Few days after my last anti-terrorism post, UK does it again. This time it's the Heathrow Airport, fingerprinting all domestic flight passengers:

Heathrow airport first to fingerprint
Without the biometric checks, the company says, potential criminals and illegal immigrants arriving on international flights or in transit to another country could bypass border controls by swapping boarding passes with a domestic passenger who has already checked in.

Oh, really. Let's all hope, UK's surveillance delusion does not spread to other European countries like a virus (we all know it does), otherwise when we get old, our future will look like the picture on the right...
Story found on Slashdot

Remember when "The West" used to stand for freedom, civil rights and democracy? Well, these days are long gone. I think, Orwell's 1984 must be banned from our schools by now and we are forced to live in constant fear being attacked by invisible enemy forces.

The latest step in making "The West" suck a bit more comes from the Metropolitan Police in London (Big hooray to the cops of London). They declared a war on photographers, business men and neighbours.
 
Remember, if you see a nicely tanned guy with two mobile phones in your lovely business district, it's not a business man, it's a terrorist. If those pesky dark skinned foreigners start taking photos of your beloved Buckingham Palace, they are certainly not tourists, they must be terrorists!
Call the police at once, or better yet, don't wait for the police, just lynch them yourself. Big Brother will be proud of you!

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

"Footwear Manufacturing, Dongguan, China" by clayirving

I stumbled upon an mildly ironic article about China losing jobs to cheaper countries:

Rising costs squeeze Chinese
[...] Costs in China are climbing nationwide, but the greatest pain is being felt in the south, where about 14,000 Hong Kong-run factories could close in the next few months, said Polly Ko of the Economic and Trade Office in Guangdong, which neighbors Hong Kong.

History just keeps repeating itself.

Not much happening recently: Bought a bass guitar so i can gain control over my fingers again. It's astonishing how little we use most of our fingers every day, especially the left hand. The bass is of no great quality, I don't think it makes any difference for a beginner to play on a €80 or a €800 bass.

Hey, good news: Somehow I missed the info that one can order from Amazon.com and get things shipped to Shanghai. My first shipment is on the way, the shipping charge is quite steep, $6.99, plus $4.99 per book (wtf!?). But for some hard to find books, i guess one has no choice. And including the per item charge, the discounted books are still cheaper than in most of the foreign language bookstores here in Shanghai.

Now to the new Album: It's a reggae-hiphop-rock-something crossover from a German group called Jammin Inc. I quite like it, somehow, no idea why.

	Artist	Jammin-Inc
	Album	Mit Anlauf
	Genre	Rock-Reagge-HipHop Crossover
	Release	March 15, 2007
	License	Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0 de

I have spent the past week in a hotel, because after 7 years, all water pipes in my home had to be replaced - because you know... after 7 years they start to oxidate and leak at random places. In the walls. Under the tiles. In every single apartment. In a high-rise building. 38 floors. 7 years old. Unbelievable. So they did it and replaced all pipes. Now my home is full of fucking dust and the pipes leak more than ever. Yes, you heard it right. The workers actually managed to make the situation even worse and leave a lot of dust behind them. Now I don't know if i should try to manage the f'cking dust™, or wait for them to come again. I am glad that I am renting and it's not my apartment.

This is Tutu, a Red Eared Slider (eine 0815 stink normale Schildkröte). Jinyu saw him on the street and bought it to "cheer herself up after a stressful day"... I think she just wanted something cute for playing with and could not stop herself from buying it. More on Flickr.

Auf besonderen Wunsch von Peter, hier sind ein paar Photos von dem F1 Sonntag in Schanghai.

...and feeling free. Made some photos, too - uploaded to my flickr account. That's all what i would like to discuss about in this public annoucement :mrgreen:

Hmm, not much to write about... it's damn hot and humid here, as always. Had a beer with Jinyu's dad yesterday (and a dinner made by her mom, which was quite tasty), actually it was 6 cans and 3 630ml bottles of Kirin Ichiban. Woke up with headache today and for most of the time i was happy i could stay in bed - I was supposed to fly to Taiwan today, but we changed the schedule coz of the coming typhoon there.

Went to eat in element fresh today, and their warm steak sandwich was actually quite cold, i guess it depends on how one defines warm... The food is supposed to be fresh and healthy there, but with the speed it arrived, the food is anything but fresh. Nonetheless their juices are still nice.

I used to have many things here, but because of lack of time I decided to remove all of it.

Recently I started working on JinIM, a J2ME Jabber client for mobile phones. It may take some time until i am finished, but if you are interested, check out the progress and leave some words.