User profile: Alien

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Flying the frugal skies

Thing to do is to return to the idea of TRAVEL, not waste time and money on so much teleportation, avoid 95% of air travel, save natural resources, see something of the world as she is on the ground where real people live, pollute the air less, etc. You'd be surprised, if you've never tried it, just how much you can learn and experience from traveling and staying off airplanes - the world may be inconvenient, but it's really quite interesting. Take the earplugs out of your ears and get off the music haze too.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Over-Charging Foriegners; Slave Labour

Back to the point: if you were overcharged at either the Wicker Basket or the French Cafe it was a mistake by the staff, not an attempt to rip you off. The price of coffee is what it is because those who own foreign-oriented cafes etc. in Kunming can get it. And yes, staff of such places are usually underpaid, though less underpaid than plenty of other restaurant workers here. Underpayment of staff is a product of competition in private enterprise, which often produces what in the short run appears as 'efficiency'.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Pizza Hut,McD,KFC

What Tommann said. And why would anybody help concentrate the world's wealth in the hands of the people who own McDonald's, KFC, etc.?

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Is it just me, or?

Perhaps some of you folks need to clarify differences between discrimination and racism. Take Brazil - there is prejudice in favor of light skin, but there is a great range of terms to describe skin colors, but no single racial dividing line. In North America, however, people imagine 2 different 'races', and then talk about race mixing, mixed bloods etc.

Recommended: The Race Concept, Michael Banton and Jonathan Harwood, pub. 1975.

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Something odd about the lengths of times listed - I think they must be for Chinese citizens. I have gotten the usual China-Laos visa at the border south of Jinghong about 6 times over the past 10 years: it always took me qabout 20 minutes, cost about US$35-40, and was good for a month (with US passport). Crossing from Hekou to Viet Nam, which I've done twice in the past 7 years, required that I get the visa in Kunming, but both times it was good for a month.

Have I read this thing wrong?

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@atwilden, you're right, the whole concept of ownership in any form has always been an important social issue everywhere, with a tremendous variety of local solutions that have worked for a time, more or less, until they no longer worked - still, I like Sitting Bull's incredulousness at the idea of land ownership: the man was not stupid, and it raises basic questions. Then there's control of the seas, which has been in the news lately....as for asteroids, I dunno, but take a look at the machinations of 'the company' in the ALIEN films.

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I wonder how long it will be until national regimes and/or private corporations start claiming they 'own' areas of the lunar surface. Read Sitting Bull's contemptuous comments on the White-American idea of land ownership in BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE ("They say we sold the land but we never did. Sell the land? Why not sell the sky, and the moon and the stars?")

Reviews

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Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.

As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.

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Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.

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Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.