Are You Happy?

70% of university graduates are unemployed a year after graduation.

There is no trust amongst people. But it's fair enough because no one is trust-worthy in this country anyway.

People in the countryside were excluded from the unemployment figure, which would have been pentupled.

People are forced to abort and be sterilized when they are 'reproducing outside of the plan'. People volunteer to take abortion when they know it is a girl.

50 million men would never find a wife because there was 50 million less women in the country than men. This situation is worsening.

Free publishing, political party forming, rallying and speech are constitutional but illegal.

Laws are only there to be broken.

Youtube, Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter are non-accessible without superior internet techniques to go pass the great firewall. However, similar (pirated) websites of perverted control under the government had been popular.

The most popular IM service watches every single word you type and searches your computer for any signs of political material.

Domestic antivirus services leave back doors and Trojan horses for government to access the computer while deleting political materials.

In an effort of establishing a 'harmonic society' any voice different from the party is muted, any people to try to protect their own rights are jailed or hospitalized as 'psycho'.

There has actually been a significant population of professional petitioners in the capital who were treated inhumanely both in the capital and in their hometown. They are professional beggars begging for their justice, but usually got chased around and beaten up by police.

People are able to vote for their local government, although all candidates are from the same political party.

Many in big cities could not afford one square metre of an apartment with their annual salary, while public servants took 90% of public housing on a 6-digit monthly salary plus countless benefits.

House prices are skyrocketing while large real estate developers buys up land like crazy and not really building on it, which only pushes the house prices even higher.

People were forced to relocate from 20-year-old buildings, given around 10% of what their property is worth to have their houses demolished and rebuilt and sold for 10 times the price, only to be demolished again in 20 years.

Despite the high price of property, people who bought a house does not own it, instead, the government will have it back after 70 years.

Health insurance of any kind is non-existent, while a cold could cost people a third of their monthly salary to be cured.

Expensive and non-relevant medical checks are always prescribed.

Even medications could be fake.

Food prices went up 300% in the past 5 years, while people's income barely ever increased.

Food is poison. Seafood treated with formalin, nuts and dry mushrooms with sulphur, cured meat with artificial colouring and extreme level of nitrous, milk with urea, grains with mineral oil...

Over 5 million people were forced to relocate in order to build a dam.

In some cities air pollution is undetectable because it is way over the range of measuring devices.

Less than 4% of the state budget was directed to education, while more than 30% was used to keep the government functioning.

Education is brainwashing. People are educated to lie, the higher education they receive the better liar they are.

40 million of mainly agricultural poplation starved to death during the years 1958-1961, not because they did not have food but because they lied about the productivity which leaded to taxation of their whole production.

While bragging about its minors policy, the minors are forced to abandon their languages, religious beliefs, cultural traditions and land or livestock they live on. Majority immigrants flooded their land, stole the natural resources and threatened their very existence.

The party in power knows precisely that what its name implies would never happen, but its members and non-members believed it and trusted the party will lead them there.

People believe a higher degree of authority will give them justice when they think they are wronged. When they found out even the highest authority in the country would not give them justice, they went for the United Nations for help.

Governments cover whatever they have done wrong, and every public servant covers for each other.

Corruption is the norm and bribery is mandatory.

Are you really happy with your life there?

On iHype

I think I have become less and less impressed with Apple and its products over the years.

Before I own any Apple products I was quite impressed with its design, all the way back in the first iMac and iBook. But back in the days Apple products are way too expensive for our home so we were not very tempted to buy it although it does look good. I actually managed to grow up without ever touching a computer running Mac OS, but everyone's using Windows back in those days anyway.

The first time that I used a Mac was in a computer lab in Melbourne Uni, when i had to finish the week's genetics homework there. I was not impressed with the experience at all. I could not find a power button on the iMac, so turning it on took me more than 10 minutes. I tried to maximize a window and kept clicking the green button and that was another 10 minutes before I gave up. The mouse have no right button which really annoys me. And when I finally finished the work I had trouble finding a way to turn either the program or the computer off. I remembered it took me like 10 minutes to get used to Windows and do all the basics when I hadn't even touched a mouse before, and spending 10 minutes to find out how to turn on a Mac with 10 years experience with computers is just ridiculous. And not being able to maximize a window, no right mouse key and weird way to turn off a program or the computer, I don't get the point (it's not that it hadn't been invented and used on a rival for more than 20 years by then). And one thing Mac users kept bragging about is actually the ease of use comparing to Windows.

And then I owned an iPhone 3GS when it just came out and I am still using it atm. I am generally quite comfortable with the phone with a huge library of apps to enjoy and stuff. I don't have to worry of getting lost in the city anymore for one thing. And it did start to change my life a bit, like I'd have Wikipedia in hand when I'm in the middle of an argue so we know who's right instead of arguing all the way on, I'd recognize music that I don't know on the streets and so on. It started to get to me though when I realized how closed the iOS is. I can't access flash contents on the internet only because Apple doesn't like it (don't talk to me about HTML5, I don't see it replacing flash for at least 5 years - it's not only about video streams either, too many company websites have adopted flash in their beautiful homepage framework, which is just stupid to ignore all those), I need to pay extra just for tethering (which I didn't), I can't make my phone any more customized than a wallpaper. Of course you could change most of that by jailbreaking (which I did). I believe I bought the iPhone when it was the best in the market, but it's not anymore, not even the iPhone 4. I could get an Android which does everything my iPhone does plus more, simply because that one is open source.

And yes Apple's attitude towards its mistakes annoys me. I first noticed this when problems arise with iPhone 4's antenna. It's a hardware problem caused by insufficient testing prior to release. Apple's response? a cosmetic firmware fix to "improve display of signal" and free release of ugly covers. Come on, this is a hardware problem! They are just working to cover there mistakes instead of actually doing something to solve it. A responsible company would have recalled all the affected products and repair, replace or if not possible refund for the product. And for all the inferior technologies that apple adopts and argues that were not useful, they just make it an even bigger hype when they are finally releasing it a years after Apple's rivals. Right mouse key, multitasking and wallpaper on iOS, high resolution iPhone camera...

Btw, multitasking for the iOS is FAKE. Most background applications could not continue to run when they are in the background (such as an in-progress task stops processing when you press the home key and only continues when you switch aback), not to mention a lot of apps don't even try to support it. Calling that multitasking is ridiculous. Do you reckon me stop typing to pick up the phone and returning to typing after the phone call multitasking? I'd reckon typing while you are making the phone call multitasking. Not many people can multitask really well and that's why we want the iOS to do it, if it's just switching we could do it better than the iOS.

I have hence determined that Apple products are for the low intelligence, not me.

Dreaming of Reading

I'm not sure whether it is true that dreams always have a certain meaning, especially recurring dreams.

I realized since I moved into this house 10 months ago (Yes it took me that long to realize) that I started a recurring dream of reading. I did not have an idea what I was reading in those dreams but I certainly was. I think I have never dreamed of those before. I recall most of the reading happened right in my bed where I was dreaming, but I don't recall any of the details of the materials I was reading. They are definitely full of words though so I suppose they are articles (as opposed to documents or images), I think I'm certain some of the reading materials were scientific while others unknown. And I always forget all what I was reading when I wake up. I am not sure whether those things were written in a language that I know at all.

I don't know much about dreams but I am guessing it means something, either related to my study as Matt had suggested because I have obviously been reading quite a bit of references for my honours project, or it could be related to this house. The first theory works quite obvious and I tend to believe it (although I had such a dream a few nights ago two months after finishing the degree), but the second theory sounds a bit more attractive I'd say?

Sweet dreams.

My Inner Anarchism

I confused myself a bit lately. I found out that I would generally accept and follow rules or laws but extremely dismissal when it comes to discuss them. I think I have been like that ever after pubety but I just never realized it. I knew that my political compass is bottom right which means conservative and anarchic but I have never thought much about the anarchic part besides that I am against bureaucracy.

I don't like laws. I have been extremely clear about that since I was a kid. In my middle school back in China we are required to recite the contents of the Constitution, which is part of our 'Morality and Political Studies' mandatory all the way up to university (basically brainwashing), and the teacher stated very clearly that this will be in the exam. I think I was the only one in the class who didn't even try to recite it and obviously I failed that subject (other stuff in this subject was no better anyways, because there are plenty of laws made in China just that no one ever obeys them). I was never ashamed of that.

I tend believe laws are only commonsense made complicated, and hence it is not necessary for any society as we all learn our commonsense from parents/guardians, and a society can run perfectly well or even better relying on commonsense instead of laws. I know that sounds a bit anarchist already. Think of speed limits, if a sign says the speed limit is 60kph on this road all the vehicles would tend to drive at a speed close to that speed limit to get maximum efficiency. Yes you could say that is a good example of how laws work but imagine the sign is not there and people can go at whatever speed they want to, they would try to drive at around the same speed as other vehicles whatever it is when other vehicles are present and they can drive as fast as they want when no other cars are in the way, which makes the road more efficient. The law is not there but the order is still there, and the efficiency could improved. Penalty for speeding is also ridiculous. If all other vehicles are driving at 100kph on a 60kph road and you drive at 60kph you will be the one causing accidents not others, do you want a fine or death? As for pedestrians, they are dead no matter whether you hit them at 60kph or 100kph, but at 100 it might cause less pain.

My obeying the laws/rules might have only been a result of commonsense instead of being forced by laws/rules anyway.