Monthly Archives: October 2009

Surface of Roads in Shanghai Recovers

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For the Shanghai Expo 2010 the next year, Shanghai government has tried everything possible to make the city look better. Although most of the efforts are just once in few decades type of thing, like painting the facade of most buildings, it does have some positive impact to this city.

Most of the roads are re-constructed. The tiles on the pedestrian roads are changed, and lift the shoulder of roads – the reason my ankle was broken two months ago. Now, many roads enter into a stage to wrap up the mess with nice bitumen.

Huashan Road, for example, looks very nice from the surface. It looks so dark, and clear on the surface. The construction of metro stations are also to an end. For example, the Huashan Road and Huaihai Road interact is almost ready for traffic today.

Hope when the construction all finishes, the city can calm down and present itself to visitors the next year. The cost? It can be quickly forgotten, just as what I will do to my broken ankle few months from today.

Bye Bye, GeoCities.com

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Geocities.com is going to close two weeks from today. It is the end of an era. When you know something you were so crazy about, but not important any longer, is going to be shutdown, you know you are old enough. :-)

Imagine, what you feel after few years, if you know Google.com is going to be shutdown, or more likely Facebook.com, twitter.com, or other super popular websites today. Geocities.com was the Facebook.com in my university age.

Along with Geocities, the big guys at that time was Yahoo!, Hotmail, Tripod, AltaVista!

I tried to search for my geocities.com web page for 20 minutes, but could not find anything – even Google Search does not help. I only remember that in 1997, every user must choose a “neighborhood” to settle down. The neighborhood I choose was CollegePark, and my URL should be something like:

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/xxxx

But I forget the number.

Another learning is, most of what you did on this earth, or especially online will vanish – your Geocities web pages, you Facebook content, your twitter message, and all the emails you send out – eventually, will go away.

Let it be. Bye Bye, Geocities!

P.S. I appreciate the consistency of newsletter from Hollywood.com. It was the first email newsletter I subscribed. 13 years later, they are still sending out emails, although I never really read it.

End of Long Holiday

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This is another long holiday – the end of the 8th free day.

Wendy asked me “What we did in the last National Holiday?” Good question. I had no idea. Checking the blog entry of Oct last year, I realized that last year was just like this year – seven days of free time with no particular activities.

This is life – normal life does not leave any mark in memory.

The only different thing in this holiday was, I watched TV show “Soldiers” 士兵突击 (30 episodes) in the last few days. Hmmm… I was not passionate for about TV shows but to watch TV shows every day provides a framework to schedule the day.

I chatted with Wendy yesterday. I said I am surprised that I started to love routines, and scheduled. Without some fixed date and some routines, life is just like a boat floating on the surface of the Sea with no directions.

In some sense, it is great that I am going back to work tomorrow.

Kongming Lamp – Hundreds of Them

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I heard about Kongming Lamp, but never really saw it myself. Kong Ming Lamp, or known as Kong Ming Lantern, or Sky Lantern, is made of thin paper, and heated by a candle, so it flies to the sky with the heated air.

The previous few days, when I am at my home, I saw some “airplane” with only one single red light – very different from the airplane. I thought it was helicopter. When I see more and more of it, I even thought it is a big military action.

Tonight, when Wendy and I drive along the Jinxiu Road, I saw about 20 of them – very exciting. Then when we approach the Century park area, there are more and more of them – at least few hundreds of them flying in the sky, with more and more rising up. They are just like stars in the sky – the whole sky was lit up by these small lamps.

China really has many great traditions, that we only saw on books, and now, many of them started renaissance.

I just hope that the Shanghai government does not follow Nanjing to ban these lanterns.

Installing Windows XP on Dell

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I am installing a new copy of Windows XP on my Dell desktop computer (with service tag: JG7PR1X).

Regarding installing Windows, it was one of my favorite many years ago. When I just joined Microsoft in 1998 as an intern (Hey! It is Microsoft!). That was years before Windows 2000 was launched, and we were still using Windows 95. One of my daily job was to install Windows. At that time, many cases need environment to reproduce the problem, and we don’t have fancy stuff like Virtual PC – we only had ghost, but most of the Windows environment don’t have a ghost file. I am very good at installing a Traditional Chinese Office onto a Thai Windows, just to reproduce some weird problems. I may have installed Windows 100+ times in one year.

Now, installing Windows is so boring task, especially when I have to look for the right driver, and fix some minor issues before I continue. See? Big difference in mood between ten years ago and now – doing the same thing.

The interesting difference is, to install a machine is a great accomplishment for me 10 years ago – look at this fresh new machine – which I can work on it tomorrow. Now, installing a computer is just, hmmm, something too small to be satisfied with… When the standard of accomplishment changes, our sense of time changes, and our feeling for happiness changes.

Get to Top of SWFC within 100 RMB

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Here, I’d e to share a secret place with budget visitors. This is really the secret locals know.

Top of World Financial Center

The Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC) is now the highest building in Shanghai and China. Standing at 492 meters high, with 101 floors, it attracts huge number of visitors to the top observation deck.

It costs 150 RMB per person to get to the top of it. Expensive, but tourists are not as cost sensitive as in their normal lives. Look at the long lines to get to the top!

My Tip – 100 Century Avenue Bar

As most of the hotels, the Park Hyatt hotel in the building offers nice bar at the top of its building – at 91th floor, named 100 Century Avenue.

It is an expensive Sushi and BBQ restaurant with about 400 RMB minimum fee for normal tables, or 2000 USD minimum for a private room, but, the bar area also offers some nice drink at relatively cheap price.

Drinks

My tip is, just go to that restaurant, and order some drink. The tea ranges from 45-55 RMB, and Baily is about 90 RMB. All the fees are subject to 15% service fee. You can expect to have some nice drink (their tea is not bad) within 60 RMB if you look at the low end of the menu, and if you are lucky, a window seat facing the Jinmao Tower, the Bund, and the magnificent view of Shanghai.

It is not cheap, but at a price of two cup of Starbucks, you enjoy much better time than the crowded top deck with a comfortable seat, and nice drink. It is just half of the price. I feel it is a better option.

The Bar

The Bar itself is not very interesting – the typical bar with shining ceiling, polite servants, and high wine shelf. The most unique thing about the bar is just its heights!

Your next meetup? Look into the sky!

PS. Bonus Tip

Another similar tip is, instead of visiting the observation deck on top of 88th floor of Jinmao Tower, you can visit the bar on 56th floor under the Great Well in Jinmao Tower

P.S. 2 Photos

Photos can be found here.

Load All Articles on Category Page

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I added a little function for myself – not necessarily everyone will love it. My last discussion about Full Content on Home Page of my Blog actually turned out to a conclusion that my readers love its current design (or to better put it, hate change). So I will try not to change stuff too much.

On the category page, I used to have a list of all the articles in the category, with a link to the original article, and excerpt. It is nice for people to read that article, and the comments(!).

From time to time, I want to review all the articles without going into each link – I never succeeded in clicking every link on the page to read every article.

So… I think of workaround – a way to add that function without change the old layout.

The New Button

Now, visit any of the category page, like this one, you will see a big button “Load all articles”. Clicking the articles, you will see all the articles loaded on the same page for you to quickly review. Reload the page restore it to the original view.

The Code

In case you want to know how I did it, just the following simple codes:

<input type="button" value="Load all articles" id="preview">

....

<script src="http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>

<script>

$("#preview").click(function(){

$("li a").each(function(){

$(this).parent().load(this.href + " h1, div > div> p");

});

});

</script>

It is a very simple JQuery code. It basically tells the browsers when a button named “preview” is called, for each a tag under li tag, load the HTML specified by the href attribute into the parent node. Then only gets the p tag under two div tag…

Anyway, skip this part if you are not technical type of person.

Your Comments

What would you like? The expanded view (with the contents) or the original view?

Foot Starts to Recover

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The ankle is recovering well. Now I can start to use the right food to walk a little bit in the room. When I am out, I still need to use crutches to go further.

Hopefully, after the 8 days of holiday, I will be able to go to office without crutches.

The life of being a temp handicapped person almost ends. I feel I have get used to this time, and feel a little bit unease to be completely independent. :-)

How amazing that people can adjust themselves to the environment!

Useless Time

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Zhou Guoping is a wise man. Wendy bought a book of him, and I am reading a piece of it. He described the value of “useless things”, and “useless time”.

A story was about parents playing with kids on the beach. The traditional view is the parents is accompany the kids, but his view is, the kids are guiding the parents to discover happiness – the water, the sand, the grass, and the ants! Children are really good at enjoying themselves for something that is perceived by adult as useless, but it is those stuff that people often enjoy themselves best.

Wendy and I were very tired this year. Why? Maybe too much time was devoted to do useful things, like work, and personal financing. Even watching DVD is classified explicitly as “entertainment time” with a goal to relax. When was the time that we were so really relax? The time that we feel worthless. When we are in university, we had nothing, just endless time to kill! That is maybe the least productive, but happiest time in recent years. The happiest time in my whole life is maybe the pre-primary school time. Not productive, either.

I wrote an article named Ability to Make Impact is the Cause of Pressure. Now, when we grows older, we feel the ability to make impact. We understand a small change in the setting in bank account may cause twice as much as monthly spending as when we were in university. Then what? Pressure, and no time to enjoy the life.

Zhou is really wise to point it out that doing something useless actually is the way to enjoy our lives.

Imbalance of Male and Female in China

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Look at this group of interesting data:

Year | Male % | Male # | Female #

1976 50.92% 20,491,797 10,435,196 10,056,601

1977 50.86% 17,931,155 9,119,685 8,811,470

1978 50.55% 18,831,591 9,519,345 9,312,246

1979 50.45% 18,924,822 9,548,059 9,376,763

1980 50.64% 18,393,809 9,315,481 9,078,328

1981 51.00% 19,122,938 9,752,137 9,370,801

1982 51.02% 23,100,427 11,786,950 11,316,732

1983 51.21% 20,065,048 10,275,677 9,789,371

1984 51.53% 20,313,426 10,468,201 9,845,225

1985 51.88% 20,429,326 10,598,460 9,830,866

1986 51.85% 23,190,076 12,023,710 11,166,366

1987 53.87% 25,282,644 13,619,530 12,663,114

1988 52.00% 24,576,191 12,779,621 11,796,570

1989 52.16% 25,137,678 13,110,848 12,026,830

1990 52.69% 26,210,044 13,811,030 12,399,014

1991 53.16% 20,082,026 10,674,963 9,407,063

1992 53.40% 18,752,106 10,014,222 8,737,884

1993 53.53% 17,914,756 9,590,414 8,324,342

1994 53.83% 16,470,140 8,866,012 7,604,128

1995 54.08% 16,933,559 9,157,597 7,775,962

1996 54.24% 15,224,282 8,257,145 6,967,137

1997 54.64% 14,454,335 7,897,234 6,557,101

1998 54.97% 14,010,711 7,701,684 6,309,027

1999 55.09% 11,495,247 6,332,425 5,162,822

2000 54.08% 13,793,799 7,460,206 6,333,593

Source: CPIRC via Chedong’s Blog

What did it tell us?

  • There are more male born every year, and there is a strong imbalance.
  • 1986-1990 is a peak of birth, and in 2000, only half of those born in 1990.

Shall I worry when Yifan grows up, can he easily find a wife?

Watching the Military Parade

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9:30 Lay back in my sofa and waiting for the military parade to begin at 10:00.

9:35 CCTV is broadcasting the scene of many cities in China in real time – it takes a lot of resources to do it!

9:43: The 60 years of history is a big V shape, with the ending point much higher than the starting point. In the 60 year review, no one ever mentioned the “missing 20 years”. It seems China directly jumped from 1955 to 1977.

9:48 From the TV screen, Beijing has never been so empty and clear – From the bird view, the whole city looks like a model – with nothing moving. Where are the people? No people on the street, and no people near buildings. They all hide somewhere.

10:06 The Parade starts. At the very beginning, watching at Tian’an Men must be boring – with long time nothing happened – waiting for HU Jintao to come out of the Tian’an Men tower.

10:21 The weapons look nice.

10:28 President Hu is giving a speech now, before the army march.

10:37 The Parade march starts now.

11:20 The military parade part ends.

11:34 I got some idea about why the students have to be working hard for several months for this parade – the parade of people are actually huge square of more than 2000 per group doing exactly the SAME thing. That needs a little bit practice to keep everyone synced.