Tallest Building

Which structure looks taller?


CN Tower: 553.3 m (1,815.4 ft)


Taipei 101: 509.2 m (1,670.6 ft)

I've been to the lower observation deck of the CN Tower which is 346 m high. There is a higher observation deck at 446 m; if I go up again, I'll probably buy a ticket for the higher deck. The indoor observatory in Taipei 101 is on the 89th floor at 383 m.


Above the clouds at Taipei 101.


Both CN Tower and Taipei 101 are "short" compared to the Burj Dubai which is still under construction.

Ontario Science Center

Having worked until 8pm yesterday, answering work questions from people in Irvine, I decided to get away from the computer and take a trip to the Ontario Science Center today. Since parking is $8 and a TTC day pass is only $9, I parked at Finch station (free parking) and took the subway/bus.


Inside a subway car. The subway system in Toronto is pretty small. There was only two lines when I lived here in the 80's and the system hasn't grown that much. They've added two short spur lines and added one extra station on the west end of the east-west line. On the subway (and bus), they announce the next stop so you know when to get off. In Taiwan, the announcements were in 4 languages: Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka, and English. I think in Beijing, the announcements were in Mandarin and English. In Toronto, it was English only... no French, even though it's one of the official languages of Canada.


TTC bus route 34. I took the subway to Eglington station and got on the bus to go to the science center. I think it added an extra hour to the trip versus if I just driven there.


The science center is built on the side of a valley. The entrance is at the top of the east side of the valley and the remaining center is down below, connected by corridors and escalators.


On Level C, there was a huge metal contraption that had a lot of tracks for rolling balls. It was pretty cool.


One of the exhibits about the vastness of space. There is a planetarium inside the science center. They just replaced the mechanical projector with a digital one this year.


What?! M&M and Smarties in the same vending machine? There were a lot of vending machines and everything was quite expensive.


An exhibit where you build stuff with old computer/printer components. I thought this was poisoning villages in China?


Tall columns with air blown upwards. You can put paper cups and other stuff in the tube and it would blow it out the top. There is a cone cup at the top that was just blown out.


Bobsled simulator.


A projected koi pond. If you step on the ground inside the "pond," it causes ripples in the projector. Again, pretty cool.


Van der Graff generator and "making hair stand-on-end" demo.


Pedal power! I remember playing with this and other exhibits in the Science Arcade 25+ years ago. Actually, it looks exactly the same... pretty good maintenance.


Tornado generator.


Rainforest exhibit inside the science center. It was hot and humid, not like Canada at all.


Large cockroach exhibit. I hat cockroaches.


Stand behind the yellow line! Reminds me of "My Sassy Girl."


Some guy playing guitar in the subway station at Bloor-Yonge. At the Finch station, there was a long-haired guy with an electric guitar singing Led Zepplin songs.


After taking a different bus (route 25) from the science center to another subway station (Pape), I went all the way to Union Station to check out the CN Tower. From here, you can take trains to Ottawa, Montreal, and even New York.


A view of downtown Toronto from the Skywalk connecting Union Station to the Convention Center and CN Tower. I think it's looking north on York Street.


CN Tower. It used to be tallest building in the world. I was going to go up to the observation deck to take a look but the tickets were $22 so I skipped it. :)

Harvey's

I had a sudden craving for a Harvey's burger. We used to go all the time while growing up; it's the only burger that my dad liked. I think the one we went to was near Lakeshore Road in Mississauga; I can't find it on the store locater though. Anyway, I found one nearby on a map and drove out at 10:30pm to look for it. In the end, I couldn't find the one I was looking for but did find another one that was closed. Bummer. On the way back, I stopped by a Burger King and got a chicken sandwich and some onion rings. Add that to my Chinese dinner earlier, I'm still not spending very much of Broadcom's money on food. I'll have to look for a Harvey's later this week.

I'm thinking of going to the Ontario Science Center this weekend. It's not that far from Markham. The admission is $18 and parking is $8 so it won't be that cheap.

==========

I found a Harvey's, inside a Home Depot for some reason, and had a burger and fries for lunch on Friday. Eeeh, it wasn't as good as I remembered.

Working in Canada, Day 2

OK, last snow photo. This was my rental car this morning. Under the snow was a layer of ice so it took awhile to clear the windows.

Today was another day working on mostly FP&A stuff at work. I'm getting used to working on two computers since the network connection is so slow. Most of the work is being done by remote access on my other computer back in Irvine. I also tried contacting AMD's help desk (by calling HELP on the phone) about connecting to a networked printer. After 30 minutes, we decided there is no way for me to print. The printers are still on an old ATI (pre-AMD acquisition) print server and the only way for me to see the printers is to get an userid and password on the AMD domain. That probably won't happen. I wonder what a new Broadcom hire will do if they're hired at the Markham site.

I had to get a visitor badge again this morning. I wonder if I can just sneak in tomorrow. The receptionist asked if I need an escort in. Sigh... I told her twice that I have my own cubicle here. There's also another problem. After 6pm, the doors are all locked from both sides and you need an AMD badge to get out. I was lucky that another employee was walking out at the same time. Not sure what I will do if I need to stay late or need to come in on nights/weekends.

After work, I decided to find a Chinese market to get some groceries/snacks. I looked on the web and found a website to Pacific Mall, the largest indoor Asian market or something. It turned out to be a huge barn-like building with hundreds of tiny stores, pretty much selling the same things: cell phones, boba milk tea, books, computers, counterfeit DVD's, and ugly clothing.


South entrance.


One of the "streets" inside. There are several long corridors with stores on each side. Both store clerks and customers seem to be pretty young.


Rims!


Food court on the 2nd floor.


Each food vendor had lots of photos of each dish. They all looked very similar... probably hired the same photographer.


I ended buying dinner at this place. I was swayed by the sign stating "Hong Kong Chef Management."


$4.75 including drink (not the can of Pepsi). That's only US$3.90! Not China cheap but pretty inexpensive. It was pretty good, better than the $40 dinner I had with my parents last night.

On the way back to the hotel (I got dinner to go), I saw a 350Z with snow tires. The stock Bridgestone Potenzas are terrible in rain or snow.

Still Snowing

Arg, I think I have mini-jetlag or something. It's 1:30am Eastern time and I'm still up; it's only 10:30pm back "home" in California. Looking out the window, the snow is still falling. The hotel I'm staying in does not have underground parking so I'll probably need 10 minutes to clear all the snow off the car. I knew I should have brought my hiking boots instead of my dress shoes. Also, there must be a lot of Indian/Pakistani families staying in the hotel and cooking dinner. The hallways have a strong curry smell. The apartment we lived in 30 years ago in Mississauga had the same smell.


Snow covered tree outside my window. It's pretty dark outside so the shutter speed was 1 second long. I was holding my breath so the camera wouldn't shake.


Parking lot with one lonely car. There was a bit more light so the shutter speed was 1/2 second. I shot this through a window with a mesh screen; I wasn't about to go outside to take photos.

"High Speed" Internet

I ran a speed test on the Internet connection at the hotel since a Skype video call to China connected very poorly. At 400 kbps, it's hardly a "high speed" Internet connection. I'm getting about 10+ Mbps at home with my RoadRunner cable model connection. The interesting thing about the results is that the upload speed is almost 3x the download speed; it's usually the other way around. Maybe my video signal was getting to China without any problems and the limiting factor was my download speed. Oh well, at least it's free (included in the room charge). I had to pay an extra $8/day last time at the Sheraton.

==========

I just ran it again and it's twice as fast. Maybe everyone has gone to bed. The weird speed difference between upload and download speed is still the same.

Working in Canada, Day 1

Today was my first full work day in the Markham office. They set me up with a small cubicle. Last time I was here, I asked for a monitor. I think the admin was going to give me a old CRT but my buddy Larry, the help desk manager, set me up with a new LCD panel (Dell 22" widescreen); a new hire didn't show up so it was reassigned to me.


My little cubicle

As I was setting up the LCD panel and docking station (I brought that up from Irvine myself), the mail room delivered another LCD panel (same model) to me. Both were FedEx'ed from our office in Richmond, British Columbia. Earlier this evening, I got a call from the help desk in Richmond, asking me to ship the other LCD panel back to them. For a moment, I thought I was going to have a dual widescreen setup.

I spent most of the day working on my normal job stuff. The network connection back to our Irvine data center is horrible. I would double-click on Excel files and it would take minutes to open. I ended up connecting remotely to my 2nd work computer, normally used for presentations, so I can get work done. They're also using the old AMD phone system until moving day next year. To call long distance, you need a special passcode. I think each person has a code; the finance manager gave me his code to use but told me not to call any 900-numbers (mostly phone-sex hotlines). I think he was just kidding. I also haven't figured out how to connect to the network printers yet so I can't print anything.

At around 4pm this afternoon, it started snowing and it's still snowing six hours later. Good thing rental cars come with snow brushes. My parents were in Scarborough visiting some friends so they came by to have dinner. We went to some Chinese restaurant nearby; there must be hundreds of Chinese restaurants in this area. After dinner, I stopped by a supermarket to pick up some sodas and water. Groceries are more expensive compared to the U.S., even after converting the currency. The average salary is lower and the weather sucks; I wonder why so many people live here... :)


I tried taking a picture of the snow as I was leaving work. It was already too dark and the flash just reflects off the falling snow.


AMD parking lot. The building we "kept" doesn't have an underground parking garage whereas the AMD building next door still does. Since their old badges still work, some ex-AMD people are still sneaking in and parking in the underground garage. My Broadcom badge doesn't work at all here and they won't give me a temp badge to open doors. In addition, the receptionist is making me sign in each morning as a guest since my badge doesn't say "Markham" on it. I've been to our offices in Vancouver, San Jose, Singapore, Taipei, and Beijing and never did I need to sign in as guest as long as I had my work badge. Lame.


Parking lot outside restaurant. It's only -2°C outside so the snow is fairly wet. Only the large roads are salted before a snowstorm so driving in the parking lots is a bit slippery. I fishtailed the SUV a bit coming out of the hotel driveway on the way to dinner... fun!

Home Sweet Home (or something close)

I just checked in to a Residence Inn across the street from our Markham DTV office, which we're still renting from AMD. This is my 2nd trip to Toronto in several weeks and this time I'm staying a bit longer, until December 1st. I'll only spend six work days in the office though, since Nov 27 and Nov 28 are U.S. holidays; I'm moving out of the hotel and going to stay with my parents during Thanksgiving.

This time, I connected through Chicago on the way here and will connect through DFW on the way back. Even though you spend time more time in transit, I avoid having to drive to/from LAX from home. Last time the drive on the 405 took close to 2 hours for a 9:30am flight. You also get a few more miles vs. flying direct from LAX to YYZ. If I connect through DFW on my planned Dec-08 trip, I will end the year with ~50,050 miles which is just enough to qualify me for AA Platinum status next year. It was also a bit more hassle this trip since I'm bringing two laptop computers: my work Dell and my personal Sony Vaio. I had them both in my backpack so going through security took a bit longer. I brought my Apple Airport Express base station hoping I could get it to work in the hotel room so I can connect both computers to the Internet at the same time. It will be just like home!

I rented a car again from Avis. Last time they gave me a compact car which isn't what I reserved. This time, I got a Ford Escape SUV after reserving a standard car. Oh well, even though it's 2WD, it may be handy in the snow. Right now it's about -3°C outside and it's supposed to get down to -8°C later tonight and snow lots tomorrow afternoon.

Ugh.


Chicago O'Hare Airport. All airports pretty much look the same from the outside... lots of concrete.


Driving to the hotel from my parent's house. It's hard taking pics with a big DSLR when you're driving. This is the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way).


Some guy was driving a old pick-up truck with a message on the tailgate. Not sure what or why.


Downtown Toronto at night at warpspeed. Need to go back later to take better pitures.

I got a one-bedroom suite/apartment at the Residence Inn. It's about 1/2 the size of my apartment but it has two TVs! The room rate is ~C$120/night and it comes with free breakfast and room cleaning twice a week. I stayed at a few of these back in 2004; this is actually quite a bit nicer. The hotel staff seems to be all Chinese for some reason; the front desk girl was pretty cute but I thought it would be inappropriate to take her picture for my blog.


Kitchen - my mom gave me some soup/stew so I'm putting the fridge to use already.


Living Room


Bedroom

Sorry, No Follow-up Meetings

MercuryNews.com Article

The recently fired engineer suspected of killing three colleagues at their Santa Clara office last week is expected to be arraigned in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon.

Santa Clara police spent the weekend "trying to tie up loose ends and are still investigating the case'' regarding why Jing Hua Wu made an appointment Friday afternoon with top executives at SiPort on Scott Boulevard, and then shot them with a 9 mm handgun, Lt. Mike Sellers said today.

The three killed were Marilyn Lewis, 67, of San Jose, the company's head of human resources; Brian Pugh, 47, of Los Altos, vice president for operations; and Sid Agrawal, 56, of Fremont, the company's co-founder and chief executive.

Wow. That's why you have Security escort people out when they're laid off. I hope we don't have lay-offs; there won't be a shortage of pissed-off Chinese engineers here.

MBA Focus Resume Books

When I was still involved in recruiting new MBA hires, I signed up for resume books from a company called MBA Focus. I think b-schools contract with them to put resumes from 1st and 2nd year MBA student online. I just got an email regarding intern resumes for next summer. Most of the resume books are free but a large percentage of schools are charging money for recruiters look at resumes. The most expensive at $300 are Harvard and Wharton with a lot of schools charging $250, and two at $225 (Cornell/Johnson and UT Austin/McCombs).

List of the schools charging $250:
Columbia
Dartmouth/Tuck
Duke/Fuqua
MIT/Sloan
NYU/Stern
Northwestern/Kellogg
Stanford
UC Berkeley/Haas
UCLA/Anderson
Univ of Chicago
Univ of North Carolina
Univ of Virginia/Darden
Yale

USC and Indiana/Kelley resume books are free. If I was a student at one of the schools charging for resumes, I'm not sure how I would feel. The list of schools are all highly ranked but there are many schools that give away for free. The students are paying a lot for tuition already and the school is trying to make more money off of them?

If I was still recruiting at this time, I wouldn't pay for resumes. Our intern program is not that big so we can fill our positions from USC or UCI. Maybe if we were hiring a lot of interns (not sure what company is going to do that next year), maybe I'd pay for a local top l0 school. I wonder if students at the schools listed above can still pass out their own resumes or if they had to sign an exclusive deal with their b-school?

Bailout

Sigh... more of my tax money being tossed into a black hole. The big 3 American automakers are asking for a handout as part of the Wall Street bailout. From what I read, the Democrats are trying to push this through.

Why do the Democrats always try to buy votes with other people's money?

We Got Married

I was up until 5am yesterday watching "We Got Married" on the Internet. It a Korean TV show, more of a variety show than K-drama. The premise of the show is to pair two celebrities (not sure how famous) and have them "live together" and pretend they're married. Each week, the participants would watch clips from the prior week and talk about what they were feeling/thinking at the time. I started watching because Hwangbo was on the show starting around Episode 12; she used to be a singer/rapper in a K-pop group called Chakra. She's paired up with some guy from SS501, another K-pop group. Each episode is 90 minutes and I'm on Episode 20. The show is currently broadcasting on MBC in Korea.



The show is pretty interesting and I recognize most of the celebrity couples from listening to K-pop. It's probably comparable to the many "reality" shows we have in the US with the exception that the participants are somewhat famous already.

CJK Support for BlackBerry 8310 Curve

Since the BB Curve has a regular 1/8" jack for headphones and a music player, I throught I could load it up with MP3s and use it instead of my iPod in my car. I bought a Kingston 4GB SD-micro memory card (for ~$12) and loaded my K-pop/J-pop playlist. To my dismay, all the Korean/Japanese (and Chinese) text showed up as boxes instead of the correct characters. Anyway, after searching the web for a few hours, I found a East Asian version of the BlackBerry OS that supports CJK text and Pinyin input. I was a bit hesitant since it's a work phone and I didn't want to mess it up by loading a new OS, even if it's the same version (v4.2).

Anyway, I'm happy to report that everything still works fine on my phone except that the icon for BlackBerry Maps is gone. The application is still installed and I can access it through Blip (map my location) but the icon is nowhere to be found. I feel a lot better with the correct Korean/Japanese text showing up on song titles even though I can't read either one.

Chinglish

ShanghaiDaily.com

‘Gays’ crack nearly causes international incident

A CHINESE man nearly started an unintended fight with an overseas sailor when he greeted him in poorly chosen English words.

The man identified as Liu said: “Hi, gays” when he met the sailor on a foreign ship docked at Wusong Port this morning in Shanghai.

The sailor grabbed Liu, a worker at Wusong, and demanded an explanation and an apology. However, Liu’s English was so poor that he couldn’t find the words to express himself properly.

Fortunately, a police officer identified as Xu stepped in and explained to the sailor that Liu meant to say “Hi, guys,” according to Wusong immigration police.

Xu also told Liu that gay means homosexual in English.

The two shook hands after the misunderstanding was cleared up.

My friend in Chengdu took an English class in college. The textbook has the N-word in the vocabulary list; the text was an excerpt from Huckleberry Finn. I can just see a Chinese tour group visiting Compton or South-Central, greeting people with, "What's up, N!@@&!"

Church and Illegal Immigration

During the message last Sunday, the pastor invited a speaker to talk about immigration. NewSong is going through a series called Purple Politics; purple because it's the color you get when you combine red and blue. The messages were supposed to present issues in a balanced manner to foster discussion. However, last week, the guest ended up being an activist for illegal immigration. He pretty much hit all the talking points of the immigration lobby and gave out a bunch of one-sided statistics.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions but I was hoping that the message was balanced as originally advertised, instead of being 99% towards one side of the issue. I had two main problems with the discussion. First, the pastor told us to use the word "undocumented worker" instead of "illegal alien." That's total PC (political correctness) crap. The label absolves people of responsibility and potential consequences of their actions. Undocumented implies that the fix is documentation, not the fact that laws were broken. We don't call people who drive when their license is suspended "undocumented drivers." The pastor and the speaker also intentionally confused the issue by asking the congregation whether their parents were immigrants. Being an Asian church, a lot of hands went up. Again, that's total crap. My parents were immigrants, three times. First to Taiwan from China/Malaysia, then to Canada, and then here to the USA. Each time, we filed paperwork, waited, and followed rules and regulations. To group legal immigrants together with illegal immigrants is an insult to those of us that respect the rule of law.

Again, people can believe in whatever they want. However, when it's presented as a sermon message, and reprinted in the church bulletin, it becomes the church's position. I'm pretty rigid about respecting laws and personal responsibility; this runs counter to both. I am really disappointed since I was one of the original volunteers that helped plant the church several years ago and spent many 12+ hour weekends moving equipment and running the sound board. I knew it was a liberal leaning church with lots of college students/recent grads that haven't been paying too much taxes. Until now however, the messages have been fairly balanced when discussing politics.

I did write an email to the pastor and he replied that we should talk, though I'm not sure if there's much to talk about. It's really up to me whether I want to stay at a church that advocates positions on issues that I'm passionately opposed to. Sigh...

China, Taiwan and Obama

Reuters Article

China urges Obama-led U.S. to be careful on Taiwan

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday the proper handling of the "Taiwan issue" was key to good relations between Beijing and the United States, and urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to halt arms sales to the self-ruled island.

"Looking at China-U.S. relations in recent years, the most sensitive issue has been Taiwan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters at a regular briefing on Thursday. The average Chinese person won't care about Taiwan or Tibet when their infant/child is suffering from food poisoning or kidney stones.

"The proper handling of this issue is fundamental," Qin said.

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's Communists won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's U.S.-backed government fled to the island.

Beijing has vowed since to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.

Sigh... the commies need to STFU about Taiwan already. Taiwan would not need weapons if China stopped threatening violence all the time.

Here's a free tip: stop worrying about Taiwan and focus your attention on not poisoning your own citizens with tainted milk, eggs, and whatever else that's laced with melamine. Your average Chinese person is not going to care about the 3 T's (Taiwan, Tibet, Tianamen) while their child/infant is suffering from food poisoning or kidney stones.

Mahjong for BlackBerry

I'm trying to find a Mahjong game for my new BlackBerry. Not the stupid tile matching/removal game but the real thing with 4 players playing for money. I tried Googling it but all I get are links to the wrong game. There's even one game called Aces Mahjong that claims it's based on a "classic Chinese game of mahjong dating back over two thousand years." What a load of crap! I grew up playing mahjong with my cousins (at the kid's table) and we've never played the tile matching thing with our mahjong tiles. This is why I hated marketing class...

My NEC China market cell phone has a real mahjong game and it's a 4 year old phone.

Shenzhen Job Fair

From chinaSMACK



Wow. I'm glad I'm not a recent college grad in China looking for a job. I saw pictures from another job fair last year; this one looks worse.

BlackBerry Curve

After breaking my 7th Palm Treo, I finally got a BlackBerry from work. I went through 2 Treo 600's, 2 Treo 650's, and 2 Treo 680's. Usually they get hit with the infinite reset loop problem but my last Treo's phone broke; I could not hear anyone nor could they hear me on calls.



The BlackBerry's phone portion is much better than the Treo. I'm still with the same carrier (AT&T) but I noticed that the calls are much more clear. Since we used GoodLink on the Treo's at work, the email and calendar sections were better on the Treo. I'm still trying to get used to the BlackBerry's messenger and calendar applications. The 8310 comes with a GPS chip and AT&T wants you to download Telenav and pay a monthly fee. I ended up downloading Google maps for BlackBerry and it is able to pinpoint my location using the GPS chip. I don't think it give turn-by-turn direction like a normal navigation software but at least it's free.

I also like the fact that it recharges and connects to a PC using a standard USB cable. I can use my Motorola RZR adapter to charge the BlackBerry at home. The Treo had a proprietary adapter so I had to carry multiple plugs when I travel with both phones. I do miss the Treo's touch screen. The trackball on the BlackBerry works OK but it's easy to move the cursor while pressing the ball and running a different application than what I intended.