I think I mentioned in a post a couple of years ago that the only people who think business travelling is glamorous are those that don’t have to do it. It palls very quickly and, for me, the only upside is nabbing a nice duty-free bottle of cognac, or single-malt, on the way back in. (Alcohol prices in Malaysia being somewhere north of stratospheric.)

For a female business traveller flying about alone, however, there is an added complication. TWF. Travelling While Female. When I travel on my company’s dime, there isn’t so much of a difference in hotel accommodation. The company rate kicks in, the company set of rooms kick in and, although I was placed right next to the ground-floor elevator once in a small “boutique” hotel, it didn’t happen again, so I can write it off as a quirk. However, if you’re travelling on your own dime, without the name of some big company behind you, then that room next to the elevator, or the housekeeping cart depot, or some other place that seems to gather noise at 1:00am in the morning the way your belly button gathers lint? It’s yours. It’s a foregone conclusion. And, as if to guard my chastity, I’m always, but always, given a room with two single beds. In Perth, Australia, one time, I remember being given a cramped, sloping room next to a giant machinery installation with one single bed pushed up against the wall. Sigh.

Things get no better when you’re eating. I remember reading once that a female business veteran used to light the corner of her menu and hold it aloft in order to get some attention. Well, since we’re not allowed to carry anything as dangerous as cuticle scissors on planes any more, that nixes that idea. However, I have held the menu above my head and waved it around a few times. And I’ve also been known to stand up and say in a loud voice (and I have a loud voice to begin with), “Excuse me. May I get some service here please?” If you didn’t know me from this blog, you’d think I was an awfully polite (but perennially irritated) person.

Part of the eating non-experience is the seating arrangement. On my most recent trip last week, I was given a table right in front of the hotel’s restaurant entrance. This was a lovely spot where people both entering and exitting the restaurant could swarm on either side of me as they walked. When I asked (politely) for another table, not willing to let every stranger see what I was indulging in for breakfast, the maitre d’s lips tightened before she led me to a lovely small table, away from the hubub, surrounded by eight (count ‘em … eight!) other small tables that also lay empty. As the male travellers trooped in, they were guided automatically to those tables. But I had to ask for it.

You know what? I’m sick of it. Sick of getting tables right next to the public toilets, or adjacent to the kitchen doors, or in the place where you’d normally find a traffic light to manage the pedestrian ebbs and flows. I’m sick of getting ignored when all I want to do is just order some damn dinner and get back to my room to relax. I think the thing that really gets me about all this, however, is that I’m just as liable to get dissed by female hotel staff as by male. Being female themselves, you’d think that the staff would be a little sensitive to others of their gender type, but my observations last week led me to believe that — in fact — we are treated somewhat worse. I even had to call back the lady loaded with the hot coffee and tea flasks because she was making such a determined bee-line for the two men sitting at a table just beyond me that she forgot me. Twice. Walked straight past me as if I wasn’t there.

I can complain. But this TWF phenomenon is such a pervasive habit — from the United States, to Singapore, to England, to Australia, to Malaysia, to Ireland — that writing some bad feedback just does nothing. I only have finite energy and have to pick my battles, and this isn’t going to be one of them. So I try to be polite to get better service — in the hope I don’t later find saliva in my dinner or something like that — but I don’t expect it, and so remain pleasantly surprised when I actually get treated with some modicum of respect. And you’d be surprised what I can sleep through nowadays.

Apropos something completely different, I was reading The Register’s instructions on how to write a “Flame of the Week”. And it occurred to me that Hoffman (who? go here and here for a good summation of the rumble) was probably looking for this exact kind of advice while she was imagining Roberta Silman roasting in the highly energetic flames of the underworld. How well did she do, considering she was, presumably, untutored in the Ways of The Flame?

According to El Reg, there are a number of important, interconnected criteria to keep in mind when crafting a classic Flame:

* Leave your reason at the door. I think Hoffman safely did that by accusing reviewer Silman of being a nobody and generally slagging off the Boston Globe and Boston itself. Tick.

* Don’t make it too long. Well, Hoffman did twitter her angst, so that’s a tick, but she released 27 twitters, so I’m not sure how to judge it on the Longitudinal Twitter Brevity Scale. I’ll just be charitable and say, tick.

* Pick a story to rant about but for God’s sake don’t read any more than one paragraph. Well, considering Silman’s review of Hoffman’s book contained spoilers (which Hoffman picked up on), it appears that Hoffman unfortunately read the entire review. Cross.

* Tie in your hatreds/prejudices. Yes, I think the swipe at Boston was a particularly toothsome example of this. Tick.

* For God’s sake, don’t start using correct grammar. My cursory reading of Hoffman’s tweets didn’t turn up any significant grammar or punctuation errors. Mind you, those of us using UK English have different spellings and punctuation mores than those of you using US English, so it could be that I really did miss a major faux pas and didn’t know it. But, considering that Hoffman is also a well-established and successful writer (I can only dream of being slagged by the Boston Globe), I think I’ll give her a cross here.

* Be deeply and personally abusive to the person you’re writing to. Oh, I think she scored on that one, didn’t she people? Huge tick.

* Don’t use too many swear words. Ah, that would be where I’d fall down if I were ever to craft a classic Flame. Hoffman resisted the temptation. Good for her! Tick.

* Do not re-read your flame. I’ll err on the side of charity here and give Hoffman a tick.

* Celebrate a successful flame by killing something. Now this is where I think The Register has gone completely off the deep end. How are we supposed to know whether Teh Flamer has extinguished the life of even a small biological specimen? We don’t. Suggest we nix this as a criterion for this exercise.

Final score? 6/8. Good on you, Alice. And people say nobody learns anything in this modern world. For those of you not as naturally skilled as Alice Hoffman, please direct your browsers to the El Reg page that tells you how to construct a meaningful Flame, complete with explanatory notes. Marvellous stuff. The bar is set high, people. I’ll be a lot more judgemental from now on.

Novel Spaces is a new group blog that I’m proud to be a member of. The official launch is today! The authors are talented (ahem) and the range of genres diverse, from contemporary romance to paranormal to science fiction. My fellow Novel Spacers are:

* Jewel Amethyst (St. Kitts)
* Phyllis Bourne (Chicago)
* KeVin Killiany (North Carolina)
* Marissa Monteilh
* Shauna S Roberts (Southern California)
* Farrah Rochon (Texas)
* Liane Spicer (Trinidad)
* Terence Taylor (Brooklyn)
* Karen White-Owens (Detroit)
* Stefanie Worth

And yours truly (Malaysia). You’ll also see a small photo of me in the sidebar. My first on the intertubes. So, if you’re curious…. Since today is Launch Day, you’ll also get to read snapshot bio’s of who we are and what we write.

Please stop by at Novel Spaces often in your virtual travels. With such a diverse group, there’ll always be something of interest to read.

It could be that I’m a pessimistic person by nature (a charge I don’t deny, btw), but this past weekend has been a classic exercise in proving the adage of a good deed never going unpunished, or its corollary, you always have to pay for your happiness.

What you may not know about me is that I’m a newly enthusiastic aquarist. From thinking that fishes were things that only looked good grilled on my plate, I’m now of the thought that the little critters have their own personalities that can really liven a corner of your home or office. As well as, ahem, looking good grilled on my plate. (I blame J for this change of heart. Just as it took him a little while to learn to eat fish that came with its head, tail and fins still attached, it took me a little longer to regard some fish — black ranchu, especially — as the aquatic equivalent of cuddly teddy bears.)

So, anyway, my new aquarium arrived on Friday evening, which meant the weekend was geared towards setting it up. It’s a 4-footer that looked quite manageable in the pet shop, but expanded to alarming proportions once it arrived at home (three weeks after I ordered it. It was an impatient wait for me). Now, with the exception of J helping me with placement, and some assistance with filling, he had absolutely nothing to do with the tank. Which made Fluffy’s (our 4yo Ragdoll) little liquid ‘present’ on our leather lounge suite early Sunday morning more than a little disconcerting. Fluffy has a perverse — some might say, unhealthy — fixation on J, who he regards as his sole possession. He is also a grumpy little …., prone to little episodes of pique when he thinks he’s being ignored. Considering J took a hands-off approach to my aquarium, appearing only when I needed some advice, Fluffy’s little tantrum was inexplicable. And then, we accidentally locked Squeak (our 3yo Maine Coon) in one of the bedrooms, and there were a couple of little ‘finds’ in the attached bathroom on Sunday morning too. So that was three clean-ups before we could enjoy our new aquarium.

Then, well, maybe I shouldn’t have done it. But J bought me a USB internal card reader some months ago and, while I was tidying up my office, it seemed to be an opportune time to install the card reader. Well, when I booted my machine, KMix told me that it couldn’t find my utterly wonderful, kick-ass Audigy card and attached pre-amp. Waaaaahhhhh! Shut down machine. Unplug mains. Open case. Check card. Looks okay. Plug in mains. Boot. Same problem. Sigh. Shutdown. Unplug card reader. Plug in mains. Boot. Same problem.

“Hey, J, could you use your magic fingers and jiggle things for me?”

Shutdown. Unplug mains. Jiggle, jiggle. Plug in mains. Boot. Audigy detected! But card reader still disconnected. With bated breath, shutdown. Unplug mains. Install card reader while not breathing and not thinking. Plug in mains. Boot. Success! Close case.

So, while I have a lovely new aquarium, the universe still demanded a sacrifice in the guise of misbehaving cats and a computer. Could have been worse.

In case anyone’s wondering, I moved my fish from an acidic environment (pH 6.4) to the new tank, which is completely pH neutral (7.0). I’m using Diana Walstad’s low-tech soil-based approach as a foundation and will report back on progress over the weeks and months to follow. Fish inventory as follows:

7 x Albino Corydoras
2 x Golden algae-eaters
5 x male Honey Gouramis (one of the most beautiful gourami I’ve had. Colour is deep reddish honey and saturated, so I know they’re happy; thoroughly recommended)
1 x Black Ghost knifefish (named “Patch”)

Plant species are confined to Cabomba and Hygrophila spp with a couple of Java ferns, because that’s all I’ve been able to find. I can only dream of Vallisneria, *wort or Sagittaria spp. Where’s Singapore moss when you need it? Suppose I’ll have to keep looking.

Total volume of tank approx. 370 litres. Water still a little hazy but the fish are doing just fine. No stress signs detected at all and appetites are very healthy.

Posts are sparse this week because I’m currently on a business trip. It was a sudden thing, which explains why I didn’t have posts waiting in the wings. Sorry about that. Things should return to normal next week.

I have an advanced degree in politics and even I wouldn’t dare sort out what’s happening in Iran right now. It’s just too chaotic and, the more I read, the less black-and-white the picture becomes. (Note that it started out a murky grey to begin with.)

That hasn’t stopped insta-pundit liberals pounding their chests and deifying Twitter with a zeal I find rather frightening. Forget the facts! Achmen-whatzizname is baaaaad, waaaay baaaaaad, dude! Everything on Twitter must be right. Right on, green for me on Facebook. I’m such a democracy-lover!

To those people, I have only this to pass on, thanks to Mo-ha-med.

As an Asian, as you may have gathered, I yearn for a time when Asians will grow into the vast human potential that awaits them. That sounds patronising, but isn’t. Even with Asian countries that can trace their history back centuries or even millennia, the modern picture of such countries have been ones of poverty, social strife and warfare.  If we use the concept of a country, such as the sort you or I would prefer to live in, as inclusion of the populace in the decision-making of a particular government, then it’s sad to realise that India has the claim of being “the oldest democracy in Asia” at only about 60+ years and counting. Not very long at all.

I’ve spoken before about the economic might (and rising ascendancy) of the continent, and that is something of which there is no doubt. However, when it comes to creativity and innovation (a “culture of iconoclasm”, if you will) then I suffer nothing but abject depression over Asia’s trenchant rejection of the one thing that can actually propel itself into the kind of envy-producing prominence that has been the hallmark of Western civilisations for centuries. Absolute, sheer-to-goodness, original, satirical, self-reflective creativity.

I’ve started this series of blogs because this is something that I feel has to be confronted and discussed by Asians. I’m not saying that everything is going to be well thought out because I’m only groping for understanding myself. And, who knows, I may even end up reversing my own position on some things down the track. What I think will remain inviolate, though, is the central premise that the Culture of Iconoclasm is stifled throughout Asia and that, more than foreign investment, more than manufacturing figures, such repression will lead to Asia being a second-rate continent for as long as it clings to its outdated concepts of not rocking the boat.

I’m trying to get permission from someone to include some of their work into a future blog on this line of thinking, so stay tuned.

The Asia Times online tells me that, in an effort to keep the engines of their economy firing, the Chinese government is encouraging its citizens to “buy Chinese”. But it appears that the Chinese themselves are starting to suffer what the rest of us have been for the past few years. If you will, allow me to elucidate.

Televisions and white goods? Manufacturers use circuitry from second-hand machines and — surprise! surprise! — logos that mimic famous brands. Wow, who could have seen that one coming? Because the components are worn out to begin with, they can (and have) cause(d) fire, injury or death.

Clothing? Just 31 of 60 tested children’s garments passed Chinese safety standards. (There are Chinese safety standards?) Problems included falsifying raw materials information and excessive formaldehyde content (which can cause skin or respiratory infection).

Children’s toys? Excessive amounts of lead, choking hazards, no robustness, and I believe past news articles have also pointed out the existence of PCBs in baby pacifiers ….

Children’s furniture? How about excessive amounts of lead, cadmium, chromium and other heavy metals?

Milk powder? Don’t get me started!

Fruits and vegetables? Mel.a.mine

Pet food? Say no more.

Fresh pork? Chemical additives (clenobuterol hydrochloride has been mentioned). In case you were wondering what clenobuterol hydrochloride actually is, Now Public helpfully informs us that:

[T]he public brand name for this chemical is Spriropent.  The article advises that the drug stays in your system for days. Not only that, it accelerates your heart rate.

It’s used in some Chinese pig farms to fatten the animals for sale, which translates into higher profits, since each pig gains 1 kilogram of weight per day. The higher profits come to around  275% !

So we’re left with tales such as that of mother, Wang Ting, who has to travel to Hong Kong to buy US-branded baby milk formula because she has “no confidence” in domestic brands. I don’t blame her. How long will it take, I wonder, for the global tide to turn against China on this? It isn’t just one thing that they manufacture badly; it’s a whole range of goods and food across the entire spectrum of life. The Chinese have always had a reputation for being the money-hungry hustlers of Asia — loan sharks in Malaysia, for example, are called by the nickname “Ah Long” from the Cantonese — interested more in profit than quality, and the unbroken stream of horror stories about modern Chinese goods and foods doesn’t help in countering such a stereotypic image.

The problem is, citizen reluctance to one side, while China finds ready markets for its frankly dangerous goods, nothing is going to change. So I’m just going to have to read those labels, and question the sources, a bit more carefully when I shop. And you’d do well to do the same.

Remember, gentle reader, when I told you that I see this economic crisis as being a boon for smaller countries who — as I put it — “were considered too immature a market to be let in on the “big boy” deals“? Because those “less developed” economies didn’t couple so closely with the United States’ shadow banking system, I postulated that they would be/were exempt from most of the resultant disembowelling?

Well, it’s nice to be vindicated, and even nicer when the story involves two Western countries. Behold, I bring you Der Spiegel :

The former East Germany has long been eclipsed economically by the richer and more industrialized West. Yet ironically the eastern part of the country is now actually better equipped to deal with the ongoing economic crisis.

The “ironically” is just another way for the West Germans to still put the superior boot into East Germany while they roll around in the dirt, pretending they’re not choking on it.

[West Germany snapshot: largest contraction in 39 years; predictions of negative growth (why not just say 'decline'? Oh well, them's the vocabulary) of up to 4% this year; Philipp Holzmann construction (a little nudge was all that was needed), Kirch (media) Group, Opel car-makers, Arcandor retail group, BenQ Mobile, Berlin (yes, the city!), etc., all declaring bankruptcy. Now that's an economic eclipse you can believe in.]

If I’m sick of the constant moral superiority that’s been shown by West Germany to East Germany all these long, lonely years, I can only imagine what it feels like to be East German! One (West) Berliner even had the gall to tell me that litter, petty crime, racist attacks on migrants, and property damage never ever occurred in Germany before Reunification!! In all our conversations, all the ills of Germany were laid at the feet of the East Germans. Our friendship ended soon after I pointed out to her that that, in fact, was often not the case. (Yep, how to win friends and influence people, that’s me.)

Anyway, back to Der Spiegel. According to the paper’s reading of the government report, the East is doing so much better because:

1. They have more small- and medium-sized companies which are “thought to be able to react more flexibly to the challenges posed by the economic downturn.”

2. They are “far less dependent on exports”.

While this may be part of the story, the entire mood of the piece is — as Colonel Sherman T Potter used to put it — horse hockey. No mention at all is made of the tremor event that precipitated the tsunami, which was the massive, unregulated leveraging of securities in a highly secretive, highly coupled worldwide banking environment that was run like a congregation of male toddlers who’d just discovered their penises.

There is a caveat to East Germany’s mirth, however:

[T]he government expects the former East to have caught up with the weaker western regions, such as Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, within the next 10 years.

Wolfgang Tiefensee, the government minister with responsibility for the “new federal states,” as the former East Germany is officially known, told the Berliner Zeitung that this would be a “considerable success.”

Ooooo, if I was East Germany, considering how the last eighteen months have panned out, I don’t think I’d be too happy about Wolfy’s words. Under current circumstances, it appears there’s only so much “success” West Germany can take.

I keep on wanting to leave behind my 3-part series on Australia’s xenophobia (one, two, three), but reality just won’t let me.

What I hadn’t mentioned in my original posts was the recent addition of an Indian element to the equation because — believe it or not — I didn’t want this to turn into a hate-fest of Australia, but more a measured (albeit brutal) assessment of a country I once used to call home. However, in a recent article in The Age, we learn that:

[Indian] groups have been gathering at St Albans and Thomastown railway stations after a spate of assaults on Indians in the area, the latest on Kamal Jit, 23, who was bashed unconscious while walking home from the St Albans railway station on the weekend.

There has been a beating on a train, assaults, stabbings. And then the Indians retaliated:

[A police spokeswoman] refused to confirm whether two men who stabbed a 20-year-old man in St Albans yesterday were Indians lashing out after being racially abused by the victim. [although, the article tells me a bit further on, police "want to speak to [two men] over the attack … aged between 23 and 29 years old and dark-skinned.” — ed.]

No one has yet been charged over the incident.

The victim allegedly said: “You are black. You don’t belong here. Go away from our country”.

(Now, remember, according to Australian migrant author Alice Pung, this is not racism with any “long term adverse effect[s]“, but merely “casual name-calling”. But I digress.)

You know what. I can sympathise with the Indian students. If there’s anything that pushes my buttons, it’s being called names by the truly ignorant. The problem is, the nanosecond you physically retaliate, you give the ignorant exactly the kind of positive affirmation they’re looking for. You prove that you can be as barbaric as them, and give them physical badges of honour that they can then use to sway other ignorant gits to their side. (What’s that you say? No, I’m not talking about US foreign policy, although there is a parallel here, now that you mention it. Let’s just stick to Indian students in Melbourne for the time being, okay?)

I know that the Indians think they’re sticking up for themselves. After all, by walking away, they’re just going to be called cowards, and that’s a tough one to swallow. But beating up some white isn’t going to solve the situation either, is it?

My solution? Leave. It’s what I did. The reality is this. There are enough ignorant gits around for you not to make a blind bit of difference. Plus, any negative publicity about any migrant anywhere is going to get headline focus. There’s another reason I say ‘leave’:

One man, who did not want his name published, said [the students] took the action “in self-defence” after police failed to respond to their call for protection in the wake of attacks on fellow Indian students … “The police don’t care. In this suburb everyone is a migrant,” he said.

His claims were verified by another person who witnessed the attacks but did not want his name published.

and

In other incidents on the same night, a group of Indians were abused by a group of males and one Indian was punched but when the police arrived, “they did not do anything”,  The Age was told.

Here’s a truism. The police are not there for your protection. They are there to protect the system. In communism, they were/are there to protect the State apparatus. In capitalism, they’re there to protect the ruling financial class. And, as Cronulla, Melbourne, and dozens of Aboriginal communities in Queensland have proven, in Australia they’re there to protect the whites. What are you, coloured student, going to do about it? You can’t win. Just leave.

But isn’t this playing right into the hands of those xenophobic bastards, you ask? Yes and no. Yes, in the short-term. Victory for Real Australians™ everywhere! But in the long term?

What if every coloured family who could afford to send their beloved child overseas for an education refused to send them to Australia? Who do you think make up the bulk of Australia’s foreign students? Whites or coloureds? And where do you think the majority of university funding comes from? Local or foreign student fees? While it may not seem obvious on the surface, it’s actually the coloured parents that hold the direction of Australian public policy in their hands, thanks to the strangling of Australian federal funds to higher institutions for more than a decade now. The problem is, those coloured parents are all in such different countries, with different perspectives and motivations, that it’s impossible to mould them into one effective public action group, if you will. But news will out. I find the locals here in Malaysia, for example, to be gratifyingly well-informed on the policies of a frightening array of countries.

And so I say to you again. You can’t change them. And do you want your child taunted or injured? If you’re there, leave. At least you’ll still have your dignity, instead of sinking to the level of people you know you shouldn’t have anything to do with.

POSTSCRIPT: For contrast, look at the furore between (white Australian) Tracy Grimshaw and (white British) celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsey. Three comments on three days and Grimshaw is already talking about it being “not a joke to me, or to anyone who cares about me”, “I wonder how many people would laugh if they were described as an ‘old, ugly pig’”, and how horrible it was when her mother found out about it.

Of course, Grimshaw has it right. There is no, no, NO excuse for the kind of inane comments Ramsey came out with. But, you know what? If it had been me in that situation, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought beyond an opportunity for some perhaps delicious verbal sparring, just because I’ve had decades more than three days to get used to it.