So I'm back in the office in Shanghai, and the sun is shining in a blue sky, which is a pretty rare event.  I'd love to be outside since it's a reasonable temperature these days, but here I am getting settled back into the job, with a new boss and a new direction.  I'm actually hopeful, though, which is great.  I'm about to move into an actual office (no more open plan working for me!) and apparently the new boss can get me a deal on a goosedown underlay for the winter.  It'll be like sleeping in a cloud.

I had a wonderful holiday back in the southern hemisphere, and caught up with a lot of people, all of whom it was fantastic to see.  Of course I wish I'd had more time, but hey.  Once you see how many people I had to see, you'll see why the schedule was so tight.  I promise more catch ups when I retire.

So, here is a summary of my holiday in numbers:

• 20 days
• 10 flights (1 cancelled)
• 3 countries
• 6 towns/cities (1 was just a layover)
• 4 journeys to Hong Kong International Airport; 3 to Melbourne; 3 to Sydney
• 6 time zones (if you include changing times for daylight savings twice)
• 11 - 30 degrees Celsius (approx)
  
• 19 family members
• 69 friends and friends-of-friends (and the new people were all lovely!)
• 2 runnings into on the street
  
• 20.2kg in my backpack on the way home (including 2L of 42 Below)
• 12.5kg of extra belongings in a box put in the post
• 1 upgrade to business class (first time in nearly 9 years of travelling!), but only for 2 hours
  
• Countless hugs and kisses, and not enough time, or flat whites.

[Image: Blue sky over Bondi, Bondi Beach, Sydney]

I'm on my way home in just over three days!  Wooooo.  They will be busy days, too.  Stupid work.  Not so stupid dinners and Chinese Oktoberfest (I was going to say ChOktoberfest, but that sounds more like a chocolate festival.  Mmm.  Chocolate).

I really just wanted to post this link to an album entirely dedicated to pandas.  Panda pop is the way of the future.  Xioooonngggg Maaaaoooooo.

13 hours and 8 minutes more work to go until holidays!

Getting nonsensical, unentertaining, "inspirational" or otherwise worthless emails forwarded to me, often by virtual (ha) strangers or long-ago workmates, is one of my pet peeves.  The obvious reason is that I don't find them interesting or worthwhile, I have better ways to use my time, and I don't care.  The less obvious reason is that I am fairly protective of my own privacy, and I don't want my email address handed over to complete strangers, especially the kind of strangers who will further propagate the sort of emails that I hate, or worse, not be actual people.  Why don't you just give them my phone number, address, and bank account details while you're at it?  Come to think of it, I received a 'warning' email today which included, not just a whole mess of email addresses, but all sorts of personal contact information contained in footers.  Be careful, people!

Before I launch into full rant mode, I'd like to pass the mic over to my completely wonderful, yet easily-irritated, friend Dave, who wrote what he intended to be a passive-aggressive response to receiving an illogical but apparently compulsive forwarded email, and actually produced a well-written, educational missive about one of the dangers of the internet.  Like I said to him, if it were more succinct, I might be tempted to put it on a t-shirt. 

I have removed the names and email addresses, because I am a considerate person.  If people really feel the need, the absolute, unavoidable compulsion to send me random crap (and I'm not talking about things you know I'll actually appreciate), for the love of God, learn how to use the bcc: option.  Please. 

Anyway, please read the following message, and feel free to pass it on to your favourite quasi-spammers.  Perhaps encourage them to read the whole thing by saying that something hilarious will happen when they scroll right to the end.

Hi there [name removed to protect baby seals] et al.,

Just so you're aware, it's physically impossible for anything 'funny' to happen if you forward a message to a certain number of people. All that will happen is that people will forward it hoping that something will happen. Which, as I'm sure you now know from forwarding this message, it never will. It just results in a whole bunch of spam being thrown around the internet.

But what's more, all the email addresses that people are forwarding to will be harvested by spam bots, giving spammers a whole bunch more addresses to send their "make your penis bigger!", "FREE viagra!" and "find hot prostitutes near you" emails. Thus these will start flooding your inbox, along with the emails with malware and worm attachments that can really fuck your stuff up.

It's actually quite a clever spam technique - promising the uninitiated users that something 'hilarious' will happen if they forward it to enough people. If you look below at the forwarded message, you'll see all those blue underlined links, all those email addresses to whom "[name removed even though he was one of the forwarders at fault]" sent it out to... well, as soon as this email is returned to a spammer, they can just copy all those addresses onto their database and know that these addresses have real people on the end of them, and so add them to their list of people to send out all their spam. They can also sell the list of email addresses to other spammers. This is actually how most spam email actually gets their millions of target users.

Emails are just strings of letters and numbers being sent through electronic communication channels... there's no physical way that forwarding, replying, or doing anything to the messages will result in any 'cool' thing happening.

So, as a general rule of thumb - only ever forward emails if you actually want or need to forward them. For example, if it's information that you want somebody else to see - that is to say, the intended use of the forwarding feature.

I am sorry if this sounds passive aggressive or preachy, but... well... it's a bit annoying, see. Because now if any of the other 6 people to whom you also forwarded this message (that is, [names removed because it wasn't their fault]) then forward it on to a bunch of other people, it'll be my email address added to the spam list. And then, if any of those people then forward it on to another bunch of people, my address will be propagated again and again and again, etc., etc., ad nauseam. In effect, by forwarding these kinds of emails to your friends, you are actively increasing the amount of spam they get.

So. If you ever get an email and are encouraged to forward it to a certain amount of people - whether it promises something cool, or promises that it will save the life of an African child with every person you forward it to, or promises that it will increase the chance of finding your one true love... the best thing to do is delete it, or just move it to your spam folder. Because that's what it is. Spam. Nothing else. You could always forward it to a bunch of people who you don't really like, and laugh at the fact that they're going to get a lot more spam, but again, your email address is still going to be propagated on that list just by engaging in any kind of forwarding activity.

Sadly, because the vast majority of people are completely unaware of the underhand tactics that spammers use to build up these lists of verified, active email addresses, spam now accounts for over 90% of all email traffic online. Check out this section of the Wikipedia article on spam, if you like (with cited sources): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam#As_a_percentage_of_the_total_volume_of_e-mail

All the best, and hope you're well.

Dave [name retained to acknowledge the awesome]

2009/9/7 [name removed to reduce global warming]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [name removed to save the whales]
Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 4:49 PM
Subject: Fw: FUNNY
To: [names removed for the sake of my conscience]

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [name removed to protect the innocent]

To: [name removed for an ideal future]

Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 10:04 AM

Subject: Fw: FUNNY

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [name removed for the sake of the children]

To: [names removed for world peace]

Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 10:55 AM

Subject: FW: FUNNY

 

---

I don’t normally forward these but will give this a try.

---

 

---

Forward this to at least 7 people and see what happens on your screen . you will laugh your head off!!!!!!!!!!! This is the coolest thing I have ever received. All you have to do is send it to 7 people and watch your screen, it is the funniest clip. I can't tell you what it is but I was laughing so hard I almost fell off my chair!!! So, send it to those 7 people and watch. If you forward it to 7 people a video comes on your screen.. This works. I don't know how...but it works.

So, I take a while to clean out my inbox sometimes.  If I don't act on something straight away, it tends to get buried until I manage to shuffle through everything in sporadic bursts of what seems like productivity.

I received an email a while ago from my friend Bjorn asking for sponsorship for a 2.8km cross-harbour swim, in support of Surf Lifesaving NZ.  It's for a great cause, especially in a place like NZ (and, similarly, Australia), where the beaches are unpopulated, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous. 

From his sponsorship page:

Ive signed up as a charity swimmer to raise money to support Surf Life Saving New Zealand. By donating through my web page you are helping to save lives with Surf Life Saving. THE EVENT IS ON THE 21st NOVEMBER 2009

I'll do all the hard work (train for and complete the 2.8km Auckland Harbour Swim as part of the Sovereign New Zealand Ocean Swim Series) but I really need your help to make a difference so that everyone can enjoy New Zealands favorite playground safely.

So, please sponsor me?

Select the "Make a donation" button below. It's simple, fast and totally secure and the money goes directly to Surf Life Saving New Zealands bank account.

If you live in New Zealand your donation is tax deductible and a receipt will be issued.

So please help me today! And pass it on to everyone you know!

I spent a few years in my youth patrolling the beach, but my experience being stuck in the bush fires in Melbourne reminded me what a fantastic job all the volunteers in SLS do.

I was running late for work as usual, and went to grab a yoghurt and a banana for work. I reached into the fruit bowl and picked out this. I've never seen a banana liquified like this before. And it was fine last night.

Guess it's just yoghurt, then.

Has anyone ever seen this happen before?
 
 - Taken at 9:47 AM on August 28, 2009 - uploaded by ShoZu

AKA I Guess I'm an Internet Addict, Then.

But how do you define 'spending time online'?  Does it include being connected to IM clients, or having a browser window open while you do other things?  Does it include the time spent trying to access websites that can't be freely seen in China?  Does it take into account the ridiculously slow transfer rates - does this equal 20 or 30 hours of internet time for people who have proper broadband connections?

Am I in the denial stage?

People who spend more than 40 hours online each week will be considered Internet addicts under China's new treatment standards for an affliction that's estimated to be affecting the lives of millions of the country's teenagers.

The draft definition of online addiction was based on research into the standards used by foreign countries and has also been influenced by China's experience with the problem.

A panel of experts authorized by the Ministry of Health is working on guidelines designed to treat people who are addicted to online games, the biggest group of Internet addicts.

The standards are expected to be released by the end of this year.

China now has an estimated 107 million juvenile Internet users, and 13 million of them are considered addicts.

http://ping.fm/s0Lju

Source: The Guardian

A fascinating concept for a book.  Everyone eats things alone that they would never dream of serving up to guests.  Sometimes it's personal, sometimes it's bizarre, sometimes it's lazy, convenient, or whatever you have on hand.  Sometimes it's just something special(ly imported) that you just don't want to share with people who won't appreciate it the same way (to avoid that appalled shock you feel when your Jaffa Cakes are opened by someone your flatmate brought home and you hadn't even met yet...but I'm over that now, really). 

I'm quite interested in reading this book.  Not that I'm a food voyeur or anything.  What did you eat the last time you ate alone?

Fridge life . . . what we eat when we're alone. Photograph: Patrick McFarlin/Illustration

The foods that we share, the meals that bind us together, have a code that we all implicitly understand. We know that the starter precedes the main course, followed by the dessert. We know that a wedding demands a cake-shaped centrepiece – whether crafted from dried fruit, butter and sugar, a heap of profiteroles, or layers of jellies. We know that a bowl of chicken soup, prepared for us when we are ill, is offered with a hope for better health.

But beyond these meals lies a secret realm of food, a universe of individual, often bizarre dishes, eaten by the light of the fridge, or tucked up in bed, or pacing back and forth across the kitchen. These are the meals that we eat when no one else is watching – meals that shrug off all convention and compromise. Now, in a new book by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin, What We Eat When We Eat Alone, these secret, often sensationally strange meals, are made public.

The book has its origins in some trips that Madison, a cookbook writer, and McFarlin, her painter husband, took with a group of food experts. The party had been brought together for a thinktank project and, as an icebreaker, McFarlin started asking what they ate in private. "Some answers were funny," says Madison. "Some were strange, and some showed just how strong people's feelings were about particular foods – the person who said, 'There must be no spice. NO SPICE!' for instance."

I had a Kashin money bank when I was a kid, and she was at the zoo every time we went to visit (which was probably not as often as we should have, since it was a few minutes' walk away from my parents' house).  RIP, Kashin.  I hope they find Burma some new friends soon.

Zoo closed as staff grieve for Kashin

Auckland Zoo's senior elephant keeper, Andrew Coers, with Kashin. The 40-year-old elephant passed away this afternoon. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Auckland Zoo will be closed tomorrow as staff grieve the loss of 40-year-old elephant, Kashin, who died today.

The female elephant, who has been at the zoo for 36 years, was euthanased after losing her battle with chronic health conditions.

"Zoo staff are devastated, grieving the loss of their incredibly spirited and gentle matriarch," zoo chairman Graeme Mulholland said.

"Kashin touched the lives, not just of the zoo family, but thousands of New Zealanders and international visitors who came to know and love her... she will be greatly missed by all."

He said the decision to put the elephant down followed years of chronic arthritis and foot abscesses.

Source: NZ Herald News

Zoo forced to rename primate called 'Obama'

Facing accusations of racial insensitivity, the Dresden Zoo has been forced to rename a baby primate called ‘Obama,’ according to information obtained by The Local on Friday.

This spring the zoo in the eastern German city named a newborn mandrill “Obama” after freshly inaugurated US President Barack Obama. But an advocacy group for black Germans demanded that the primate be renamed this week, calling the zoo’s choice racist.

“It’s a catastrophe,” director of the Initiative for Black Germans (ISD) Tahir Della told The Local on Friday. “Black people continue to be confronted by associations with the animal kingdom and primitivity.”

The baby mandrill, which belongs to a species closely related to the baboon, was born on March 23, Manuela Collmar, zookeeper at the zoo’s “Afrika Haus,” told The Local earlier this week. Each year the zoo names all newborn animals beginning with the same letter.

“This year they all begin with ‘O,’ and one of the zookeepers chose ‘Obama’ – it was meant to be positive and an honour in light of his visit to Dresden in June,” Collmar said, adding that neither she nor her colleagues were aware of the history of using monkeys to caricature and ethnically stereotype black people.