2011 Billboard K-pop Masters Concert

Next Friday in Vegas... both Sistar and Brown Eyed Girls. I really want to go.

Official Website

Tesla Model S

On a tour of several satellite buildings at work this afternoon, we walked through the Tesla Design Center that is right behind our main building. In the main building space, there were several full sized clay models being sculpted. I thought the Model S was finalized so I wasn't sure what they were working on. In the other area of the building, there was a beta version of the Model S Signature (not sure what that means). It had a California manufacturer's plate and the Tesla guy said they drive it to PR events. The huge center console display was pretty cool but I wasn't too impressed with the two jump seats in the back. It's a "seven" seat car like Bret's Porsche 911 is a "four" seat car.

No photos... though there are many on the Internet already.

Who is Chen Guangcheng 陳光誠

From Seeing Red in China

Please read... it will only take a few minutes.

Part 1 - A celebration of life on his 40th birthday
Part 2 - Fighting forced abortion and his trial
Part 3 - From a small prison to a big prison

From Part 2:

Confinement, Escape, Kidnapping, Beating, Imprisonment, Isolation

Beginning August 11, 2005, Chen Guangcheng and his wife were confined in their home and watched by dozens of people scattered around the area. In the night of August 25, Chen Guangcheng managed to slip out in the dark, shake off guards running after him, and eventually arrive in Beijing, but not without taking detours through Shanghai and Nanjing.

In the afternoon of September 6, 2005, six men who claimed to be Public Security officers, without showing any ID or legal documents, seized Chen Guangcheng and took him away in a Santana sedan (license plate 鲁B13237) in front of three witnesses, including a Chinese lawyer and Philip Pan of Washington Post.

Badly beaten in the car, that night he was taken back to Yinan County to a hotel room. On the morning of September 7, Liu Jie (刘杰), the head of Linyi Public Security Bureau paid him a visit. “It is enough to give you a five-year sentence just for being interviewed by Washington Post. Another interview, you’ll get ten years!” He then suggested that Chen Guangcheng withdraw from exposing the abuses. Chen refused.

After a 26-hour hunger strike, he was sent home, but was under close watch and not allowed to leave. In the following days his telephone was disconnected, computer removed, and cell phone signal disrupted. No outsiders were allowed to go into his house. He was completely cut off from the outside world.

From this time to early 2006, rights lawyers and other friends and activists, mostly from Beijing, visited Linyi hoping to meet Chen Guangcheng, but were beaten and turned away. Villagers who protested Chen’s confinement or who tried to help the visitors were repeatedly beaten and detained. More international media outlets reported what was happening in Dong Shi Gu, and human rights organizations called for his release. Chen Guangcheng himself was beaten several times, as was his wife.

On March 11, 2006, Chen Guangcheng and two others were arrested. By then he had already been under house arrest for 197 days.

On June 11, 90 days after Chen Guangcheng was held incommunicado without authorization, his wife received a notice of criminal detention issued by Yinan County Public Security Bureau for allegedly “gathering crowds to obstruct traffic” and “destruction of property.”

By then his wife had written letters to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, Chinese President and Prime Minister respectively, and UN Secretary General Annan, pleading for justice. After Chen Guangcheng was formally detained, she wrote to Deng Pufang, the son of Deng Xiaoping and Chairman of China’s Disabled Persons’ Federation.

To publicize Chen Guangcheng’s case, lawyers, scholars and friends in Beijing planned a press conference on June 16, and Chen’s mother and son were to attend. But the press conference had to be cancelled, because every single organizer had been called on, followed or confined by authorities in Beijing that day. Most shockingly, Cheng Guangcheng’s mother and his toddler son were kidnapped outside Teng Biao’s apartment building by ten unidentified men and spirited away in a van without a license plate. They were brought back to Yinan to the home of one of Chen Guangcheng’s brothers.

Chen’s lawyers were allowed to meet with him in the Yinan detention center. They were later prevented by thugs from visiting Yuan Weijing, Chen’s wife, to discuss the case. While in his hotel room, Li Jinsong (李劲松), one of Chen’s defense lawyers, received telephone threats from an unidentified man. “Have you lived enough? Have you?” The man menaced repeatedly.

In Beijing, national security personnel called on the lawyers and activists; while in Linyi, Chen Guangcheng’s lawyers were followed, threatened, beaten on the street by unidentified thugs, had their camera smashed and their cars overturned.

LAX Reverse Flow

I went out to lunch today and saw that the planes taking-off and landing at LAX were going the other way, i.e, headed east. Normally due to wind direction, runways 24/25 are used (east to west) instead of 6/7. Too bad I don't have my camera (waiting for a new camera backpack) today; it would be interesting to see landings at Imperial Hill and take-offs at In'n'Out.

I looked online and could not find any real-time notifications on when (and why) this happens. It seems to be a pretty rare event.


I guess I can "watch" the planes land on FlightAware and tell which direction they're headed.

Thursday Traffic

Dang it. I thought I could go home a bit earlier and have dinner at a "normal" time... i.e., before 9pm. However, looking at Google Maps traffic, there seems to be more red than green on the map. I guess I'll hang out here for another hour to see if traffic improves. Thursday night appears to be the worst traffic night for my ride home.

21 and Over

From the director of The Hangover and The Hangover Part II, 21 and Over is another stereotypical "buddy" comedy movie. Here is the description from Variety magazine:

Miles Teller ("Footloose"), Justin Chon ("The Twilight Saga"), Skylar Astin ("Taking Woodstock") and Sarah Wright ("The House Bunny") star in the pic, which follows two childhood friends who drag their straight-arrow buddy out to celebrate his 21st birthday the night before an important medical school interview, in an evening of debauchery that spirals out of control. But when one beer leads to another, the evening spirals into a wild misadventure of debauchery that none of them will ever forget.

Yawn... sound terribly boring. Anyway, the interesting (to me anyway) part of this story is that they're filming part of the movie in Linyi, China. Looking at the brief blurb above, I don't see how a scene in China fits into the story, but who says crappy movies need a logical plot. More importantly, Linyi has been in the news lately due to Chen Guangchen. From Wikipedia:

Chen Guangcheng (born November 12, 1971) is a blind civil rights activist in the People's Republic of China who drew international attention to human rights issues in rural areas. He was placed under house arrest from September 2005 to March 2006 after talking to Time magazine about the forced abortion cases he investigated in Linyi Prefecture, Shandong Province. Authorities formally arrested him in June 2006 for destruction of property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic. During his trial, Chen's lawyers were forbidden access to the court, leaving him without a proper defender. On August 24, 2006, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months for "damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic."

Chen was released from prison on September 8, 2010 after serving his full sentence, but remains under "ruanjin" or soft detention at his home in Dongshigu. Chen and his wife were reportedly beaten shortly after a human rights group released a video of their home under intense police surveillance on February 9, 2011.

I'm not sure what the movie producers were thinking. Chen Guangcheng's story is not small local news; it has been featured on TIME, BBC, New York Times (often), NPR, and lots of other "Western" media. Relativity Media for its part, seems to be quite happy with the Chinese arrangement:

Joining Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman (The Fighter) and Todd Lieberman (The Fighter), are producers on the film, Andy Yan of SAIF and Hugo Shong of IDG. The Relativity and Sky Land production is being made in association with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Produced (Limitless). In addition to previous footage shot in Seattle, Washington, filming locations include Linyi, a city in the south of Shandong province. Principal photography on scenes in China began shooting in Linyi on October 26, 2011.

Party Secretary of Linyi Municipal Committee of the Chinese Party of Communism (CPC), Zhang Shajun, whose position is directly above the Mayor, said “Linyi is a beautiful city and we welcome international filmmakers to come to Linyi to make beautiful worldwide films, and particularly welcome my good friend Ryan Kavanaugh and his great company Relativity to be shooting in our historic city. We promise to provide the best service possible in order to help make the movie successful worldwide.”

This will mark the first of many projects that Relativity plans to shoot and do post-production work on in China.

Keeping lots of thugs around to intimidate and beat up visitors to an entire village is costly. I read that there are up to 300 "guards" and they get paid ~RMB 100 per day. With other expenses, that's probably RMB 1M per month. I don't know whether a small city like Linyi has that kind of discretionary budget but some cash from a "Hollywood" movie production company will sure come in handy. Just wondering how well the movie will do once it's linked to illegal detention and torture of a blind human rights lawyer. Probably not good.

From Charlie Custer at ChinaGeeks:

So, what should you do? I’m no expert, but let me help you weigh the options here. You can either piss off the American media and whatever percentage of your audience chooses to pay attention, or you can piss off some government leaders who are giving you a great deal on shooting your hilarious movie so long as you keep quiet about how they’re using your money to hold a blind man hostage.

Personally, I’d say leave Linyi. Like, tomorrow. Or hey, even today! It certainly seems like the moral choice, and I don’t understand why you’d want to shoot an American buddy comedy in China anyway (well, except for because of this).

We know you’re aware of the issue (see image). And while I understand the “no comment” response — you probably need some time to get your ducks in a row — please be aware that people are not just going to forget about this if you choose to do nothing. People haven’t forgotten about Chen and his family, and even though they’re beaten and robbed, people keep trying to visit him. Relativity Media needs to seriously consider which side of that equation it wants to be on.

Because maybe it’s just my sense of humor, but holding an innocent blind man and his family in their house, beating and robbing well-intentioned net users trying to visit him, and then lying about it to the world does not sound like a great premise for a hilarious buddy comedy. And every day you’re in Linyi shooting 21 and Over, you’re funding that, too, whether you want to be or not.

Do the right thing here.

Airliners.net

I uploaded a photo to Airlines.net a few days ago. They have lots of great photos of just about every airplane. I found out after uploading that all photo submissions are moderated which keeps out the crappy or mundane shots... I have lots of those. :)

My photo is still stuck in the moderation queue. It's probably the most unique shot I have so hopefully it gets posted.


Singapore Airlines A-380 landing at LAX

How to say nothing in 500 words or less...

Global Times, one of the many English "news" sites run by the Chinese communist government, has an article regarding the terrible air quality in Beijing/China. Instead of talking about the real issues: dangerous levels of air pollutants and improper monitoring standards, it talks about politics.

Since the problem cannot be solved quickly, a consensus is needed. The government should play a key role. Local governments usually leave the impression of "playing down bad news" among the public, which makes many people exaggerate the gap between their feelings with the government's figures.

It is probably the same reason why the monitoring standard of the US Embassy is emphasized by netizens. That means local governments need to establish absolute authority over monitoring pollution without concealing information. If they are defeated by foreign embassies in this regard, they will lose more than just authority in monitoring air quality.

Heh, how is the CCP going to accomplish this?! Their entire political system is based on concealing information from the public.

==========

I guess I've been lucky though. Each time I've been to Beijing, the weather has be either mostly clear, very windy, or raining. I have not experience anything close to "crazy bad" air, though a mysterious "fog" did roll in during the afternoon on our visit to the Olympic Park in 2008.

Occupy Wall Street = Monty Python

Sandy Lam in Concert

After attending the Jacky Cheung concert last year and enjoying it more than I thought I would, I want to go to this concert too. Unfortunately, I'll be in Portland so probably won't be able to make it to Vegas on Christmas Eve. Hotel prices are going to be crazy expensive too.

More LAX at Night

To pass the time while I waited for Leon to clear immigration, I sat and watched planes again. Even though it was too dark to take photos, I tried.


Long line of planes arriving at LAX. It's much easier to see them at night.


A Quantas A-380 parked at gate 101. Did LAX retrofit this gate to handle double-decker planes?


30 second wide-angle shot of LAX. One plane took-off while another one landed during the exposure time.

A Gaggle of A-380s

There are three Airbus A-380s in the photo. The big blue one is flight KE18 (Korean Airlines) taking-off for Incheon/Seoul. Right behind it, flight SQ12 (Singapore Airlines) just arrived from Narita/Tokyo and is pulling into gate 123, the only double-decker gate at LAX. If you look carefully, right behind the SQ A-380, you can see a red tail fin. That should be flight QF11 (Quantas Airways) that arrived from Sydney at 9:45am this morning.

According to Wikipedia, there are only 7 operators currently using the A-380. In addition to the three above (Singapore, Korean, Quantas), the list includes Air France, Emirates, Lufthansa, and China Southern. Hmm... my friends from Guangzhou all hate taking China Southern (only direct flight to/from LAX). Does this just mean more unhappy and/or rude Chinese people on each flight?


SQ12 mentioned above landing at LAX

==========

I also saw a few Boeing 747s today. There are a lot more of them in service than the A-380s but they're still pretty impressive close up.


Evergreen flight 802 from Anchorage... probably a freight flight even though there are lots of windows on the main deck.


Polar Air flight 214, also from Anchorage. This is definitely a freighter since there are no windows other than on the top deck.


Lufthansa flight 456 from Frankfurt

LAX at Night

Warning: may be boring

The tripod I ordered from Amazon arrived last night so I went to Imperial Hill after work today to try out night shots. The sky was overcast so there was lots of refracted(?) light. Since the runway was not lit up, you could hardly see the planes anyway. I was really trying out the P/A/S/M setting on the camera to see if I could take decent pictures at night.


250mm 10 second exposure at f/13


90mm 5 second exposure at f/8
The long white streak was a plane taking off through my FOV during the 5s exposure

China Daily Chutzpah

China Daily

Isn't that a serious concern for journalists, whose primary responsibility is to speak for the voiceless in their society?

It is a shame that most so-called mainstream media outlets have miserably failed to inform the public over the past two weeks.

Wow. Chinese "journalist" criticizes US media. It says he's based in New York but the story he writes appears to come straight from the propaganda department in Beijing.

Here's an experiment for Mr. Chen. It's been a month since OWS protests started. Go ask random New Yorkers and see how many has heard about it from "mainstream" media outlets. Now go back to China and ask random Beijingers if they know who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. It's been a year... has Xinhua or CCTV "informed the public" in China?

This is the problem with the CCP and modern China. There is no sense of morality... instead, whatever gets you more money or power is right. That's why Mr. Chen can write nonsense like this day after day because it gets him a cushy posting in New York. This is also partially why 18 people walked by a bleeding and dying toddler in Foshan because helping her won't gain them anything.

I think I would go crazy if I had to live in China.

Running Man Episode 61

For this episode of 런닝맨 (Running Man), they are in China. I just started watching the parts on YouTube. I'm surprised they got permission to film in Beijing with all the running around they have to do.


Part 1


Part 2

The first stop is the Great Wall at Mutianyu; I thought they would go to Badaling but it's probably too crowded for their games. Too bad they weren't there when my family and I visited. I could have met Kang Jiyoung of KARA!


Mutianyu Great Wall with almost no tourists in Sept 2009


Luckily they didn't try to film the episode during China's National Day holiday. Can't run when 1.3 billion people are crammed in one place. [Ministry of Tofu]

Air China 983

Air China Boeing 747 (flight 983) from Beijing landing at LAX on Sunday. About 8 months ago I picked up Sindy from this flight. It was her third and probably final trip to LA.

Tintin Movie

Yay! I love Tintin. I have all the Tintin comics and even a couple in French that I bought in a Paris bookstore. Let's hope the movie doesn't suck.




Most of the books are in the small, three-per-volume format. I did read most of them in the large format while working at the Mississauga Library.


French... for some reason, when I bought these I thought I could read French. Nope.

Wasn't I just here last week?!

Sitting around waiting for the next airplane to take-off or land is kind of exciting. You never know what will show up on the runway, even though the flight schedule is all over the Internet. There were a lot of plane spotters on Imperial Hill today. I think the goal is to write down the tail number of each plane though I don't know what they do with the info. Is there a website where everyone keys what planes they saw?

Earlier this afternoon, I tried to find other locations to take photos of LAX, especially on the north side of the runways. I drove west on Imperial Highway, north on Pershing Drive, then east on Westchester Parkway; there were No Stopping signs posted on all streets. On the map, it appears there are a bunch of side streets just north of Westchester Parkway but looking closer on Google Maps, all of them are blocked off by fences. Is this because of 9/11? I ended up driving around the Century/Sepulveda area a couple times before parking outside of the In-n-Out on Sepulveda and Westchester. The place was packed but fortunately, there is a tiny park next door and there were lots of people hanging out. It was just like any neighborhood park but every few minutes, a jet would roar by and land on runway 24R.


B-18717 Boeing 747-409F (China Airlines 5108 TPE-LAX)
When I first got to the park, I heard people yell, "A big one is coming!" I then realized they were referring to an incoming plane, I quickly got out my camera (with the 18-250mm lens) and snapped of a few photos.


Not sure if this park has a name... I think everyone just calls it the In-n-Out Park. That guy lying down seems to have been there for a long time.


Three American Eagle Embraer jets landed one after another. Since Terminal 4 is on the "other" side of LAX, I think all these plane have to taxi around the west end of the airport to get to their gates.


N209UA Boeing 777-222ER (United Airlines 878 PVG-LAX)


With the sun low in the southwest, it's hard to get anything once the plane passes the park, and definitely no take-off photos from here.


N524VA Airbus A-319-112 (Virgin America 932 SFO-LAX)
Virgin must have registered "Virgin America" in the US since the tail number starts with "N" (USA) instead of "G" (UK).


Southwest! Since SWA is in Terminal 1, I have not seen any planes up close from Imperial Hill. The photo is a bit blurry so I can't make out the tail number but this appears to be flight 1982 from Austin. The plane is a Boeing 737-300... I think SWA only flies 737s.


HB-JMD Airbus A-340-313X (Swissair 40 ZRH-LAX)


HL7420 Boeing 747-48E (Asiana Airlines 966 ICN-LAX)


This is the Asiana 747 freighter (no passenger windows) again. I like this shot... it reminds me of a scene from Ghost in the Shell.

Instead of going home, I figured that since I was here, I may as well go to Imperial Hill and take some more shots... since every other flight seems to be an American/Delta/United 757, I'll ignore those for now.


By the time I drove under the runway on Sepulveda and arrived at Imperial Hill, the Asiana 747 had taxied around to the south side of LAX to get to it's "home" near Terminal 8.


N120AK Bombardier Global Express (GC Air LAX-SJC)
Pretty


N908SW Bombardier CRJ2 (Skywest 6288 LAX-MRY)
MRY = Monterey. I was wondering how much the fare was... the same flight next Sunday would cost $239 one way on United Express (same plane).


HL7498 Boeing 747-4B5 (Korean Airlines)
They were moving the plane from TBIT to the remote gate area so I'm not sure which flight it was. Korean Air bought A-380s from Airbus; hopefully they will operate them on the Incheon-LA route.


4T94101... wait, that's not a plane.


F-OSUN Airbus A-340-313X (Air Tahiti Nui 7 LAX-FAA)
FAA = Faa'a International Airport in Papeete, French Polynesia


N262DG Cessna T303
This small twin propeller plane was flying over LAX. It looked really far away... I was surprised that I can read the "tail" number in the photo.


HL7756 Boeing 777-28EER (Asiana Airlines)
This was also being towed to the remote gate area, probably to open up a gate at TBIT for another incoming flight.


9V-SGE Airbus A-340- 541 (Singapore Airlines 38 SIN-LAX)
This is the all-business-class flight from Singapore to Los Angeles... 16.5 hours non-stop and one-way ticket costs ~SGD6000. Not sure how much that is in US dollars but it's expensive.


I tried out the panorama mode on my Sony a55 camera. You press the shutter button and move the camera slowly to the right. The camera is taking lots of photos and stitching it together automatically... pretty cool, but the camera makes an awful racket when it's taking the photo. Final output is 8192 x 1856 pixels (shrunk down here to only 800 pixels wide).

Anonymous readers getting bored? Just fivesix more to go...


N563SW Embraer EMB-120 (Skywest 6338 LAX-SAN)
Wow, airfare for the same flight next Sunday is $460.


N864GA McDonnell Douglas MD-81 (Allegiant 378 LAX-EUG)


N452PA Boeing 747-46NF (Polar Air Cargo 214 - CVG-LAX)
CVG = Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. I guess they ran out of room on the Ohio side and put the airport in Kentucky.


JA716A Boeing 777-281ER (All Nippon Airways 1006 HND-LAX)
I was all excited when I saw a big ANA jet, thinking it was the new Boeing 787... but it turned out to be a regular 777-200ER. Coincidentally, this is the same flight I took from Tokyo to LA on my last trip to Beijing.


I couldn't get the tail number but this is a old McDonnell Douglas DC-10. I don't think there are any passenger carrying DC-10s left. FedEx usually flies a MD-11 on this Memphis to LA route so I'm lucky to have seen (part of) the DC-10.


G-CIVF Boeing 747-436 (British Airways 282 LAX-LHR)
For some reason, it took forever for this flight to taxi to the end of the runway and take-off. There were several of us waiting to see this jumbo jet take-off before leaving Imperial Hill.

Samsung TV + PS3

We bought a new TV last weekend from Costco. They had the Samsung 55" LED TV (non-3D) with a Blu-ray DVD player for $1500. The TV is pretty nice though I really wanted the 8000 series TV. Anyway, I tried to hook up my old fat 80GB PS3 to it and found out that the Samsung TV does not support 1280 x 720 mode (720p). Even though I set the PS3 to display 1920 x 1080, some games are not full HD and the box switches the HDMI output resolution down. On my old Vizio 42" TV, it displays everything without drama. Even the cheap ($130) Acer 21" LCD monitor I using for my PS3 works fine but the expensive new big TV just gives me a resolution error. How lame is that. It also doesn't like my dad's old KTV/DVD player. Once again, the composite video output works on all our other TVs but not on the Samsung. Finally, the audio out on the TV (I have it hooked up to an old Yamaha Dolby Pro Logic receiver/amp) only has 2 channel stereo signal so all the encoded surround data is lost.

I'm a bit disappointed that the detailed specs on the TV don't mention any of these missing features. Not being able to play non-1080p games really sucks. I've googled all over looking for a solution but have not found anything yet. Samsung needs to release a firmware update, though I'm not optimistic since the issue has been around for a few years and they have a lousy track record of updating the Android OS on their smartphones. Overall though, the picture quality is awesome, much better than my old Vizio so I guess we'll keep it.

More OWS Thoughts

I heard and interview with some Occupy xxx people in Boston on NPR this morning. First, my political bias is more right than left so I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to their demands... even if they had one. What irked me this morning was their constant socialist, anti-corporate whining. To get their message out about how evil corporations are destroying society, they send out tweets on the Apple notebook computers and shoot videos to post on YouTube. Hello?! Do you think those things were invented/produced by a bunch of hippie on a commune?



Of course, the guy they interviewed was unemployed and probably got all his electronic gadgets from his parents. Did they work for any of these evil corporations? They also talk about their "village" like some kind of utopia where everyone volunteers their time and energy, and decisions are made in a general assembly twice a day. Sounds good on paper but as we learned to ask in business school (does having a MBA make me evil too?), does it scale? Can we have the entire population sit around and do nothing but meet all day?

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because this experiment has been done before... it's called communism. Let's see how this works. Eventually the "village" will discover that some people have to do work or they will all starve. The leaders of the "leaderless village" or "people's republic" will start making rules and giving orders. Mysteriously, the people making the rules will be exempt from doing work and if anyone complains, they will be branded as "running dogs of the capitalist imperialists" and thrown in jail. Finally every villager becomes poorer except for the new leaders and their friends but no one knows because the Internet and mass media has long been restricted and only propaganda and filtered news is allowed. Did I miss anything?

Another thing that bothers me (there are lots) is the media coverage of OWS and all lefty protests. I'm not a Tea Party person but I agree with their call for less government spending. I'm not the 1% that the OWS bitches about all the time but I may be in the 10% of people that pay 70% of all the taxes. Anyway, media coverage of Tea Party protests have been mainly negative even though they're mostly peaceful, yet the OWS protests are getting favorable coverage even though there's pervasive references to violence and anarchy.



Don't they know the first people that will be thrown in jail in the "new society" will be journalists?

A Quote for the Occupy Wall Street Clowns

Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

- Abraham Lincoln, March 21, 1864