Mark and Spencer

Finally we can have a good night sleep without hearing all those drilling, shouting and loud construction noise after Oct 1. That is in our Shanghai apartment. Mark and Spencer will open on Oct 2. It is just across the street from us. I believe it has about 4 floors. That building was entirely gutted; from March 1 this year to now, the place has been transformed from a very ugly 80's building to a very modernized department store. Have to go take a look when I get back there in mid-October. It will be fun. Maybe I can some bisque.

Right now I am in Boston; think I packed the wrong stuff. It's cold and wet. Rain started this morning and will continue until I leave! Go figure.

Had the first 4-hour plus sleep in over a week. Haha. Even the kids were yelling and screaming upstairs, my body did not response.

the iPhone forensic....

Yes, and you do not want to have your iPhone lost or stolen anywhere. Even if you have it password protected; I can still reset and get everything off your iPhone - SMS, sent and received phone calls even though you cannot list them back, the last thing you looked at before going back to the main menu because the iPhone engineers designed the phone to take a snap shot of what you looked at last. Then, your emails in plain text; your web searches, sites, you name it, get it all... If you feel like you are a techie, here is the link to see it. This is a webcast by O'Reilly book with guest speaker Jonathan A. Zdziarski, author of iPhone Open Application Development.

You think SaskHeath is bad

try the one here in Macau! Totally bad. I am just wondering what happen if there were an epidemic in Macau rather than in HKG. People working in the hospital has no clue about hygiene. Cross contamination can be sighted everywhere. No precaution of any kind between the nurses and patients. Then ventilation in room was bad. My grandfather currently is sharing a room with another older one-hand gentleman. This guy has diabetic. And the stench from his urine and whatever else coming out of his bottom... it is etched in my brain and nostrils for a while I think. The nurses were totally lazy and didn't want to do anything. They yelled back and forth as if they were in kindergarten. You thought Pasqua was dusty and dirty, the hospitals are worse here. Dust bins with open lids. Patients using visitors elevators or vice versa. Totally bad... Visitors spitted in bins... There..... Doctors didn't wash hands in between seeing patients. No gloves, kept playing with hairs then to patients; get a haircut!

Been a busy week!

Yes, it has been a very busy week once I stepped foot on HK soil. Hong Kong, Macau back to Hong Kong. Then taking advantage of the "non-restricted" highspeed to download all the patches and upgrades for our Macbook Pro. For only one patch of 140MB from Shanghai would have taken anywhere from "super fast" 10 minutes to an average of 8 hours. Yes, 8 hours. While doing this, I was review all the contracts iron-wife has received for work. Sh*tty construct was all I can say. After reading 3 contracts, I was driven. Driven to pop open a bottle of Chiva Scotch! Once only though! If two bottles, I knew I was in trouble. I could not believe people actually coming up with legal stuff like that and then had the ball to tell contractors to sign as is; and then contractors actually signed them!!! One contract, I actually had to rewrite from scratch and correct all the spelling mistake! Then there was one with both English and Chinese. The Chinese translation did not match up to the English in the proper legal grammatical sense. The Chinese was a literal word by word translation. Scary. I finally told iron-wife to get the company to remove the Chinese. So, in case you all wondering what I have been doing this week, it was not fun and game. It was all work. Serious work. I only had time to surface for air to pick up a laptop, my lunches and that was it.

The laptop, my Chinese teacher wanted a replacement laptop; a Thinkpad. If getting in China, you never know if it is real or authentic. That's how bad it is. And with the RMB is higher then HK$, last I look the conversion rate is: RMB 1 = HK$ 1.14. During a lesson I had with her, we were talking and I showed her the conversion rate... And all of a sudden all the lights went on. When she studied at HK University, the exchange rate was: RMB 1 = HK$ 0.8 to 0.9. Got a top of the line Thinkpad T400 with Windows XP Pro and all, the cost came to HK12,500 (CAD$1,700). This machine is 14.1" and light! Light! About 3lbs or so. And the guy threw in an anti-virus program with one year free subscription, a mouse and a very nice carry case. This Wan Cai Computer Mall is big and houses all sorts of computer shops, Mobile shops, computer components, whatever you want this mall has. Hey, want an iPhone 3G? It's about HK$5,300.

Tomorrow, heading over to Macau to do a day trip to visit mom and dad. Let see how things go over there.

O yeah, I was looking for a Mobile device that I can surf the web, with camera, that I can load application to, that I can listen to podcasts and watch movies, do emails... Well, I thought I have finally found one in this Nokia E71. It shapes like a Blackberry. Very nice; has everything. I went to play around with it in the Official Nokia store. This phone runs on an operating system called Symbian; Nokia just recently bought the entire Symbian operating system from Samsung and Sony (I believe) and will turn this into an Open-source operating system. OK, after playing around for 5 minutes, I could not find what I want from the UI (User Interface). Hey, if I have to relearn, forget it. I am wasting time here. And the screen is wider than long. Basically just like the Blackberry. Nah, not going to pull out my credit card; plus after buying this phone (about HK$3898.00) I have to buy this software called MissingSync (US$39.99) to sync my Mac's contact, iPhoto, Calendar and podcasts. More money to spend. Last I heard there is a recession coming and Cash is king. I looked at another mobile phone too Nokia N95 8GB; basically is a walking Mobile piece of work with 5M pixel camera, Wi-Fi, aGPS, edit Word, Excel documents, 3G, High data packet transmission, TV-out.... for a cost of HK$6,000. Well.... it is as thick as a brick. I might walk funny. And this Nokia N95 also uses Symbian Operating System. I think - NOT. After playing around further, I have come to the realization that Steve did a good job making the UI very intuitive to use. The only thing I hate about his elegant design is NO KEYBOARD. I have decided I guess.... iPhone for me when all the kinks are worked out.

Very funny

If you guys can read Chinese you would be very amused at this news article. To sum it up, this is a report of the top three properties around Shanghai area that dropped the most per square meter. This article used the Olympics diving events and different category to list the top three worst performed properties. Also, it included the "difficulty" rating of the drop. The article listed single 3 meter and 10 meter diving events, 3 meter double and 10 meter double, etc... Very funny.

Jade on 36

Good view of Huangpu river to Puxi, plush decor, elegant, very Western, luxury, high-end, give your taste buds a sensual experience, give yourself a very pleasing food presentation show, still hungry afterward....

We were at Jade on 36 last night for dinner with Audrey's business partner. The place was on top floor of the Shangri-la hotel. But this building is dwarfed by the two buildings next door: the Jinmao and the Shanghai financial center; both buildings are one of the tallest in the world.

The menu is a set menu, ranged from Small to Medium to Large. The small is a 4-course meal, medium is 6-course and large is 8-course. It comes with two big bottles of complimentary mineral water or a bottle of champagne.

I took the medium Prune. The meal started with a complementary bread and sardine mouse presented in a sardine can. Nice. A bit too watery. Then the Crunchy Fierce Salad. It came in a big bowl with leafs at the bottom and several layers of various fried "something" (a bit too dark to identify). Crushed everything up, mixed and ate. The lime dressing mixed with the crushed up fried things with the leafy green was really good. A refreshing taste to my tongue. Then came the Fragrois, it wasn't much thank god! It was only a little bit, the side and shape of the Japanese pocky stick. The outside is candy coated with the fragrois inside. It was presented with a silver ash tray. The berry flavour was nice. Then came the lobster. It was a very small baby crawl served in a bowl with a galeton sheet covered over the bowl. Nice presentation. Lobster is lobster, hard to make it tasty. Then the my main course came; the black cod. O I missed eating fish. The cod came in a very large bowl; but the portion was the size of a MacDonald's chicken nugget. Served with the equal portion of rice and a compliment of steamed green, same portion. Haha.... After the meal, we were offered frozen water melon on a stick to wash our pallets. Then my dessert came. My Lychee came on two sticks. It was not lychee, it was lychee froam wrapping up a berry of some sort. One bite, two bite, my dessert was done. Then we had a complimentary apple toffee in an expresso cup. Sweet and sour.

After two hours of sensual and tasting experience, the bill came to RMB2,800. When I wrote the tips in the Visa bill, the waiter asked if I could pay cash for the tips; if not, the Chinese gov't takes a cut and they cannot get the full amount, if any. Wow.

Still hungry. A bowl of cereal before bed was in order.

First year away

Wow! Iron-wife has just informed me during dinner that I "have been in" Shanghai over a year now. Left Canada on Sept 4/07 and arrived on Sept 5/07. Man o man. So what exactly have I accomplished over the first year away, well:

- I start understand Mandarin and talk more and hear more.
- I finally can use pinyin to type Chinese SMS or letter to my parents.
- I renewed my Portuguese passport so I didn't have to waste the last 4 pages of my Canadian passport due to expire in 2011!
- I got this express pass in and out of Hong Kong airport.
- I trim down, holding at 79-80Kg.
- I start knowing Shanghai streets better.
- I can use a wok whipping dishes like no tomorrow.
- I have more time to be a geek.
- I can actually converse with our regular airport run driver and the Ayi (our house helper).
- I got married? :-P
- I have cooked more than my last 5 years in Regina. Cook not instant noodles or campbell soup.
- I have sampled how Western foreigners in business here in Shanghai still think they know everything.
- I have traveled all over Asia, safe places only. And can go to Singapore knowing my way around without much help. I can even be a tour guide there ;-) India couple times.
- I think I am just scratching the surface of a very complex environment; but it is due to the tug of war between the "developing mentality" of the next generation of Chinese and the Commie controlled doctrines.
- I still have my Mac and think will be just a Mac family - unless Steve Jobs begins to peeve me off with less functional and more elegant products. Next procurement will be either a phone or two and the Macbook Air with Solid State Hard drive.
- I have no TV in the house for a year now; does not seem to miss it much. Funny. But after having TV on in CNBC all day in hotel rooms, my brain just wants the TV off.

Wonder what the second year holds.

Torture?

Iron-wife and I were talking this morning what we should do for the last Saturday we are together in Shanghai. She'll be off to Beijing on Sunday morning and onward to HK Wednesday night and then teach a different course from Thursday morning at 730am to Saturday evening. Non-stop action for her this coming me. Me, I'll be heading to HK/Macau on Tuesday and then back to HK on Wednesday night, staying there until the 15th morning before me arriving in North America again. I was to leave on Sunday but was overruled. Didn't realize Sunday was the Mid-autumn festival; and it will be 2 years since we laid eyes on each other. Wow.... And we will be in HK; that was where everything happened. So..... Needless to say...

Anyway, the torture was stemming from the discussion of what to do for Saturday. Then iron-wife's idea was to have facial. Well... Not on Saturday but today. She booked me one. Good timing as Air Canada might have to charge me extra having a big red pimple on my nose! And with the air quality here and I walked all over town, pretty much lots of dust and oil blocked my pores. The facial lady wasn't far from our apartment, just 5-minute walk. It was a renovated ground floor one-bedroom place sitting in the middle of downtown within rows of old pre-20 5 story high buildings. First, I was relaxed with all the scrubbing and washing on my face. Hmmm... OK. Then she asked about that big red pimple on my nose. Yes, it started about 3 days ago. Then I heard some drawers opened. And next thing I knew, as if I was a patient in the OR waking up in the middle of an operation with my eyes bandaged shut. I felt lots of pressing on my forehead, around my nose, scraping, scraping then the grand finally, poke, poke, squeeze, squeeze.... She announced all the gunk from the pimple were extracted out of the "area". More scraping and pressing. My face had been just worked over. Hurts like hell. And she asked during her "operation", had I have one before. Nope. She announced, it will be better and less painful next time. O.... So after tolerated these pains on my face, I was once again back to the land of comfort. She washed my face again and then applied mud on my face. Relaxed.... All threw out the initial ordeal, I did not realize until now, that I had my fingers crossed tight, very stiff. After the mud, there were facial massage as well as some other cream or toner on my face. Then a 10-minute massage on my upper shoulder and neck. OK, that I could take. More please ;-) An hour after my facial experience, it ended with RMB 320.00 (CAD 55.00). I think my face is happier and lighter without all those gunk from the pollution.

A recall!

Yikes. My Sony Vaio model is part of the recall list. Of all the time I used (rather abuse) it and all the Cisco and Microsoft and BMC students used in all over Asia, no one got hurt. Phew... (knock on wood)!

So I went to the Sony support site. Followed the instructions and to a website link that was suppose to help identify the recall list, I got a blank page with the word "Test.". What? Did I see it right? I thought it was because there might be some scripts running in the background to identify the model; nope. Suppose to be a website that requires users entering the model number and serial numbers. Right.

Sony, what's up with this recall business? First the battery, now the computer, what's next? Game consoles?

Dealt with

OK, got my new Macbook Pro charger now. Man, this morning's place was a rip off. Well, this place I bought the new charger not exactly cheap but within acceptable range and I NEED ONE! Alternative is to buy a new Macbook Pro or get a new Macbook Air of my iron-wife with a new solid state hard drive. Right....

This evening, after escorted my wife to the restaurant for her dinner meeting with client, I continued on the "QUEST" of my holy grail. My destination, the Cybermart, was a good hike. In total there and back from my apartment is a good one-hour walk. But I enjoyed it (and my arches, ankles, heels will complain loud and clear tomorrow, stupid Arthritis). After "dumping" my iron-wife, I walked on the side streets toward my destination; what a difference on the "street life" in the evening compared to "office hours". I could see small shops, chic and local street-side restaurants were filled with people. People looked more relaxed (no, not the feeling I have with a 500ml can of TsingTao beer in my hand now). I ventured into a street that was totally blocked off for pedestrian use. And the restaurants, all authentic local Shanghainese food! Someone coming to Shanghai soon? Please, pretty please so I can try them with someone!!! Hee hee... Sorry vegetarians not welcome. Haha... Then I was back on the hustling bustling of HuaiHai Lu. It's a long long street with shopping. Anything you want, you get on this street; even a gun club where you can shoot at targets (NOT pedestrians).

O where am I going with this babbling? It's just that I never really walk at night on the same streets that I walked during daytime. The atmosphere was different. There was another side of Shanghai metropolitan local feel that I never seen. A quite philosophical feeling (at this point I still did not have any beer yet!).

OK back to the Cybermart. I ventured in there. The first Apple store, no 85W charger and I must order in. Right. And they wouldn't tell me the price or anything. So I kept walking. I must looked like a tourist! Shopkeepers started poking out and asked what I want. Found it; another Apple store. It had exactly what I was looking for and at the "high end" of the price I wanted to pay, still almost half of what the other store quoted me this morning just across the street from my apartment. Mission accomplished; going home.

As I walked and walked and walked, I was debating if I wanted to eat out or not.
Sushi bar, passed; noodle house, passed; Mediterranean restaurant, passed; Hong Kong style restaurant, passed; Indian, passed. Then beer at the corner store. OK! So here I am sitting in front of the computer with a 500ml TsingTao beer and left over stir-fried veggies from last night. Ha ha... After these appetizer dishes, I am heading to have some instant noodle and vegetarian meat. Shhh... cannot say "imitation meat". Hee hee.

Yikes!

Now I understood why I got that "special" feeling with my palms on my Macbook Pro laptop. The wire going into the Magnetic plug to my laptop was faulty. This morning, I took a closer look, yellow-ish, burned holes... Yikes!

So the hunt is on to get a new 85W charger for my Macbook Pro. There was an Apple retailer just across the street. I almost had a heart attack, the store wanted RMB1,350 for it! For a US$80 part! Ridiculous. The guy gave me an excuse that it is hard to come by. Wait, that was an apple store right? Ummm..... So will head over to the Cybermart tonight while my iron-wife wines and dines her clients. Let see if I can get it at sub-thousands.

Speaking of Yikes. We are planning to head out for supper with a good friend of iron-wife this Saturday night. To Jade 36. This restaurant is suppose to have a very nice view of the Bund from Shangri-la looking back over the Huangpu River towards our apartment's direction. Well, well, if we were to reserve a non-smoking table, we get NO view! The non-smoking section is next to the door. The smoking section is where all the views are. Go figure. I guess this is China. Haha.

First it was the key...

then it was the wire connected to my computer; and then I kept seeing this beach ball spinning on my screen. Agh.... Was I awake or was I in a nightmare. No, I wasn't dreaming. I already had my first cup of strooong coffee.

The key came off yesterday; some plastic pin broke away. Then this morning I noticed my computer wasn't charging. The magnetic pin was in. OK, wired was pinned. Need new cord when I get to Boston or Canada or HK whichever comes first.

Then the beach ball spinning, better than Window's blue screen of death! Good thing I backed up my important files. O well.... A quick "repair disk" fixed my harddrive problem.

Things come in three?

It is so funny at the sight of my good looking Macbook Pro. The keyboard looks all beaten up with a missing key; and the charging cord is dangling next to the computer.

The elegant has become the ugly.

Hi-tech

With the amount of time I spent evaluating technologies, I am I can start writing my own column! Yikes. I just spent another 3 hours evaluating Windows Mobile 6 and Apple's latest iPhone firmware 2.0.x. To sum up: get the iPhone or iPod Touch if you don't need to type constantly and can "suffer" without Flash content on the mini-Safari.

The Windows Mobile 6 is basically a striped down version of Windows. And in attempting to browse the Microsoft site for software list and all, very user un-friendly in terms of finding information. Everything still looks so "Windows". Not elegant, some even look like DOS-era interface.

Apple's website on the applications available for iPhone and iPod Touch are so elegantly laid out; very logical and concise. To boot, the price is right! Many applications are free. And you might pay a range of 0.99 to 6.99US per application compared to Windows Mobile application of over 19.99US at least.

I just downloaded multiple applications for my iPod Touch. Spanish phrases as we are invited to be in Barcelona in December this year, Windows Remote Desktop, VNC remote desktop (now I can remote my Macbook Pro from my iPod Touch in my bedroom. Hee hee. Bloomberg market info; IM+, a multi-IM client which I can now connect to MSN, iChat all in the little device. Flashlight, I can turn my iPod Touch into a flashlight and also strobbing in case I got lost at night and require assistance; A Chinese/English dictionary and Wikipanion for term lookup. All for FREE.

I also tried the mail program built in. Good for checking emails but if I want to response, I look for a keyboard.

A new iPhone 3G can have all the same functions and then for the obvious - Phone. As of last week, the street price for an iPhone 3G in China is about RMB4,800 (CAD753.00). A month ago, the iPhone 3G in China is about RMB9,000. What a drop in price! In HK, it is selling for HK$8,500 to HK$10,000. RMB and HK$ is roughly the same with 1RMB = 1.3HK. If I were to get one, I want to be sure Steve Jobs and company has sorted out the connection problem with this new phone. Customers were complaining about drop calls and lost of connection to 3G network. Traced back to a chipset made in China. Haha, go figure. A firmware upgrade was pushed out. Since then I have not heard anything; but with Apple you never know.

O yeah, one neat thing about the new iPhone 3G is that it has Chinese handwriting built-in. So I can write the stroke of a character and it recognizes the proper character. Neat!

Google Chrome

The new web browser on the block. Just downloaded it to my XP virtual machine to try. First impression, it is very simple and clean. None of those thick Menu bar on top for "File, Edit, ..." options. It's just a little box and you can start surfing. Only one setting you need to do on the first start of the browser. It asked if I wanted to keep Google as the default search engine, of course! That was it and I am off surfing.

Now look under the hood, if you are not careful Google captures your surfing behaviour and sends information back to Google for "statistical analysis to improve surfing experience". Right. More like, how do we generate more Ad income from user surfing behaviour. I turned that option off. OK, even though it is turned off but does not mean it is not doing it. Have to do some deep packet analysis.

Setting default web page when I started up the web browser is the most painless amongst the three browsers I used - Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

Scary thing is after I installed, it captured my browsing history from Firefox and use the information as Chrome's own. Yikes.

One feature I like, it is called Incognito browser window. What it does is to erase all traces of you surfing a site from your computer. Cool. Now, parents have to figure a new way to check their children's surfing habits. Now, they will need a keylogger either hardware type or software type. Or setup a listener on a different computer with a huge harddrive to capture all the traffic from the children computers to the web; then identify the IP address of the children computers. And from there, install Shark or Ethereal to analyze the traffic when it is put back into human format. Phew... Just wait when kids or some criminals figure this "incognito" browser option out. I can see several applications for all the s#x offenders etc out there. What is Google thinking? Ah, Google did say that if a user downloaded a file using this Incognito browser window, it would be on the harddrive; and the stats and information are still being tracked on the other end, meaning the website servers. Right. If I don't know where you have been on a computer, do you think I will find out who the other end is? Umm...

Nonetheless, this browser seems to be very user-friendly. One thing, it does installed a little application (process) called "GoogleUpdater.exe" in the background to check updates. Right.... Checking updates huh? Hee hee...

Canada trip all set

OK.

Sep 15 HKG->YVR->YQR
Sep 19 DO NOT DISTURB - golf day
Sep 25 YQR->BOS
Sep 29 BOS->YQR
Oct 03 YQR->YVR->HKG

After that, I still won't be back to Shanghai yet! I'll have to be in HKG->TPE->HKG->PVG; all said and done, I will be away from Shanghai close to a month.

AC's ticket price is getting outrageous. I was browsing and ready to book my flight; saw a cheap 780 one-way; but when I try change the return HKG date that fare disappeared! It jumped close to double! Yikes! How could that be for that mere 5 seconds? AGH... I never paid that much flying. But I shouldn't be complaining as I am flying Biz class for inbound and outbound for less than 1/2 of the lowest Biz fare. That's it. I have used up all my SuperElite coupons. No more. From now on, just like everyone else - back of the bus. Current price for the lowest fare is about 3,200 one-way.

Since I have accumulated lots of points the last two years, I have used about 33,000 for 10 days of car rental in Regina. Not bad. And 40,000 for my Biz class to Boston and back. Taxes and fuel charges for the Boston trip are expensive, 200.00; I remember two years ago was about 100 or so.

That's it. Got to come before Winter sets in.