Getting my front row seats for the End of the World

It is almost a done deal but it does actually appear that I will be
moving the hearth and home and taking up a new post in Shanghai
China this August.

Nineteen years of La Dolce Vita in Japan will come to a close, probably
witha boozy Sayonara party sometime in mid-July. Rev Aeon has been
annointed Pope of all-Japan and hopefully he can do a much much better
job thanI have done as a missionary for the Church of the SubGenius
(swear loyalty to him here at www.myspace.com/popeaeon ) I
always joked that I would leave Japan when they pried it off of my
cold dead fingers but now it looks like China will get that honor.

Just thinking about the move well, it moved me to get drunk and
legless at the Kinki Brewers annual Golden Week BBQ. Someone
showed me a bottle of shochu and told me that the sensation
was like floating down a river so I said what the hell and
went for it. Consider some of the factors of my new station.

Shanghai is the home of the teeming masses. You can get on the
subway and walk into a gaggle of country immigrants with all
their possessions in rice sacks on the floor, ready to go through
your pockets if you let your guard down for an instant.

Shanghai figures prominently in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth,
where a rise insea levels floods the whole city, including our apartment.

While the city functions as China's Monaco, a playground for their
Nouveau Riche,the spectre of mob violence always seems to simmer
under the surface.

I will be taking a 60% pay cut from my salary in Japan and I will be
paid in US dollars which fell 4% this year alone against the now
strong Chinese Yuan.

We are moving into a tiny dormitory on campus, 25 sq. meters. We
have an apartment but it is 2.5 hours away by public transportation
which is full of those country immigrants I mentioned earlier.

Food price inflation has hit China, pork doubled in price from last
year and overall food index 8% last month.

Weird viruses keep popping up in China, the land of SARS, like one in
neighboring Anhui province that goes after kids. Did I mention
we have a 3 year old?

The Tibet uprising began in Shanghai in late March when Icelandic
moppet-head Bjork performed there, sang a last unapproved
song called Independenceand then screamed "Tibet!" which
no one understood until she was long gone.

We were in China and heard the first reports of some kind of kerfluffle
up in the Himalayas. Then we were watching the news on state TV
a few days later and all of a sudden they show footage of Tibetans
attacking Chinese, mobs led by monks attacking a Bank of China branch,
shots of Lhasa with smoke rising from numerous fires. "This...looks a
little out of the ordinary..."I thought.

I asked my wife what the commentary was saying. She said it was to the
effect of "We will smash them, they cannot win, this is a foreign plot...,
etc,"We got a call from my wife's uncle, a Chinese living in Lhasa. He had
moved there to start a business and get away from the gambling
dens in Shanghai where he had lost a bundle. He said he had seen
five people get killed below his window. From all accounts after
one big demonstration with police had run back and barricaded
themselves in their station houses and let everyone run amuck for a day.
Spontaneous ethnic cleansing and the local settling of
scores had been the result.

So my only hope is to recruit fellow Subs in Shanghai, form a protective
posse and wait for the mobs. Should be fun. But as Khan of all Shanghai
I plan to make sure there are Chinese instructions
on the ramps of at least 2-3 Pleasure Saucers.

I love that old line from the US Navy of putting one's self "in harm's way."
Watch this space.