Archive
July 1, 2002
The weather in Tianjin has taken an ugly turn. Tonight we were treated to a huge lightning storm, and the humidity has shot through the roof. I feel like I'm in a tropical country.
China in talks with Vivendi, BSkyB. They want to broadcast CCTV 9 in Europe (already available on cable in the US, actually). There is an exciting prospect: Chinese TV bowing to viewer preference.
I was talking to Kathy today about how in the United States, textbook are published by private companies and not under government control or censorship. Not to imply they they aren't under other forms of censorship.
Very cool article in the NY Times about the Korean nation and the World Cup. It makes me wish China had been able to go further; I think some of the same issue were at stake for this country.
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July 2, 2002
I spiffed up the blue alternative stylesheet and now it's called Night Blue, and I created a new green one called Bean Green.
Yahoo is debuting their new homepage. Sad to say, they went with a table-based layout.
TD stands for "table data", according to the W3C.
I learned two new Chinese expressions today, qi3ren2 you4tian1 and ren2zou3 cha1liang2.
There is a topic I've been wanting to write about for a while now, just to get it off of my shoulders. It really bothers me when I hear Americans say "it's not real!" in regards to manufactured and possibly pirated goods. What does that mean, "real"? What conditions does something have to meet to qualify as real? For example, I bought a pair of Levi's at the Silk Market, and Shirley kept trying to convince me that they probably weren't real. They have the leather-like Levi's tag on the back of the waist, they have the "authentic Levi's" notice printed on the inside of one of the pockets; in all likelihood they are either seconds (defective, not up to standards products) from factory that makes jeans and sells them to Levi's, or perfectly fine jeans from the same factory that runs overtime to make some extra money on the side. So what makes those jeans "not real"?
A reasonable objection based on the above would be to ask whether they are really made by a Levi's-endorsed factory. Based on this article in Business Week, "Clear Sailing for Pirates", I would say that yes, these clothes or other commodities are produced in corporate-backed factories. How else would Safeguard soap be showing up in the Middle East? Or "bogus" Duracell batteries be passing for the "real" item in the USA? My beef is not with the main point of the article, I respect the right of corporations to defend their copyright laws. But please don't go calling these products "bogus", "fake" or "not real" and brainwashing the American public into thinking that a signature from your CEO and a few extra dollars on the price-tag makes something more "real".
On an unrelated note but on the same topic I think it's interesting that, for example, you can find Safeguard soap in the Phillipines. I don't ethically endorse pirating goods (disclosure: I've bought my share of pirated CD's), but as a starting point for another argument you could draw parallels between Napster and the "manu-pirates", in terms of bringing quality products to "users" who wouldn't have it otherwise and preparing them to be consumers in the modern market sense.
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July 4, 2002
The only reason I regret abandoning Japanese for Chinese is the lack of good Chinese music. Where are Gu-lei (古累) or Pi-ji-ka-tuo Wu (批及卡托 5) when you need them?
According to Confucious, he has played on the Forbidden Table-Tennis tables. I have a new hero, not that he already wasn't.
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July 5, 2002
I had a very leisurely day today, even though I started out in a foul mood. I intended to go into Beijing and apply for a replacement passport, since mine was lost/stolen in Beijing on Thursday. By the time I got to the train station, it was almost two and the embassy closes at 4pm, so I walked down the river towards Binjiang Dao looking for a bank. I found a very nice air-conditioned bank, HSBC to be exact. I pulled out a sizable sum of money, which will secure me for a while. Then I settled down in a comfortable chair in the Ocean Pacific (?) hotel next door, which was also a/c'ed and enjoyed a cucumber juice while I read John Grisham's The Testament.
Binjiang Dao was not too crowded on a Saturday afternoon. Most Tianjin residents were playing it smart, staying out of the heat and humidity. I thought about catching a movie. The movie theater was showing a Jean Reno movie that I just bought on DVD and a documentary about 9/11. Not in the mood for a movie, I kept walking and followed my stomach into the Food Alley. This place, I'll admit, is a little dirty. Shirley refused to eat there. It's a bunch of booths flanking both sides of a covered walkway, which is filled with cafeteria-style benches and hawkers offering you rice, noodles, veggies, kebabs, all sorts of good food. The best way to choose a meal is to watch what other people are eating, and point it out. Nothing simpler: no Chinese needed. I ended up repeating at a place I ate with months ago; they specialize in Korea food. Their curry rice in a hot metal bowl is excellent, and at RMB 5 it can't be beat for value. A bottle of apple soda brought the total up to RMB 9, about one US dollar.
I caught the bus back to the McDonalds by the school and got in some good reading time. The DVD store is air-conditioned, I found out by stopping there on the way back. Several new DVD's joined my collection: Conan the Barbarian, a Japanese movie with Takenouchi Yutaka, and God of Gamblers 1 and 2. I also picked up Sterelab's Sounddust, some live sessions by Prodigy, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Right now I"m listening to Daft Punk's homework, which I picked up in Beijing recently.
It turned into a good day.
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July 6, 2002
I really like what Lou Brothers has done in his Self Project page. If I started one for myself (which I just might), I would want to learn basic/intermediate Korean, maybe some Russian to communicate with Annie, read books in Spanish, learn auto-mechanic skills, and duplicate his goal of learning XML/PHP. All that, and install/run Linux on a computer I built myself or with a friend. (The rest of Lou's site is recommended, as well.)
Some cool stuff is happening on Simon Willison's Weblog. He has a cron job to grab an XML document with update times for his favorite blogs from blo.gs, which he uses PHP to turn into an HTML list sorted by last-update. He used this to create a Mozilla/Netscape sidebar. Neat! I suggested using the CSS :visited pseudoclass to style the links of visited blogs, but a Mozilla bug prevents that from happening.
The closer I get to going back home, but more anxious I am. One one hand, I can think of a million things I will enjoy back in California (eat at Taco Bell, not worry about mosquitos, drive a car). On the other hand, I can think of a million things I won't be able to do (eat kebabs on the street corner, order my favorite eggplant, train it to Beijing for sightseeing).
I'm supposed to come up with a list of candidate domain names for the website of CRIS Elementary School in Tianjin, China, which will be moving to the Binhai area later this year. Any original ideas? I'm currently looking at other schools for ideas. I believe both top-level and .cn domains are acceptable. Lawrence didn't like http://www.crisschool.com, and I agree. At the moment, I'm looking into CERNET, the Chinese Education and Research Network.
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July 7, 2002
The Overseas Young Chinese Forum consistently puts out splendid articles. In the lastest issue, Randy PEERENBOOM (note the capitalization of the last name, woo!) expounds on China's transition to a rule-of-law country in his article "Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom, One Hundred Schools Contend: Debating Rule of Law in China - Part One". Great sections on the views of different conceptions of nationhood on human rights, and the ways these different conceptions treat their constitutions. An article by Yuanheng Sally WANG called "Mosaic "Eggs" and Their Connections to the Biculturalism: A Dissection of the Identity of White Americans Interested in Chinese Culture" caught my eye because it's about "egged" Sinophiles and how the Chinese culture can either modify or reinforce the cultural elements of their birth culture. This article has a lot of academic heeing and hawing and not much original thought, but the second half has some interesting framework for future thought on this topic.
I haven't done much today. Had passport photos taken. Bought a toothbrush and soap. Ate ramen and almost-ripe nectarines for lunch.
Following in the footsteps of Lou Brothers, the Self-Project begins.
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July 8, 2002
The American embassy in Beijing is under heavy guard right now; in fact, the whole embassy area is roped off. The reason? Beijing wants to keep defecting North Koreans from dashing into foreign embassies. Fair enough!
I went back to the store on Liulichang where I bough a t-shirt for my sister and chatted with them for a while. When they found out my backpack was stolen, they offered to replace the t-shirt for free. Such nice people!
One of my main interests in China is the contrasts you see in daily life, especially the social contrasts between the old-school communist society and the newly emerging capitalist side of things. Today I picked up a couple of books at the Xinhua Bookstore in Xidan. They include a textbook for first graders called "I love the Chinese Communist Party" and a history of the CCP for children. I couldn't believe the books I found in the "Nationalism" section of the kids area. One was called "I Reject Depraved/Evil Teaching" and the first page started talking about the Falun Gong movment. A cool one was all about the flag raising in Tiananmen and the training that the color guard goes through. I also picked up a volume in a series of biographies of great people in history. Did I get Confucious? No. Abraham Lincoln? No. George Washington, Napoleon, Sun Yat-sen, Buddha or Mozart? No siree, I picked up the biography of Bill Gates. It's odd how people idolize him here, and yet China is supposed to be so Linux-friendly. However, I do see a ton of people on the street studying computer books about Dreamweaver, Maya and Photoshop. Microsoft, blah.
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July 9, 2002
You know you've grown used to Beijing when you can fend off the art students with no effort.
Also, I had a conversation with a friendly People's Armed Policeman today. He was holding a machine gun. On one hand, it was a little unnverving. On the other hand, it was exhilarating. He was very friendly.
DeadChingis wrote a good summary of the different uniformed people you'll see in Beijing.
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July 10, 2002
Passport and visa have both been issued in a record of three days total. That means I'll be in sunny Southern California this Friday morning.
Today I went to a big CRIS Group/Home Club company meeting and show. It was pretty boring, lots of Mandopop crooners. I got to play in a game, in front of a billion Chinese people oggling the 外国朋友 ("foreign friend", could you get away with that in the US?) where I ran around a pole and transferred ping-pong balls from one glass bowl to another with a little wire doodad like you use to transfer Easter Eggs out of the dye cup. I tied for first place and won a bottle of shampoo. I also came away with a yellow(!) polo shirt, which all of the CRIS School staff wore. Like my suitcase isn't full enough.
The highlight of the show was the Michael Jackson imitator and the army men. A Chinese Mr Jackson strutted his stuff to a remix of Dangerous, which was seriously sub-par dancing but compared to the other acts this afternoon was pretty inspired. The army men were four guys in camo suits who beat each other up in various creative ways. They were actually very professional and fun to watch.
Since my logs have been seriously lacking in links lately (too much real life, haha) I'll drop a totally unrelated bonus link: my friend Pierre wants to immigrate to Canada, specifically Toronto; Toronto is in the middle of a trash strike, you can see pictures at The Daily Nonsense. Also, you can see my work on CSS Frames.
Chinese men bare their chests. We see this all the time in Tianjin. Frankly, I just got used to it.
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July 11, 2002
Animated gifs rule. Surfing Slashdot today, I found this gem:
I laughed out loud at the Lorem Ipsum sidebar.
Last night I spent a couple hours packing. I have one big box, a suitcase, and a bunch of stuff that didn't fit. Grr.
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July 14, 2002
I'm back in California and dealing with reverse culture shock. Surprisingly, as accustomed as I am to giving little credit to psychological analyses, reverse culture shock is something that I've come to accept. It would take a very balanced person to get through the change without feeling a little depressed about being home. California feels so extravagant and rich, I miss the simplicity and gentle politicking of China. I've convinced myself that by spending some time here in the USA, I'll be able to go back to China as something more than an English teacher. Hopefully this will serve as a motivation to work hard in the years ahead.
I'm working on my parent's iBook, in IE 5.2/Mac. My webpage suffers a slight disfiguration on the sidebar, and will receive a proper updating. Other than that, things are just dandy. Working on MacOS X is fun too, although being on a dial-up I can't take advantage of things like Apache and download huge binaries. Plus the fact that the computer belongs to my parents, I don't want to load it with extraneous applications.
I really missed my bike this last year. It never would have survived Tianjin's pot-holed roads and muddy streets. I rode to Tower Records tonight and browsed the magazine I haven't had the chance to peruse in a year (Foreign Affairs, the Economist), learning a new word in the process: blench, which I first assumed to be a mis-spelling of blanch (it's a variation) but it turned out to be a word in its own right with a similar meaning to its cognate. I also found a good Korean textbook, which I thought did not exist. And a book teaching Arabic script, which may convince me to add Arabic to my list of goals for this next year.
From Simon Willison's weblog, I found a link to the Which PowerPuff Girl is Your Blog? quiz. I'm Bubbles, yeah!
Bored? Pick one of the 52 Projects.
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July 15, 2002
Our friend and yours Amy Chen leads us to a neat start-up, Stanford's Journal of East Asian Affairs. Maybe someday I'll ante up and contribute.
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July 16, 2002
I posted this Mozilla feature suggestion at the weblog of Simon Willison, but it's been something I've thought about for a while so it's worth posting here for reference's sake. The feature I most want in Mozilla is a regexp-based filter for replaced objects, namely images, flash objects, etc. Say I never want to see a flash presentation every again: I would create a filter that does a match for "\.swf" and any request for an object which matches is not carried out. If I'm morally opposed to ads from the nytimes (which serve ads from the same server as the stories, negating Mozilla's "block images by server" feature) then I could create a filter which matches "nytimes.com/ads". This isn't the user-friendliest feature (you need to be familiar with regexp's) but it sure would be cool.
Emacs come pre-installed on MacOS X. Woo!
Has the blog become the standard and possibly most efficient form of informational webpage? Just like the window paradigm has taken a firm grip on the computer GUI scene, the blog seems ubiquitous in the web, though perhaps I'm looking at it from a very narrow perspective. So far, all improvements on the window model have been experimental and not widely used. I wonder if in the future it will be similar with blogs. One counter-argument could be that weblogs are just very simple Content Management Systems (CMS), which are a convenient way of updating information in a digital form.
I'm looking for a job. If you know of a teaching opportunity for an uncredentialed and minimally experienced person in the math and/or sciences, let me know please! See my lastest resume in the resume folder.
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July 17, 2002
There is a new Mac "Switch" ad that is totally Annie. It's not linked from the main page, they published then pulled it but a backup was saved.
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July 19, 2002
I'm passing some very lazy days, watching a lot of TV or riding my back down to Tower Bookstore and reading about XML (very cool!) or MacOS X.
My blog code is this:
B2 d- t++ k- s+ u- f i- o+ x— e- l- c
I'm not one to jump on the bandwagon the minute it starts rolling, so things like the Blog Code put me in between a rock and a hard place: do I want to be one of the early adopters, or wait and see if it's a losing deal? The Geekcode took off, went through a period of hyper-inflation, them became old school. As for the Blog Code, they should adopt some of the Geek Code's notation, as in "I don't have my own domain, but someday I'd like to be able to say that I own and administer a dozen domains in 8 different TLD's." As it is, they don't have enough outrageous options, excepting:
I AM Brad, Cameron, Ev, Matt, Jason, Meg, Tom, Derek, Rebecca, Jack, Dave, or Jeffrey. [u=]
Read some cool journals; thanks Memepool!
Using XML by J David Eisenberg is the latest and greatest AListApart article. It was interesting to me because it's something I've been thinking and reading about lately, not to mention that XML is on my Self-Project list. An interesting note: the author J David Eisenberg is the guy who wrote the original, old-school online Korean tutorial! And he has a Russian one too! Woo!
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July 23, 2002
I haven't updated in a while because I'm back in the armpit of California, "Brea", where nothing every happens. With no money.
I'm on the hunt for a job. Borders Bookstore is holding a job fair at the Embassy Suites hotel in Brea this week because they are opening a new location in La Habra next to Krispy Kreme. I went in for an interview and had a great time. Anthony, my interviewer, asked me questions I've always wished to be asked: "What's the last book you read?", "what's the last CD you bought?", and "what's your ideal job?". Anthony dug my aspiration to be a freelance itinerant museum exhibit translator because he was a history major in college, and the interview had a really positive tone from that point on. I'm really glad I went in, and I'd be really happy to work at a bookstore, even a corporate giant like Borders. Is this my chance to be six degrees from Jeff Bezos?
I've also been looking at private schools in the area, because I really enjoyed teaching last year in China. Somebody remind me to call my uncle Steve about that. And to call Kartik to get together sometime. And while you're at it, check out the updated BOHS Class of 1997 page.
I'd like to make a book recommendation, a book I picked up at Tower Records and couldn't put down. It's by Michael Breen (no, not Jim Breen) and it's called "The Koreans". It touched on differences between Koreans, Chinese and Japanese, and a little bit on the Korean education system. Even the chapter on religion had my eyes glued to the page. I'll be finishing it on subsequent visits.
How many times will these things be pointed out, and how long will our leaders continue to ignore the fact that Saudi Arabia is a state that sponsors terrorism and treats its women almost as badly as the Taliban did theirs? Pulling out is not the answer, and neither is ignoring it. Saudi Arabia should be put on the list of countries that need a serious cultural education in civility and human rights.
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July 24, 2002
I like music and I like politics, so when the two intersect I'm interested. If you follow that link, you will find some powerful lyrics, of which you can find a sample here:
But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
Cucumber juice isn't what it cracked up to be. Try Lychee juice, available in the Asian food section of Ralphs.
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July 25, 2002
No Chinese Should Make Light of their Native Language, in today's China Daily. A Chinese reporter decries the mindless spread of English in China.
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July 26, 2002
My page pings weblogs.com when it's updated. I'll discover the ramifications of that some other time. I downloaded a freeware RSS feed reader called NetNewsWire Lite for the Mac at the suggestion of Todd Dominey, and I may be building my own RSS feed soon.
Uncle Ted invited me out to lunch yesterday, and we had a pleasant conversation about China and job/schooling opportunities available to me. He mentioned that even a public school would be willing to hire an uncredentialed teacher by providing them with an emergency credential. It would be nice to make a teacher-sized salary for a year, but it would be a lot of work. I haven't heard back from Borders yet.
Kartik and I hung out last night at the Olde Ship in Fullerton. He's going to Northwestern medical school in Chicago, which is very cool. I got updates on several Class of '97 people, and we spent the requisite time bashing Brea for, as he aptly put it, having no culture.
I wanted to get the XSH shell, an XML-editing shell and perl module, working on the iBook but I'm still too much of an MacOS X newb to figure it out. You can find me down in the Operating Systems section of Tower Bookstore. (link is courtesy of Sweetcode)
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July 27, 2002
In the afternoons occasionally I watch a drama on channel 18 (KSCI) called "Toast Boy's Kiss". It's in heavily accented Taiwan Mandarin with Chinese subtitles, and I'm very encouraged that I can understand a lot. I really wish I could find a place to rent these dramas, be they Japanese or Taiwanese. Through Google, I managed to find some fan pages, including a Lee Wei photo site and the official 吐司男之吻 2 site.
For the general amusement of our shareholders, I offer this link. Warning: may not be work-safe.
I registered SimpleVCD today. It's probably the first piece of software I've actually payed for, partly because it's such a darn simple, no-frills program, partly because VCDs are still the primary means of propagation for Japanese and Taiwanese drama, and partly because I couldn't figure out how to bypass the registration system. It stores the date you first used it in some secret location, and you can't play in full-screen mode after the demo period ends. There is no documented way to reset the starting date, according to Google. And I first used it 697 days ago!
I think it's funny that http://www.dictoinary.com points to a porn site. You'd imagine they would have registered that one too.
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July 28, 2002
I'm on the hunt for a phonograph that can do 78 RPM. I bought eleven old records in Tianjin, but I discovered that neither my player nor Grandpa Stu's can play 78's. My only hope is finding one at a thrift store, or having to wait until next time I go to uncle Bob's house.
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July 30, 2002
I'm getting ready to make my big re-entry into the "Brea scene", if there is such a thing. I called up Mrs. Davis and told her I wanted her job, mom dropped the news to Mr. Patterson that I'm looking to work at the high school and I requested letters of recommendation from a few people to accompany my applications. The longer I mull over the prospect of being a teacher at Brea, the more OK it seems. At least I can be an agent for change, and inject some culture into this dead town. Mr. Malloy left the high school to teach at Fullerton College. Apparently he was working on his masters degree. There is always that escape route.
The Brea Posse 5th year reunion is coming along. As of today, the volunteer list stands as follows:
shirley - cheesecake?
micah - (vegetarian) lasagna and a salad
julie - a chocolate cake
clara - buy or cook whatever you need
kartik - a main dish (and of course vegetarian)
Fon is in Seattle and won't be back in town on the day of our party. We will miss him. And we will miss Amy Chen, who will also we absent. But as you can see from the list, Clara will be around. Whoopee!
Some days, I get creative: Tony Bennett is a study of the fixed background property, and Test Blog 1 is an experiment in floats foiled by IE Mac; darn this browser.
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July 31, 2002
The Archive is open for business, although not in its final form. It's in open beta.
Timothy Luoma encourages us to start 'em young.
Jiang Zemin's Succession and the Ghost of Yuan Shikai is Robert Sutter's very insightful article into the coming possibility of a leadership change in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In it, he discusses not only the reasons that Jiang wants to stay in power, but the possible negative repurcussions of that move, which are not often mentioned. Sadly, Sutter concludes that the best outcome for the United States would be that Jiang would remain in power and continue to cause contention within the party on the issue of succession, drawing the CCP's focus away from international issues like Taiwan. My opinion is that this could backfire, and lead to some rash actions on the part of the Chinese leadership on either side (not an unprecedented phenomenon). I'm hoping for a younger and more dynamic leadership, that is willing to sacrifice some of China's long-sought stability for a more ambitious place in the global race, challenging the comfortable lead that the US now enjoys and possibly giving Bush Jr. a case of the jitters.
In support of my ongoing series "Why the world like China better than the US", the Angola News Service reports that China is giving a grant of USD 90 million to rebuild the rail system in Rwanda. This is the country that Clinton chose to ignore while sending troops to the lesser conflict in Bosnia. What has the US done to make up for it? Stonewall on the International Court issue. As a developing but newly rich country, China is in the unique position to befriend and help out other second and third world countries, extending its sphere of influence in a way that the US isn't willing to do. If or when I join the Foreign Service, I hope to make this kind of foreign aid available from American coffers, working towards the practical betterment of the lives of people in developing countries.
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