detour

Away from tourist street. People live here...

Shangqiu old town

It's the old capital of the Shang dynasty.

Thunderrain!

Must be a new word!

In any case we got a lot of it the first days. So much electricity and water went out...

Has awesome (foot) massage in my friend's father's business. The massage girl walked all over my back. Haha. Is that why it's called foot massage?

Train 22 hours to the Shaolin temples

I go visit a friend in Henan. I take the night sleeper train 1800km or so in 22 hours. Soft sleep bed is 530 rmb, hard sleeper 200, hard seat 1xx. Long distance slow travel can be very affordable. Flying would have been 1400 and I still would need to take train.

In shenzhen subway I meet two subway station attendants they are from Henan, see picture.

On the train I eat in the restaurant. The chef borrows my buddha beads and unbuttons his shirt. See picture. He alludes to the pictures and statues of the jolly happy Monk, and then he rubs his own belly for luck. I get my beads back and he makes me some tequanyin tea.

Later the conductor gives me some of his stash too.

Travels: it's the trip, not only the destination that is experience.

14 more hours. I sleept some but went up for toilet. With the lot of tea I drank probably need go few more times. Lol

I'm nowhere!

16:19 Left China, but will not enter Hong Kong until 1830, on a train on a very long imaginary border...

From Foshan airport near Guangzhou. Taxi driver from airport pretended his meter broken and kept saying wushi. I said no...

At train station he didn't drive all the way up but gave me my bag I gave him twenty instead of fifty that he tried to get. He protested but I walked away.

He wanted to discuss a price and not use the meter after we already left the airport. I didn't argue since you hardly can get out of the car at that point. Just deal with it at the end. And it all worked out...

And he probably got double from what the taxi meter would have said.

Another adventure.

Soon back to hk, I already feel my caugh getting worse - a cold, but the dry climate of bj poses less trouble than south humid climate of Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Oh, here is a picture of the taxi driver, lol. If you can take another one.

Happiness is good pill

Well I guess that can be name of a food dish in China. Wonder what it translates from...

I've been studying Chinese on the slow. 5+ weeks with 9 hours class a week.

Economics

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/spending-and-growth/

So Japans economy is growing because they are rebuilding their country. So their economy has "positive growth". Counties restraining themselves have negative growth.

Yes! So what? Seems economist always thinks spending more money its better. Is it? Well to grow there economy yes. But does it really mean the country and its citizens are getting richer, which seems to be the underlying assumption? Probably not... That would mean that collective wealth could be created by hmmm. Demolishing your own cities... Hmmm.

I think it's rather that some few people are reaping a lot of money and others are borrowing. Unless the government is printing money, which probably could be justified in this kind of case...

forth: max

Hmmm, in implementing MAX in forth returning the biggest of two number from the stack, there might be several solutions. The simplest and most straightforward is something like:

: max over over < if swap else then drop ;

Not using any type of if/branching/skip instruction it becomes more interesting. Using abs is one possibility http://www.retroprogramming.com/2009/06/implement-min-in-forth-without.html but abs is implemented often by branching (?) and isn't a very primitive first forth word. Instead one can use the fact that conditional less than "<" return 0 if false and -1 otherwise...

Using only simple operators I came up with this, it's kind of overly long but...

: max over over < dup 1 + rot rot * negate rot rot * + ;

3 4 max .

-> 4

4 3 max .

-> 4

I guess one could use < to implement abs similarly and use the simplier definition in the link above, but abs becomes:

: abs dup 0 < 2 * 1 + * ; 

77 3 - abs .

-> 74

3 77 - abs .

-> 74

ok, so then using this abs which isn't too fanicful define min instead (max require an swap somewhere)

: min over over - abs - + 2 / ;

3 4 min .

-> 3

4 3 min .

-> 3

--
.sigh

Minimaker fair in shenzhen

Hong Kong botanical garden and zoo

I like the pixelation effect off the grid fence of the American flamingos.

Old people in hk

Hong Kong is a strange place. Old people continue working. Most people work 6 days a week. Most singles wouldn't be able to pay for their own apartment. 30-40 square meters is normalish size for family upto four people.

A person from China, who by no means are rich commented on the fact that so many old people work in Hong Kong: shouldn't they be in the park walking a dog or something. In China you take care of your parents. The children are the retirement. In Hong Kong which on surface looks like modern society on many ways is seemingly stuck in the 50ies. People in China usually work only 5 days.

Cake

Giant Buddha

At top of the big stairway is the giant Buddha statue. Can you see it? At this time of year it is very foggy on lantau island. Tonight I'm staying over at a temple here. Had a delicious dinner made by the Vietnamese monk.

Shenzhen

Many people say they don't like Shenzhen. I think most are from Hong Kong. I think one can choose to think the worst of something if one wants to but I always enjoy...

Tea in the park

Just some day in Shenzhen. It's just s bus ride away... Some parts of hk is further away.

Freezing in Hong Kong!

All is relative...

Happy holidays - software engineering definition

So just now talked with a friend. He very busy at work before the holidays. Some Chinese business close for like 10 days...

"Yeah. Is funny. We work hard to finish something before period of time where nobody is going to use the result of what we have done!"

I remember one incident where we worked really hard and looking hours to finish something before end of June - the European part of project wanted it badly before that date. Delivering on time. I sent the result to the developer who wanted it. The automatic email response was that he had just gone on vacation and would be back a month later!

Wuhan, hubei

Not far from my hotel there is a street where there is a cluster of stores making gambling game machines. One instance caught my eye. The machine with a baby on front and a baby emerging from the innards of one machine.

As always waking around in China you see people making things! I think it's very exciting. You don't need to make everything in big factories, like in the west...

High speed trains in China

Over the last few years China has built high speed trail network including new stations. They might feel more like airports than old style train stations. There has been criticism that these are built while not needed. Somehow I doubt that. The trains I've seen are almost always full. Arriving at a station you might have to wait for a free train. All normal trains are full too, so the need is there. And the Chinese travel a lot. Often got like up to 30 hours on normal trains. The biggest issue is that high speed trains are expensive to take. In some cases like flying. On the other hand ticket prices are fixed. Either the ticket is available or not. You get what you pay for. Flying on the other hand is a gamble - you never know how much you're going to pay!

Btw the construction of train lines are happening faster than the plan. Because the put more money to it. In the West it seems opposite - its always delayed and cost more than expected.