I see the Hong Kong Government has put away the extradition agreement with the mainland, and I think that this is a shame, really. Many people commit atrocious crimes, paedophilia, rape, murder etc in the Mainland and then find their way to Hong Kong as an escape from trial and punishment...and for these most serious and horrible crimes, they can't be extradited to be on trial at all. I really don't know why Hong Kong people wish to protect these kinds of monsters and criminals.

Whatever the motivation for Trump meeting Un, it is a good thing to do. North Korea is the worst government on Earth, true, and then comes Saudi Arabia. And Trump is probably the worst President on earth. Still, It's always best to talk rather than kill.

General Muttering Afternoon. Getting things in order. Plan is to fly out to Guangzhou Monday AM, connect to Shanghai, overnight in Shanghai Monday midnight, drop off about 50kg of extra luggage to family, then domestic air to Shen Yang midday Tuesday, then an AirB&B in NE China. The AirBnB apartment in Shen Yang looks like a cross between Zen and the Art of Oddness and Hello Kitty, and is unrealistically inexpensive, so that it may not actually exist. Then a few days there, go to the wedding, see family, then back to Shanghai see family, a few days there, then home and back to work. In preparation for this, apart from the heart attack two months ago, I caught the flu this week so have been holed up at home sneezing and snotting around in a zombie like fashion trying to work out if the zombieism relates to the lessening of the damaged pumping heart's blood supply to the old brain, or just the flu. I expect its a combination. It all augurs pretty well for our first holiday in about 3 years since coming to Melbourne and finding work, and working, and then...getting sick, working, pushing back on creditors etc. So: passport & visa, yes. Some tablets, oh yes. Some tissues, yes. Some nitrolingual spray, yes. Some spare Yuan. From time to time in life I've had PTSD/Depression/whatever and tend to agree with Mr Leonard Cohen when he said that as he got older, the connecting pathways in the brain that bring about depression tend to get burnt out. Mine have. Last night we drove into the city centre in Melbourne to pick up a Certificate for daughter noting her excellence in sound engineering in a Nepalese video, so we can deliver it to her in Shanghai. Then we had some Japanese food. The cost of the meal and the cost of parking the ute was about the same...$30 each. Nothing cheap about Melbourne. I was muttering and grumbling for sometime before realising that everything was basically okay...and, in its way, remarkable. Today I have swanned about in my Chinese winter Pyjamas and fluffy slippers all day, and drove to the bottle shop dressed that way and bought a bottle of Guinness and a packet of cigarettes. I did this to be culturally prepared for Northern China. Tomorrow, Sunday, is packing the luggage day and writing down numbers of things that may be important. Who knows? Hopefully, in the time available in Shen Yang, in the Hello Kitty AirB&B I will have a nap, transcend the usual, and become self-aware for ten minutes before getting hungry for street noodles and fried snakes on sticks. I will smoke ten Pandas for you.

Huawei/The problem for America, Australia and England and a few other places, in regard to 5G is that they aren't very good at it but still want to control the 5G scene due to the billions dollars its all worth. At the same time, China has a very advanced, well working Huawei 5G sophistication that it can deliver anywhere... far faster service, far cheaper, and far less flawed...and this is why Huawei has been nominated as the Bad Guy...because its better, faster, cheaper and far more reliable. Pouncing on Huawei, and trying to destroy the company, That's not Free Trade, that's just the rotting corruption in the Western outposts of America, Australia, the UK etc when they can't honestly compete at all.

In Australia, well, Peter Dutton, Minister for Being the Enemy of the Free World and Everything Decent, has launched his first salvo against the current Prime Minister with recent raids by Australian Federal Police and secret services, on the ABC and News Corp. He won't stay quiet. He won't stay lower than the PM. "There can only be One! Sparta!" He actually believes he is the best to lead. He really does...and because of the broken nature of the government, just re-elected, no one can stop him. It will get messy, very expensive, very nasty, and hurt a lot of innocent, like us, people, before he's through...and he may well win.

"It was never my artistic existential burden to be over talented when young, nor in my time in firm bright adulthood, nor in the middling middle age, nor now, in old age, or what I choose to call: my advanced projection. I guess, all in all, I should be grateful that neither fame nor talent has had the opportunity to savagely ruin me at all. Yes, thank you God, for that, and..fuck you too."

The Tiananmen disturbance had far more to do with the population protesting at the ridiculously high price of cooking oil in China than it did with any notion of democracy. Another case where the "anti-China, anti-Other" West trots out feeble and flawed information for political point scoring. Much like during the "Arab Spring" which was not a cry for democracy within various Arab states but rather due to regime financial losses in the 2008 financial meltdown where the price for basic living food items became too expensive due to the needs of the very rich to keep increasing the prices to keep increasing their income no matter what the social or economic reality. The true story of China is best told by China. More Fuel! Jaiyo!