After the 2nd night of partying in shanghai, I slept about 5 hours before waking up. My flight was at 4:20pm, so I didn't need to get to the airport until 3 or so.... which gave me just enough time to check out and enjoy a good lunch. And luckily I had spotted somewhere special i wanted to eat down the street:
No, not ...Read more
between my saigon trip and my seoul trip, I made a quick day trip across the border to SZ on wednesday. I had to give a talk at our research center up there, but afterwards I stuck around to do some shopping.
I went back to the D0ngmen shopping area. I discovered yet more blocks of shops of all sorts that I didn't see the last time. This one was ve...Read more
Now that I've finished updating my pics from last week's trip to Japan, let me jump back to the present: my mom's been visiting since tuesday. Today I took her across the border to Shenzhen.
She was mostly only interested in getting cheap gifts for her friends, etc. The problem is that the only shopping i've ever done in SZ is for electronics and DVDs... so it was a challenge to find the right places to go.
Everyone goes to Lu0 Wu city mall, which is right across the border (like 100 feet from the...Read more
Since friday was 'culture day' in Japan, Y0-chan had the day off and we took a trip to the neighboring island of Shikoku.
With the help of G00gle Maps. let me try to explain a little bit. Take
a look at this map. We drove east from Fuku0ka( 福岡 ) on the west side of Kyu$hu to the town of B3ppu ( 別府 ) and then took a ferry across to the Japanese isla...Read more
Here's the hotel our conference was held at,
the Gr@nd H0tel, which was M@d@m Chiang herself commissioned back in the day. Much money was spent:
And since our conference is pretty big (~900 people), and the Taiwan govt. has a lot of sponsorship money for hosting international conferences... so they went all out, including a line of flags along the dr...Read more
| Entry | As I mentioned yesterday, there have been tons of protests against the president of Taiwan the last few weeks. Since tuesday was Taiwan's (or rather 'The Republic of China's') National Day, they staged an extra large rally and march through the downtown area... which just happens to be right near my hotel.
I left the conference after the morning session to return to my hotel and I had to swim through a see of red:
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I flew into Taipei yesterday afternoon after my lecture in the morning. I took EVA air for the first time, it wasn't too bad (cheap ticket at least!).
It turns out they use 747-400s similar to the ones they use in Japan... all coach seats on the lower deck, i ended up getting the first row in the very front of the plane (directly below the cockpit). It was ok, a short flight from HK,...Read more
My internet connection in my apartment has been turned on. The plug is on the far end of the living room though. But they gave me a really long cable downstairs at the front desk, which not-so coincidently ends up to being just long enough to reach my bedroom desk. I'm considering getting a wireless router (next time i go down to Wancha1), but for now there's a cable snaking behind my sofa and through the doorway... one of the nice thing about living by yourself is that you never need to close any doors.
In other news, I bough...Read more
first thanks to Senh for letting me steal his internet access in his hotel (my hotel is too ghetto, it doesn't even have furniture, much less internet). On to the entry:
My last saturday in Japan was a big event. As I mentioned a week or two ago, my friend Aska was the main organizer for the kyu$hu installments of an Avex Trax sponsored club event across the country, called 'Campus Summit.'
Our next stop was the small city of Okayama. Until now all I knew about this city was the fact that it was where the train to Shikoku (the /other/ of the main 4 islands of Japan) connected with the Shinkansen. But while researching the trip to Himeji's , I found that Okayama had the antipode: .
It took a few minutes on the street car and then a brief walk along the Asahi River:
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