Going munky!

Mitch Altman took pictures of me in the barber shop...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maltman23/sets/72157626596250384/

have you've been shanghaied yet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing

In any case, here's the group picture of the shanghai hackerspace people, that by itself a good reason to be in shanghai.

During my visit, we also passed by a company that I no longer have strong relationship with but alas, for a company it's a pretty good one... ;-)

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.sigh

Breakfast

Breakfast at airport going to Beijing!

Department store

Not sure what you think but I never understood why department stores sells perfume on the entrance ground floor. I don't like walking through it and it must be the night mare of allergies...

Sometimes I think of it as a warming - you who enter here are doomed!

A new way of working

In hanging out at the cafe of xin dan wei - a shared office space in Shanghai. Just meet one of the co-founders Liu Yan. Before I had my first Chinese lesson, one tomorrow. Then maybe go Beijing.

Shanghai hackerspace

Small report, cannot access facebook so feel free to copy to there.

Cane here on Thursday. Spent Friday with my friend Mitch Altman and his manufacturer. Saturday with founders of Shanghai hackerspace Xin Che Jian 新车间 and then mitch gave talk and soldering work shop. Well attended and some people built some kits. Then vegetarian delicious dinner!

Then next day shopping at electronics market at Beijing lu. Its big!

gmail access in china

It's pretty clear china is "blocking" gmail access occasionally for some users (?), whenever china officially denies anything or states that it's ridiculus or unfair and they're appalled of any accusation it's as good as admitting guilt. Mostly it seems that gmail sync works on my mobile phone. It'd seem that my email on my laptop hasn't been working since I did search for f*ceb**ok among my emails not that you can access facebook, but that they'd be able to detect that it's the same laptop being reconnected at different locations as well as see what one searches for when using https would seem somewhat "farfetched". However, isn't https susceptible to middle-man attacks?

In any case, I can read email on my phone so far. At this moment I can't access my machine in hong kong using ssh. It's be reasonable to assume this is a specific blockage on their part. ssh is encrypted so they don't know what I'm doing thus maybe assuming it's a firewall circumvention site, who knows?

It seems silly being paranoid. But having things not work on internet feel somewhat upsetting. I mean, blogger/blogspot by google as well as picasaweb (pictures) is access is blocked from china.

This is the problem with using corporate services that fallen out of "grace" with the chinese, or for that matter, any government. Of course the "law" in china specifies what one can "bring into the country" and states one cannot do antigoverment propaganda. I wonder what this message falls under?

In any case, I'm enjoying Shanghai, today Mitch Altman was holding a talk about hackerspaces (places where people build electronics and program microcontrollers). Then we had a very good vegetarian dinner.

Now, we'll see if this message get's through. Feel free to comment so I know you got it! Haha.

All in all, it makes me pizzed off not being able to read email reliably, feeling that I don't want to study chinese in china since they seemingly do all this stupid stuff.


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.sigh

No glasses glasses

Here is a fashion accessory I don't fully understand but have an inkling of idea. Some younger people in Hong Kong and China wear eye glass frames without any actual glasses!

I remember when living in Berlin in 1992 and there was a multitude of fashionable frames, overly gawdy even, colourful and with design that really stood out...

Now in Asia, among younger people who are pushed into studying even longer hours keeping their heads to close to the books, eye correction eventually becomes so common that wearing glasses becomes the norm! As its what most people do. Now you find people who have lenses or even lasic wear eye frames as fashion...

I remember one of my last year of study taking a class on compilers in computer science, there was like 60 students, all except me were wearing glasses...

People taking pictures

Of each other!

Fire in the hall!

Literally. Its not unusual to see people burning papers on the street, a bit more surprising is that they do it in the stair wells of apartment buildings...

Basketball

I don't like to watch sport, but find myself stopping by places in Hk to watch little as they are smack in the midst of the city. Find that I can enjoy watching practice. Hk guys seems good at basketball!