New Camera

I'm thinking of getting a new camera. My current camera is a Panasonic DMC-TZ3 which is a point-and-shoot with 7.2MP and a 10x zoom. I also have a 2.0MP Sony U-20 and a old Canon T-50 35mm film camera. The TZ3 takes pretty good pictures but I've wanted to get a digital SLR ever since I bought the Sony A100 for my dad.

Recently, Costco started carrying the Nikon D60. I've read many reviews and it seems to be a very good entry-level camera. The Costco package has the body, a 18-55mm lens, a 55-200mm lens, a 1GB SD card, and a carrying case for $825. However, Amazon has just the camera and the 18-55mm lens for $615. I think I'll probably get it at Amazon since I can save ~$60 on sales tax and get a 70-300mm Sigma zoom lens later. The 1GB SD card is not that useful anyway and a 4GB SDHC Class 6 card is only $18.



I'm still deciding whether to buy a new video game console (PS3, Wii, Xbox 360) or just keep my PS2.

Taiwan Show

I'm watching a show about Taiwan on (Discovery) HD Theater. It seems to be various video segments on different locales and attractions during the last Lunar New Year (year of the rat). The last video showed thousands of people in motorcycle helmets, looking to get hit by fireworks for good luck. This is followed by other segments on paper lanterns, temples, pottery, etc. So far, I've never heard of any of the places they've shown yet... :(

Oh, they're showing a segment on Jiaofen. I've been there before! Now they're talking about Taipei 101 and CKS Memorial Hall. Hmm, they're still calling it by it's original name and mentioned CKS even though it was filmed only several months ago. They also showed a shot of the new high-speed bullet train; trips from Taipei to Tainan only takes one hour. The last time I took that trip, it was close to six hours by bus.

During the show, they interview several people. Though some spoke Mandarin or Taiwanese, a lot of people spoke English. They sometimes have subtitles for people speaking English, I guess letting us know what they're trying to say. They interviewed the governor of Taipei County; he speaks pretty good English so no subtitles.

Hunger

Growing up in large cities (Taipei, Toronto, Los Angeles), I've never experienced hunger before. There's always enough money and restaurants/stores to get food. However, for the past 4 days, I've eaten pretty much nothing. Long story short, my leg is still hurting and my doctor gave me a prescription for vicodin. One of the side effects is vomiting and that's what happened Tuesday morning. Like I mentioned when I got sick in China, the last time I threw up was back in 1986 so this is not a normal experience for me. Since then, I've had a bowl of porridge and a package of instant noodle. I was going to stop taking the painkiller but I wimped out; my leg was hurting too much.

I've been feeling nauseous for a few days. Not sure if it's from the drugs or from not eating (no eat = no puke). If this is what hunger feels like, I can't imagine feeling like this everyday. :(

Log-in Again?!

I've been trying to work from home today. Even with a fast connection, it takes forever to attach files to an email since Outlook has to download the file from the server to the local computer, then upload the entire email back to the Exchange server before the message can be sent. My cable modem connection has been messed up since Sunday so it's even worse than normal. So to avoid sending megabyte files back and forth, I'm using Web Access for Outlook on our Citrix server. To do this however, it means I have to log into my computer (Windows XP), connect to work via VPN, log into the Citrix server, log into mybroadcom.com, then finally log into the Exchange server via the web. Once I'm logged all the way in (5 times), to attach and send emails is actually pretty quick.

Old Habits Die Hard

BBC Article

The mother of a dissident Chinese web journalist who vanished last week says he has been taken into police custody.

Huang Qi had not been seen or heard from since he was bundled into a car in Chengdu, the capital of the quake-hit province of Sichuan, last Tuesday.

It is thought Mr Huang may have been detained for posting an article about an academic held for criticising the government's response to the quake.

Mr Huang finished a five-year jail term for subversion in 2005.

Boy, I'm so glad that I'm not a citizen of PRC. I would probably be in a jail cell next to this guy for criticizing the communist government. How can one claim that there's rule of law in China when he gets 5 years in jail for posting articles about 6/4 while corruption is rampant.

I've been talking to my friend who is attending college in Chengdu. Even though she is studying business administration, she has to take a class on "Mao's Thoughts." Unlike most other college classes however, you're not allowed to question anything in the textbooks, much less tell everyone you think Mao was insane (my opinion). How do you learn anything if you're not allowed to discuss and disagree, unless the purpose is not education but indoctrination. Any system, whether political or religious, where you cannot question the orthodoxy, is corrupt. The U.S. political system is far from perfect, but we're allowed--even encouraged--to criticize and to participate to make it better. In China, that just gets you thrown in jail.

I truly believe that people in the Chinese government and those that join the communist party are in it for themselves, i.e., wealth and power. In China, any dissent on any topic is seen as a challenge to the political elite and must be censored and repressed immediately. How ironic. Of course, politicians in the U.S. are probably looking out for number one as well, but at least I can criticize them and vote them out of office.

Vista Incompatibility

First casualty of Windows Vista: Star Wars Battlefront II. I tried using the WinXP compatibility option but it still keeps crashing. Maybe it's the crappy Intel video on the new computer; it kept warning me about missing "TnL" or something.

OTOH, I installed Quicken Deluxe 2002 and it seems to be working. I'm going to try Diablo II next.

==========

I just tried Age of Empires III and it also gave me a compatibility warning. I ran it anyway and it was really slow, especially the 3D screen refresh. It didn't run that fast on my Dell and it had a 256MB nVidia graphics chip. At this point, I'm not sure if it's Vista or the built in Intel X3100 video chip. I wonder if MAME32 (arcade emulator) will run? At least I can play Ms. Pacman.

"Broadband" Internet Connection

Something happened to my Internet connection at home this morning. I'm supposed to have ~10Mbps cable modem access and I've run network speed tests in the past that shows >9Mbps. However, my connection has slowed to a crawl and even drops out occasionally. It feels like I've been transported back to the days of the 56k modem, waiting hours to download anything.

I thought it was the new computer and Windows Vista but I brought it to work this afternoon and it connected fine; I'm not sure what type of Internet connection we have at work but it's off the chart on every speed test I tried. I'm even having problems connecting to the work VPN from home. It looks like I may have to update some slides for tomorrow which means I have to drive into work again, third time this weekend. I don't really mind but when I go in, I hear the air conditioning kick in on my floor. I hope it doesn't end up cooling the entire floor or building just for me.

Sony VAIO

My new computer was delivered to work today. I've been pretty happy with it so far except for all the extra pre-installed software that I don't want. I ended up uninstalling trial versions of Microsoft Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional along with Microsoft Works. I also got rid of a spyware blocker that doesn't work with Vista and Norton 360. In it's place, I installed Norton Anti-Virus from work that allows for unlimited updates.

Vista is okay so far. Applications are crashing at about the same rate as WinXP and I spent the first couple of hours dealing with patches and updates. Looking at the labels on the box, the computer was made in China, shipped to a Sony warehouse in Carson (California), shipped to Amazon.com warehouse in Lexington (Kentucky), then shipped to my work in Irvine (California). Too bad I can't collect frequent flyer miles on the computer. :)

Zillow.com

I've never paid too much attention on house valuations on Zillow.com. Some of the numbers they come up with seemed unrelated to reality. I looked up my old house today and the Zestimate® is $928,500.



The dark blue line is supposed to represent the value of the house and the light blue & orange lines represent ZIP 92821 and the city of Brea respectively. The round $ symbol is where we sold the house for $646,000 in May-06.

1. Not sure what accounts for the crazy spike in prices at the far right of the chart but it's probably not correct.

2. The house across the street is for sale and listed at $539,900. The current owner bought it in Feb-08 for $530,000 so there's not much change. I checked out the house before and the interior is nicer than my old house; the floorplan and size is identical. The Zillow.com value is $1,011,000 or about double the list price. Crazy!

3. From the ZIP and city averages, it appears that we sold at the peak. The new owners are ~$125,000 underwater on their purchase. :(

Jumping Ship

Our new VP of Accounting (and my prior boss for 6 years) is leaving to become CFO at Mindspeed. He was recently promoted to the VP position but I guess the CFO title is too hard to resist. Mindspeed is actually a competitor and was one of the many companies spun out from Conexant. They're not doing too well... losing money since at least 2005 and they just announced a 1-5 reverse split, probably trying to avoid being delisted from NASDAQ.

Since I worked for him for so long, some co-workers think that he'll try to get me to go with him to Mindspeed. I'm not sure I want to give up my ~4 weeks of vacation each year and accumulated stock options and RSU's. Maybe if he makes me the Director of PowerPoint Presentations I'll reconsider... :)

iPhone 2.0

Announced today at Apple WWDC in San Diego. The release date will be July 11 and will finally have 3G network support plus GPS and a bunch of other stuff. I think I want one... my mom can have my RAZR V3. Whether I really get one or not will depend on the 3G speed and what service plans AT&T offers with the phone. I can probably give up my iPod too since I never fill the 30GB anyway.


Both black and white models


$299 for 16GB and $199 for 8GB. That's $12.50 per GB... pretty cheap!

Hmm, Apple's website is loading really slow. I think there's probably a bit of interest out there for the iPhone. What's weird is that the iPod touch is still selling for $299 for the 8GB model. Those prices probably need to come down.

NewSong NOC Worship/Sermon

The worship set and sermon from last week (6/1/08) is posted online. I think this is the first time that I'm seen playing bass on a video. It's also the first time I played without hiding behind a music stand; I still stare at my fingers too much though.


There are two songs at the beginning, a special song (Dare You To Move by Switchfoot) right at the end of the sermon (29:45), and a few more at the end (45:50).

Speaker: Alex Wu
Vocalist/Acoustic Guitar: Tom Choe
Female Vocalist: Carolyn Kim
Vocalist/Electric Guitar: Josh Chang
Keyboard/Acoustic Guitar: Dave Martyn
Drums: Benedict Choi
Bass: me

Chinese Culture

One of the few HD cable channels I get is HD Theater and they have a series on festivals of the world. Right now, they're showing the mid-autumn festival in Hong Kong. In addition to talking about the festival and moon cakes, they also introduce elements of Chinese culture. The narrator will say "The Chinese believe..." or "The Chinese do this because..." but I found that much of it was foreign to me. Maybe because I grew up in North America and most of the stuff has to do with superstition and how to ward evil spirits.

I get this feeling when I'm in China too. Even though I speak and understand Chinese (mostly), I'm still pretty Americanized when it comes to culture and world view. I think it would be easier if I looked like a laowai since expectations would be much lower. Instead, because I look like everyone else, local people think I'm retarded or something when I can't understand what they say or do something culturally different. This is especially worse in Chengdu since most locals will speak in Sichuanese to me first. Maybe I need a t-shirt that with 老外 (foreigner) or 美国人 (American) printed on it.

New Computer

I just bought another computer this afternoon. However, I have an excuse: I'm giving my Dell "laptop" to my dad. He's currently using Shirley's old Compaq 1722 laptop; it's running really slow and he's looking for a replacement since he's spending a lot of time on digital photography and audio recording. I was also thinking of getting a smaller laptop since the 17" models are not really portable. Lately, I've been carrying around my work computer (Dell D410) on both PMI and personal trips which is probably not good.

I ended up buying a Sony VAIO CR420 from Amazon.com. It's not the latest model (CR490) but it was $100 cheaper and buying through Amazon means no sales tax! The only differences appear to be the CPU (2.1GHz vs. 2.4GHz) and the sound chip.


OK, I admit it. I bought it for the nice shiny blue cover.


I just went to Amazon.com to grab these pictures. It seems I managed to get the last unit sold by Amazon. The price is now $1,139 ($40 more) and sold by a third party which usually means no free shipping.

My Dell Inspiron 1705 is only 18 months old and because I wanted to play games on it, I loaded it up with upgrades when I bought it. It has an Intel T5600 (Dual Core, 1.83GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB cache, 65nm process) and a nVidia 256MB graphics card that cost $200 extra. The new computer has an Intel T8100 (Dual Core, 2.1GHz, 800MHz FSB, 3MB cache, 45nm process) and 3GB of RAM but only the on-board Intel X3100 video chip. I thought it would run cooler than my Dell since it's manufactured with 45nm technology but both CPU's are using ~35 watts of power. The Sony CR series has a 14.1" LCD so it should be significantly lighter and smaller than what I have now.

The one bad thing with the new computer is that it's running Windows Vista. :(

Official Olympic Cheer

BBC Article

Beijing Olympic chiefs are introducing an official cheer for patriotic spectators to spur on Team China at the Games, Chinese media reports.

The authoritative, four-part Olympic cheer, accompanied by detailed instructions, will be promoted on TV, in schools and with a poster campaign.

It involves clapping twice, giving the thumbs-up, clapping twice more and then punching the air with both arms.

The cheer is accompanied by chants of "Olympics", "Let's go" and "China".

The Beijing Olympic Organising Committee has hired 30 cheering squads who will show spectators how it is done at Games stadia, reports Xinhua state media.

'Civilized cheering'

A committee official said the simple chants and gestures were designed to help spectators cheer for their favourite athletes in a smooth, civilized manner.

The Ministry of Education is also arranging special training sessions in schools for the 800,000 students who are expected to attend the Games.

Li Ning, president of the Beijing Etiquette Institute, told the Beijing News that the cheer was in line with general international principles for cheering, while at the same time possessing characteristics of Chinese culture.

Is there anything in China that the communist government is willing to give up control? Are they going to toss Olympic fans into labor camps if they clap three times or flash an unofficial hand sign in the middle of the cheer? They probably formed a huge committee, including lots of official lunches/dinners, to come up with this smooth+civilized cheer, not to mention the "30 cheering squads" helping people to master the cheer.

There are a lot of people in China, and they all need jobs.

Henry Nicholas Drug Indictment

LA Times Article

A federal grand jury has indicted Henry T. Nicholas III on fraud charges, according to documents unsealed today that also accuse the Orange County billionaire of supplying customers with prostitutes and drugs and slipping Ecstacy into the drinks of unwitting technology executives.

In a 21-count indictment, Nicholas and former Broadcom Corp. Chief Financial Officer William J. Ruehle were charged with backdating millions of stock options for five years to improperly reward employees of the Irvine computer chip maker Nicholas co-founded.

A second indictment naming only Nicholas accused him of maintaining homes and commercial properties in Orange County and Las Vegas for the "purpose of using and distributing controlled substances" he sometimes referred to as "party favors."

The article has links to PDF files of the actual indictments. I've only looked at the drug indictment; the backdating stuff is probably not as interesting.

Overt Act No. 17: In early 2000, in New Orleans, Louisiana, defendent NICHOLAS used MDMA (ecstacy) to spike the drink of a technology executive without the executive's knowledge.

Overt Act No. 49: In or around 2001, in the lobby of Broadcom's office in Irvine, California, defendant NICHOLAS directed a Broadcom employee to provide approximately $5,000 to $10,000 in cash to a drug courier in exchange for an envelope containing controlled substances.

Overt Act No. 50: In or around 2001, defendant NICHOLAS distributed and used controlled substances during a flight on a private plane between Orange County, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada, causing marijuana smoke and fumes to enter the cockpit and requiring the pilot flying the plane to put on an oxygen mask.

Overt Act No. 56: On or about June 29, 2002, pursuant to the Settlement Agreement, which contractually prevented the Broadcom employee from speaking about defendant NICHOLAS's unlawful narcotics activities, Broadcom paid $1,000,000 to the Broadcom employee and the employee's attorney.

Wow, Nick was buying drugs in our office lobby. I'm a bit worried about #56 since it appears that Broadcom paid the $1M instead of Nick personally. I wonder who in finance at the time knew about the $1M payoff...

Boston, Going Home via Chicago

Yawn, got up this morning around 3am (Eastern Time Zone) to get ready to go back to Orange County. Since the T doesn’t start operating until 6am, I had to take a taxi to Logan Airport. The taxi was a brand new hybrid Camry and the fare was ~$20. Even at 5am, the airport was already packed full of people. Once again, I’m glad that I have AA elite status which lets me use the business class check-in, the short line at security checkpoints, and board the plane early.

Our plane just (Boeing 757) just arrived at the gate and people are exiting the plane. My flight is supposed to depart in 30 minutes; let’s see if AA can turnaround a plane in such a short time. I’m just glad I’m carrying all my luggage. There are lots of people in line at the gate counter; I hope this doesn’t mean the flight is full. The next flight to Orange County after my flight is in 2 hours. If they offer me money, maybe I’ll take it since this was a “free” ticket anyway.

I need to post this after I get back to the office. All of the 4 airports (SNA, SFO, BOS, ORD) on this trip offers wifi but none for free. I was going to pay $7 for access but decided to read a book instead.

Boston, Part 2

It's ~midnight in Boston and I'm sitting in the hotel lobby with my laptop. The Internet connection in my room expired so I came downstairs to use the free wifi available in the lobby (but not in the room); I was too cheap to pay another $10 since I'm checking out in about 4 hours. I got an email from my real boss (not Leon) to check numbers on some slides so I need to download some large Excel source files from our server and it's taking forever.

The presentation at the conference went fairly well today. I was a bit nervous since it's been 20+ years since my only Material Science class at UCLA. Thankfully, I didn't get any questions during the session although several people came to talk to me afterward. Risking my life, I went back to the food court at the Prudential Center to get dinner. There are lots of good restaurants but I didn't feel like spending $40 to eat by myself. Meals at the food court are not cheap; it's costing me about $10 with a soft drink. For RMB70, I can probably feed a family of 4 for a week.

Tomorrow is going to be another long travel day. My flight from Boston leaves at 6am so I have to get up at 4am (1am Pacific time). It's about 2.5 hours to Chicago and another 4 hours to John Wayne. Since I'm out of vacation days, I'm going straight from the airport back to work.

Boston

I'm in Boston attending the 2008 Tech Connect Summit for PMI. The conference is being held at Boston in the Hynes Convention Center. This is the third time I've been to Boston; coincidentally, last time we stayed at the Fairmont hotel right down the street. The convention center and hotel (Boston Sheraton) is located right next to the Prudential Center. Maybe I'm getting used to Asian hotels so I expected free Internet and free breakfast in the morning. No such luck... I'm paying additional $10/day for the Internet and they pointed me to Starbucks for breakfast. At least the room doesn't smell like cigarette smoke.


The Blue Line train at Airport Station. This station was fairly new but the trains were all old looking. As we got closer to downtown Boston, the stations got crappier.


Conference banner. I didn't get to see any of the Nanotech stuff since I was mostly interested in CleanTech.


Hotel room. I was on the corner of the 19th floor so there were windows all around.


View north towards the Charles River and Cambridge.

I'm also having no luck with traveling. My left foot/ankle is still messed up and the 5 hour red-eye flight made it swell up again. I arrived in Boston Tuesday morning and took the T (Boston's subway) to the hotel. Since it was rush hour, I was crammed into the subway car and almost missed my stop. I got to the hotel at 8:30am but I couldn't check in until 3pm so I went to the conference in my travel clothes: jeans and sandals. Most of the people were dressed up in suits so I felt pretty out of place. Finally, I ate dinner at the food court in the Prudential Center and got sick. Wait, am I back in China?

Back to the conference. The main reason why I'm here is to make a presentation to VCs and other investors about PMI. My 10 minute slot is today at ~6pm so I spent all night/this morning reorganizing our existing PPT slides. I'm a bit worried since people were asking very technical questions during yesterday's company presentations. I'm not sure if "Uh, I dunno... I'm just the finance guy" answer will be enough.

Made of Honor

I was checking out movie trailers on Apple's website when I ran across this. I haven't heard about this movie before and from the trailer, the plot is pretty predictable. The funny part is that one of my co-workers actually asked me to be her bridesmaid at her wedding in August. She is originally from Korea and she said that they don't have groomsmen and bridesmaids in Korean weddings. Since I'm one of her best friends and her sisters are not going to be able to make it to the wedding (they're both in Korea), she wanted me to be in the wedding party. I kindly declined... I said that I can be an usher, walk her mom during the wedding, and say a toast at the reception but I'm not going to stand next to her in a dress. :)

Slightly off-topic but I saw trailers for both Star Trek and Star Wars. This should be good: Star Trek without William Shatner and Star Wars without any actors at all (animated).

DIY Air Conditioning

One problem (there are lots) with my apartment is that the only A/C unit is outside in the living room. Since I'm on the top floor, whenever it's warm and sunny out, the apartment gets really hot and there's no way to cool down the bedroom. It's really inconvienent since all my computes are in the bedroom. In the past, I just end up going into work for free A/C and drinks.

Anyway, last year, right at the end of summer, I bought a long dryer vent hose at Home Depot to try and redirect the cold air into my bedroom. Since it cooled down right after I bought it, I never tried to hook it up. Well, it got pretty hot today so I found the hose along with some masking tape, and ran it to my bedroom. It's working pretty well but makes it hard to sit on the couch.


It was the longest hose I could find. I thought about using PVC pipe but it would be rigid and probably much harder to set up.


At the other end, I have a small fan blowing the cold air into the bedroom. I think I'm losing air at both ends; I need to get some duct tape to make the seals better.

Arg, I just checked the weather in Chengdu and the high today is 96ºF. I'm so glad I'm not there right now; no amount of A/C rigging is going to help with temperatures like that plus 90%+ humidity.

INTO THE MIRROR feat. AISA - LOW JACK THREE

LOW JACK THREE
Aisa Senda of DA Mouth (大嘴巴)

Significance

I'm a pretty big Lakers fan... or used to be. When I first moved to LA in the mid-80's, it was Showtime with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Pat Riley as coach. Lately however, I haven't been watching that much, even when the Lakers had both Kobe and Shaq. While I was in China, I didn't even know which team they were playing after beating the Utah Jazz (San Antonio Spurs).

Anyway, during a staff meeting this Wednesday, two of the people in the room started talking about sports, mostly about basketball and Boston teams. I found myself totally disinterested since all I heard about the previous week was the earthquake in Sichuan. I'm not sure how you can compare anything to a natural disaster but the NBA playoffs seem so insignificant in comparison. The amount of money spent on courtside seats is obscene when the need for relief supplies are so great in China.

Sigh... but where do we stop? I just watched a video about people risking their lives to escape from North Korea. There is an estimated 300,000 North Koreans living illegally in China where they have no status and are in fear of being deported back. Unlike the earthquake, all this suffering is man-made. How come nobody does anything about that?

Chengdu Trip #5: Home

I finally got home last night around midnight which isn't too bad considering how long it usually takes to get out of Bradley terminal at LAX. We had to deplane at the remote terminal again and take a bus to the main terminal; usually this means all the gates are full and therefore a long line at U.S. immigration. In addition, they were having problems with the jetway to our plane so we were stuck on the plane for an additonal 15 minutes. I thought we would have to walk off the plane onto the runway; not even sure if that is possible in a 747 since the doors are so high off the ground.

Maybe someone read all my complaints about coming back to the U.S. through LAX (ok, probably not), but there were more lines open and more immigration agents. It only took ~5 minutes in line for my 15 second interview, and my luggage was already out. Anyway, Leon picked me up with my 4Runner, and I drove home from his house.

I'm really glad to be home this time, with all my stomach problems, sprained ankle, and the threat of aftershocks (even though I joke about being from California). One week every three months seems to be my limit... :(

You know You've Been In China Too Long When...

Leon pointed me to a Facebook group with a huge list of items unique to living in China. I've only been to mainland China six time but I've personally experienced a lot of stuff on the list.

My favorites:

3. A June 2001 Great Wall Cabernet (mixed with Sprite) is your vintage of choice [the first time I went to a Karaoke place, my friend ordered a bottle of wine and I was shocked when the waiter poured it into a pitcher along with a bottle of Sprite]

25. You find western toilets uncomfortable [actually the opposite... I've spent many uncomfortable moments searching for a sit-down toilet vs. a squatting toilet]

43. You believe that pressing the lift button 63 times will make it move faster [in every elevator in China, the most worn button is the "close door" button]

72. You buy an XXXL T-shirt when you returned home [when I lost my luggage on a trip last summer, XXL was the largest size I could find at the local Wal-Mart and it was way too small]

107. It becomes exciting to see if you can get on the lift before anyone can get off [!]

113. You find that it saves time to stand and retrieve your hand luggage while the plane is on final approach

131. You honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you drive down the sidewalk

140. You get your first case of bronchitis and you have never smoked a cigarette in your life [I've seen people light up their cigarette in a crowded elevator]

Chengdu Pictures from May 12, 2008

My friend took some pictures on the day of the huge Wenchuan earthquake. They are from a few hours after the quake since she ran out of the apartment without taking anything. Coincidentally, the first major aftershock hit while she was back at the apartment getting her cell phone and camera (and cash, Chinese people always have cash at home).


Free water for old, weak, sick... I think.


Parking lot outside Wenshu Temple. There are still people sleeping in tents there after two weeks.


A lot of shingles came down from the roof of the Wenshu Temple complex. The furniture was tossed there later to prevent people from walking that way and getting hit from more falling shingles.


People hanging out at the side of the road.


More people staying away from their homes. This was around 11pm at night; the quake hit at ~2:30pm.


1am in the apartment lobby. My friend and her classmate went back to her apartment at ~2am. She said the floor was too hard to sleep on.

Chengdu Trip #5: Aftershock!

I'm back at Hong Kong International Airport. This means I can access my blog without using the VPN to get around China's Internet filters, though the free wifi connection is pretty flaky right now. I didn't get to do anything during my last night in Chengdu; I was still sick from the Zigong trip and had not eaten for about a day and a half. The flight from CTU to HKG was only about 30 minutes late, compared to ~3 hours during the days right after the earthquake.

Speaking of earthquakes, I felt the largest aftershock since the main Wenchuan quake yesterday afternoon at around 4:20pm local time. It was a magnitude 6.0 or 6.4 depending on who you ask. Interestingly, the original quake has been "upgraded" again to 8.0 in China but remains at 7.9 at the USGS site. I wonder how much of this is the politics of exaggeration common in China.

Anyway, the aftershock didn't feel that big even though I was on the 10th floor of an apartment building. The building swayed a bit, stopped, and swayed a bit more. It only lasted a short time, probably less that 20 seconds, but I heard all sorts of screaming and freaking-out from outside. Lots of people ran outside of their building and stood in the middle of the street. In China, that's probably more dangerous than an earthquake.


After about 10 minutes and no buildings collapsed, some people went back inside. However, there were still a lot of people sitting outside. I wonder if they're going to start sleeping in tents again.


Not everyone was scared by the aftershock. I was watching TV and didn't bother to get up. Across the street in an 8th floor apartment, they continued cleaning right away, even climbing half-way out the window.

On the plane ride, I was reading some articles about the quake in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong newspaper). During the quake, a lot of school building collapsed, apparently from shoddy construction, probably from a combination of lack of education funds in rural areas and corruption. The article also had an interesting statistic:

In March, Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to increase spending on education by more than 45 per cent, to 156.2 billion yuan, this year.

...

By contrast, government officials nationwide annually spend nearly 300 billion yuan on dining and entertaining, 300 billion yuan on the use of vehicles and 250 billion yuan on government-sponsored domestic and overseas tours.

Dang! I though the U.S. government was inefficient but this is crazy. To spend double the education budget (after a huge increase) on just eating out?! Meanwhile, China's foreign exchange reserve stands at ~US$1.76 trillion.

The other article reported that the government will ease the one-child policy for parents of dead/disabled children:

Chengdu, capital of stricken Sichuan province, is to allow families who lost their only child in the earthquake to have another, official media reported.

Parents whose only child was disabled in the quake can also apply for the right to have another, provided the disability is serious enough.

Sigh... having children is a "right" you need to apply for with the government. Also, who decides if an injury is serious enough? Some bureaucrat in the government?

Chengdu Trip #5: Back to Chengdu

With nothing else to do or see in Zigong, we headed back to Chengdu Sunday morning. Unlike the small bus station in Chengdu, the main Zigong bus station is much larger. Also, the buses seem to run on a schedule. For some reason the bus ticket for the trip back was only RMB65 and there are assigned seating on the ticket. I guess the seat numbers are assigned sequentially; my friend and I ended up sitting in different rows. I’m at the very back of the bus and interestingly, out of the 5 people sitting back here, there are three notebook computers out. One guy has a GPRS wireless card and he’s surfing the Internet and the girl next to me was playing Warcraft… or at least trying to play since it’s very difficult to play with a touchpad.


Chengdu North Gate bus station. There were many many rows of buses, probably several hundred buses in all.

I am noticing a general lack of courtesy everywhere in China. You’d figure with 1.3 billion people, they would be more considerate but the opposite seems to be true. While we were waiting for our bus at the Zigong station, a girl was playing MP3’s out loud with her cell phone. I guess it doesn’t matter if other people in the waiting area want to hear or not. Likewise, the girl next to me on the bus was playing songs out loud on her computer, even singing along, poorly. Sheesh, get a pair of headphones or something.

Chinese drivers are terrible. Instead of slowing down or stopping for pedestrians, they would incessantly honk their horn so you will get out of their way. They also don’t seem to obey any traffic signs. I think part of the explanation is that cars are pretty expensive and most people cannot afford one; car owners probably feel a sense of entitlement because of their wealth… communist paradise indeed.

What I hate the worst is when people try to get on the elevator before you’ve had a chance to get off. How am I supposed to get out of the elevator if you’re blocking my way?


Guy at the departure gate in Chengdu. Dude doesn't look old or pregnant; maybe he's weak (love the white t-shirt/pinstripe pants/white socks/dress shoes combo though). It wasn't just him though. The other three seats were occupied just before I took the photo and none fit the description.

Chengdu Trip #5: Saturday

After throwing up lunch and dinner from the past couple of days, I felt really crappy this morning. Almost every hotel in Asia includes a breakfast buffet so I tried eating some congee. The breakfast was just slightly better than the food at Jinghu Hotel which isn't saying much.

We had lunch with my friend's friend even though I didn't feel like eating. She picked us up at the hotel and it was quite exciting since she just learned to drive. I think she got lost twice and had to make several u-turns. There were also several near misses with pedestrians but that's typical in China. She drove a Kia Spectra (or the Chinese equivalent); her "husband" has a dealership in Zigong. I put husband in scary quotes because the guy is not really her husband. He married a girl he didn't like when he was young and had a daughter. However, for the past 10 years, this other girl has had a relationship with him and just had a son several years ago. The guy did not divorce his first wife, supposedly to save face, so things are pretty complicated. I hear things like this (second wife) is pretty common in China.

Dinner was pretty interesting too. My friend's uncle, who works for the Zigong city government, took us to dinner in a restaurant across the street from my hotel. The food was decent and it only cost ~RMB300 for 10+ dishes and some beer. During dinner, the topic of politics came up. I usually try to keep quiet since my father's family were all KMT (losing side in the Chinese Civil War), and I was born in Taiwan, another touchy subject in China. Anyway, the uncle was telling me how as a Young Pioneer/Red Guard/whatever, he traveled to Beijing to see Mao during the late 1950's. My friend's mom (younger sister) also said that she saw Mao during those days, though in Sichuan rather than in Beijing. I guess things were more idealistic during the early days of communist China; food/lodging/travel was free back then since everyone were comrades. The uncle also told me that during the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to the countryside to work at a commune along with his university professors. One of the professors couldn't endure the stress and ended up committing suicide while another one survived to become the dean of a university today.

I just thought it was surrealistic that I, son of a KMT military officer from Taiwan, was sitting in a restaurant in the middle of China, listening to stories from ex-Red Guard members.

Chengdu Trip #5: Meet the Parents

I just called Leon thinking he's on his way home from LAX. Instead, the plane is just pulled into the gate after landing a hour ago. Nothing like cruising around LAX for an hour after a 12-13 hour flight.

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On Friday night, my friend took me to her parent's house in Zigong for dinner. They're both retired but they bought their own house several years ago. They live in an older part of town, up on the hilly part of town.


Apartment complex. Even new buildings get dirty really fast. I think it's the dust/smog in the air.


Parent's apartment - 5th floor. The staircase was so filthy that it was scary.

The apartment is about 56 sq. meters and has two bedrooms. I think my friend told me that it was RMB1,000 per sq. meter when they bought it; it is worth about double that now. Her mom cooked some dishes for us. It was quite greasy and salty which didn't help my stomach but I had to eat what they gave me. After dinner, we went to visit an uncle (who is treating us to dinner tonight) in another part of town.


Non-regulation ping pong table made of brick and stone. I particularly like the solid net.


View from the bus station at the top of the hill


Bus #37. It was really old and the seats were made of wood. The fare was only RMB1 though.


Street vendors and shoppers in the commercial part of the old town. It looks like every other large city in Asia.

Chengdu Trip #5: Zigong

Since Leon is taking off on Friday, I decided to go visit Zigong with a friend. Zigong is about 3 hours southeast from Chengdu and has a population of 3+ million. I think the most famous thing about Zigong are the salt mines that have been in operation for centuries.


North Gate bus station. Buses to different cities depart from different places so you need to know where to go. My bus ticket was RMB75 but they also added RMB2 for travel insurance... not reassuring. There is no timetable either. You buy your ticket, get on the right bus, and wait until it fills up. We ended up waiting about 20 minutes before departing. While we were waiting, lots of people came by selling drinks, snacks, newspapers, and even roasted corn-on-the-cob. Hmm, I just noticed that the characters on the building are traditional characters (simplified = 北门车站); maybe the station was built before the communists took over though it doesn't look that old.


The bus ride wasn't too bad. It was a typical tour bus so there was plenty of leg room. The entire trip took about 3 hours with a rest stop. My problem was that my stomach was acting up and I did not want to try squatting at the rest stop bathroom. There were TV monitors in the bus and they showed a couple of movies.


A traffic accident, I think. Maybe the truck was like that before... sometimes it's hard to tell in China. There are many vehicles on the road that belong in a junkyard.


Once you get out of Chengdu, the landscape becomes more rugged and mostly agricultural. There were a lot of billboards along the road to spoil the view though.


Typical farm house along the road

After arriving at the Zigong bus station, we had to take a taxi to the hotel. Like at an airport, there was a line of taxis and we got into the first one. As soon as we pulled out of the bus station, the driver says, "Um, I have to run an errand... it won't take that long." What? Why can't you do this on your own time? Anyhow, he pulls onto a side street and starts talking to a motorcycle policeman. After a few words, the policeman gets into the front passenger seat. I didn't get the entire conversation but it appears that the taxi driver's friend got in trouble and had his documents taken by the police. It would cost a lot of money to resolve officially plus leave a record. The driver wanted the policeman in the front seat to "take care" of it and he agreed to do it for RMB200-300. So here we are driving down the street, the taxi driver on the phone with his friend, the policeman on the phone with someone in the police station, and me in the back seat amazed at the level of corruption on display right in front of me. All this while the meter is running on our short taxi ride.


I'm staying at the Huidong Hotel, a 4-star hotel and supposedly the best in town. The room cost RMB410 per night. It's not that nice; I think they added 2 two stars too many. They're also doing construction so there's loud banging all day. At least the Internet connection works.


Intersection outside the hotel. This is the new section of town; the old town is up higher on a hill and the buildings are much crappier.

Chengdu Trip #5: Sick Again

Sigh... I'm having stomach problems again. The first few days were fine since we've been eating in restaurants. On Thursday night, we ventured out to some local hole-in-the-wall place. We ate dinner at a "firepot" place; you get a base pot with soup base plus tofu and you add meat/vegetables. We got the pork ribs but the meat was really tough. I ended up puking this all up 24+ hours later... no pictures!


Firepot


Fruit stand: mostly kumquats (very good) and watermelons


Butcher shop... maybe that's where the meat in the firepot came from :(

Chengdu Trip #5: More Tents

I saw a lot more tents on the way home from work. Aftershocks from the 5/12 quake is definitely decreasing in number and magnitude so I’m not sure what people are afraid of… they still have to go back to their homes to eat and use the bathroom. It’s also been raining overnight so it has to be a lot more miserable sleeping outside.

This is just one intersection near the old factory; it's like this everywhere.

Chengdu Trip #5: Wednesday

It rained last night so people in makeshift tents were all wet this morning. I had to step around people sleeping in the apartment lobby. With a lot of people volunteering in the earthquake damage zones, the traffic is noticeably less during the morning and afternoon commute. There were no aftershocks last night so a lot of people spent the night in the rain for nothing.


Driveway to Jinghou hotel. People were sleeping in tents, under tarps, and in their cars.

For the past two days, we’ve been taking a different route to work in the morning. I think our drive likes this route since a portion of the road is under construction and there are very few traffic lights. The problem, for passengers, is that the road is still unfinished and there are many obstructions in the roadway, mostly manholes that stick up about 6 inches from the road surface. Everyone still drives fast through this section so you see all these cars, including ours, in a crazy slalom race.


Why is that huge piece of concrete in the middle of the road?!


Road outside the current PMI location. Still unpaved since my first trip to Chengdu one year ago.

We stopped by the new factory again this morning to discuss the electrical room construction with the general contractor. We also took a look at the 2nd and 3rd floor of the building to see if anything was damaged during the earthquake. Almost everything is complete, including bathroom, showers, and the kitchen/dining area.


Some serious cooking equipment


Power conduits for our casting furnaces along the wall


Grrr, what do you want?


Some chickens at the back of the building lot. Maybe we can make kung-pao chicken with the huge woks in the 3rd floor kitchen.


Lunchtime! There are a few other companies in the same compound as PMI. I think they get rice and a few dishes in huge pots and bring their own bowls/utensils and eat out in the parking lot.


We went to a nearby restauant for lunch; I guess we didn't want to join the local lunch crowd. Kung-pao chicken! It wasn't too good... the chicken was kind of tough and the peanuts were not crunchy.

After lunch, we had a pretty long meeting to go through our costing information and manufacturing process. I need to determine the new factory’s output capacity, lead time required for new orders, and a comprehensive cost model to make sure we're making money. I think this is more work than I normally do for my "real" job at Broadcom.