There is an old tradition in the seafaring world of rounding out your roster of able-bodied seamen by slipping them Mickies or knocking them over the head. The sailors would rise in aching confusion in the morning with the ship underway and no escape possible. The Royal Navy would do the same thing at sea- “impressing” sailors from vessels detained on the high seas to fill the deleted ranks of their crew.

Ashore, the tradition was forever associated with the Chinese port city that lent its name to the practice of nautical kidnapping: Shanghai became a verb.

I liked Shanghai a lot when I finally got there. Before that, back in the day, traveling on the train in the New Territories of Hong Kong, there was an ominous announcement that used to be broadcast in the compartments that you were approaching the frontier, and that you had better get your ass off the train before the ChiComs boarded the cars, since the train went on to the curiously Western-appearing city of commerce up on the Huangpu River.

The Bund- the old European Banking District- feels just like home, and there are houses in the English Tudor manner and others in the Swiss Chalet style, and fabulous Art Deco buildings that remain from the bad old days.

I mention that because the FedEx people were kind enough to send a tracking number for a recent purchase, which apparently left some sweat shop in that very city yesterday. The box will travel across the South China Sea to a FedEx hub somewhere else- perhaps via the former Naval Air Station at Cubi Point in the Republic of the Philippines- before landing in the Continental United States and arrive at Big Pink within the week.

The piers of Subic Bay were close aboard the airstrip, and that was where where the big decks could pull in. The base was a wonderful place, not to mention the dubious pleasures of Olongapo City across Shit River from the West Gate. Subic was everyone’s favorite port visit, back in the same day when Hong Kong was still a Crown Colony.

At Cubi, the Seabees moved enough dirt to create the 10,000 foot airstrip to rival the amount dredged to create the Big Ditch of the Panama Canal. a

I was thus dealing with the current controversy about the Apple Corporations merciless exploitation of the Chinese worker in the context of the former ruthless exploitation of the workers- male and female- of the Republic of the Philippines.

My personal involvement in this chain of shame is the procurement of a new laptop computer.

As I may have mentioned, I am a cult follower of the Apple Corporation, and I regret that the pristine white case of my old MacBook had become so stained with the grim of my palms that I was driven to clean it up last Friday night after getting home from the office.

Apparently I overdid the enthusiastic scrubbing of the old Apple, and when I logged on the next morning (thinking overnight would be sufficient for any residual moisture to have evaporated) the number keys on the keyboard had gone non-functional, followed shortly by mysterious stutterings from the hard drive. “Well,” I thought, “It is three years old anyway, and time for a new box.”

So, MacBook Pro it is. I am on the back-up computer that goes back to the transition period from PC to Mac- the second Mac Mini. It is still cool enough that I am thinking abut replacing this box with an iMac, since this one has not kept up with the times, and will not stream video due to an increasingly obsolescent operating system.

Gotta have that, right?

Of course, that was the whole reason for that ill-fated legislation to protect America’s Hollywood intellectual property from being Shanghai-ed by unscrupulous overseas predators. Like Apple, you know?

(Consumers beg impressed with the new Apple line.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com