
I had been told that I wasn’t behind the Great Firewall here in Macau. This is ChinaLite after all. I certainly have had no reason to think so before. Facebook and Twitter work with no problem. BBC World is on FTA TV FFS. Yet somehow I can’t get onto rollingstone.com without using a proxy.
I didn’t even notice at first. I had innocently clicked on this link to a story by Matt Taibi about crazy Michelle Bachmann. I saw the screen shot above and just figured their server wasn’t feeling well. Thought no more about it till I came across the link again elsewhere and when visiting it saw the same screen. No way was this sort of site offline for days. Unless they had pissed of Lulzsec I guess. That in itself would have been a news story.
So I turned on my proxy, which until now had been unused, and there it was; all the news that fits.
I have no doubt RS has been critical of China. But how come it is on Macau’s blacklist when none of the other usual suspects are?
Odd.

This has been my first one of any note. The signal was raised to 3 yesterday and has only just been lowered to no signal. It is still raining quite heavily though.
The signals are based on how close we are to the eye of a typhoon. It goes from 1 (vaguely nearby) to 10 (direct hit). You can read about the Hong Kong system (which Macau follows) here.
Things only get interesting at about signal 8. When that happens all public transport stops and I don’t have to go to work. If it goes to 8 when I am at work supposedly I can’t leave. Rumour has it though that you can just go and pay a taxi a lot of money to get you home. Or else you can ride out the storm in one of the bars.
Typhoon season lasts from May to November with October/September being the worst. Supposedly we are in for at least 9 typhoons this season.
There’s a very organised system to let you know what’s going on. Every apartment block has signs like this:

Apparently I’ll also automatically get an SMS if it goes above 5.

Asia-Lite. I’ve heard it called that a number of times by people here and it is very true. There is a European feeling to the place that extends beyond the Portuguese street signs. Four hundred years of colonisation will do that. It makes for a very soft landing for a new ex-pat.
This really is a company town, or rather country, or rather six companies in one industry. Eighty per cent of the economy is gambling and associated service industries. Six companies have licenses to operate casinos. SJM, run by Stanley Ho, had a monopoly until 2002. I work for the Venetian Sands, one of the Las Vegas companies that came in after 2002. I am officially employed by the casino itself but work on the Cirque Du Soleil show.
The job is great. I haven’t worked in this level of theatre for a while and although it was intimidating at first I soon remembered that I am actually good at this sort of stuff. It is wonderful to be working with professionals again. Everyone knows their job and just gets on with it. After years of working with clueless clients it is fantastic.
Language wise I am not having any problems. English is the main language of the show crew here. Macau’s official languages are Cantonese and Portuguese. The latter really only remains on government signs and menus. Hardly anyone speaks it here aside from the Brazilians and Portuguese ex-pats. Mandarin is fairly common too but English is the lingua franca. Although the majority of guests come from mainland China, the real area of growth is India.
One of the factoids I remember from my casino orientation, which was done in English by Cantonese HR ladies to a room full of Filipinos, Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians and one native English speaker (me), is that over half of the world’s population lives within a 5 hour flight of Macau. India, home to a billion people with a rapidly growing middle class, speaks English. So most of the casino staff do too. This is no doubt going to affect the country as a whole.
My Cantonese is coming along. Learning with a mixture of mp3 lessons and asking locals and ex-pats for tips. I know my numbers, please/thank you and “here”. Basic stuff for dealing with taxis and shop keepers. I also know how to order a beer but with widespread hospitality English, I’ve never used it.
Antonios has pointed out that I am breaking the unspoken Rathdowne contract of compulsory travel blogging. I thought I had a pretty strong defense in that I am living here for the foreseeable future so it’s not really travel and besides, don’t we all communicate visually through Path now? But I am caving in to peer pressure regardless.
More to come

Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Just jam the correct sentence in. No one will notice that the next sentence contradicts it.

Monday, December 22, 2008
Let’s see what we can do with this
