"So, what's it like to work there?"

Recently, while at work, I learned the phrase: 道可道，非常道... dao4 ke3 dao4, fei1chang2 dao4.

Three of us, foreign and non-foreign coworkers working together to reach a consensus, arrived at a kind of conflated translation of the expression which we loosely came to understand as a kind of reflection or meditation on the underlying tenants defining the core principles of Taoism. To quote a coworker from an unrelated department:

"It is as if everything you know and have learned, you have discovered to not be true. No, maybe this is not right... It is like everything is different and in the end becomes something... different."

--Oh, so you mean it means like, it expresses that you can't trust anything you've ever learned? And that everything you know, and have learned, is just a part of your own personal environment.

"Oh, no. It's a very difficult thing to translate. Let me check online."

(nearly half an hour later...)

"道可道，非常道... It means like everything you know is not necessarily true..."

--I... think, I understand...

This is what it's like to work here: 道可道，非常道. The Way is The Way, that's exactly what It is. The Way. No matter what happens--absurd directives from higher-ups, common knowledge that the office is more like a Fantasy Camp that an actual company--it happens. It just does.

You either get used to that, or... (as I recently experienced) ... you go a little mad. Lucky me that it happened as I "knelt at the foot of the Buddha", that is, if Buddha were Klamm.

To quote my immediate superior during a discussion concerning our future affairs:

"It doesn't matter what you say or what you do... that's as good as it gets."

Or, in other words:

Your world can be turned upside-down, over and over again, doesn't matter how many times, but that doesn't matter. Gravity is always pointing in the same direction.

Everything eventually changes in some way, thus change is a fixity.


Total Information Awareness

movin' shop

Good News:
That's Beijing is moving locations! because damned if we aren't all about to start an armed uprising over the ghastly commute we daily suffer! Southwest Beijing Businesses Housed in Governmental Regulatory Agency Office Park Buildings reprasent!

Better News:
We're moving into a hotel! owned by Zhong Dian Media, the shady media company holding some kind of stake in the current retarded stewardship of That's Beijing. And it's right next to the subway!

Awesome News:
The name of the new place is the Rich Hotel! Awesome! We're going to be Rich!


Older Man: This has bad idea written all over it.
Young Girl: I am frustrated with my work to point of insanity.
Young Man: We now sleep where we work! My parents will be over-joyed!

no 会, ma恩

Actual office conversation had while work was trying to be done:

"Excuse me, [Syme], what's the difference between the words 'competition' and 'contest'?"

--Context.

"No. 'Contest'. What's the difference between the two words: 'competition' and 'contest'?"

--The difference between the two is the context in which you use them.

"'Contest' not 'context'."

--I know. The difference is the context in which you use them.

"No. 'Contest'; what is the difference?"

--The two words: 'contest' and 'competition', they differ according to how you use them.

"I'm not talking about 'context', 'contest'. What is 'context'?"

--Context is how in one situation you would say one over the other, it just depends on the situation.

"What's the meaning? 'Context'?"

--'Contest'?

"'Context' is the right say? What's difference with 'competition'?"

--'Contest' and 'competition' are different according to context, in one situation you say one...

"What is 'context'?"

--There's no difference in the meaning, just it depends on when you say one or the other?

"What is difference in meaning? 'Context' and 'competition'?"

--Wait, 'contest'.

"Context."

--The difference between 'conTEST' and 'conTEXT' is one letter, they have different meanings.

"Oh, I understand. It's difficult! 'Contest' and 'competition' have same meaning."

--Yes!

"I understand... What is 'context'? How to spell?"

(Conversation eventually came to an entropic end after 5-10 minutes or so...)


Almost there!

(a Work In Progress) -- HiPower theme song

(sung in the style of an uptempo, brisk "Communisty" march)

There's just noth-ing quite as-- sour!
A-waking late on a fine day's after-noon--
We're all train-wrecks nursing bad hang-o-vers
Be-cause of our-- jobs-- at-- (All together now!)

Hi-Pow-er! Hi-Pow-er!
Where the foreign edi-tors--
are handed the buck of all responsi-bil-i-ties--
with-out any kind of real--
High-Pow-er! High-Pow-er!
Where we point-less-ly toil
for a face-less few, just for a chance to say--
Hello!-- to Hi-Pow-er! to Hi-Pow-er! (Hello!)

Stub-born river-crab bosses always sche-ming--
in guan-xi-laden sham i-vory to-wers--
While the rest of us are simply drea-ming--
of ba-sic business-- com-mon sense!
just-- meri-to-cracy!
and a whole slew of pigs--
and ass-es for them--
to fly out of! (All just as likely!)

Hi-Pow-er! Hi-Pow-er!
You just simply would-n't be--
If your rott-en busi-ness model--
was act-ually free-- to suff-o-cate--
un-der its own--
in--com--pe--tence! (Bye-Power!)


"...but where exactly is this March headed?"

consistently missing the point

It's been something of a long whiles since I've updated here. Forces completely out of my control sent this Blarg into hiding as a rather inflammatory forum posting on a non-competitor's website (non-competing because between This mag and That, only one functions like an actual, operating, honest-to-god magazine) started to get passed around among the office staff I work with and the Conceit Behind the Farce of that's Absurd quickly lost its context, and honestly became a bit of a danger to daily/weekly/whatever-ly maintain.

A mole! A mole in our midst! I was, in the end, found out by some of my closer acquaintences here and the only reproach I received came in phrasings as damning as: "Yeah, I mean, it's all true." Heh.

But back to current events: We have a new boss! Huzzah! The White Whale continues to cling with his sets of teeth-guanxi to whatever he can as he sinks, bitterly and surprisingly solemnly into the briny deep (recently found out, his previous job before this one?: running some other nightlife-related mag into the ground; oh fer two, ouch!) and this new guy, Klamm, the new Boss, he has effectively stepped into a situation not unlike the situation America has been facing now that a certain W. has all been put out to pasture, politically.

Though many, many forces unseen went into chosing our newest Immediate Overlord, and I'll be damned if I were to ever bet on finding out who this new guy actually is, where he came from, what experience he has, and what his actual plans are for all of... well, this.

More and more pointless, Tower of Babel-esque meetings later, and it's beginning to look like an opportunity for fortuitious change and what little chance there was to turn a decaying, smoldering brand back into its mint-y, shiny self has all but circled round the plug hole for the last time. Man, oh man! is the force strong with the more guanxied around here... The problem is, most of the ones I casually refer to as the "rotten ones" with select co-workers, they're in charge of the departments that are directly responsible for making a print mag work as a business/enterprise and tangible, attractice/aesthetically-pleasing physical object.

The Way Things Are Done here, not just in this country, but in this company, would truly just baffle a lot of the people reading this. Yes: you there. I can't tell you how many times people who read the magazine feel the need to criticize everything wrong that the people on the inside already know and are constantly trying to battle with, trying to correct things for the better. But...

...to recap my State of Being for all my time spent here so far:
-A (likely) misguided sense of Hope became participation in a Comedy
-This Comedy quickly became a series of Absurdities
-The laughter has since slowly (and painfully) come to fade, and Absurdity has become Farce
-Now, at present, this (that's?) Farce is becoming Futility

In fairness to a recently renewed sense of Perspective and (as-close-to)Objectivity(-as-humanly-possible), and to quote T.S. Eliot...

In my beginning is my end.
But to brighten things up...!

A quick impression of what it's like to ask one of the "associative" editors in charge of ensuring payment to freelancers... for confirmation of payment!


Dog 1: But the White Whale has told me not to pay.
Dog 2: ...