s “The Phantom of Liberty” (1974) when the party guests pull down their undergarments and sit on toilet bowls at what looks like a dinner table, that’s a fine example of the master Spanish filmmaker’s sense of surrealistic humor rarely seen these days at movie theaters anywhere.
Leave it to the Chinese, though, to dilute and emulate the Continue reading →

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Brand New Day

Military Junta Grants Freedom
 to Myanmar’s Opposition Leader

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who single-handedly personified the struggle of thousands of Myanmar citizens against the country’s military junta, has been released from her seven and a half years of house arrest.
The Oxford-educated daughter of General Aung San, an independence hero assassinated in 1947, she’s been incarcerated for 15 of the past 21 years, since her return to the country that used to be called Burma.
But although as politically articulated as her father was, there’s Continue reading →