When I went thru immigration, I made small talk about what my college’s Football team was up to that year. I HATED football. But my roomie was a fan and he always gave me a tl;dr I could recite in under a minute.

Holy hell I was always the fastest Asian guy thru foreign immigration at LAX.

Pretty soon the word SLAM is mean “to gently prod in a meek and inconsequential manner”

Me and my roommate in college come from Southeast Asia. I’m of Chinese descent with lighter skin and he is darker skinned, more indicative of Southeast Asian natives ie Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines.

We went to college in Texas. While he was out with a bunch of our fellow countrymen, they got stopped because the cops thought they were “behaving suspicious” while driving. But quite obviously it’s because they looked Mexican. While waiting for one cop to search the vehicle, my friend put his hands in his pockets, and the cops immediately had their hands on their pistol holsters. HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM.

This was before 9/11. We both moved back home and found work here. Being a damn good engineer, he was given a contract job in Texas for a couple years, in the 2010s. He was asked by his bosses if he wanted to stay on for good, but he turned it down. Without elaborating, he told me, THINGS HAD GOTTEN WORSE.

As for me? Nothing much, just was called a COMMIE and asked where my little red book was. I think now they would shoot me.

Rich people. The cost is rich people.

Haha. I would not be surprised if this is truly the case. However I do not believe that it’s as simple as just straight up asking for money.

In his native state of Johor, there was a mega project called Forest City built by China developers that was effectively halted by then Prime Minister Mahathir in 2018. This PM has famously been known to have bad blood with the Johor royal family. My guess is this visit is also to discuss revitalizing this project, allowing China to recoup some of that lost investment.

Traveling with him are both the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Housing, lending some merit to this rumour.

Speaking of evidence, the latest UN report I could find was in August 2022. Direct accounts of 40 individuals from an alleged 1.3 million detained.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region

I do wish to see a follow up report

What I’m seeing is that China’s subsidies create cheaper products that benefit consumers, be it Chinese or the world at large.

Meanwhile American subsidies to American companies benefit their CEOs who then cut themselves an obscenely fat bonus, and fire half their downline staff.

Best to end it while you are still “Master of your Domain”.

The American language is reductive to the point of being inaccurate or at worse, downright wrong. Born from this nature is the reason they use the phrase “deplane” whereas the rest of the world uses “disembark”.