life - Kill the bureaucracy

A you know, I alway enjoyed dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy. It is their system, they can ask me to write applications while standing on my head, but that is not going to annoy me. China has not only invented the bureaucracy (although the French have also claims here), because of the size of the country, it is a forceful power you cannot change as an individual, so you comply or ignore the b-people.
Unfortunately, much of my current days in Europe include similar fights with the bureaucracy, that seems to be able to match even the worst excesses of what Chinese bureaucrats have done to me. I cannot go into details, but the honor of being able to drive me crazy is equally shared by both Dutch and Belgium government departments. I would have loved to get it off my chest, but I might still need those b-people. Also writing on my weblog unfortunately has to include some self-censorship.

Update: Guess the bureacracy you have to deal with is always worse. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng got his license revoked for not reporting he moved his office. Crackpot Chronicles points to a NYT article.

Books on the b-word