Back to Generation Limbo... ANGST!

Hello you, the Frustrated!

I am frustrated lately, so much so that I am sick and tired of this place we live in. This Limbo that my generation has inherited because of some politicians that decided that greed, yes one of the 7 deadly sins, was more important than the future generation or more that is/are to come!

Isn't it ironic, or more like insulting to a generation of baby boomers that were hippies, YES HIPPIES, to become the most greedy generation of modern times! Here is a generation of our parents, leaving their jobs due to their age and their Alzheimer's or what not that had decided to go on and take a world that wasn't perfect, but instead of doing something to make it better, they decided they would rape into Global Warming, Financial Depression, and Revolutions...

Irony? Insult? How about Stupid? Yes, I accuse you, the previous generation of being Stupid! You were the generation that did not want war in Vietnam, you protested with flowers being shoved into guns, you wanted the world to be a happy place. You tried your best, with your drugs, nudity and hair (remember that iconic play broadway show? It even made it to Lebanon!). You are the generation that said enough to violence and watergate corruption. You were the generation that wanted all that to vanish! Then you came into power...

There you are now in a position of power, taking control during the 70s and 80s and all seemed happy and gleeful! YEY! (Hint: sarcasm). Then you decided we need more. More what? MORE EVERYTHING! More war, hello Gulf war. More production, hello world's factory a.k.a. Far East. More financial whatever you wanna call it, hello internet bubbles. More death, hello African genocides that went unnoticed because the O.J. Simpson (who is he again? yes, he is insignificant) trial!

Where are we now? A Generation SO educated yet stuck. Many of us feel stuck in our jobs if we have them. We have bosses that are either younger than us and cocky we want to smack on the back of their heads and say "Yes you are tech geniuses but no you do not know how the world works yet!" (Or don't they?!) or older than us and still want to run things with a business ethos that does not make sense anymore... The world has changed old man! Deal with it!

Our Generation was lucky enough to know how things were before the internet AND after, but because of that we are, ironically, less equipped than the fresh graduated that grew up with the internet abso-(mind my language)-fuckin-lutely EVERYWHERE. We get it, we do! We know the uses of social media and the stalker-ish fetish you all have for it, but we do know how to have an actual conversation with each other. We too love our Blackberries, iPhones, Androids, iPads... but we are no where near as apt to handling them as the young-ins are! Why? Simply because although we were young enough to familiarize ourselves with them, we were not young enough to have them so intrinsic in our life that they become part of our being like this new generation.

So before I ramble on for hours and paragraphs upon pages on this, I will say this: We are in between. We are stuck with a world we are now responsible of cleaning up, with a previous generation that tore it to pieces and still is and a new generation that is more into making sure they update their social media account with the color of their poop!

Does anyone know what is happening in Africa right now? The new apartheid in South Africa? The new famines? The creation of 2 Sudans? How about South American countries? The fact they are now rising into the new factories of the world while their governments are moving to neo-communist or socialist ways of governing... How about India and China buying up South America and their resources (not to mention Africa's resources too)? The Americans slowly losing grip of almost a century of almost absolutist power? Europe bankrupt? Europe being dubbed the Old-Country because it has no where to evolve to any more...

So, you, the Frustrated, I say CHARGE! Charge into what? Into driving out all the bad, the corrupt, the unjust and bringing in a new era into this Earth we call ours... Because I tell you, we are surrounded by 2 generations that don't seem to give a crap! An older one that is leaving us to clean up and a newer one that is more concerned about touching their screens than lifting their heads to see that soon, there wont be anything to life their heads to see anyway!

I am one of you today, the Frustrated. I AM FRUSTRATED!

C

Fizzling into lawlessness, is that where we are heading?

Hello you, the Desperately Optimistic!

So, with the economies of the world crashing, including that of the Almighty U.S. of A, and a Generation of Intellectuals going into Limbo, where are we heading?

Historically, when prosperity goes down, everything "bad" and illegal goes up... Lawlessness roams.

Athens is being riddled with wild-west-ghost-town-esque like scenes of lawlessness and desperation, Wall street is being "Occupied" (did you notice how the media is using the same negative word they would use in the warlike news casts to scare their own people to think there is a sort of 'occupation' in their own beloved Manhattan?), China is worrying about its real-estate bubble bursting (which if it does, they will hear on Mars!), Ethiopians are starving (does anyone care? Or are we all thinking, AGAIN? Wasn't that the scene I grew up with? Are those scenes on CNN about Ethiopia's kids dying of starvation digitally remastered from the 80s video footage?), the Arabs are scrambling to get some sort of governments running in their own newly 'liberated' countries (some even saying that they were better off with their tyrants in charge!!!!), even Israel is facing its own people revolting about the rises in prices and stagnant or declining wages! This is not to mention Filipinos' plight against nature, Europe's Euro being in constant question, South America jumping in communism/socialism, Russia floundering with its own lawlessness woes and what-not.

Is there really a place viable to live in now? ANTARCTICA maybe?

I hear the word "corruption" everywhere I go now. Every country is suffering from it! Even the seemingly perfect Scandinavian countries are not safe from the greed of the people in charge (some trace our latest economic credit-caused crash to that area of the world...)

I am usually an optimistic person, I just LOVE life! Even when it slaps me on the face, spits on it, drags me through the mud and then some...

My retaliation?

The slap is my wake-up call to do something about my situation.
Spit? Nah, its just a little rain :-p
Dragged through the mud... Hey, we were all kids once, a good shower and laundry detergent and its like nothing happened!

I SAY SLAP AWAY LIFE! Rain, RAin, RAIN!!! There is nothing like playing in a little mud, getting my hands dirty has only shown me how clean they can get with some effort.

So, to the Desperately Optimistic, I say SMILE even when you're muddy in the rain with life slapping you so hard your neck hurts more than your face! Smile and the universe will smile back. The greedy will be rewarded anyway, but everything has its price... Everyone pays someday...

To the Desperately Optimistic, this is me being anti-pessimistic. I hope we all band together now since we do sincerely live in a global village.

Smile! :-)

C

China (Pt.1): No longer the name for a fancy plate your mum hides away for special occasions!

Hello you, the 老外!

I've decided I am finally going to write about my time in China and what I've learned from being there. There is so much about that HUGE country that people seem to either miss, or just choose not to see. Here are a few simple guidelines I followed and hope others follow too:

1) When in Rome... YUP! When in China, remember you are NO LONGER AT HOME! You are in China! This is THEIR country, they have their own rules and their own judicial system! Respect their culture and rules and you will have an amazing time, don't and well... you won't! This, fortunately, comes quite naturally to me. However, I feel many foreigners, or laowai (老外) as we are referred to in China, do not seem to come to grasp with the situation they are in. "YOU ARE NO LONGER AT HOME!!" is something I end telling a lot of my friends there, "So, don't expect people to treat you the same way!" So, when in China, do as the Chinese!

Note: Most Chinese are extremely hospitable and genuinely nice. Just give them a chance and experience them!!

2) Beware the Terribles T's: Tibet, Taiwan and Tian'anmen! China is controlled by a government that wants to forget the past and look to the future, so discussion of the past or sensitive subjects is highly inadvisable. They consider that their own politics are their own business. In a way its true... Would you want a foreigner to come into your own country and tell you how to run your own affairs??

• Tian'anmen or 天安门. Any google or wiki search will give you the international account of what happened in Beijing in 1989. However, the official chinese government account is completely different. Discussions with good friends in China has come up on this subject many times, and they all seem to agree on one thing: it is a part of their history they would rather put behind them even if they don't agree with how the government handled the situation then. In short, they would talk to a very close friend in a private situation to voice their real opinion, but in public, they either change subjects or repeat their official mantra "it happened in a different time and we don't want to go back. The students did the wrong thing, but the government back then could've also handled it differently".
• Tibet or 西藏. This is an even more taboo subject in China. None are more divided about that subject and even less will tell you their true feelings about it. The Chinese in general would agree that China owns that territory and that it should be part of the PRC. The French for example, disagree... To this day, the French nationals in and outside China are complaining about visa issues. In April 2010 I was planning a trip with some friends to Tibet, although I had to cancel my participation in the trip, I was present during the planning. They had an embargo on French nationals wanting to go to Tibet because of a mayor of Paris having said something against the Chinese handling of the situation in Tibet. I even passed through one of the rallies against French products in early 2008 at a huge mall in Wuhan (Hubei Province) that houses a french branded hypermarket called Carrefour. So this is a subject I would advise no one open, or if you do, respect other people's opinion (even if it is completely false in your point of view). And whatever you do, DO NOT wear a "Free Tibet" T-shirt unless you feel like being blacklisted and kicked out of the country!!
• Taiwan or 台湾. This is less of a taboo subject. Here lines are blurry. Most would truly agree that they wish Taiwan to be part of the PRC because it always had been. Also, it is a matter of national pride. The Taiwanese, however, consider themselves different from the mainland Chinese. This is true since Taiwan is a democracy and they had been "open" to the world far longer than the mainland Chinese. They are far more advanced in their understanding of the occident and other cultures than the mainland Chinese. However, should Taiwan be part of the PRC? This is a long long debate that I myself do not like to get into, but some Chinese would talk to you about it.

In short, do not discuss Chinese politics in China. There is no use to do so, and if you are there for business or scholastic purposes, there is no real reason to do so either! The Chinese are extremely nationalistic and so they should be, it is their country after-all.

3) The Chinese people have a hunger for knowledge. Some would go so far as to use you for that knowledge. The thing they would most want to learn is a language. They are also borderline, if not actually, racist in this regard. To them, and in most cases true, a person who comes from a certain country would best speak the language. If that person was of african origins, they want less to know of them, if that person was of the arien race (i.e. blonde and blue eyed), they would be all over them! Even though I do not condone any type of racism, I would like to add that this is something most, if not all, Eastern cultures share (Korea, Japan and China). They think a blonde blue eyed person is much more of a representation than any other race of Europe and North America!

This was a longer than expected blog post, but trust me when I tell you... When in Rome, do as the romans do!

Any questions? Any comments? Suggestions?

Let me know my fellow 老外 or my fellow 中国朋友们！

夏小龙

1st blog, 1st of many...

Hello you, the reader, this is for both you and I!

My first blog entry after a few years of actually attempting to write something. Living in China and running a blog on google websites wasn't the easiest thing in the world and quite honestly China has too much to offer to have me cooped up in a room and write a blog!!

For those of you that live in China, GET OUT! LIVE! Breathe in the pollution and experience a culture of WOW! There is too much to do there for you to be writing a blog... Trust me!

For all you other people, no advice yet...

C