Marks & Spencer is closing all its stores in China...too much competition. Can't compete. Wrong model. Interesting times. Both McDonalds and KFC are also leaving because, well, they are USA brands and the USA isn't popular due to the perceived US military threat to China in the South China Sea...but also because that old Western model of capitalism doesn't work well in China, whereas Chinese Capitalism, more focused, innovative, more researched, and a hell of a lot faster...is doing very well. We haven't seen any Chinese capitalism in Australia so far as we are off the map of importance really and as we are content enough with the old ways of the world they will continue for some time here. It does mean that the Australian economy can't actually grow, but, that's our choice.

South Korean folk rebelling in the streets against their elected President this week. Corruption. I expect she will have to go.

I like Australia and i don't mean to complain about it...but there are some things that stand out...the past PM Julia Gillard announcing the beginning of the Asian Century 25 years after it began...and it isn't really the Asian Century, it is the Chinese century...and then no one believing her anyway...her only achievement being to hand over a chunk of Darwin to the US Military to help stop China's trade routes...madness. China doesn't have Churches or much in the way of Religions...instead it has shops. You shouldn't try to stop Chinese shop keepers from selling stuff...that's insane. Australia has lots of nice things, that's true. We certainly haven't had the huge mistakes or the huge successes of China because we can't conceive of that scale...but if we tried, we could maybe learn from it rather than trusting in 1950s British economics and 1950s American politics here. they don't work now; they didn't work very well back then.

Noting Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry is currently in Antarctica ... after bringing peace to the Middle East, nothing else for him to do now...safest place for him I expect.

So, the Trans Pacific Partnership, a huge conglomeration of about 26 countries and giant companies, sponsored by Obama and Clinton to isolate China, the largest and only growing economy on Earth, rather than do anything good in the world, is defunct now. Good! The US putting bullying pressure on Phillipines, Vietnam, Laos, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan etc to not have anything to do with their rich neighbour who they always trade with to their benefit, was never ever a good idea. So, The USA will be studying just how much it costs them each and every day to currently bomb six countries (The Obama-Clinton form of Peace) they are bombing...Good! Bombing villages is, apart from hurting the folk who live there, and creating a lot of enemies, is something that costs a lot of money and the USA can't afford to keep borrowing this kind of money every day from China. Good!

Jordan Steed-Fitzpatrick and Tianshu Jiao (AKA now DJWAWA) going to the shops in Thailand.

Thailand Memory of Mrs Fitz (Wang, Wan Yi) off to school to teach Mandarin at International School. A rainy morning, a good bike made in Myanmar, and a Hello Kitty honking bell.