Did you ever wonder about relocating to another city?

Well, there is a decently designed website found here which attempts to leverage its users information so that ALL of us can understand the costs of becoming an expatriate.

What's the definition of an expatriate? or expatriate worker?

The definition expatriate just means that an individual has decided to work in a country in which he/she is not a citizen.

Like me.

Do me the favor - and update the information about costs in the city where you live by clicking here www.bit.ly/intl-costs

Thanks, 

Parker

Perhaps you've wondered about the cost of living in your city versus the cost of living elsewhere - like:

What's the cost of living in Hawaii?

What's the cost of living in Oahu?

What's the cost of living in Honolulu?

What's the cost of living in Los Angeles?

What's the cost of living in Puerto Rico?

What's the cost of living in Shanghai? 

What's the cost of living in Tokyo? 

What's the cost of living in New York?

What's the cost of living in Chicago?

What's the cost of living in Madrid? 

What's the cost of living in 

When is the best time to visit Guangzhou, China? 

Late September should be when you arrive.

If you're a weather wimp (i.e., you're from California), then you might have considered wearing shorts today. It was all of 32C (89F) today.

Within weeks it'll be maxing at 80F. Awesome.

This is the best weather. Sun, lightning sometimes, with rain. And less and less lightning/rain.

Love it here now. 

Hey, why exactly aren't you visiting?
Missed it - well then it's the same at the end of March ... except in reverse (and with less lightning).

PAF

Ethics Smethics

Wal-mart... the brand that loves to toot its own horn.

Wal-mart with the budget to prove that it's holier than thou.

I can't take it anymore ... I'm officially ROFLMAO now after reading the article in today's Shanghai Daily, "Wal-Mart apologizes for new customer fraud"

NEW CUSTOMER FRAUD. Meaning, the 8th time in 8 months time that they've ADMITTED TO.

Dear Customers,
Don't worry, we'll stop cheating you. Trust us, this last time is only the 8th time in 8 months that WE HAVE ADMITTED THAT YOU HAVE CAUGHT US.

But trust us, we'll get better (at cheating you) in the near future.

Wal-mart

http://bit.ly/stupidwalmart

Oh, this is too much.

Your house is worse than worthless. It's worth negative equity.

You're not going to lose anything... because you've already lost it.

Huh? You didn't know- well check out these 3 cities that caused it all. Then you'll know.

http://www.businessinsider.com/no-housing-bottom-in-sight-2011-9
 

I'm going to be sick. I'm listening to one of my favorite bands, Dave Matthews. He mentioned something just truly incredible ... and I googled it... and it's true.

Specialist Jon Town after being 2 feet away from a mortar round that hit while he was serving in Iraq, he:

• amazingly lived
• lost the majority of his hearing permanently
• was stripped of his rank
• was thrown out of the military
• lost all of his health benefits
• and was charged back 3000 dollars that he'd been paid as a bonus

WTF!?

Read about Jon Town here

So...

Jon Town - or any other US military veterans ... please send me your resume if you're interested in working for a growing company that would love to have dedicated, hard working people.

We are seeking veterans to fill sales and marketing positions. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, veteran, honorable discharge, job opportunity, entry level position

Who knew that the Chinese government trained their Anti-Corruption Officials as NINJAS!

The short version: A courageous Chinese government official who took the post as "Anti-Corruption" official - who just a month ago investigated the 2nd highest ranking government official in the same province - was found dead in his office chair.

Stabbed 10 times - with the fatal stab would to his neck (below his chin).

Police have ruled it a suicide.

ROFLMAO

www.bit.ly/10stabs

The idea that someone could stab themselves ten times to the neck, including once getting the main artery that feeds blood to your brain, once to the artery feeding your arm, etc ... and this is the persons idea of a good way to commit suicide ... hahaha.

Read the comments in the article. Hysterical.

At least, it reads like his obituary.

A few months ago I was talking with a friend of mine. We discussed the most unlikely of subjects .... Steve Jobs' butt.

At the time, it struck me that our conversation was bizarre. Discussing the behind of one of the most interesting men on the planet and that his life expectancy could be measured in days ....

Steve Jobs years ago

Steve Jobs recently

As cancer patients progress, they loose massive amounts of weight - and that weight is critical. Apparently, my friend's buddy is an oncologist.... and he dated the amount of time left by how loose Steve Jobs' pants fit him on TV one time.

So while reading this article I recalled our conversation.

Look for more stories about Steve Jobs' contributions to our digital world, about his philanthropy ...

 You know that the world is totally screwed when ....

A Norwegian kills 90 people in a United States type "Postal Service" (aka Going Postal), or Columbine (aka going insane in the rich suburbs) type attack.

if you KNOW me, you know that even though I only heard about this 12 hours ago (I've been busy on vacation ... you know, i'm busy) ... there are a million ... well, a few thousand .... Stop being technical. there are a lot of thoughts going thru my head.

Some of them humorous, at least to me - if you like Lisa Lampanelli, Jackey the Jokeman, Howard Stern, Doug Stanhope, then you'd agree.

What's humorous about this? You mean you can deal with some psycho piece of sh!t murdering a random assortment of people living in a fantastically fair society in a normal way, as if you are buying tomatoes at the supermarket? I can't. That is the definition of what humor is for; taking the edge of.

What freaks me out isn't that someone was so efficient at murder. It's that the person wasn't American!

I mean, there's so much that speaks AMERICAN Fox Channel loving sociopath:

• He's got THREE names (Anders Behring Breivik, aka 'this idiot') - like Lee Harvey Oswald.
• He's got skills (like the abortion bomber guy in Georgia)
• He's totally planned out his insanity - like Columbine
• He wants to testify - like Timothy McVeigh
• He's a white male - like all serial killers

Oh, I could go on.

Stunningly, people seem surprised.

Please, sit down with some Scandinavians. Ask them some hard questions ... and you'll get uncomfortable but HONEST answers (and here's where my comparison starts to wane ... in the USA, the BS will start up on the same questions). 

Ask them, so how is the assimilation between the muslim immigrants and those which have been in (X) country for a few hundred years? 
If your daughter decided to marry a muslim immigrant, how would you and your mom react?
How do you feel about the government financially supporting the immigrants?

As a non Chinese living in China (for years and years) I know what it's like to be a representative of less than 1% of the total population .... while it's sometimes difficult, I can't imagine what it'd be like to be a psycho looking to find people to hate. Whatever the tipping point is, apparently this idiot's tipping point was around when he started writing his own manifesto.  (We haven't need any more manifestos since Marx, or Hitler. thanks).

Here's a toast to sanity. Hate your neighbor if you want, but don't go slaughter the  neighbor, or their kids. That's just wrong... 

 Well, the experts have spoken. Spoken yet again.

Not only is Greece screwed more ways than not. Let's not talk about how Spain, Portugal, Italy or Ireland is safe ... None of those places matter in international finance anyway.

Don't bring up Minnesota, it doesn't matter (really, when has Minnesota ever mattered except when you counted all of the states in the USA?).

What's really the concern now, is this place you hardly consider a world economic powerhouse.

I mean, you don't think of the corner (gas-station) store as a powerhouse, right?

So, when was the last time you wondered when CHINA would crash and burn ECONOMICALLY. Yeah, sure, many of us wonder about the random and bizarre political decisions ... .but ECONOMICALLY?

So when you read:

As municipal projects play out across China, spending on so-called fixed-asset investment — a crucial measure of building that is heavily weighted toward government and real estate projects — is now equal to nearly 70 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. It is a ratio that no other large nation has approached in modern times.

Even Japan, at the peak of its building boom in the 1980s, reached only about 35 percent, and the figure has hovered around 20 percent for decades in the United States.
 

What's awesome is the Chinese way of 'pork-barrel' projects' - "same same but different" from the US style:

In the case of Wuhan, a close look at its finances reveals that the city has borrowed tens of billions of dollars from state-run banks. But the loans seldom go directly to the local government. Instead, the borrowing is done by special investment corporations set up by the city — business entities whose debt shows up nowhere on Wuhan’s official financial balance sheet.
 

So, I ask only ONE question, as the USD and the EURO are both, essentially insolvent - now that one reads this article ... where does one put their money? Gold? 

Multiple quotes of above article came from here.

Mama mia.

Chinese Government Officials Can FLOAT magic

Thank you www.ChinaSmack.com ... you're awesome. 

And I love (absolutely LOVE) the translated comments.... like this (try to pick up the nuance, it's there if you look for it):

I'm guessing it should be: ... "who actually do work are too few" (PS = photoshop)

 No one would believe that this stuff ... but it's true. And frigging awesome.

What's better are ChinaSmack's visitors' PS'd alternate images!

Here's the link to see it on their site