Now, FOUR Years in China

http://www.youtube.com/v/KdV4KH7fBtk

I’ve tried to describe to people what Chinese New Year’s fireworks are like. It’s almost impossible to describe. However, this video which I took near midnight last night captures the essence of it. Note that this just happened to be the street I was driving down….nothing special about it. Multiply this by every street in Beijing and that should give you a sense of the static-like, never-ending, crackling hum in the air. If fireworks really chase off bad spirits, then I guarantee that there won’t be any descending anywhere near Beijing.

I was just at a website searching for references to one of my favorite bands of the 80s named “The The”. Most of the time, search engines are tuned by ignoring words like “the”. Thus, finding “the the” references hasn’t been an easy task.

To see what I mean, type “the the” into Google…there’s no reference to the band in the main results area. Now try it again with quotes around it. Typically, Google will catch things like this but this still seems to stump Google.

But you might notice that the sponsored link on the right returned the correct band. I did a search of the iTunes music store and it too found the correct band.

So…note to self. Don’t name a popular band with only fillers or conjuctions.

I’ve met a couple of people in China using the iPhone but due to the fact that it’s locked to AT&T in the U.S, the aren’t using it as a phone…only an internet device and iPod.

When I pushed them about the fact that they spent so much to not have a functional phone, they said that they were fairly confident that a crack would be available at some point. I personally doubt that will happen anytime soon without a combination of re-chipping and patching the kernel.

After thinking about this for a while, I concluded that an announcement of a hackers ability to unlock the iPhone to be used with a different SIM card would initially cause the AAPL stock to climb. The validation and release of the hack would cause a flood of orders for the iPhone in the U.S. and overseas.

In the history of devices and/or the hacking of such devices has there ever been the probability that hacking a particular device would dramatically benefit the manufacturer in terms of market share and stock price?

My Chinese SUV has been mechanically sound under the hood but not always great in other parts like the door locks and other secondary amenities. And except for the fact that the car isn’t very comfortable or quiet inside, it’s actually a pretty decent vehicle. It’s definitely more “utility” than “sport”.

Last week, I noticed a small pool of water under my car as I left work. Uncertain whether it was mine or not and the fact that my home is only 5 miles from work, I decided to risk it by driving home. It turned out that the water was indeed, from my car and that automobile engines really DO require some sort of coolant. Two thirds of the way home, the temperature gauge was pegged in the red and there was noticeable change in power. Instead of heading to my house, I took it to my auto club’s shop and shut it down. Steaming smoke was seeping out of a few seals and I was certain that this was going to be a very expensive repair.

The next morning (Sunday morning…yes…you heard me) the shop called me and let me know that my engine wasn’t ruined but it was in need of new hoses, gaskets, fluids along with other maintenance items. Below is my invoice.

I’m not sure what this repair would cost in the US. I recently replaced my front bumper, had it painted and installed for about $90 including parts, labor, paint…everything. In this case, I probably got screwed in some areas but in all, I think this is probably much better than U.S. prices for car repairs.

I had the good fortune to receive a loaner AppleTV last week. Lacking motivation and enthusiasm, it sat in my living room unopened until tonight. Despite seeing the keynote and marketing around it, I still had some pre-concieved ideas about it being a simple relay from my computer to the TV. It turned out to be way more than that…read on.

I quickly wired it up and using the simple, 6-button remote, selected the default language. I was then treated to it’s boot sequence and was treated to a delicious video sequence. This is something that Apple does better than anyone…from the minute you start to use an Apple product, the device itself endlessly re-affirms that you bought something special. Even as a veteran of the company, I still get goofy when I start to unwrap a new product.

I uploaded a few playlists, some videos, my photo album from my cambodian holiday and some podcasts from Chinesepod.com. And then it really hit me how freaking great this is. It’s not just an interface to your computer….it’s got a hard-drive and can play all your media without your computer. So does a Tivo but this is very different. While a Tivo contains movies and TV shows, this is much more an embodiment of your soul. It’s your photos, your music, your playlists, your movies, your podcasts, and so on. It’s one thing to view a personal 15″ screen on your lap but quite different the minute you transfer everything to the focal-point of a shared living space. Then, brandishing the tiny remote (reminds me of Will Smith’s little gun in Men In Black), you fire up a huge picture and sound effectively liberating the media trapped in your laptop. It’s quite a powerful shift and I wasn’t expecting to have this type of reaction to what I assumed was a meaningless TV accessory.

From briefly using it, I realized how frequently I put my laptop in front of someone to show video clips, slideshows of holidays etc. Now, showing photos from Cambodia to anyone who walks in is a piece of cake…and who doesn’t love a spontaneous slideshow of someone’s holiday? I can do a couple 5 minute ChinesePod sessions in the morning as I’m packing my laptop away for work. Lisa can watch the latest episode of desperate housewives. Madeline can take the Karaoke videos that I ripped and do Karaoke with her friends. During parties, I can put a video playlist together and in combination with the tasteful screen-saver, have a cool ambiance. In the evenings, I can listen to NPR episodes and listen to an audio book.

This has the potential to change the living room culture from mindless TV watching to more engaging activities such as learning languages or getting diverse news insights in a digested format. Most importantly, it seems to reverse a trend we’ve been seeing with technology over the past few year where devices disconnect us from humanity. For example, I’ve spent evenings on the sofa with my laptop, reading my news aggregator while my wife is on her laptop searching for home to buy when we move back to the US and my daughter is listening to her iPod. We DO occasionally have some family time when we watch a TV show together but it’s sort of a brain-dead activity with little commentary or thought. Most of our rich knowledge these days is coming from online sources yet none of us are really sharing these digital experiences.

With AppleTV (especially the podcasting features), we can participate in each other’s interests on one shared screen and have deeper discussions than we can upon viewing the latest episode of Mythbusters.

As we might stay here for 1 more year, I’m negotiating a new housing package. We’ve started looking at homes and last Friday, Lisa and I found an awesome one which is in our budget. I could devote an entire website to the ridiculousness of trying to get a home here but I’ll stick to this story.

Our realtor fast-tracked a contract to us and pushed us to make a decision this weekend because (in his best english) another contract has already been submitted to the landlord.

My instincts say this is a “typical’ negotiating tactic here…well, actually history says it it’s true. The best response is to tell the realtor “if the landlord is so ‘pushy’, then maybe we won’t be happy with that type of landlord and should look elsewhere”. I did this and was immediately met with (in his best english) apologies and certainty that we could find another good home. Ok…the deal is dead right?…that’s what I initially thought.

He was struggling to convince us of his honesty and trust his ability to find good houses (ie not fire him) but that this one house truly DOES have another contract pending.

“She has contract from Korean family, landlord want rent to Americans. She wait for you but Korean family ask her to sign it soon”.

This is one of those times when I wished I wasn’t raised with those darned pesky ethics which get in the way of…well…getting my way.

To be continued….

I’ve been very homesick lately. But the ideas rolling around my head haven’t been for any particular people or food….but for the delicious mountain bike trails in North Georgia, Eastern Tennessee, and Western North Carolina

It’s been over a year and half since I’ve been on my mountain bike. I finally got sick of feeling as healthy as Keith Richards looks (ironically, he’s probably in pretty good shape). But the problem is that using my car to drive up into the mountains strands Lisa and Madeline. But this weekend was different. They went on a Girl Scout camping trip where they spent the night next to a dilapidated section of the Great Wall. This freed me up to do whatever I desired.

So this morning I dusted off my bike, packed some gear and headed to the same trail system at Fragrant Hills that I rode the first (and last) time here. Getting there took about 30 minutes and I was successful remembering the location of the obscure trailhead.

The trail is rocky and technical as it climbs up precipitously close to areas of sheer drop offs. It’s so rocky that I would be better off with “all-mountain” bike (longer travel, bigger tires, and disk brakes) instead of my lightweight XC racer.

Being off the bike for a year has it’s consequences. Leg strength, endurance, technical skills and general confidence suffered. On the climb up, I used an abnormal amount of discretion when it came to tricky sections and walked some of them. After all, my goal was to get my heart pumping and get the trail “feel” back…not chase adrenaline-pumping thrills.

Watching the clock, I decided to start my decent after about an hour of painful climbing. This is a great trail for descending but I still rode conservatively. I reached a left-inside switchback and while doing the left turn, I hung my front wheel on a big rock and started to fall towards the downside of the hill…not the direction you want to fall. I clipped out one foot and was nearly successful stopping myself but the ground crumbled and I kept going over the ledge. As I was rotating over the steep ledge towards a pit of sharp boulders my “Risk Bucket” blog entry came to mind because it looked like I was in for a potential trip to the hospital.

As an action-sports participant, you learn to be cautiously optimistic in the first few minutes after a wreck. You may think you are just sore only to find something broken later. Visibly, I was pretty messy. My elbow had a bleeding raspberry along with cuts on my shin, knees and hip. The area above my sacrum (lower spine) took a major scraping blow and that reminded me how dangerous even a low-speed tip-over could be.

After my 30-second “system-check”, I untangled myself from between my bike and the boulders pulled myself back up onto the trail. Still not ruling out serious injury, I started checking my bike and my thinking about an exit strategy. The bike looked fine except for the seat which broke cleanly off. I jury-riggged it back onto the post, then held it in place by pinching it between my thighs and slowly descended about 2 miles back to the car.

On the way out of the village, I bought a couple drinks from a local merchant and soon started to feel certain that I didn’t have any serious injury. As more hours passed, I’m certain that my arm isn’t fractured and more optimistic that my back is just banged up rather than “really” injured.

Despite the soreness in my legs competing with the pains from the fall, I felt the energetic fatigue that I haven’t felt since moving to China. My homesickness is cured and a third year here isn’t so scary after all.

I was looking at my restaurant reviews that I did when I first arrived. It was a pretty sorry looking list. We were such noobs when I wrote those and my whole mission at that time was to find a decent burger.

In the past year and a half, we’ve been exposed to some amazing restaurants and have been treated to some new ones.

My mission in the next few weeks is to create a hypothetical 5-day holiday in Beijing which includes a combination of dinner and lunch spots. These are the restaurants that we have taken visitors to. It should span a range of quality, price, and ease.