[UPDATE.2: FakeSteve gets it on! The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : Meet the man-weasel who boned Michael Arrington. LOL, great stuff. Oh, and yours truly learns a new Indian word: behenchod]
[UPDATE: Some Friendfeed readers have some very interesting thoughts about Mikey, the vaporPad, and VCs in general. Have a read.]
Oh, Mikey Arrington. Boy, you got punked. I almost feel sorry for you. By now, you're asking your trust fund baby self, what do I do? Ah, the Eloi of Silly Valley.
Well, Mikey, I'm your greenskinned Uncle Drunky, thoroughly a Morlock, and I'm here to help.
Having been to S'pore a couple times, I can tell you that it's a 'fine country', a port of call, where 4 cultures meet. And let me tell you something, what they have there for each other is r-e-s-p-e-c-t, because basically, they all hate each other. Muslims, Hindus, Chinese & Euros, now Arabs oh my!
Where do you figure into this? You're some doey eyed mark that's not part of their scene. I think the word I'm looking for is 'fair game'.
Unless you make your mark like you know the score. And believe me Mikey, it's not like that little yob 18+ hours away pulled this out of his ass and pickled off some email to you on a whim. This was planned. Badly, but planned.
I really can't advise you as to what to do, as an old Asia hand. But I can relate experience.
Okay, I'll give you ONE freebie, and then a story:
Asia is a man's place. Don't send Sarah "I can see Vivek Wadhwa's codpiece from my Camel" Pale-imitation of Palin to do a man's job. With that out of the way, let me tell you a story about how things work in the Chinas, and basically in all of Southeast Asia, aka SEA.
Expats, stop me if you've heard a story like this one before:
Once upon a fictional time, there's a construction project with some younger buck with something to prove. His boss, or maybe he himself, undercuts the other bidders, and the project goes off, seemingly okay for awhile, until there's some 'construction accident' -- next thing you know on TV you see a score of dead, a pile of rubble, bare rebar and a bunch of splintered bamboo scaffolding.
You see, someone spiked the cement with too much sand to cut costs.
The police are at a loss of what to do. The courts are tied up with a backlog of cases and maybe they'll get to the families' civil concerns. In a few years.
What happens next? Well, I'll tell you. Someone behind the scenes gets pissed. Could be someone's Mom, brother, but basically they talk to some wiry old guy, maybe with some discreet tattoos and maybe some scars. Who talks to some younger guys with even more tattoos and scars. Money changes hands.
Our hapless friend is made an example of. Poor guy took a dive off a balcony / hung himself / you get the idea.
If it's really trouble, maybe his family gets some hush money, but the point is made. No more sand in the cement, m'kay?
This is why Indians don't fcuk with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thais. This is why they're the low one on the totem pole in those countries because everyone knows they're not trustworthy.
This is why you don't see slumdog shenanigans in any of the Chinas or SEA like you do in the USA. You also won't see it in Japan or Korea either because they have their own refined version of this scenario.
Don't believe me? Guess how Foxconn 'made things right' by Apple. Do you think the ol' Stevie now understands what the Chinese consider 'making things right'? You bet your ass he does.
Still don't believe me? Read the skinny on how Edison Chen was treated after he started bopping little Chinese starlets under the thumb of the Chinese Triads.
So now you know how the real globalists keep things running smoothly in that neck of the world. That's why when Uncle Drunky hears about chopped off hands, mistaking 'heavy water' for 'drinking water', or balcony diving I just roll my eyes.
On second thought, Mikey... never-even-mind. I don't think you have any friends or even friends of friends of friends like this, and your 2,000 LinkedIn friends don't count.
But just bear in mind: Every time you or one of your pasty Eloi bring up 'competition' and 'globalization' -- some of us Morlocks understand something different.
Forget I brought it up. Just get some zinc oxide for your sore ass. Happy thoughts! Carry on!
Mentok out.
[Three books for little Mikey Arrington]
1 comment:
Great post. Just shows the naivete of most Americans who think the whole world is honest the way most Americans are. Then they get suckered by Asians and live in denial that they were duped. I've been to Japan 5 times and it's pretty civilized but if you cross the Yakuza bad, you'll end up inside a cornerstone or underground parking garage pillar never to be heard of again. I can just image what goes on in China. I think in America it will eventually come to this too. We can only take so much economic robbery, collapse, and cons before something has to be done. We've got mafia here too remember and sooner or later the slumdogs will cross them and then it's all out war, which I believe might be a good thing. If we let the dogs know we're going to start behaving like the Chinese, then maybe, just maybe they will go home.
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