Highlighted, is a part of the response in google’s blog to its decision of censuring some search results in its chinese portal.
And yes, Chinese regulations will require us to remove some sensitive information from our search results. When we do so, we’ll disclose this to users, just as we already do in those rare instances where we alter results in order to comply with local laws in France, Germany and the U.S.
Ouch 
This week a person asked me through mail about cultural shock.
It seems to me that, much more than the social norms that we see in travel books, Cultural Shock presents itself in a very diferent manner, and does not necessarily require a foreign country for that.
You see, what I have realized is that the biggest form of cultural shock can be the many little things that make your daily life, and not this monstrous ghost called “national idendity”. The TV channels you see when you were a kid, your favorite and most hated politicians, commons games at school.
I mean, I felt some cultural shock when I came to japan the first time. But I came to realize that it was a culture shock not because I was in japan, but because I was in a mostly-humanities university, among mostly people from economics, marketing, history, politics background. So no one would care for the latest slashdot story, or get a Microsoft joke. Or talk silly things about integrals and numbers, or care about spurious logic. Even the tone of the generic jokes were different. Not to say anything about brazillian “deep” culture, like Chaves.
I think these kind of common things connect people easier… make half sentences go through. In this way, I have felt this kind of cultural shock before, even before leaving Brazil.
On the other hand, this time out, I feel much more at home. The nerds in the lab understand me, and I understand them a lot too. It is reassuring to see them reading slashdot (even if the japanese one), or playing Final fantasy 5 for a few hours at my place.
I mean, today I was talking to a couple of friends from the Micro-processor lab, and it went like this.
“I should be in the food business - that is where the money is. Everyone needs to eat!”
“And what would you do?”
“I don’t know… I could do hamburgers… I know! MOS Burgers!”
And the funny thing is, there IS a burger chain in japan called MOS Burgers…
Of course, it opened the worm can for all kinds of “the burger needs more silicone” jokes.
… cringe …
Yeah, I’m in the right place.
We just had the very first jishin of the year, and its centers wasn’t even that far from here. Just a 3 degree over Ibaraki, but that was enough to shake things up here a little bit.
The rain, on the other side, is much more troublesome than these puny earthquakes.
“if anyone knows of any reason why these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace”
He slowly rose from his seat. Murmurs spread like wildfire. His calm, sure steps were folled by frownings and surprised gazes. Someone started to laugh.
The room fell in an embarassed silence, as he stood, one step from the couple. He looked at her eyes. She was not finding any of this to be funny at all.
“Are you really going to marry this guy?”
“Yes.” There was nothing more to be said.
He turned towards the groom and, for the very first time, acknowledge his existance. He produced a gun from his suit, steadied it against the middle of the groom’s eyes and didn’t say a word.
Many cried. Many ducked under the benches. No one could quite understand what was going on. And, in the ensuing chaos, he slowly pulled the smoking gun towards his own mouth.
Just a quick post to keep the posts flowing
Today I had two very weird dreams, which I got to remember with lots of amazing detail. The first one does not deserve to be posted here, but the second one is kinda worthy of note. The main character of the dream was a buck-rogers kind of sci fi hero, in a war on humans against aliens. Our hero manages to get to an alien on the bargaining table (how is reason for another post itself). So in the table we have our hero in one end, and this alien babe on silver spandex, and a crab-like humanoid by her side on the other. The dream them proceeds to show the alien girl putting about 10 empty bottles of booze in front of her, while our hero is struggling with the second bottle. Already drunk, our hero asks: “How many livers do you guys get?” - “What is a liver?” - “Ah, that explains everything.”
…
I mean, after spending the new year reading dune AND asimov, I should expect more in my dreams than humanoid aliens with universal languages and bad puns based on terrible pseudo-science.
Anyway, coming to school today I ran into one of my favorite uses of “japengrish” - or japanese words based on english words with totally different meaning. The offender this time was the infamous O.B., O.G. combo. In “japanese”, O.B. O.G. are terms referred to people from a college, school group who left the group because they had already graduated. Roughly equivalent to Alumni, but a little bit broader in meaning. When I first heard the word, I thought it was a real japanese word, something like “oubi”, but, alas, that was not the case… O.B, actually means “office-boy”. And the female correspondent, O.G., of course, means “office-girl”.
…
I mean, what is the problem in calling them “Sotsugyousei” or something similar?
Ok, It is a new day, with new classes ahead…