I got my ticket for Expo 2010 today.
Here is the photo of the face and the back.
The ticket is good between May 1 to Sept 30, and Oct 8 to Oct 24.
I got my Expo 2010 Ticket
8
Surface of Roads in Shanghai Recovers
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Parade Tomorrow
The 60 Anniversary Parade will be on show tomorrow morning.
But, I still don’t really understand the need for a military parade.
I understand that many people want a celebration, but what is the military function of the parade? Anyone wants to share some idea?
I am confused not only by the Parade tomorrow, but also the parade in France, and other countries. It seems there are just small number of countries still doing that.
Interestingly, there is no military blood in my body. I just don’t enjoy guns, and canons. That is maybe the reason I am not excited about the parade, but many of my friends are looking forward to it just as to the world cup. See? People naturally have different types. I am more of an IT guy, than a military guy by nature.
60 Anniversary of … Motherland?
Tomorrow is the so-called “60 anniversary of the motherland”. It was called 50 anniversary of the motherland 10 years ago, and people just let it go, but this year, with the popularity of blogs, and social media, more and more people are challenging the idea: Is the motherland of China just 60 years old?
I would support to change it to “60 anniversary of the regime”.
In 1 and half hour, the traffic control measures will be implemented in Shanghai. Several roads and buses are blocked. But we are much better than Beijing. Just had a phone call with my friend in Beijing, and they are busy moving out the building. The whole building near the east 4th ring will be shutdown shortly.
2009 National Holiday Schedule
In China, it has formed a tradition that every national holiday from now on will be from Oct 1 to Oct 7 – 7 days. This year, since there is a Middle Moon Festival during that period, the holiday is extended to 8 days.
So, the quick schedule is: Oct 1 to Oct 8 = holiday.
The complicated schedule is about the date before and after it. Since the holiday is just 3 days, and they tried to leverage the 4 weekends before and after the 3 holiday to make it up to 7 days, the national wide schedule is very wired:
Sept 25 Friday Weekday
Sept 26 Saturday Weekend
Sept 27 Sunday Weekday
Sept 28 Monday Weekday
Sept 29 Tuesday Weekday
Sept 30 Wednesday Weekday
Oct 1 Thursday Holiday
Oct 2 Friday Holiday
Oct 3 Saturday Holiday
Oct 4 Sunday Holiday
Oct 5 Monday Holiday
Oct 6 Tuesday Holiday
Oct 7 Wednesday Holiday
Oct 8 Thursday Holiday
Oct 9 Friday Weekday
Oct 10 Saturday Weekday
Oct 11 Sunday Weekend
Oct 12 Monday Weekday
Please note the two days marked as bold – people need to come to work on Saturday or Sunday.
THE Parade
The Parade will happen on 10:00 AM, October 1, 2009. I doubt any other media besides CCTV 4 will broadcast it outside China. Putting all the controversial discussion aside, the parade itself should be nice to watch.
Village Li – My Primary School
My school mate Nie Xiangfeng took some photos of the primary school we went to (we are both primary school, and middle school classmates). Very nice picture – obviously it means a lot to me since I have never been back since 15 years ago.
Below is the playground and the buildings of the primary school – how come after 20 years, it never changed a little bit?
Photograph by Nie Xiangfeng
The buildings of the primary school.
Photograph by Nie Xiangfeng
The main building. I think I was on the third story in my grade 5.
Photograph by Nie Xiangfeng
Photograph by Nie Xiangfeng
This is the junior middle school part.
Photograph by Nie Xiangfeng
More photos is on Nie Xiangfeng’s blog
Photo of Rush Hours
Wendy took a photo of rush hours on Huashan Road. Look at below:
Photograph by Wendy Fan
Photograph by Wendy Fan
That is the bonus of living in a big city.
The Founding of a Republic
Wendy and I went to theater to see the movie The Founding of a Republic – the politically important movie. It is about the beginning of the domestic war and the end between 1945-1949, a movie to celebrate 60 anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
My comment? Well, better than expected, since for the first time, it tells the story from two side – the KMT side and the CCP side. For most of the time and event, I take it suspiciously. I am not for sure which part is fake, but my tendency of thinking is, there are many facts altered from the history. Just need to spend more time to dig into the details of that 3 years. Actually, the movie raised my interest in recent history again.
For my readers outside China, there is something so funny for the movie. The 135 minutes long movie accommodated 170+ celebrities in China, with most of them only have several seconds to show. Famous star like Zhang Ziyi only also have about one or two sentence in that movie. That added some humerus factor to this movie.
Overestimation of Bad Things
In my favorite book “Stumble Upon Happiness”, Gilbert described an experiment seeking for the answer of this question: “Whether people are happier to lose one leg, or winning 1 million prize in lottery”. The result seems to be obvious, but objective survey of people who lose a leg in car accidents, and people who won lottery after one year show the difference is not that obvious (with people losing a leg just slightly unhappier than the lucky winners). Why is that?
We often over estimate the impact of bad things, because when we think about it, it seems to be the whole of our world, but actually it is just a small part of it.
Breaking Angle?
Taking my recent experience as an example. I have my ankle broken, and the foot cannot touch ground for 3 months. I have to use crutch everywhere I go. Isn’t it bad? It is bad but not that bad. When I sit down at my desk, my foot, both feet, actually, is out of my conscious world. I can reply emails, I can write blog and reply comments, and you know what, I even can watch a video clip! At night, I enjoy good sleep without worrying about my foot, when I started my sweet dream. There is nothing to do with my foot 23 hours out of the 24 hours of my day. When I do have to pay attention to the foot (like at noon time when I worry about my lunch), I was taken very good care of by people around me. To me, it is not that bad.
Blind?
Imagine what if someone got blind. Isn’t it bad? Yes. But we can hardly understand that the world is not just about seeing things. You have radios to listen to, and you still have thoughts going on in the brain. The kids are still talking with you all the time (so you want to shut them down with a button). All these happiness are actually has nothing to do with eyes!
Inspiring Disabled People
It is so inspiring to see people who don’t have legs and arms – I saw one, but he is still so happy! With a little bit help, he can still enjoy great DVDs, and delicious food, and become a thinker! I was so inspired to see sisters connected with each other – they share everything except two heads. They are still very happy people, because the great things normal people can do, at the end of the day, are just very small part of the life. The majority of the time was spent on something body actually does not matter too much, like talking or reading, or watching video, or just close eyes, and hmmm… sleep.
Loosing part of function does impact the other parts too much.
A Country with Bad Sides
As a country, it is the same. Just as the great discussion we had in the last few days. We see areas to improve on political systems, and we see the dark side of the country (along with great side), but what I believe is, never let the bad things destroy our hope and our happiness, and even further, do not stop improving where we live because of losing hope of the political system.
A democratic and real republic political system, or justice, and freedom are just one aspect of this country. Even with it, it does not help on many things:
There are still car accidents (no matter in capitalism, or socialism, democratic, or dictatorship, or whatever -ism countries). Improving the safety of transportation need people’s hard work, no matter what happens in Beijing.
There are still be unhappy people. Leaving along adults, kids are always unhappy if the parents put them into bed at night! Can democratic process solve this problem?
There are still economy problems, even art problems around. In a more fair society, people still need to compete. There will always be poorer people and richer, in whatever society. That does not solve that difference problem, too. Oops. We did try to make wealth evenly distributed across the country in China in the 50s and 60s. What a great success!
My Hope
If you read my recent discussion and comments, you may feel that I am not as hopeful to this country as before, and I am not happy. No. No. No… The impression is wrong. We need to understand the importance of improvement on political system, but meanwhile, there are many other ways to help. Running a successful classified site also means a lot. Multi-party system does not solve the problem that people cannot trade second-hands, does it?
In short, I am full of hope for China, and knows there are many things to do including but not limited to political improvement.
Nice Discussion on Politics
I’d like to draw people’s attention to the follow three thread where there is great discussion happening. I admire people’s thoughts in the comments section. Please join us if you are interested.
Does Policital System in Taiwan Work? 24 comments so far.
Millionaire Country Singapore. China? 12 comments so far.
Life in Beijing Must be Interesting 33 comments so far.
Be patient to read the long thread. There are some very nice thoughts in it.
Recovered Old Files on Wangjianshuo.com
My frequent readers won’t be able to notice the difference between two domains: wangjianshuo.com and home.wangjianshuo.com. They are different in many ways:
History: wangjianshuo.com started in 2000, and it is far before I started the blog.
Authoring tools: Between 2000 and 2002, I never heard about blog, and I was a FrontPage support engineer in Microsoft in early days, so I used FrontPage – not very good in today’s web 2.0 terms, since after you authorized the pages, it is static. I didn’t change the content for a long time.
Location: as implied by the name, home.wangjianshuo.com started from a home computer in my reading room, and then moved to more than 5 different hosting services, before it now settled down at MediaTemple (very good so far).
There are some nice content on the old site, but I just found out it is not accessible for many months today. So I recovered (a simple “CHMOD -R 775 html” did the trick).
Here are a list of the old files.
Look at how naive I was 9 years ago. As historical record, I just don’t want to touch it and keep them their as long as I can.
http://wangjianshuo.com/about/faq.htm
http://wangjianshuo.com/about/links.htm
http://wangjianshuo.com/about/buildwebsite.htm
https://home.wangjianshuo.com/photo/
http://wangjianshuo.com/cn/926/index.htm
http://wangjianshuo.com/personal/places/pudongairport/index.htm
http://wangjianshuo.com/personal/
I have hosted blog for some of my friends. They do not update today, but the old files are still there.
http://wangjianshuo.com/fanfan