Ryu2.mind

Taken in my hotel room in Beijing where our group stayed when we were there two weeks ago:

Simple and yet elegant -- for on so many levels, it expresses some of the challenges faced working and living in society here... =P

Workis officially kicking my butt right now. Last week, I spent at leastthree nights past midnight at the office, and this week looks to bemore of the same.

All my i-banker or resident physicianfriends reading this are no doubt snickering since that would be aholiday. For me though, coming to SH, despite being in the softwarefield, I've resolved to shed myself of the Silicon Valley code junkielifestyle as much as possible, and actually get some solid sleep eachnight.

The one good thing is that I've found I like walking inSH late at night, much better than cabbing it back... the swelteringheat is gone, as is the chaotic human and vehicle traffic.  Even the beggarshave usually called it a night.  It gives me time to relax,decompress after a grueling day, soak in the environment, and do someleisurely thinking on the 25-minute walk from office to home.

Forthose planning a long-term international move, whereever thedestination, whatever the reason, keep in mind -- for the first fewmonths, seven-eight hours a night on the sack as the first priority when it comes to scheduling! It's possibly themost valuable and universally relevant piece of transition-relatedadvice I received from my friends before coming out here, so I echo ithere; it does make a huge difference in one's initial adjustment.

I'mmost up for Yo-Yo Ma myself (#20 on the schedule)... I've always wantedto do so whenever he came by the Bay Area, but was just too lazy to doso. I'd even be willing to splurge a bit on tickets if it's the onlyshow I see during the festival.

Hmm -- I wonder if theperformances of Mr. Ma will have a greater allure this tie around thanthe escapades of Master Skywalker... =)

Generally, I'm thankful for being an ABC here and having basic knowledge of Chinese language and culture to ease the cross-cultural transition a bit... most of the time, it's indeed the best of both worlds.

But I'm realizing a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing -- for after showing them that you're not a total twinkie, Chinese people have a tendency to assume you know all the ins and outs, and don't need hand-holding... or they assume you're willing to be treated like the other locals (ie, deal with the @#$@ dished out) in situations good and bad.

Indeed, talking to the laowais at my company, they often seem to be have a easier time in terms of people going out of their way to help them with basic logistical stuff like housing, getting things fixed, etc. In a way, this state of affairs is fine with me... trial by fire and learning things first hand by doing it on my own, so to speak.

Still, there have been many times that I feel like just throwing my hands up and wanting to play the part of the ben laowai (stupid foreigner -- being white is implied in the term) -- using ignorance of the language or culture as a ploy to get out of troublesome or plain irritating situations... or just put up such a big Obnoxious American show that eventually, locals relent/leave you alone/fulfill your request as the case may be just to get you off their backs.

Of course, physically, it'd be hard for me to resort to something like that. So my answer to the oft-posed thought question: if you could have one supernatural ability, what would it be, and why...

I wish I could at will, switch appearance between being laowai and Chinese. Perhaps being able to quickly suit up from my usual mild-mannered Asian identity, a la your favorite comic book superhero... yeah, that's it! ;)

Police/PSB stop you for some stupid reason and want to give you a ticket? Something in your apartment broken and your landlord is stalling on the repairs? Laowai mode! Driving a hard bargain at Xiangyang? Need to get those "sold-out" train tickets or those cheap hotel deals? Chinese mode!

Well, one can dream. Must... learn... to... deal...

In the interest of keeping the negativity on this blog down to a minimum (lest you get the idea that life here is non-stop whining -- far from it!)...

*** I've thankfully have never gotten really scammed by taxis in China (knock on wood)... in my time here, and my previous short-term trips here, the worst I've encountered are taxi drivers that are clueless... but I've never been victimized by a dishonest one.

But today, I found a driver that actually went out of his way to help... I was taking my usual route to work along Yan'an Lu to Huashan Lu to Changshu Lu, when the driver missed the chance to swerve into the left-turn lane, thus missing a turn. With rush-hour SH traffic being what it was, to take a U-turn or to turn at the next road would add at least 10 minutes to the commute time.

Then, without me first complaining, my driver profusely apologized and turned off the meter in the middle of the journey! This actually resulted me saving about 1-2 kuai from my usual fare. =)

Yes, there is still good out there... and to the driver from 前卫 taxi company, driving the taxi with license 沪BM9260 from 9:35 to 9:49 today -- props to you, comrade!

*** It had to happen sometime or later, bu Mac OS X has been finally been cracked to run on generic PC hardware! Yep, you know what *I'll* be doing this weekend as a little project... ;)

That's right, I have a near 100%-functional Macintosh system running on my PC.

[Non-tech geeks can stop reading this now.]

After a day or so of downloading 1.2 gigs over my @#$@# China Telecom line, I finally had a copy of the "deadmoo" .img file that's all over the net now. After running it in VMWare (sluggishly) just to make sure it wasn't some wild dream, cloned the image file onto my second hard drive, and booted off that.

Worked like a charm right off the bat... networking, sound, etc. It's as responsive, or more so than the G5 Macs I've used. USB works... it recognized my flash card reader just by plugging it in, and iPhotos imported my pictures perfectly.

There was one speed tweak (more like a necessity): deleting the now-unnecessary "TPMACPI" system extension, which Apple apparently meant to limit it to their official X86 devkits. After that, it was completely smooth... even without 2-D/3-D acceleration. All the eye candy is here, although my resolution is limited to 1024x768 for some reason.

Now, it boots in about 15 seconds... literally, from the initial boot prompt to a usable desktop. I kid you not.

Rosetta is not working right now, but I'm working on fixing that next since I have a SSE3 capable CPU. It involves reverting the "hacked" CoreGraphics extension to the original SSE3-required one, apparently, but I read reports that this trashed peoples' installs, so I didn't try it immediately. Next up is trying iTunes, and maybe downloading some Mac apps to try out the PPC emulation.

My specs:

* Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott core), 3.0 GHz
* Micro-star MS-6788 mobo
* 2 GB PC2700 DDR DRAM
* 2x Western Digital SATA HDDs
* Intel chipset (82801EB south bridge, 865G/PE/P/GV/848P north bridge)
* NVidia 6800 Ultra video card
* Networking: Realtek 8139 onboard Ethernet, ordinary DHCP through a router connected to a ADSL modem
* Realtek onboard AC97 audio

The more or less de-facto portal, if you didn't know already: http://www.osx86project.org/

I'm hardly the first one to experience MacOS bliss on their PCs... so consider this not anything you haven't heard already, but rather a personal endorsement, that yes, the hype is true.

Too bad my parents' PC back home barely missed the specs, and I'm on a different continent than they are now... otherwise, I'd slap it on ASAP. =) Yes, it's that usable as far as basic email and webbrowsing is concerned.

Happy Tiger-ing!
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Update: Rosetta works! iTunes and Yahoo Messenger for Mac which I downloaded seem to work quite well. Basically, all the apps work now except for the DVD player (complains about video device not found or something...) XBench scores: native 41.85, PPC emulation: 16.16. Aww jeah...

Depicted is my friend Chun... currently in Mongolia doing His work, and one of the six GrXers in East/Southeast Asia now.

He went abroad pretty much the same time as the other five of us did (early Feb. 2005), but dang... as you can tell, he definitely seems to be way ahead of the "game" than any of the rest of us! =)

Everyone, please feel free to leave notes of "support" and "encouragement" in his blog for the "work" going on over there.

[Sorry dude, but you were just asking for it with that pic! ;) ]

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Julie Chen, a member of the Family in NorCal went Home this past Monday. She passed away suddenly from an asthma attack while jogging in Davao, Philippines where she had arrived just a mere month ago to teach children of Workers in the field.

In life, her seed was already making a difference. True, while I was friendly with her, I wasn't intimate... still, the few memories I have of her are fond, for we first met via mutual friends at WCC in 2003, a conference targetting Asian-American members of the Family interested in overseas Work or more generally, integrating Work-mindedness into their daily lifestyles.

It was during my own period of exploration... wanting and feeling a desire to take the leaplong-term, but not exactly sure how or when, and over some mealtime and small group conversations, her warmth was contagious and encouraging, reassuring to me that yes, I wasn't some crazy guy in a proverbial boat all by myself... =) A year later, when we were both serving together as part of the organizing team, I saw more of her gifts of teaching, encouragement, and patience. And then, we went our separate ways... ultimately leading to Asia for both of us.

Yes, we mourn for now, but in a way, I am joyful, for her single seed is indeed now many, multiplied before my eyes in being a blessing to others that are looking up to her and through her to Him...

In death, she has inspired and is insipiring many more -- many closer to her have written much more eloquent and moving pieces that ultimately capture and continue her spirit of insipiration through joy. The number is large and growing, too many to completely link to, but I recommend alvonator's and searchingfortreasures' as those that were especially touching for me.

Even those that didn't know her at all, like my GrX friends nerdjenni729 or ihtc have been blessed (the power of blog-networking at work!) For me, reading her own blog that I just found out about has certainly affected me here and given me much to reflect on.

Overall, amongst the biggest things that I've been reminded of thus far:

*** Are we living knowing that our time here will end... even suddenly as was the case for Julie?

*** And when that time comes, will our actions, relationships and interactions be such that our seed sown will produce many more after our time here?

Whether in Shanghai or San Jose, some reminders for us all...

It'samazing how seeing the exact same thing in a different format cancompletely change your outlook... especially with money.  Here,despite the rampant modernization spree everyone seems to be on, one verynoticable difference from the USA is that cash is still very much kinghere. Sure, high-end restaurants and hotels, luxury-goods shops, a few travel agencies, aswell as large stores like Carrefour or IKEA take credit cards. Somemore places take local Chinese debit cards as well.

Even so,card usage is still a rarity by locals, even rich ones, so stores thatsupposely take them are often unprepared (I often hear the excuse thatthe only person who knows how to operate the machine isn't here).Basically, if you want to buy stuff, be prepared to cough up cold, hardcash.  The thing is that the largestdenomination here is 100 yuan, or just slightly over US $12. ForAmericans, imagine buying a car and having to pay for itusing $10 bills only. It happens every day here.

Last week, I made my biggest purchase in China yet: a newlarge-screen LCD monitor for my desktop. And as luck would have it, thestore didn't take cards. Basically, I had tomax out my daily withdrawal limit on all 3 of my Chinese bank accounts(long story as to why 3, my employer screwed up some things whilesetting them up initially)

Then, it hit home for me then,holding a thick wad of cash -- a wad amounting to a very significantportion of a average migrant worker's yearly salary. It felt obscene in many ways, and I for the first time, felt a bit shameful.

Yes,I will admit that consumerism has been something I've been guilty manytimes of while living in the Silicon Valley, despite knowing betterthrough what I believe in. Back in the states, I would think nothing ofplunking down that amount of money or more to fuel my thirst fortech-toys.  Here though, seeing the money in hand -- not just the total figure, but more so the sheer quantityof bills -- gives that amount a different, concrete feel -- much more tangible than entering one's credit card numberon a ecommerce site and clicking "Submit".

That plus theadditional trouble and hassle of paying for stuff serves as a means of curbingimpulse buys of big-ticket items here... that's the good side of it.  Muchmore so than seeing the beggars, much more so than reading about Histeachings on not hoarding earthly treasures... seeing money in a tangibleform reminds, nay forces meto really think about what and how I spend it here.

No more being a consumer hoe for me now... ;)

Courtesy of graceyc, I've been "tagged" to do a blog survey.Usually I think most of these things are kinda lame, but this topicseemed interesting enough and potentially revealing some interestingaspects of everyone's personalities, too... so here goes!

Weird habits

1. I sometimes take off my shirt when doing #2, especially during summertime.

2.In speech, I overuse "ahhh yeah" as a generic filler for anything. Inwriting, I overuse commas, a lot, in writing, although it's gottenless, sort of. ;) In high school, a lot of the points deducted from myEnglish papers were due to mechanics, caused by comma overuse.

3.Before I dig in, I like to take pictures of airline food when I fly, nomatter what airline, or how much/little they serve you; some of mysubmissions can be found on www.airlinemeals.net.

4.Unless I'm in a total rush, I always try to give exact change ifpossible when purchasing something whether in China, the USA orelsewhere, even though it might take some time to sort through mywallet and fumble for coins.

5. I almost never throw things away (the opposite of the person who sent me this)

Pet peeves(I've tried to avoid Shanghai/China-specific examples here as much aspossible, otherwise, I could fill volumes... ;) I've also tried tostray away from my many tech-related pet-peeves that only fellow nerdswould understand. In no particular order...)

1. Not closing and locking the bathroom door
Self explanatory, I hope...

2. Wasting food
Ithappens and it annoys me everywhere, but the China-related angle israther ironic -- while people truly go hungry in many places in thiscountry, in Chinese culture it's actually considered a loss of face tothe host if you finish everything clean (implying that they were toostingy with the food)...

3. Blind nationalism
I definethis as viewing country X, its culture, and/or its policies as beingsuperior or proper (regardless of whether or not I agree), withoutputting personal thought as to the reasons why they feel that way,other than "I'm a citizen of X and it's my duty". BTW, I'm not singlingout any one nationality here -- they are/could be Chinese, Americans,Japanese, Koreans, anyone...

4. Social stratification in His Bodies/communities
Basically,it's where you have a "in" crowd that develops, and those outside whothen become "marginalized". Certainly, GrX for one was notimmune, and I don't fault them, as I've seen it in many other places(including here); just our innate sinful nature rearing itself... Thedifference is whether it's addressed for what it is by the leadership,and in a proactive way rather than reactive.

5. Going overboard with ketchup
Evernotice how fast food places give you a fistful of ketchup packets (In NOut back home is a big-time offender) for a small order? Oh well, if Iever decide to have a BBQ, I won't ever need to buy ketchup myself. =)

And on it goes... bigdenis, blackrose9, chieworld, clieu, dreyersice, uspolymer just to have someone near the end of the alphabet... your turn! Ooooh, this should be interesting... =)