What? Say again?

I could not believe this "Security" specialist on TV from Br!t when being interviewed about the $0ny's server information problem. This guy said "If you have not seen your credit bill goes up or any dodgy magazine showing up at your home, your information is safe. (paraphrased)". Huh? Say again? We are talking potential !D th!ef here.

He should have said:
1) call bank to cancel card immediately
2) use only a single CC with low limit for dedicated online transactions
3) never never give out REAL D0B to any gaming or social sites for "verification" purpose. You can always use an "alternative" one
4) There is no justification for any social network or gaming sites to ask for real information just to "hang out" and "play games".
5) Use separate email address for each gaming site or social site so that you will NOT easily be "located" or "found". G M @ ! L is a good one to use.

Welcome to the 0nL !ne World.

magic

This is a step by step instruction on how to convert a piece of pork into beef.  So now the pork price is going up because o high demand using converting to beef.  Yes, the main driving force here is the big $ sign.  And if you get sick or d!e, tough.  

Vegetarian convert?

http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/beef-extract-additive-used-to-change-pork-into-beef.html

sore butt

First 140K ride this year. It was suppose to be about 90 some K but my wife and another friend kept changing the destination. Not good when we had to be at the gym by 2:30pm ;-) My Personal Trainer was waiting for me.

A quite windy day today. I was spent before we sat down for lunch at 9:30am. Yes, lunch as we left the APT at 5:30am. One thing about biking in away from Shanghai, I could shut off other senses and just use my nose to smell where I was closed to. Along the way - EARLY IN THE MORNING, I smelled nice flower fragrant, home cook breakfast as we were close to homes. Then when we were close to water, I could smell the "lovely smelly" of dead pool idling in the sun. These were the senses I picked up using my nose. O yeah, I saw someone on a silent electric bike with golf shoes, except he wasn't going for golf (Let's put it that way). The morning fragrant of the bygone filled my nostrils this morning. I enjoyed it. These were the smell that one would not get in a city.

Unfortunately, on the way home. The nice fragrant smell gave way to industrial strength glue, chemicals and fume exhaust. Yuck. At last people woke up and went about their money-making scheme.

We owned the street at 6am but by 10:00am, we gave way to the industries, tourists and people abound. Yes, the streets became congested and accidents waiting around the corner. At one point, we had a water buffalo came out to the bike lane w/ the owner. They just stood there looking at us as we approached. No moment at all. Then an out of province driver drove at the wrong direction at us signaling left but turned right. With so much momentum on my bike, I narrowly avoided a collision. Momentum = mass = speed = overweight? Then these two kids on bikes wanted to hand w/ us, to show their stuff. One kid almost caused a piled up because he passed with on-coming traffic coming at us. Basically, he was playing chicken. I hanged back after that. One of those kids passed us on a low end bike. Iron-wife said "that was humiliating". Not so. Life preservation. Didn't care.

Yes, if we could just ride early in the morning and then had a van picking us up at the other end. Early morning fragrant.... lost forever if we don't take advantage of it now to smell them. Urbanization will snuff the old way out.

fruity company

Didn't post that much the first 3 months was due to the fact of me dealing with fruity company. Started as an innocent lunch with the HR person. I was told to pass an updated CV over so that a meeting could be setup for the next day. I did - just to see how far I could go. Nothing for a month and a half. Then, a call from the same HR person. A meeting with the Operational Head in town. A Brit. I spent over an hour and half with him trying to understand what he was looking for. He was just fresh off the boat, like 2 months or so by the time I met him. My spider senses tingling when during our talk, he was very adamant which company I had my most IT experience. I attempted to correct him. He still insisted on he was right. Fine, had it your way. As I went thru the meeting, I kept asking myself - DO I WANT TO BUST MY A$$ again for a company that is not mine? That was in my head through out.

The HR person called back several hours later after my meeting with the boss man. She asked how it went. I told the truth - maybe I didn't want to work for you guys. She was stunned. Everyone wanted to work for the fruity company, to be able to "close" to the "mothership" and Steve. Not me, actually. I had 4 MBP, the tablet, the phones and a group of close friends that would convert to any MBP I recommended. Apparently, the boss man was so impressed that he wanted me "to find myself" what was best fit within his structure. Really, did I get pay to find myself? NO. I visited the flagship store talking to people. After that, I wrote about my experience and emailed off the the boss man and the HR lady (not a person anymore ;-) ) Nothing... no reply..... 3 weeks had gone by. An email from a secretary from fruity office: "How about a call with London with this other boss man?" OK. I played along....

Found out this London boss man was a friend of the boss man I met. To make it very funny, this London boss man used to teach English in Suzhou, about 120K away from here. This guy was a London operational boss. He must have some really good skills. Now, that was a sincere conversation from me ;-) We talked.... Done... 2 and half weeks later, another email. This time, I was passed to the HR lady at the mothership itself. We had a very good conversation. From her tone, expression and dialog, she was ready to move forward to setup a call w/ the main main main Operational head, again, in London. By this time, I had to stop what I was doing for SLo and just played w/ my thumbs.

Because I had not heard from these people for so long, I could not drop everything, sit and wait. So I fired off an email to the boss man I met in Shanghai asking further Operational issues which I spotted. 5 days later, the reply "I could not discuss with you at this time about the questions you have". OK how the f60-900k was I suppose to know what you think?

2 days after this HR lady mothership called, I woke up with an email from her. " As you can imagine we received a large number of qualified applicants for Operation Role. After further discussing your background with xxxxxxx we have chosen to move forward with other candidates. I want to thank you for your interest and for investing the time to speak with us about this opportunity. ". Ha! OK, so there are lots of candidates that claim to be qualified and willing to work cheap? Umm... (watch it here, I am being sincere about my conversation here).

After receiving this email, a flood gate was opened. I jumped out of bed, sprinted to my computer and typed off a message to my branding consultant. I said: "let's get things moving for me. ". I showered and the way I went to work on the 3-month delayed biz strategy development. My iron-wife was more disappointed with the news than me.

3 months! One quarter down already..... I have to catch up 50 days worth of work now!

Incidentally, the HR lady from Mothership offered a debrief. I took it up. It's been one month and no answer. The funny part was: her other counter part emailed me 3 weeks ago asking for a time to talk. Apparently, she was about 2 months behind in emails. Huh? Hello? Communication?

That was the side journey I took that detracted my purpose.

Sincere conversation

From my CII course, a sincere conversation was one that is a "genuine opinion" about a topic. I never believe I saw that in action fully in front of me and the two parties were soooo aligned with their views I believed they were thinking they were in an accurate conversation - that is full of facts.

The premise was as A and I were waiting to deplane after landing in Singapore three weeks ago. We sat in the last row of a 777-200 so we had two seats by ourselves. The conversation was between the passenger sat next to me across the aisle and the flight attendant - both $ingaporeans. They both were saying how bad Shanghainese food was. The passenger had been working in Shanghai for 7 years and he hated the food in Shanghai. Ummm.... The flight attendant too, she said too oily... Well, she did have a figure she needed to keep for the uniform. Scary part was, both of them never fully aware that their conversation volume was high. I heard every word of it. I should have typed recorded it with my Steve phone and then play back as an example of sincere conversation. These two people never bother to venture to eat anywhere or to seek for recommendations. I could not believe what I was hearing. And 7 years on greasy food? Obviously, none of them shifted from their "stuck" view or rather their Schticks.

Hey buddy, there are lots of nice restaurants - clean and all... open the eye lids wider or do a search online. Better yet, there's a weekly magazine outlining the restaurant scenes. Wagas offers nice healthy food. Gourmet Burger - vegetarian burgers and oven baked sweet potatoes.

Did I offer to help these two people in conversation? No, I was in my Schtick - " You are not worthy of my assistance; I watch you suffer, A$$ h0!e". I would offer my recommendation if we were in-flight actually. I was in a rush.. Yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses. In my Steve phone I had a category for nice Shanghai restaurants to offer.

Funny, this encounter was the 3 of sort I experienced from Singapore - opinionated not willing to change. Umm......

smog

The top two pictures were taken as I walked pass in front of Four Seasons in my town.  I could not see more than a block as the low pressure system pushed all the "interesting" air into Shanghai.  The air was a vail of sandy brown.  I washed my face as soon as I got home.  Incidentally, this location was the same taken as in a NYT article.  Mine was at the ground level where the real actions happened.  The article's was taken from the Howard Johnson high above at night.  The title for the article was "In Shanghai, Preservation Takes Work"  

 Notice in my pictures there were no trees?  In the NYT there were trees?  The trees were "moved" overnight in preparation of the subway work inside the construction site.

B @d @pplE

I was shocked yesterday when I had to do an emergency fix on my trouble-free computer! This was the first since I have owned it - over a year and a half!

What happened was that I applied all the updates outside of Motherland. It's crazy I couldn't download any updates while under the protective care of the one single happy family rule. Took me 15 minutes to download my iPhone & iPad updates in $ingapore. The same update would took over 5 hours and could be disrupted without warning from "inside the womb". Frustrating. Even connecting to my SMTP servers to email was next to snail mail.

Anyway, back to my @pplE problem. After all the updates, things were normal until I plug my iPhone in. Pop-up error: Sync service was not started.. something like that. No resolutions. Thank god for Google. I discovered that after updating to the 10.6 the latest version, this problem can occur. What? Then why updates? The solution? I had to uninstall iTune and remove packages from my computer. Seemed I was back in the Windows days! Then I had to download iTune and reinstall. Good thing I have made a rule not to updates while inside my motherland. Otherwise, I would be more frustrating than anything.

I fixed the problem. Things are back to normal. Except I am now out CAD99.00 because my @pple Developer Membership somehow was removed from my account!!! Yes, removed. The permission system would not let me download the files I am currently qualified for. But my account profile said I am! I had to re-registered under another account. Worst was that when I got the "Access Denied" page, the link to contact Technical Support was a dead link!!!! "Page not found"! You are kidding me right? This would be just bad stuff for Windows but not Apple right? I went up one level to get the right screen in order to submit my problem to Tech Support. So far... NO answer.

Aghhhhhhh.....

Noodle

My second lunch. I had one at 11:50am after my workout. 6.50SGD. A plate of coconut rice, a drum-stick, a fish stick and some green beans. Guess not enough. I walk through Suntec City Mall to my other old stomping ground to get a bowl of Vietnamese noodle. Here it is. This one costed more. A set lunch for 13.40 SGD. I got two fresh rolls, a drip coffee and this bowl of beef noodle. Yummy.

I walked through Suntec City Mall. Shocked that there were empty shops and empty carts not being rented out. There are more and more new malls being developed here. I am not surprise to see this is happening. How many more new malls can $ing@pore have? There is a limited demand here despite tourist. Not a good sign. We walked down another street and 1/2 a block was empty with garbage littered at a corner. Not like the $ing@pore we accustomed to.

Things seem to be expensive here. The gov't is doing a price control at Hawker centers. Trying to get hawker stall owners to keep their food price at around 2SGD per plate. I can get use to that. 3 weeks ago, my cost of living expense was low in Singapore for the weekend. This weekend so far I had exchanged 400USD and counting! That was just eating with odds and ends. 3 weeks ago, hawker center was our friends. Cheap food. And the supermarket was just next door to the hotel for some good discount fresh fruits.

Speaking of Hawker Centres, the gov't here is promoting healthy eating. At no extra charge, customers in Hawker Centres have a choice of eating with brown rice and use non-saturated fat oil for cooking. Bonus!

A sky view of Medan from our hotel room window.

Plateful of hot

Yes, small red hot chili peppers. Freshly chopped in the back kitchen of the restaurant. We arrived last night at the hotel, went for dinner and one of the condiments we were provided. Yummy. Towels..... To whip off the sweats from the forehead and the neck! So wonderful to have fresh small red chilies. Vitamin-C.....

Medan

Long day flying from Shanghai to Medan. We left the house at 6:15am in the morning and landed at Medan's Polonia International Airport at 7:50pm local time (one hour behind Shanghai). First we flew 5 hours to Singapore, ah what a nice city. Then waited for about 6 hours before taking the last 1 hour and 20 minutes flight to Medan. What took us there? Well, my mother was born and raise at Balawan about 20K from Medan. She went to school there and taught at a high school. After leaving the city 50 years later, she arrived back this week to attend a high school alumni banquet. And she was to be honored as a teacher.

A and I, at last minute, decided to come. We were scheduled to be in Singapore again anyway starting Sunday. The banquet was on Saturday so why not.

Man, things have changed here. 50 years ago and up till about 5 years ago, the Chinese were treated as "non-existing" class. Everything was blamed for the economic hardship for the locals. Burning, killing, you name it... Now the last while with the close economic tie with China, the local Chinese who have been here generations and generations ago, are not thriving again. Not just thrived. Obscenely extravagant! I guess history of being humble has gone out the door. Last night at the hotel, the JW Marriott one of the tallest in the city here, tables of local Chinese eating w/ huge watches on wrists and handbags. We went to a Chinese temple completed 2 years ago. It was big! I mean GIGANTIC. It was part of a gated development. An acre for the temple by my estimate, not counting other projects around the temple.

That's the surface. Who knows what is under the cover. My dad and mom came early this week. Dad was "harassed" at Immigration. First they said "O, Macau passport you can't come in without Visa.", then "O it is ok now". After that, "you know this weekend is a Chinese festival, maybe you can buy me a cup of coffee?". Dad knew and gave him USD 5.00. Then the other Immigration Officer saw it and walked over "What about me?". By then, dad already had his passport back he said "You guys can share". He left.

This weekend is the time for Chinese to get to ancestor's tombs to pay respect. There are lots of Chinese coming back to Medan to do that. The locals know it, the Immigration officials know it.

People are friendly but the infrastructure just not there. Security at hotels are very heavy. Today as we drove home after lunch, a cop car with siren on drove the opposite direction. It was for a wedding party. Then two arm guards on motor bikes took up the rear. Wedding = gifts = lots of $. A side business for the cops here as escorts.

Do I want to come back? Probably not. Took up one page in my passport to have a stupid Visa on Arrival sticker, then USD 25.00 from 1 to 30 days visit. On on departure, about Rp 100,000 (USD 12.00) per person. The airport arrival is not that nice anyway. Jammed pack with cars and pot holes.

Here's a Google map link to the Singapore and Medan: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Singapore+Airport+Singapore&daddr=Medan,+Indonesia&hl=en&geocode=%3BCRzk3Lg8frooFdq0NgAdjqvhBSn9sj4czDExMDFigpCmyDHUIw&mra=ls&sll=3.524387,99.063721&sspn=0.819668,1.017609&ie=UTF8&ll=1.955187,100.535889&spn=6.562414,12.32666&z=7

city driving

We are finally here in Medan, a city in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Safe and sound without much harassment from the "guards of the homeland".

This video was on the way home after lunch today. I was sitting in the back and had a very nice view of traffic following us. Thought I would share. Enjoy. (*Disclaimer: any dizziness or nauseating feeling is not the author's responsibility ;-) )