Shaolin university

The shaolin is actually a university, many study marital arts but some don't. They have about 22000 students, this is one dormitory we peeked into.

Now doing kungfu they may sweat so one would think that with that many sneaked the stank would be overwhelming but I could not detect any. I asked if it was cold in winter but it isn't because so many in one room.

Shaolin music and sound experience

Nice coreographed sound experience show

Shaolin temple area

Shaolin just means "young forest" in Chinese.

The shaolin temple

Is a temple like other temples, but well visited.

Fortune telling

Turns into big spectacle many wants to see the laowei and take picture. The cost was 10rmb, my friend was translating. Since we sit down we had, in the end, to pay for two. Lol. Anyway, don't remember much then generic good fortune guesses. Live long and Prosper!

Kids

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