Sometimes it's interesting to see where the visitors come from. For example, I've never met anyone from Trinidad and Tobago. Reminds me of how I've also never met any Africans online other than South Africans (met one but technically he was just an Indian Sikh working there) and Nigerians (via spam emails).
So I've finally recognized the flavour of basil. It took 2 meals, tasting my chicken burgers each time, to allow me to figure out that the other flavour in the chicken patties was from the basil I added.
I guess I don't recognize it because it's so common I just assumed it's from the meat or something. One of the things you just skip over and take for granted.
This is interesting. China's move to support Greece by buying Greek bonds in bulk has been obvious from the start to be motivated by motives other than to strengthen international relationships. I just didn't know why.
Apparently, this article says that this is to stop the euro from weakening further. First, a weaker euro means less money to buy Chinese goods. Second, strengthening the euro against the USD can't be bad for China.
Furthermore, in exchange for the massive inflow of funds into Greece, the Greek government has allowed China to lease two main terminals in the major Greek port of Piraeus, and for 35 years no less.
From another article linked in the quote:
As Cosco took control of Pier Two, the Greek state-owned Pireaus Port Authority was left with Pier One – which is smaller and shallower, thus unable to accommodate the larger ships.
Cosco is short for China Ocean Shipping Company. For those who, like me, didn't know the significance of this, Piraeus is a one of the largest ports in Europe ranking 47th worldwide in cargo traffic.
From one of the links above:
China's state-owned shipping giant Cosco last month took control of Pier Two in a £2.8 billion deal to lease the pier for the next 35 years, investing £470 million in upgrading the port facilities, building a new Pier Three and almost tripling the volume of cargo it can handle.
The container port, just next door to the Piraeus ferry harbour that is the tourist gateway to the Greek islands, can currently load and unload 1.8 million containers a year - meaning 5,000 come and go each day.
No wonder they call it the new Silk Road. China basically took that port's cargo-handling facilities (those that matter anyway) and upgraded them for its own use. And by protecting the purchasing power of the Europeans, they make sure these ports get used a lot.
As for the exchange rates of the RMB, it is now being described as a "currency war", with the US being the losing side. If so, is this WWIII? We've got the Western world vs the PRC, with many other countries, eg Japan, now actively controlling their currencies to save their own economies or about to do so.
Personally I've never tried WoW in a RP (role-playing) server before, so when I saw these I realized how lucky I was to have missed that feature of WoW.
This looks like Second Life but in a fantasy setting. And yes, Second Life does have adult features. You can even have virtual sexual intercourse there.
Wow gaming industry politics? The boss of Valve, Gabe Newell, calls the 360 "a train Wreck" and sells L4D and L4D2 at US$6.79 each or US$10 for both plus a new DLC (downloadable content ie expansion) free of charge. Holy crap! This new DLC alone costs US$7 on the XBox360.
If you haven't bought it and have been considering, you may want to get your credit card out now because this sale is just for today!
It was fun for only a while and then it got boring. There are new maps, yes, but they are being released too slowly to hold my attention. The slowness, in turn, is caused by the difficulty in making a new map.
It's just like a map in Empires. You need to know the game inside out to make a good map. You need to create good chokepoints, good hiding spots, good event locations and the environment cannot be boring and must be varied.
Still, it's like S$9.50 at most. Hmm.....
And I have no idea what the heck is going on with the HTML of this rant because for some reason, halfway through my rant every sentence got surrounded by this "<.p>" and "<./p>". Every time I hit Enter it doesn't just go to the next line but also creates a "<.p><./p>". Remove the "." in between, added in to make sure they don't get interpreted as actual HTML code by the blog.
What the heck do those mean anyway?
It's fine with I'm typing this in HTML mode but when I go to the Compose mode which I usually use it starts all over again and gives the keys a weird behaviour.
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