I will be in Hangzhou on May 24 for the developer conference organized by Alibaba. Drop me a note if you will be there as well.
Here’s the link to subscribe (Chinese). Hope to see you there.
http://info.china.alibaba.com/html/wx/index.html
p.s. quite some presentations will be in English. They will be given by foreign technologists/professionals.
房东把房子卖了， 五月底就得搬家。 唉， 本来想在这边久住一段时间的。 不得不又要找房子了。。。找房子是费神费力， 还费钱。 在上海这种1600万常住人口的大城市， 找到自己的一片地儿怎么这么难呢。。。哥们要求不高， 离漕河泾30分钟以内， 有办法去地铁一号线， 2300块/月， 2室， 不要顶楼和一楼， 全配就行啦。
My landlord sold her apartment, which means I am looking for an apartment in Shanghai again, not easy job…anyone who has tried to find a decent place with reasonable price (2000-2500 rmb/month) knows it.
My hosting service company is moving their data center…Back online next week:). See you folks then.
李宇春出名还是有原因的。 今天这首歌《差生》尽然莫名的感动了我。 虽然我从小到大都不算差生，但是却很能理解不被承认的心情。 请别因为他人的眼光放弃自己的梦想！
I have to confess that I didn’t get high ratings often on writing classes in Chinese when I was in school until the last year of high school when I had to prepare for the college entrance exam. Recently I started to understand the importance of writing. So I think writing more often is a good idea. For my own good. I think I’ll keep writing in both Chinese and English, depends on my thinking process.
By Aug 2008, I will be back in China for 3 years. It’s been a exciting and somewhat difficult experience. But I have learned a lot about my own country. It’s been doing me a lot of good. If I stayed in Europe, it could be harder for me to adjust to the life here when I return later.
It’s still hard for me to judge where exactly the opportunity for China is since I only worked for two employers, and they are both Dutch companies. I somehow feel starting up business should be the best idea. Chinese government has some program to promote business created by Chinese student returned from overseas. I looked into some of the specifics in the program and made some contact. I think with the right people and right project the success factor is quite high. Keep watching and keep looking. And of course, more importantly, start doing and learning by doing:).
It’s been 2 years I haven’t done any development under Linux. I’ve been a long time debian user. The debian installation on my Dell Inspiron 510m laptop was 2 years old. So I decided to give it a upgrade to the latest Debian testing.
Download the latest Debian testing image then burn the CD, however my laptop’s screen goes out of oder in the late stage of Debian installation. WTF? I couldn’t believe it. So I have heard Ubuntu for a long time, and I want a linux distribution which works out of the box and have easy package management cause I don’t want to spend time on drivers and dependencies.
I mistakenly downloaded Ubuntu Live CD which is the default option on their website. Be careful to download the desktop or alternative CD to burn:).
Installation was smooth. Everything works after installation. My wifi WPA is supported. Fire Synaptic and get everything installed. Apache, Mysql, PHP, just a few clicks! Software development in Linux is just easier. Everything is designed to work together. My external LCD monitor was automatically recognized when I plug it in.
There is a mirror in China. So software install and upgrade is pretty fast.
Go Ubuntu!
There’s been some intensive traveling this winter. It’s a good opportunity for me to experience different winter lifes in Normandy France, Shanghai and Hunan China.
Among the three, life in France is no doubt the physically the most comfortable one. Hunan is spiritually the best place for me to stay. France is most developed and Hunan where I was born and raised is unfortunately the least developed. I lived in Europe before. Naturally there were certain habits that I picked up there. Such as, shower in the morning rather than evening, take my coat/jacket off after entering the house/apartment, shower daily, drink bottled water/soda, put bags on the ground while sitting. Those are the obvious ones I can think of now.
After returning to China, I go back to shower in the evening, but occasionally I have the surge to shower in the morning, so now I shower about 30% of the time in the morning. I shower about every 1.5 days. I keep my jacket on after returning to my apartment because the temperature in my apartment is not warm enough to take my jacket off. For those who have never been to China might ask, why not turn on the radiator, I have to tell the truth, because there is no radiator. I drink boiled/hot water because bottled water is too cold. I still put my bags on the ground in my apartment but I try to avoid that while outside, because the ground is gross, everybody in China knows it.
On average, I make about 1 call on my gsm per 3 days in Europe. I make about 3 calls per day in China:D. 1 sms per 3 days in Europe, about 5 sms per day in China. More blogging in Europe. Less blogging and more human interactions in China.
I drank cold Cola during tea break in Europe. I drink heated Tea in Shanghai for tea break.
I go home immediately after work in Europe and avoid outside when it’s dark. I feel comfortable most of the time outside in the evenings in Shanghai and Hunan.
I do grocery in Carrefour about once a week in France. I do grocery in convenient store, fruit stand, Watson’s (European equivalent of Kruidvat) and everywhere once every 2-3 days in Shanghai.
I talk to my parents once a week, barely talk to my school friends in Europe, occasionally socialize. I talk to my parents whenever I want, call my school friends often. Meet friends in Shanghai once a while.
Fighting The Day after Tomorrow
Right now, the whole China (at least the south, where cold winter weather is rare) is fighting the freezing winter weather. My hometown Yueyang is at the north tip of the worst affected province, Hunan. Going back home was a scary thing for me. One city called Chenzhou had been without water and electricity supply for 8 days. 27 thousand vehicles had been stranded (tbc) on the highway for 3 days along 160 KM. Thousands and maybe millions of people are suffering from the extreme winter weather.
Is it the first wave of global warning hitting China? Right now my biggest concerns are:
You guys out there must watch this. Tell me what you think! He talks about Indians, Chinese and so much funny stuff. An Indian friend of mine introduced this to me. But he wouldn’t allow me to watch it in front of him. Hehe, He was afraid I would be intimidated by his show. Actually I am not! Russell Peters rocks!
p.s. I googled him. part of his show is based on stories with his father. His father died recently. So He decides to change his content of future shows…good luck to him and all the best to his family!
