What Kills Us This Week!

OK, this is soooo good I'm don't even care if I'm guessing correctly this week or not.

New Zealand has made an enemy!!! CHINA!

Isn't that the coolest thing ever! New Zealand! A nation that prides itself on its decency and fair-dealing and being straight and good, pure and true ... but that's why it made itself it's first ever international enemy!

Keith found out yesterday when he went to get a visa for China. He handed over his Kiwi passport and asked for a year-long multiple entry visa, and they sniggered and said "No multiple visa for New Zealanders. One entry only, $1,200 per visit." Keith snatched back his passport and said something about how China should be ashamed of the capricious and childish way it handles visas, and that it should learn to behave like a REAL nation and have rules to follow, and then he went all mean and said "I could go to Bangkok or Singapore for that price and those countries are much better places to visit than yours!"

Then later he was fretting about why China has targeted Kiwis - like "What did we ever do to them?" - and that's when I reminded him "You blew the whistle on the melamine in their milk!!!"

Yup, that's the only thing that makes sense. It was those Kiwis who reported to the Chinese authorities that Chinese dairies were putting toxic chemicals into their milk ... and then when Chinese authorities openly demonstrated they were going to ignore it, reported it to the newspapers. So, because they caused China to lose face, Kiwis must be punished.

So that's what's happening this week. Nah, nah, nah, nah! China hates New Zealand! It's a damned nuisance because we were planning to go up to Dafen this weekend to commission an artist to do that portrait of my mother for my niece Didi, and now Keith can't come with me and they are still kidnapping people up there in Shenzhen and I'm kinda worried about being there alone.

Later: Didn't expect to get it right and, what do you know!, didn't get it right.

HK Magazine has chosen that weird case in Japan wherein an ex-wife was arrested and charged for killing her former husband's on-line avatar. (That's his persona in a cyberspace virtual reality game). And, can you believe this, she's facing five years in jail?

We were talking about this at Yum Cha yesterday and decided she should have a virtual trial and they should put her avatar in virtual jail.

Reminds me of that English medieval story where a baker had a man arrested for sniffing his bread, and when it went to trial the judge ordered the sniffer to go over to the baker and drop a coin down beside him and then repocket the coin. Turns out that was the fine for sniffing bread: "the sound of a coin"! Wise judges they had back in those days!