A Geek in China

While in Shanghai China recognized the victims of the Sichuan earthquake with a nationwide 3 minutes of silence. At the time I was on a subway, everyone on the subway stopped, stood silently and waited until the 3 minutes passed.

Most tourists like to travel to resorts, amusement parks, or fancy restaurants. I like software parks! yup, I'm that geeky

May 24, 2008 I attended the 2nd annual developers conference in Huangzhou. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the line up of speakers and with the quality of the presentations. I was always extremely interested to compare how I, a big white westerner, and the local Chinese students interacted within the sessions. Or maybe I should say that lack of interaction within the sessions. I was extremely excited to ask questions, to probe deeper and to really get at the "meat" of the matter(s). The Chinese students seemed bored and also as if they knew all the answers or maybe they just didn't care. I was cool to attend and to see how the local developers interact and to watch this ecosystem grow. In 10 years (or less, according to the Chinese government) the world is going to see a lot more highly skilled, very talented developers hit the industry.

After a long, hard day of climbing the Great Wall you really don't want to climb back down. Fortunately Chinese people are incredibly smart. They setup an "Inertia Ropeway" which allows you to get down from the Great Wall with the greatest of ease.

I've been attending a small private Chinese language school here in Beijing in an attempt to improve my Mandarin language skills; which are currently at the baby talk level. The school took a trip out to the Simatai section of the great wall. Previously I had only visited badaling so it was nice to see a different part of the wall, especially one that is less touristy.

I shot this video several weeks ago and after I shot it the air cleared up for a few days and then got worse again. The last two days the SEPA index has been over 100. Fortunately today the rains and wind came to wash and blow away all of the pollution! yay!

I was fortunate enough to be in Shanghai for their Drupal user meetup. It was great to meet all of them and see the projects that they are working on. Shanghai has a good number of Drupal developers and some of them have worked on some really cool projects. For me the highlight of the entire meetup was when one of the guys introduced himself as "ian" and just in case you didn't know how to pronounce it, it is "Ian" of Deb-ian. Yes! There are super Chinese geeks! I love this place! Track the group at groups.drupal.org/Shanghai, they are growing quickly.

The picture is of my new "little red book" (he he) which I received after I gave blood at the expat show. My blood type is one of those nifty types that can be used in a lot of people and its clean so I try to give whenever I can.

For no good reason we subjected ourselves to the expat show in Beijing. I wouldn't say it was horrible but I wouldn't say it was mind blowing either. It was what it was, a show for expats. I'd go again next year if they have free stuff, its free to get into to, and its convenient to get to.

Cupping is a form of Chinese medicine believed to relief a myriad of ailments. Lately I haven't been feeling well and I've been meaning to go to a local Chinese medicine business situated just down the street. Putting two and two together and mixing in a bit of masochism for good measure I went and tried Cupping.

Two weeks ago Diana and I headed to Zhong Guan Cun, the major computer area, in Beijing to pick up a new keyboard/mouse combo to alleviate my inevitable descent into carpal tunnel. I attempted to capture the immenseness of the place but failed miserably at achieving my goal. I figured I'd post it anyway.

This morning I thought I'd film a short bit of my ride to class. When the weather is good it is a nice ride.

A sandstorm ripped through Beijing today.

I remember learning about the Erie canal when I was really young but never thought I'd actually see it. In fact I completely forgot that the Erie canal linked the Hudson river with one of the great lakes (Erie). While I was in town Andrew and Vickie were kind enough to take me on a bike ride around Troy, NY and during the bike ride they mentioned riding over to the first lock of the Erie Canal. I probably sounded like a five year old when I yelled out that I really, really, really wanted to see the start of the canal. Its not as big as I thought it'd be but it was still cool to see.

for 春假 (Chun Jia aka. Spring Festival aka Chinese New Years) Diana and I decided to head down to Hong Kong as well as to ZhongShan 中山. On Friday afternoon we boarded the overnight train to Hong Kong and had a really great afternoon and evening on the train. On Saturday morning we woke up on a stopped train about 10 hours north of Hong Kong. An ice storm ripped through the middle of China destroying crops, causing havoc on the roads, and downing power lines. Our train was electric. There was no electricity 5 hours behind schedule became 9 hours and that turned into 12 hours behind schedule finally we arrived a full 24 hours behind schedule. This video was taken before, during and after.

A teaser to a much longer video about our experience getting stuck on a train in Hunan, China. The region was hit with an ice storm during the middle of the night and all of the electrical lines powering the train stopped functioning thus our train stopped. This video was taken at midnight as I was looking at the other trains that were stuck with us. Oh how I love ice storms

If you're expecting pork sauce you might want to learn to read a few Chinese characters. The English on this menu read "Seasonal vegetables in Pork Sauce", The Chinese read "Seasonal Vegetables [with] frog"... Guess what it really was. There are advantages to reading Chinese.

How do you know what time it is in China? Well if its between 7:00 and 7:30 the T.V will tell you. The government likes to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to see and hear what is going on in China especially the new developments, new relationships, new wonderful things, new super wonderful things. Actually I think everything is absolutely wonderful around 7:00 to 7:30. P.S Don't get my site blocked it'll make my life much, much harder. Comment to me in person if you think you might be including some certain keywords that rhyme with monoism (I'm serious)

I have been in China now for about 3 months and I finally purchased my very own bike. Although its the middle of winter and I can't ride it that often it is still nice to own a bike. Beijing is the "Kingdom of Bicycles" and I LOVE IT. Now if it'll stay that way with car ownership on the rise I don't know but I hope it will.

Wow I'm actually learning something. Two days ago I had my first Chinese writing test. The teacher said a word and we had to write out that word. Books closed and the whole nine. It was only 21 words and I studied all of them the night before so it wasn't exactly like a standard test but I still wrote 21 Chinese characters in less than 10 minutes so I'm proud of myself. OK watch the video.

New years past a few weeks ago but I didn't have the time to edit/post this video. This new years we headed out to D-22 in Beijing to see some of the local acts play out 2007/ play in 2008. The video is quickly edited (like all of mine) and does little more than show off the local music talent. They weren't bad at all, I liked it Unfortunately New Years' isn't quite the fanfare it is in the U.S and the band as well as most of the crowd forget to even do a countdown. The expats in the crowd went ahead and did the countdown during a song break. Oh well the "real" new years is coming up that will be a completely different story.

Native Beijingers will be like "so" when they watch this but its something new to me "so" here it is. This is how you pay your electric bill in Beijing. I purchased 200 electric credits at 97.22RMB, we use about 60ish credits a month which works out to an electricity bill of about 4-5 US dollars a month at current exchange rates. unfortunately you do not have the ability to choose "green" electricity in Beijing so the best we can do is to use a little as possible. The source of all of this cheap (to us) electricity isn't all that great but things are changing...

This past weekend Diana and I headed to IKEA（宜家家居) to pick up some household items. IKEA in China is really just the same as any other IKEA with only a few minor differences. The only major difference was that of cultural. For whatever reason a lot of people in IKEA were simply lounging about on the furniture. Not testing it out or simply resting their feet but literally lounging about. People would pull up seats at the demo tables and have long conversations, recline on the sofas and several people were sleeping on the couches and chairs. As a westerner its interesting to me. I don't think its bad just interest. In fact if I were running IKEA I think it'd be cool because at least people thought the chairs and sofas were comfortable! If you picked up this blog to find the IKEA here is what we did. We took a cab. There is supposedly a bus from the dongzhimen 东直门 subway station but when we went that station was closed for repairs and we could find the bus. (We looked around the outside of the station but couldn't find any signs). The cab was 22元 from the subway station。 I suggest printing out the map on IKEA.com to hand to the cab driver if you don't speak Chinese.