Personal Blog of Carl Pei

I’ve now been in China for a year, surviving on my own. This entry is a look back at what’s happened and is written both for you the reader and me, as a reminder of what has happened and what remains to be done.

I remember many years ago, when I was 6 and attended preschool in Sweden, we were doing maths. I worked and thought hard to complete my assignments quickly, while many others were struggling and held their hands up for the teacher to help them. I too help my hand up, not to ask for help, but to ask the teacher what to do now that I was done. To my great surprise, she told me to sit quietly and wait for the others. Then she left me with her stinky breath of too much coffee and cigarettes, to help someone else. I expected the teacher to praise me. All the hard work for nothing.

Throughout the entire Swedish school system, I was never motivated, always staying under the radar and not joining into class discussions unless asked by the teacher. But I was not dumb either, I always managed to get above average grades, just a cut below those who put their entire heart and soul into the schoolwork and system with minimal effort. During the last year of High School, I got very fed up with the school system and how it worked. Especially the part where some students kiss teachers’ ass. I don’t kiss ass. I felt underestimated by everyone, especially teachers, who failed to recognize my abilities and compensate accordingly. People who were dumber, knew less but kissed more ass than me ended up with better grades. The attitude at the time was, “This game fu*king sucks, I’m not gonna play it anymore. Let me find my own game to play. The rewards will suck anyway.” Slowly, the idea of moving to China formed, and as graduation approached, I decided to go for it.

(more…)

This past week has been pretty unbearable. Life in China has been cold, very cold.

The government has issued a nationwide red alert because of heavy snowstorms that has put this country in a state of shock. Transportation is no longer working, trains and busses have stopped mid-way or slowed down to a crawl. To rub salt into wound, now is the time when people travel home to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year - the most important holiday in China.

In some cities, there has been no electricity nor water for 4 days. Many people are trying to book planes to South China because of the relatively warmer climate.

Here in Zhuhai, it has been around 5-6 degrees Celcius for the past week. Traditionally a warm and subtropical city, there are no heaters in the apartments. Basically, the temperature inside is the same as the temperature outside. Right now I’m wearing a thick jacket in my own apartment and my toes are freezing to death! Showering and getting out of bed have become a nightmare. In the neighboring city of Guangzhou, 200,000+ people have camped several days in wait for a train that will take them home for the New Year.

Business has also been affected. I can not ship anything outside of this province, and am forced to rely on local services which have greatly increased costs. Also, packages are taking longer to reach their destination. In result, more complaints have been received. It has been a hectic time. Many here have related these events to those in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, and I tend more and more to agree. There’s no denying that climate change is happening.

Luckily, the snowstorm is almost over (according to forecasts). From Monday next week, the temperature will start to gradually increase to the nice and warm subtropical Zhuhai again. Hopefully I’ll be able to switch my jacket for a t-shirt.

A friend from Sweden is here for his China experience, and I can see how I was several months ago in his actions and words.

Now, whenever he has a question or needs help with anything, I answer quickly and confidently. I’ve helped him get to this city, get an apartment, buy a laptop, and also familiarize with the city and the local customs.

By seeing his unfamiliarity with living independently, people, money and decision making - I see how much I’ve changed and grown and it feels good.

I followed my dream, surviving alone in China, and it turned out to be the best decision I’ve made.

I’m back in China and things are starting to really make sense this time…

Background

After finishing High School in Sweden, I decided to take a break from studying. Alone, I go to the small seaside city Zhuhai in the South of China in search for myself. There I meet a lot of new and interesting friends from many walks of life and traveled around nearby places such as Hong-Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. To survive, I had some money from a website sale (mid- $x,xxx USD) I did only months before the trip started, small monthly revenue (mid- $xxx) from advertising on my websites and later started experimenting with export during my four months in Zhuhai. Although sometimes life was hard living in the small dark solo apartment, these were the best four months of my life.

Round Two

I go back to Sweden briefly, and since December last year, I’m back in Zhuhai. Between the time I arrived and now has been spent on expending the export business. It’s now more organized and efficient, saving me time. I’ve also found ways to do the same things for less money, increasing my revenue. The workload was pretty heavy and monotonous, so I’ve now hired an employee to take care of the non-creative elements of the business (eg. packing, forms).

This second round, I haven’t had the chance to take care of myself as much in terms of meeting new friends and working out, and hope to change that soon.

The Goal

The goal is to establish a good, steady income for myself while I continue studies. This means that I’ll need to find loyal, smart and hardworking people here taking care of things on a long term over here while I’m over there. I’ll only be able to travel back and forth 4-6 times a year. This is currently proving to be quite hard, but there is still time left before I leave in August.

However, this is an important part of my life and I must get this rolling. With this money, I would no longer be the “average poor student” and can concentrate on more important things while in school.

The Blog

In this blog I’ll write about my life and the things I do, learn, experience and think. This blog will now carry a much more personal tone than previously and I hope it will grow together with me.

For the first time in months, I check my email address listed in the whois registry. Skimming through all the junk, I notice a title that catches my eye, Scams. And I open it (some info censored for privacy):

From: Chase ******* <*****.*******@kcsg.com>
To: *******@carlpei.com
Subject: Scams
Date: 18/01/08 17:37

I know you have been sending fake IRS emails and setup a fake IRS set to
collect my information such as SS number and credit card number. I have
reported you to the local authorities in Stockholm and they are on there
way to pick you up for fraud. Have fun in jail. Peace.

–
Chase *******
KCSG News, IT

At first, I thought this was some kind of prank. Then I remembered my web host mentioning to me over MSN, in a non-serious manner, that someone reported to him that one of my domains (aglocoearners.com) was used for phishing. I asked him if it was something I was responsible of doing, he said no. I was confused but had other things to do and didn’t think about it more.

I search for “aglocoearners.com” on Google and find that it indeed was used for phishing, and the fish was already published on the anti-phishing website Castle Cops. By now I started to panic.

Checking through my email, I found more messages of the same kind. I immediately called the Swedish Police, but unfortunately their IT department only works on weekdays, so I’ll have to call again tomorrow. I’ve also emailed GoDaddy and various other people.

aglocoearners.com was a domain I picked up back when AGLOCO was being hyped up by blogging gurus like John Chow. I was going to start a AGLOCO forum on the domain together with a friend who I no longer have contact with. It never happened, and the domain was idle. We both had FTP access to the server hosting the domain. I don’t think it was the friend who did this. It’s more likely that he saved the account details somewhere that was later stolen.

Additional Info:
- The phishing email was sent out at the 17th (3 days ago).
- The domain folder shows a CHMOD of 775, unchangeable.

Phishing Email Header: (from one of those emails I got)

Received: from mail.pegaprecision.com ([71.158.242.2]) by mail.decossas.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:14:50 -0600
Received: from User ([151.12.152.26]) by mail.pegaprecision.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:12:31 -0800
Reply-To: <no_reply@usa.gov>
From: "Internal Revenue Service U.S.A"<service@usa.gov>
Subject: Notice From IRS
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13.13.29 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Bcc:
Return-Path: service@usa.gov
Message-ID: <JUPITERvmkBgAusejaa000027ef@mail.pegaprecision.com>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 17 Jan 2008 12:12:31.0718 (UTC) FILETIME=[3C56B060:01C85902]
X-TM-AS-Product-Ver: SMEX-7.0.0.1345-5.0.1023-15672.002
X-TM-AS-Result: Yes-28.070100-8.000000-1

Any help is appreciated!

Currently, I’m still very confused about what to do and would appreciate if anyone knowledgeable in the field would give a few suggestions. It would be nice if you could link to this post hopefully to attract people who know what to do.