Wednesday, September 30, 2009

air ticket

nice wine

It's a very nice bottle of wine indeed!  Friends of iron-wife came from US for a visit.  This was a bottle of wine they got somewhere in Shanghai.  And I was the receiving end of this lovely.  Smooth, and fruity.  I can get use to this brand and age still nothing could have compared to the bottle for red at Graham's house that he served us for the last time.  A 1975 Red he had completely forgotten about, tugged in a corner of the basement.  That was .... like him now was "heaven". 



Saturday, September 26, 2009

expensive dinner

RMB 2,270 or CAD 350.00 later. Not worth it. Quality seemed to drop
compared to my first visit two years ago. I think this is getting
more to the flaunting than anything else.

My Rack of Lamp was .... Meat was not firm, a little bit "mushy"
shall we say. Portion was small. Not like at Greko's that's for sure.

This is the place. http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/shanghai/listings/dining/fusion/has/laris/

That amount I paid tonight was equivalent to 21 meals at our local
vegetarian restaurant with 3 dishes per meal! 21 meals! That's
pretty much a whole month of eating out! Healthier too!

Friday, September 25, 2009

high

Drophead

Insane! I have just saw a Phantom Drophead Coupe across the street in
front of my apartment. The drive came out was not that "old"! About
my age!!!! He was stopped for Valet Parking for the KTV across the
street.

Hopefully, he's not going to get a ticket tonight going home. The
city is cracking down on drunk driving in a big way.

Here's the official link of the Drophead Coupe: http://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/#/
drophead_coupe/

7 HOURS LATER

We are home from Zhuhai, the border town just next to Macau. We flew
from there. First, we were delayed an hour due to Air Travel
control. The gloria fY*)(king stuP!D c0Mm!e restricting air space for
military use. Then after 2 hours of flying, we had to circle for an
extra 15 minutes before we could land. And then we waited for 10 more
minutes before we could taxi to the gate. Welcome to the air travel
along the coast. There is only air corridor and anything above 25,000
ft is controlled by the you know who. And they are throwing so much
planes in the air... No forward thinking! This is worse than the
iPhone flight control game I play once in a while.

Anyway, the tight security has started; we went thru the security
check at Zhuhai airport, anything with liquid either being taken away
or sent for further analysis on a portable machine that was fitting to
be in CSI:NY. Speaking of Zhuhai airport, it was a w@$te of $. It's
about 40 minutes outside of town with 3-lane highway (coming and
going). And it was big and NO customers. There were over 15 gates
with moving jetways. Only two were used at the time we were there.

This picture is a bit of a classic. ;-) I took this sign from the
Men's bathroom posted in front of every urinal. It said " Get closer
is easier and you are closer to being civilized". Yes, it's always a
mess in the Men's washroom. One reason I wear shorts and runners, you
get the pictures.

Friday, September 18, 2009

drills

Take a look at the slide show here. It's all the preparation of the
glorious celebration. Pay attention to the soldier's sun tan!!!
http://slide.mil.news.sina.com.cn/slide_8_457_1269.html The slide is
automatically set to scroll every 5 seconds.

unbelievable

One thing I really hate is sloppy and poor service. Well, I have hit
both all at once today when trying to register a Chinese keyword.

I didn't want to do it "domestically" in China because you "really" do
NOT trust anyone with this. Lots of "hijackings" happen here.

So I contacted the Singapore-based credited agent to request the
keyword. Great, I thought. Singapore - efficient, play above board,
always follow the rules. Well......

I have spent 4 hours trying to get this Chinese keyword done via this
Singaporean website today! Including bloody fr*^*^*-)HHanking
debugged its login system! (blood boiled.... Breath in, breath out...
Wine!!!! My Wine!!!!) Anyway, I found out I could not have a "period"
in the username. If I did, then the screen would keep recycling and
recycling and I never got in. Wow... Never said that when I
registered.

So I re-registered without "period" in the user name. Great. Now
where do I go? One the Chinese Registration page website, it said
click this link to download the application form. Right.... Old
form. No way. So I contacted the support via Live Chat. Seemed
good. The lady said " you can do it online from your account". OK.
Where? There was nothing that said "Chinese Keyword". Well.... You
have to type the "name" you want in the "Check domain" box and then
scroll down to the "China" section and then check the ".keyword.cn".
Holly! What? I want a bloody keyword registration and you put it
under domain check with a cryptic extension like "keyword.cn"? Who
the hell programmed this? Instruction? Right....

I put everything in and then try to enter domain registrant
information, I couldn't!!!! Every single piece of contact information
MUST BE a site registered user. OK, I'll add one more. And guess
what? The bloody database could not find anything! So I couldn't put
in correct information. Right! If I were submit using another name,
the Commie is not going to approve the request.

Now the kicker, I tried to checkout to pay. Well, "we accept all
major credit cards". Great. Except the RBS online e-commerce does
not allow or provide AmEx as one of the "major credit cards"!!!!
Paypal then. Set one up except Paypal couldn't get thru.

Contact this Singapore website Live Chat again. And.... "did you try
calling our tech support?". Really darling, "I expect you to!".

(more wine now, I just sprinted over to M&S for a bottle of nice
Riesling)

So I couldn't get anything done. 4 hours later. I tried every single
combination of PC, Mac and browsers. Just totally pathetic! The
site: www.ipmirror.com. Useless.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

bl@@dy he!!

The c0Mm!E Postal Office has just announced a new rule for courier
service. Anything less than 50g for in-city and 100g for out-of-city
delivery MUST go through its EMS courier system. Imagine that!
Exclusivity. On the outset, this will pretty much kill off 90% of all
the local courier service. We use it often to do courier delivery of
invoices and documents. Cheap and efficient. Now, we will have to
pay close to double, fill out forms and subject to "attitude"
problems. This will affect online shopping like e-Bay look alikes.

I believe there is a deeper reason other than just acquiring new
markets. It's more "security" with a big captial '$'. With its EM$,
you can scan, do whatever you can to collect information. Who sends
it and who receives it, where and when. People, the tightening has
begun to "combat" the "you know who" from the not so peaceful areas.
Bumping up the revenue profit of its postal service is only a by-
product. Maybe an IPO is coming in Shanghai and in HK. This will
certainly looks good in the book. Profit jumps over 50% year over
year "because of new business venture".

C0mM!e news

In today's news...

In anticipation of the grand city showcase of no project is too big
for us to do (after consuming 100% of the earth's concrete and
creating the bigger construction site dust cloud ever), we are
starting to practice what our competing city of the North (airport
code: PEK) had done last year. Yes, putting X-Ray machines at major
subway stations as a trial security measure starting on the 25th of
this month. All major subway interchanges will have X-Ray machines
and people going in will have the bags scanned. Big or small. And if
you are are a courier, visual identification with your work ID is a
must. O how wonderful long the queue will be at rush hours at these
super hubs.

The river banks. Actually another mini-construction site all by
itself. You see nothing but bullies (bull dozers) and metal fences.
All for the glorious progress of egom**acs.

Someone wrote a really good article about real estate development. It
asked if we are buying at inflated price or buying at a "just" value.
The author basically said, people are buying at inflated price. It
was due to the gov't lax rule to stimulate economy. We are not out of
the wood yet so the buying is out of step. Basically because of the
stimulus packages, price in every sector will go up in the future. No
downward trend.

There was a guy complained that Best Buy here would not replace his
phone. That was after he dropped it into the water. He further
complained that Best Buy only gave him a replacement battery. Hey,
buddy it was not a manufacturer defect! It was an idiot defect. But
here, with low end education and small brain and not reading the "fine
prints" and twisted reasoning, things like this happens a lot.

Ridiculous. In Shanghai, price of residential apartment has gone up
50% in 6 months!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Cookie

Everyone loves cookies except when it comes to Internet tracking. That
type of cookies. That's not what you want! They are being used to
track a user experience, where you have been and how often. You are
suppose to "experience" a custom experience next time you return to a
visited site. Half true. In reverse, Internet marketers employ
cookies with sites to track you and then sell the patterns to
Advertisers to make more money. And what do you get? Zero dollar
return and more annoying ads on your screen.

You can deal with these cookies before and now. You can wipe them
from your harddrive by clearing your browser cache. Or turn on the
danny "anonymous browsing" option from Safari 4.x and Firefox 3.5.
Internet Explorer, I stay away so I cannot tell you.

Now, here's a new one that you are being tracked and you cannot get
rid of it (easily if you don't know)! It's the Flash player cookies.
On websites, you got so many flashy and nice videos and animations.
Flash player does the trick for you. But these Flash player cookies
are more secretive and more accurate in reporting your behaviour. Now
Internet Marketers and major websites can track you better and have
better stats to sell.

You know what is the kicker? You cannot get rid of it on your own.
The only way to see them is going to Adobe's website and visit this
page: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html
Incredible huh? Delete them by clicking on the "Delete all sites"
And then click on the Global Storage Settings to restrict them from
storing 100K of information on your harddrive for their profit and
privacy intrusion. Take it down to 10K. Hee hee...

what a day

Finally decided to sleep in till 630am this morning. Yeah, late for
us. Crap, last of my Macau import Italian expresso coffee. What am I
going to do tomorrow? :-( Starbucks here sucks and have no taste,
week and expensive. Still 5 MORE days before heading to Macau.
Instant? Somehow there is a chemical reaction between the instant
coffee and iron-wife's soy milk. Just doesn't look good when those
two mixed together. Grumpy for the next 5 days. Right.....

Then emails..... What the ... One of the servers a client used has
not been working since Sept 1. What kind of monitoring is that from
the Regina hosting company? 15 days!!!! Good thing my backup scripts
also backs up locally to a remote HD, just in case there is a dumb ass
involve in this entire hosting process. O yeah, I had to spend 2
hours investigate and then compile supporting evidence to this same
company on my client's website slow response. That was after 5 days
of this hosting company telling my client the problem was from the
webmaster updates. Bull! A reboot of the server fixed the problem.
Maybe I'll use Godaddy next! I have very good service and luck and
ROI with it.

Yes, after that mess dealing with Boston mess. Long story.....

OK 740am, I better get a move to the subway to beat the rush. I want
to get over the Century Ave to my friend's office before our 9pm
meeting with an Industrial Designer company. At last, the #2 Line
worked flawlessly this morning. It has been acting up during rush
hours. Today, it was the #3 Line that had problem. Almost to the
friend's office. Phone rang. "Will be late". No problem, I need a
refill of my caffeine intake. Costa Coffee I went.

Ah... Relaxing morning (somewhat) with a cup of Java. Kinda! The
store did not have the air con on, to save cost! Rightly so though, I
was the only customer of a 900 sq ft place. But the employees were
kind enough to turn on one overhead air con for me by the entrance.
OK. That was when I recong sweat slowing dripping from my neck to my
chest and from my neck to my lower back and from my hair dripping
almost to my cup of Java! Air con on? It was and on high. Wonder
which High as C0Mmie products always go opposite to what "common
sense" should be. After 30 minutes, ready to roll. I ordered another
cup of Java at the counter. The female employee said, too hot? I had
the fan turned on high. Ha... Really? I wonder how she could tell I
was hot? Maybe because of light blue Patagonia dress shirt looked
like StarTrack clink-on uniform? I was sweating.

Alright, at the office. No Industrial Desinger. Umm... I ended up
doing "in-house" computer support. Micros"OFF" who design your latest
market strategy on webmessenger? I only want that. Last I used it
moons ago, it was so easy. Now, I had to waste time ready the latest
exciting stuff happened and where I should be redirected to. And
above all, I still didn't get to where I want in 2 clicks! It was
OFF, way OFF the mark! So I had to download the MSN Messenger
client. Took forever. C0mMie speed. My friend''s wife definitely
got taken by her friend setting up the computers in the office. The
laptop was half and half. Meaning an English based system with
Chinese software that are crap! Yuck! I just didn't want to touch
the machine. Ah... my Mac... organized. Uniformed. Then I found out
their email server was a Chinese public freebies! Crap. How many
passwords or emails they have been "read" by others? Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't...... Take your pick.

Where was the Industrial Designer?

930am, phone call. Will be late. No excuse, no explanation.

10am, showed up. Sat down. We started our discussion. Late huh.
Smell like he just got up! Chinese men are not known to be of good
hygiene. Hair all over but this time, it was the breath! Ouch! I
could smell it across the table in the meeting room. Talk about
dense!!!! Attack of the killer gas! When we asked about project
management, the supposedly project manager for the company just
blanked. Could not tell us any logical approach or anything. And you
can tell by the body language that it was not his thing. Facial
expression said it too.

Kicked them out - ever so politely after 40 minutes.

11:30am... almost home. Hungry. OK, let's try this Shanghainese
place at the Four Point mall just across the street from our
apartment. Steam juicy pork dumplings.. O.... One order of that and
Shanghainese noodle. That should not go wrong. WRONG. My noodle was
so oily, it gathered just like the People's Congress gathering. A
pool at the bottom of my bowl! Then the dumplings. I thought at
least I saved the best for last. WRONG. The dumplings were small and
not worth the money. My total bill came to RMB 54.00. I felt ripped
off.

Tummy full of grease I walked home. And decided against taking the
elevator. Felt guilty with the lunch. I took the stairs to the fifth
floor hopping every step upward would burn one drop of the grease that
I consumed.

To my To Do list for the day.

I called a courier. Not bad, she could totally understood me. Ha!
There was a bright spot today. And that was the smoothest! RMB 10.00
to send a package from our apartment to 9K away. Not bad.

Then I tried contacting two web-hosting companies inquiring about
registering Chinese keywords. No answer on Live Chat. The other phone
message saying the entire office is on lunch break. What? Huh?
Right, I was dealing with a Malaysian company based in KL. Right.
Lunch time. O yeah, lunch time in Singapore too. So the whole WWW
stops in those countries during lunch hours? Unbelievable. Sales
must be good. I had to wait until 2pm before the office was staffed.
2pm!!!! My whole day was over by then!

I am proud to announced that I am an official member of Linux
Foundation now. Paid the due, joined the Linkin group, got the T-
shirt (on order) and my own personal email address:
damiaolo(at)Linux.com (I think).

And I am also a member of PayPal. Wow, so many holes. How much info
does it store and how it safe guard your data? I am concerned. And
so should you all using it!!!

I paid for my Shanghai Game Development Conference tutorials and
summits CAD 85.00; the next level up for 2 more days of conference and
talks would have bumped up the price to CAD 1,000.00 or so. I think
NOT!

A little over 2pm, I called the Malaysian company. She tried talking
to me in English then request talking to Mandarin and Cantonese; but
she was equally bad on the language. She kept tell me if I would be
interested in become a partner. I said, I ONLY want to apply for
Chinese keywords. Somehow she just couldn't get it; and then she
tried to up-sell me to a premier partner. Hey lady! Give me what I
want! I hung up. Did the Live Chat with Singapore. Tried twice
before getting thru. Easier and much more straight forward. Will get
my client to register tomorrow. Site visit..... My walk again....

After an ever seemingly exhaustive actions dealing with idiots, gym.
40 minutes on the treadmill. No problem. Just wait till tomorrow
afternoon. PT time! My thighs are still sore from two days ago! And
I thought I was fit. Right. Come to think about it, I have not taken
any of my gut ranching Arthritic meds for over 3 weeks. Wow, how time
flies. Only minor soreness on my wrists. Doctors don't approve
that. Seems so far physical activities and daily gym workout helps.
Not just my body but my pocket book. Let see what long term damage I
have by not taking my meds religiously. With meds = no babies. Might
not be a bad thing considering the high cost of living in this hyper
inflated country/city.

Calm before the storm. Italian veggie pasta tonight. Quick and easy.

Iron-wife back. Raining out there. Meal ready to serve. Drip,
drip... that sound. must be the rain.

drip drip drip drip. So close, must be the upstair neighbour's drain
from the rain.

drip drip drip drip.... ummm.... sounded like from the inside.

I looked and looked... AGGGGHHHHHHHH...... The watercooler!!!! It's
streaming water at a speed faster than the commie control download
speed. AGGGHHH>.. A pool was gathering next to the fridge and next
to the power bar!!!! Flash light. The storage room light was so
conveniently went dark!!!! I had to unplug everything with a Magna
Torch. Canadian import from Costco. Still works after 2 years! I
cleaned, dried and emptied the cooler. Half a bottle! Down to the
floor. Had to get the fridge power on again. Otherwise, more water
from the defrost process. My trained emergency response skill
acquired from the "the site is down, the site is down" days! Ha..

Place is cleaned and ready for operation in 20 minutes.

Tomorrow, order new water bottles and buy a new cooler. Another task
to a day that I hope I could have catch a breath. No such luck.
Maybe another visit to M&S for some nice Sapphire Gin.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

pics

This is from a public bus somewhere in China. The big red sign on the
left said " To elevate individual hygiene, please spit outward.".
What the F?

now only if

some of the North American airlines would have such high level of
services! I called China Mobile today to "update" iron-wife's mailing
address. She has not received her bills since April. I could only
stand so long before action was taken.

I called the helpdesk at 10086. Chinese or English. Umm.... ok
English this time. The wait time was 4 seconds. And before the
Operator picked up the call, a nice recording voice announced the
employee number, just in case you want to complain! Then the guy was
on, very courteous. 3 minutes later. Done. I hang up. 2 seconds
later, a SMS to my iPhone (second generation only) asking me to rate
the service. I did with a "1" - strongly agree of the service. A
nice SMS replied saying China Mobile just want to commit to the best
customer service and satisfaction rating as possible; how's that Bell
Canada? Or Rogers? Or my formal SlackTel? Sending a dozen of these
China Mobile operators with very good English should cost one
unionized annual wage at my former boss and up the service
satisfactory rate by 100%.

Let's face it, even though this city is getting expansive by the
minute but the services at some Chinese gov't own enterprises are so
nice; we seem to be spoiled. At the immigration at Pudong Airport,
the plan is to speed up clearing of visitors through check points.
The policy is trying to get under 20 seconds for foreigner and 10
seconds for Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan "brothers". At my last
arrival at the Pudong Airport, it has installed a bank of automatic
clearing machines for Macau and Hong Kong residents. That's for sure
will be less than 10 seconds! I use those machines often at the
Zhuhai border. There, I clear thru at 10 seconds, iron-wife an hour
(at busy time). Huge line-ups.

O the "update" in quotes. Iron-wife lost her phone in April. Got a
replacement SIM card. Somehow, with a new SIM card issued the mailing
address of the bill is wiped. Hence no bill from April. I found that
out after visiting the China Mobile shop about 50 yards away from our
apartment. Yes, inquired in Mandarin. No English there! Funny, I
cannot tell anyone iron-wife's phone number in any languages other
Mandarin so is my China mobile number too!

Speaking of China mobile number, the pre-paid SIM card once charged up
is valid for more than 356 days!!!! Not like the 30-days use it or
lose it policy.

not a good view

Pollution, constructions, empty buildings, spitting everywhere, gray
sky over the horizon, collapsed building couple months ago... But
nothing worse than this:

All Foreign institutional investors are dumping every single
residential commercial projects they owned since 2000. Morgan, ING,
HK's Li property... And the dumb things, the Chinese are snapping
them up in such high pricing that they are padding the pockets of
these institutional investors. In the end, it's the Chinese that are
holding the bags. These institutional investors are selling them for
hundreds of millions of RMB, after average of 6 years of rental
incomes and all. ING, the latest to dump its assets for 900 millions
after collecting about 64 million RMB annually. These properties went
to Chinese companies being looked on as priced trophies. Familiar?
Japan in the late 80's and early 90's? One economist is warning that
the Chinese property is moving in the direction of the Japanese one.
Bubble followed by long decline. I am not so sure. The Chinese is a
different bunch. A different thinking.

They buy to show off or to hold for value. If their assets drop, they
hold; they do not sell; they just collect rent waiting for the
upswing. So this market here will never go down for long. It will
pick up. I see a long term upward trend with dips of about 15% or so
on average. Scary thought. Average people can't afford to buy
properties. Parents are saving about RMB 1 million over their life
time to provide down payments for their sons and daughters. Not
enough now. A sad situation. Specially for male. For a mother-in-
law to see her daughter married without asset and only rental.
Yikes. Double pressure for the male. White collar crimes up? Maybe.

Wonder why the foreign institutional investors are dumping everything
in Shanghai? Did they lose too much money last year that they need to
recoup their cash situations? Or is that because of the recent
announcement from Chinese Central Gov't on tighter tax reporting
monitoring against foreign companies? There seems to be a vail
amongst the foreign institutional investors pushing the price up, to
make these Chinese think the assets are good buy - value, status
symbol and showing off.

It's scary to see things rising so fast so sharp.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

access

After I have incorporate some status information about my Internet
speed using Geek Tool, I can easily monitor the provider's status.
Wow... These guys definitely have some issue on some of their server
farms. As we are on dynamic IP address assignment just like
everywhere in the world. We were randomly assigned an external server
to surf. You would figure once you are connected, you stay on that
server. No so.

The provider switched us in mid-stream of surfing! Ridiculous. It
bumped you and we have to re-connect to another group of servers. I
have found that, I get better speed on the 58.37.xxx netowrk.
Yesterday, we were bumped to the 128.xxx network which was just slow.
On that server at most we were getting about 0.5Kb/sec for foreign
websites and 250Kb/sec for in-country access. Umm... Where's that
1.5M download speed we paid for?

I suspect that was only a lie. With the 60th anniversary celebration
of c0Mm!e life style, more restrictions will be placed on these
equipments. Choke, choke.....

Thursday, September 10, 2009

view

This gives you an idea where I live. Just off to the left between the
rocket shape building and the Four Seasons hotel. Far away the
background, that's across the Bund. The black smoke rising was from a
fire at a construction site.

Pollution? What Pollution?

play

After running around since early last week for people that I deemed
not worth my time, I decided to take a day off to do something "fun".
Fun as in Geeky fun. I know there are lots of stuff I do not know
about a Mac. And the underlining sub-systems included, I barely use
to their full potentials.

So download and installed this free tool called "Geek Tools", how
original. ;-) With it, I managed to embedded lots of system
information I like to know and see when I need to. The desktop
background is one of many included from OS X. I managed to embedded
the System Log on the left corner. Designed and laid out the
information on the right side of the screen. So now I know my IP
addresses and my CPU utilization. What Geek huh?

Yeah, and I've learned a little command-based tool that I kinda knew
was there but never have time to sit and learn. It's called cURL,
another FREE tool. It does a lot of commands to and from Internet.
That's how I manage to have my external IP address displayed.

Not bad to spend an afternoon after a bloody stressful 2 weeks. Now,
I have to sell my services to people I deem "worth my while". ;-)

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

making money

There are lots of people making money on the side, pre-booking wedding
banquets on traditional popular dates in May and October and special
dates that sound "lucky".

This year, October holiday is from Oct 1 to Oct 8. The 60th
anniversary of C0Mm!e lifestyle and the mid-autumn festival. People
usually pre-book wedding banquet venue at least six to eight months
prior. There are people out there specialize in booking large venues
around the city. Then as time gets close, they will post "adverts" in
local wedding websites. One headline would read "Because of family
emergency, we cannot get married, interest party of our wedding
banquet venue please contact... ", Right.... Another one would said
"we have splitted, need to cancel banquet booking..." All sorts of
excuses.

Prior to booking a banquet hall, the venue booking manager would have
already negotiated a fixed price for the banquet. So, "interested"
parties taking over a pre-booked venue will have to pay more. So....
these "Huang Nue" or "Yellow Cow" so to speak, locked in a price and
they don't care how expansive, then jack up the rate for a "real
couple" to take over. Easily a profit of RMB 11,000+ per transaction
with no effort.

The venue knows it can get a fake but who cares, it gets paid in the
end. So who gets screwed? The parents of the real wedding couples.
Now, they are paying for a wedding with artificially inflated price.

Anything can make money here. It's how much you are willing to pay.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

ummm

Went to see this IT company that develops pre-paid cash cards for
merchants. Very interesting. And very interesting name too, Circle
Pleasure. What the heck is this name? Maybe it's Korean origin has
some translation problem. I was in its office back in February.
Winding forward to now, its product is maturing; also have some
interesting news about the pre-pay cash card market.

There are six major players in this market. Each requires its own POS
machine. So if one visits a major theater, one can see a bank of POS
machines by the ticket window. Now no more; thanks to the China
gov't. This business is changing. China Mobile and its partners are
setting up a competing company getting into this game. The previous
player's its cards virtually is null and void. A virtual cash left on
the table at estimating of RMB 300 millions. This new China Mobile
venture is called Tong Lian with a registered capital of RMB 3
billions. So what gives? I don't know. Maybe it's one way to make
outsiders think there is some form of competitions.

Tong Lian will give out free POS machines initially. Later on, it
might charge about RMB 20 per month. That's nothing. And there are 3
types of POS available. Dial-up, 3G and Internet.

This company, Circle Pleasure, I visited this morning is in the game
with Tong Lian. So will be very advantages to it. Also, it already
has a big contract with Minsheng bank. Apparently, this bank pays
portion of the monthly salary to some of its employees with this pre-
pay cash card. The reasons are: Lower the taxable bracket of the
employees. Apparently, anything less then 5,000 RMB a month is taxed
at 10% or so vs 40%. Also, the bank can write off the card purchase
as biz expense and lower on the profit tax. Smart move huh? U think
Canada is ready for this type of "bend the rule" scheme?

Wonder why not that many small to medium size companies in Shanghai
are catching on to this yet. The pre-paid cash card can enjoy
discounts from participant merchants as well as collecting points for
redemption. Plus, one can pay all utility bills and recharge credit
on mobile phone.

And if this can lower the tax rate, will the local and central gov'ts
aware of the loss of tax revenue? O wait, they have trillions so who
cares.

Monday, September 7, 2009

this is funny

Below is the official resort website that I looked at. Iron-wife will
be there for a day to work tomorrow. The website is all in Chinese.
But the designer was so considerate as to provide non-Chinese for site
visitors. At the very bottom, from left to right, we have "Chinese"
version, "English" version, "French" version and "Russian" version
respectively. Here's the kicker, for non-Chinese readers, do you
think they know they can read in 3 other languages? NOT!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

block

It is so funny with the C0mM!e cEN$0R s H ! P. Internet check
(kinda), CNN and BBC (occasional blackouts in mid-stream on TV) and
whatever else. I laughed when I could not get any HK news on
podcasts, on yahoo or any HK news site. But I could pick up SCMP at
my hotel gym, sit there and read. Funny. Just have to give your head
a shake.

Also the so call "morale Internet police" check on sites making sure
the comments and all are not "morally disturbing". Well, I was
following an online news article on Sina.com about some gov't policy.
I noticed a little image next to this user about the article. The
comment was "Ding" in Chinese; that meant "outstanding". But a closer
look to the image, I was shocked! It was an X-rayed sexual act. The
image was clickable. So to see where it led to, I clicked the image.
Wow. Another side of Ch!n e $ e website I have not seen. Totally XXX
with all sorts of services available online or offline. Man.

So it does not matter how much you want to block, there is always a
way. Specially you use a simple crafted HTML code when submitting.
Very simple but effective. So block all you want, there are always a
way. Unless, of course, shut the entire net down, no website hosting,
and only hosting is done by the secret police department. Haha, that
will be major uproar.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

crazy

Not sure what the hell is going on in Shanghai; seems there is a wave
of people with tones of money paying upmost top dollars for luxury
apartments. Normally, the price was between RMB60,000 to RMB80,000
per sq meter is now selling for minimum RMB 100,000 per sq meter.

Lots of big developers are not renewing their rental contracts at
targeted apartment buildings. They are being converted into luxury
apartments for sale. The luxury apartment market right now seems like
the flower speculation back in 1900's before its market crashed. It's
nuts here!

One of the news articles reporting about real estate market is saying
the condition as "lots of money with idiots".

Yes, I do not know where is the money coming from. Tonight, I saw two
bloody F430. One parked and another was pulling into a parking garage
behind my apartment building. Licence plate from Beijing and was
driven by a young kid. Convertible too! Red. Gee.....

Something definitely is not right.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Thai

I have decided to eat out tonight with iron-wife. We went to the gym
first. It seemed we were always tired this week for some strange
reason. Wonder why. After workout, I initially wanted to do Napa
again just behind the gym. Vetoed. Thai it was tonight. There was
one close to our apartment, about 7-minute walk. Thai Gallery, the
name. Everything was so dark inside looking from the outside in. We
were wondering if the place was closed (for good). Turned out, it
wasn't; very busy and you wouldn't know it. The place was huge too;
two stories and very contemporary. Somebody put a lot of thought into
it. Lots of foreigner. Reason: Staff could speak English. Even had
to write down the order in English. We like the dessert the most:
mango with warm stick rice and coconut milk. Wow.

Link to restaurant: http://www.smartshanghai.com/venue/686/Thai_Gallery_shanghai

File Encryption, etc...

I have spent two days playing around with technologies that I have
around. To see what benefits there are for me on a day to day usage.
Not bad.

1) Airport Extreme wireless router
- the latest edition makes wireless connections faster for internal
network transfer
- I can isolate my wireless network so if there is a guest visiting
who wants to use my Internet, I can just give out a Guest network so
my own is protected.
- above all, I can plug a USB portable drive to the back of this
wireless router and wham, I can share this portable drive across all
my macs and PCs. I can have this connected portable drive expose to
the Internet so when I travel I can access files. This, I won't do.
That traffic is NOT encrypted. Need to setup extract secure tunnels.
Plus it opens up another can of worms for security. I unplug my
router when we are away anyway. *Note: don't upgrade the firmware to
7.4.2. Apparently, it causes USB drive not accessible.

2) USB drive encryption. Finally I have found one that is FREE,
endorsed by NSA and can be shared between Macs, PCs and LINUX
computers. If I keep using this, I might just donate some money.
It's open source and is adopted by IT professionals (some). So easy
to use. Took me a total of 20 minutes to download, install and try.
Pictorial explanation below. O, the name: TrueCrypt from www.truecrypt.org
. This might be helpful if the south of 49 parallel wants to inspect
your computer when you travel down south. And they can because it is
their rights to protect their "motherland". TrueCrypt can create a
hidden container that leaves no trace so they don't know your
important files are. Other than using this encryption tool, you can
"NOT" take your laptop with or put things in the "cloud". But
seriously, how secure is the "cloud" when your hosting company is
south of the border too ;-)

.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

where the money gone

Two news items developed overnight that caught my eyes. I was
wondering the same things and sure enough....

First thing. With all the lands being auctioned off by the city here,
how much is the deposit each real estate developer must put down in
the gov't bank account before participating. And if a participant not
successfully bid for a piece of the auctioned land, will he receive
the original sum plus interest earned from that "gov't bank account"?
Ha, I got the answer. Fro the first half of the year, this "interest"
amount sitting in the "gov't controlled" bank account has accumulated
over RMB 2,000 million. The city officials were mum as to what to do
with this amount. "Do we need to connect the dot or draw pictures
where this amount" could potentially be "used"? I caught this news
article from official sanctioned online newspaper. It indicates a
signal that "someone is watching you".

Second, Grosvenor have sold all the apartments they owned since 2007
during the height of the real estate market. At that time, they were
buying parking spaces and apartments for about 60,000RMB per sq
meter. Last year, that price dropped to about 40,000RMB per sq
meter. Now, they were sold for close to 100,000RMB per sq meter. 25
units and 25 parking spaces. http://www.lakevilleregency.com.cn/en/index.htm
. And the buyers were all mainland Chinese. "Suckers"? Or there is
that much $. I suspect the market was driven up by the big players
and then dump at high price and leave. Now, who's holding the bags?
Can't see the apartments at a lower price in the future because the
apartments were bought at six digits per sq meter. Chinese do not
like to sell things at a loss. So they will hold them and then try to
rent them out. If rent out, how much to charge to make the mortgage?
Not everyone can buy with cash. Ummm.... So buy high by the Chinese
and buy higher... A Japanese-style 90's problem? Morgan Stanley has
sold off all of its holding in Shanghai this year with a fat profit.
These big companies screwed the market up, pocket fat profits and
leave town. Sounds like a WWW here. I don't see the market will go
down in the next year. I see a severe inflation coming the "economic
progress" is not in check.

In two years, the same restaurant we ate at, the price went up by 20%
but the portion of the dishes has shrunk by about 15%. Normally, we
could have 3 dishes for RMB 70 or so two years ago, now RMB 105 to
125; that is after member discount.

this is real

Take a look: http://you.video.sina.com.cn/pg/topicdetail/topicPlay.php?tid=2860728&uid=1354076857&t=2#20105006

This happened today in Guangzhou.

SWAT

This is a 5-minute video clip of SWAT team training from city of
WuHan. The team composed of both males and females. Take a look: http://you.video.sina.com.cn/pg/topicdetail/topicPlay.php?tid=2860728&uid=1354076857&t=2#21825754

They are slimmer than the North American ones.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

new dev

Yesterday I decided to walk down to #1 line subway rather than taking
#2 line West, away from my destination, switching at a Super hub and
then down South East to #1 line. Wow. The entire block is coming
down! All the old buildings, 2 stories high ones. Not one, not two
but the entire block!!!! See map. The blue strip is the area. What
the h...? What development will be put up there? I have not notice
any info from the online newspaper. That was quick. On the top right
corner of the picture where the Yellow "3" is located, that whole
piece of land will be redeveloped with 3 commercial buildings and 2 5-
stars hotels. Right. I wonder what the air quality will be. Scary!
We still have lots of empty 15-20 stories high commercial buildings
sitting empty within 100 meters of our apartments. What are all these
developers thinking?

overnight trip

We ventured over to Pudong district last night to visit a friend's
family. Due to the distance and the late dinner start, we were
invited to stay overnight. Normally in Saskatchewan, 22KM is not that
far if you have a car. But here, we just don't trust the taxi late at
night. Plus taxi drivers do not obey traffic out there. It is like a
wild wild west.

Here are the maps:

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

views from the HK hike

Here is the link from the HKG hike last Saturday: http://web.me.com/damiaolo/hike

Forget about Twitter, Facebook or anything of that sort to update my
status. C0mM!E blocked them all. Even more severe now in preparation
of the 0Ct ! 60th birthday. Everything starting to grind to a haul.
My Internet seems to choke now. Been having problem with mE.c0m.
Wonder if Stevie pissed off the C0mM!E.

Online newspapers reported that the Express airline from here to the
North capital city is no longer express. Delay of over an hour and a
half at the very least yesterday. Think "it" does not want anything
bad happens before or during the big birthday a month from now, to the
exact date!