Thoughts on Shanghai

Alas, I've been stationed in Shanghai for almost three months... or is it four? I'm loosing track. Took some pictures around Shanghai to share with my 3 readers (Mom asked to be included in the reader list... so, if you are counting, it's Bro, PNGF, and Mom).

Smog is part of every day life in Shanghai. It starts when the sun comes out and ends when the sun sets. I've been staying at the Le Meridien facing the Bund most of the time. I think there's one morning (in three months) where I've felt good about looking outside my room.

This is not one of those mornings.

Speaking of the Le Meridien, it's quite a nice hotel. The staff all know me by Mr. Lam and they start saying things like "welcome back" and "same old, Mr. Lam?". Somewhat disturbing, me thinks, when strangers start to know all your habbits... such as my morning office destination and that returning at 1130pm is "you're home early". Just to clarify: NOT early. NOT home.

Here's a picture of my Shanghai "home" from People's Park

More pictures from People's Park

And the aforementioned (in a previous post) about the marriage advertisements. This is the small crowd that I felt comfortable taking pictures of. There's a MUCH bigger crowd nearby...

"Quote"

I've noticed the increasing prevalence of using the "quotation marks" in the media lately... like this past year or so. Very odd. I'm not sure what the rules are for using quotation marks, but I'd like to find out. For example, currently, on CNN headlines:

• Did Hamas use 'human shields'?
  
• Musharraf: U.S. treats Pakistan 'unequally'
• Two children killed by man with 'painted' face
• Freed Gitmo detainee 'went to al Qaeda'
• Tsvangirai: Zimbabwe cholera crisis 'man-made'

Or on BBC headlines:

• Mexican 'dissolved 300 bodies'
• Two detained over Travolta 'scam'
• Court fees plan 'tax on debtors'
• Ledger had 'most fun' as Joker
• Afghan raid 'kills 15 militants'

For the ones where someone is quoted, such as Former Pakistani president cry baby Musharraf's claim, sure, quote the exact word to reflect what he meant. Or the one on Zimbabwe. Those seem like genuine quotes.

But how does "human shields" and "scam" deserve quotation marks? "Most fun"? "Kills 15 militants"? "Painted"? Why not put "painted faces" in quotes? Why just "painted"?

In the Travolta story, the word "scam" doesn't even appear in the article! And in CNN, they reported Two held in Travolta extortion plot. Someone needs to put a stop to this "" non sense. Use them when your news piece cannot accurately articulate the meaning of your report. Otherwise, please don't use quotation marks to "draw attention" to a particular word that "may or may not" have any weight in the story.

Obamera? Obamania?

I tried to stay up to watch the inauguration. No such luck. I fell asleep when Joe Biden spoke. Somethings never change.

And so the Obama Era begins. I wrote about "you win, and then?" back in November. I hope he succeeds.

I actually quite liked his inauguration speech (replay), which was a far cry from the arousing campaign speeches he has given. A much more sobering note. Fitting for the current environment, actually. It's time to put all the talk away and start getting your hands dirty. And so he did, on his first day. Suspending Guantanamo Bay, drawing the line between his staff and lobbyists, salary freeze... yes, it's always easy to fix the home. Now it's time to fix the country.

By the way, I did not like the CNN coverage of the inauguration. It seems like only African Americans are attending the celebrations. I understand their emotions are more moving and more TV-worthy... but there are white people there too who are just as thrilled with the new president! Interivew them too! Please! (Sadly, it almost felt like the TV channels were trying to discredit Obama by only showing his African American supporters)

As usual, some idiot in China has decided that the speech needs to be edited for the common Chinese. Uh... it's called the Internet... you can't edit this stuff out.

No. You. Can't.

Yes We Can.

Sharing tons of pictures...

By timing (Can you tell I'm on a roll with my blog entries? Power of New Year Resolution, I say!):

One day visit to Beijing's Forbidden Palace, National Theater, and the pretty good tourist restaurant 大董 (typically, Chinese food don't make for great pictures... this one is different)。

Christmas vacation to Malaysia's Sabah region - hiking up Mount Kinabalu and then spending a relaxing time in Sandakan. See older posts part I and part II (leech).

And PNGF and my culinary experience at Zuma in Hong Kong. Green Tea Banana cake. Yummmm. Review here.

Extended business trip in Luoyang to visit the Longmen Grottoes as well as nearby attractions (first time taking advantage of a business trip!). Earlier posts on weird signs and trip.

Fail blog

In honor of fail blog... oh, and I somehow took all these pictures at Luoyang.

At my hotel... the"Fire fighting and life saving masks" are sealed behind glass... smash through with hands first... I wonder if they have a first aid kit somewhere (No, they don't, I looked)

I don't see the obstacle... what obstacle?

Not sure if I should be laughing or crying. Miss Universe competition comes to Luoyang! And they are posing with GuanYu in their Bikinis; GuanYu would have probably chopped off their heads had he seen these girls. Not good times. Note to Miss Universe: bikinis are nice... but not universal for all locations and occations.

From a high end department store. Due to prevelance of counterfeits, this department store posts a short description of its brands. They focus on the origin (most are Korean... to my surprise) of the product and it's target audience. Here's one for Crocs... except that they didn't copy and paste the brand name.

Ancient capital of China

At the tail end of a business trip, I took the liberty to stay an extra half day at 洛阳 (Luoyang) to see the relics and sites. It's a city that doesn't have the same reputation as another ancient capital Xian (of Clinton fame). Nonetheless, it was the capital of 13 ancient Chinese dynasties, including the all important Tang dynasty (that's where Chinatown's Chinese names, Tang ren jie, comes from). The Tang dynasty is when Buddhism entered China and became prominent.

Hence, the 龙门石窟 was born. Basically, they carved huge buddhas on the side of the cliff over the river banks. A truly magnificent site... the only problem was the RMB 80 entrance fee + 50 for a personal guide. I guess they've decided they could milk the foreign tourists and shut out locals from learning about Chinese history. (A guide is absolutely necessary... as well as good walking shoes... and gloves... and patience...)

Longmen (Dragon Gate) Grottoes

By the way, if you are wondering why there isn't anyone there, it's cus its low low season and its about freezing temperature outside. Good for picture taking though.

I know pictures never quite do justice... but if you take a few steps back and take a picture from across the river, you realize how big this structure is. Remember, they did this some 1500 years ago! Truly amazing. It's too bad the even more ancient Xian gets all the attention, because these grottoes should get their due.

View from across the river

关林 Guanlin is a temple/ monastery/ forrest combined to commemorate the great general Guanyu 关羽 from the Three Kingdom period. Legend is that his head is buried in this building. General Guan (no relationship to the General Gao's chicken... seriously, someone asked) was a mere mortal but was given the emporer treatment and then the god treatment due to his tenancity on the battle field and righteousness/ loyalty off it. He's especially worshipped by mob members due to his loyalty to his god brother Liubei 刘备.

Guanlin (Guan's Forrest)

Lastly, I also visted the ancient tomb museum near the airport. I was the only visitor at the complex at the time and it was kind of creepy to walk through ancient tombs by yourself. Anyway, I wish I had more time to explore the place. Somehow, the curators have picked out some 20-30 perfectly preserved (structure wise, Lara Croft took most of the relics) tombs from 1500 to 800 years ago and moved them to this museum. Each tomb can be carefully examined and each offer a different lesson about the ancient times. Layout may reflect changing importance of women, for example. Or the height of the ceiling to reflect the jump in architectual technology. Or this painting on the walls, reflecting the official rank of the deseased...

Wall painting, indicating that a gov official was buried in this space

Worthwhile city to come back to at some point...!

Today I learn about hovering

Instructions for this blog post:

1. Check out this hilarious set of ads from Gizmodo (Below is the focus of this study)
   
2. Note the bathroom part, second to last row
3. Proceed to discussion below
   

I was quite amused the girls actually hover over their toilets due to sanity issues. I've always imagined the girls bathroom to be much cleaner than the guys and much more pleasant to step into. Apparently not so. But then study the graph carefully...

When you think about why a guys bathroom is dirty, it's a matter of being able to aim. We don't pay attention, so we create a mess. But girls... they don't need to aim. They just sit down and deposit. Why would it be dirty at all when the route is straight down? Gravity will take care of everything and all the dirty stuff should be in the toilet only.

Now I know. It's hovering. Left hand side 2 pictures of the 2nd last row on the girls side. Study that carefully and ask: doesn't hovering create a dirty toilet in the first place??? As I mentioned above, there's no reason for a mess to be created in the lady's room. Unless... you hover above. When she hovers, doesn't she compromises her aim? Doesn't that mean there's a chance to make the toilet dirty? Doesn't that mean the next user will have to do something about it? Doesn't that mean more hovering? Doesn't more hovering mean more dirty toilets? Why am I asking so many rhetorical questions? My head is spinning...

Ladies: stop hovering, save the toilet. (Hero style)

Food reviews...!

I think my last food review was probably half a year ago. Shame on me. Per my "new year resolution", I need to blog more. Here goes:

Zuma: Japanese fusion restaurant in Hong Kong that was left off the the HK Michelin guide. For a good reason, me thinks. The sushi and sashimi were ordinary - better than average Hong Kong only. There were a couple of cooked dishes as well, but I have long forgotten its taste. I'll skip right to dessert where the green tea banana cake more than made up for the otherwise unspectacular food. Banana and green tea, who knew?

(Note: the restaurant is quite well laid out and the utensils were excellent. Good atmosphere that made you think that you are not in the middle of Hong Kong for 2 hours. I'd pay for that.)

Slightly recommended. Get dessert.


"Food stalls" in Shanghai

There were two fairly famous cheap eats in Shanghai and are conveniently located right next to each other. Both are dumpling places even though the dumplings were different. The first is a fried one and the second is a steamed one. Both have long lines though, at 3pm, the desire to eat seems to be less for most people (not me, I just woke up at 2pm). And both are dirt cheap at a few dollars for their signature dishes.

This is Xiaoyang Shenjian. Their fried dumplings are quite good. The inside is pork with a very tasty (and super hot, ouch) soup. I found the inside to be very good but the skin was a bit too oily and think. Locals will tell you that is the point of the friend dumplings, and that you should enjoy every bite into a slightly burned wrapping. I find it difficult to savour the after taste of burnt dough... anyway, I stuck to the non-brown parts and it was very good. Just be careful with the soup. Very yummy. Highly recommended if there were no line.


JiaJia Tangbao is right across from the friend dumpling shop. I've attempted to visit this place twice and both times they were sold out of their dumplings. This time, at 3pm, it had one type left: their most popular type, pork and crab. I ordered a dozen.

Usually, with steamed Xiaolongbao, you have to be very careful with the soup. The dumpling is delicate and if it breaks, the good stuff is all gone. If you just bite into it, the hot soup spills and your burnt tongue will not feel the next 10 bites. So... as always... I approach with caution. The key is to bit from the top and leave the hot soup at the bottom. Once you've pierced the top, slowly suck the hot soup inside and cool the whole thing down before devouring it in your mouth.

Except this was a bit different. I put on some excellent (and I do mean excellent) ginger sauce and took my first bite from the top. Surprisingly, the soup didn't seem that hot. But the rush of the smell of the meat made me want to gallop the whole thing. I tested the soup again. Okay to put the entire thing in the mouth. Excellent combination of wrappng and meat: thin wrap, big and juicy meat, tasty soup.

And the best part: you can put the whole dumpling inside your mouth without cooling it down! Major kudos to the cook. Highly recommended. Wake up early.

Malaysia

We visited this particular restaurant near the Kota Kinabalu Le Meridien (thank you, Starwood points!) FOUR times during our stay there. Chili crab was the best.

Along with all the other fresh seafood...


Highly recommended!

Movie (experience) review - 非誠勿擾

Well, let's talk about the movie first. Simple and predictable premise: decent man posts ad about looking marriage, meets girl who isn't really interested in him, conflicts between the two, (eventual) happy ending. It's actually a much better movie that what I described, but since it is quite straight forward, I'll skip the details.

Good performances from former best actor (China) 葛優 and former super porn star 舒琪. It's a very calm movie with nothing over the top and totally believable (more on this later).

Anyway, I said the review was on the movie experience, as I have never seen a movie in China. Or maybe my friend who bought the tickets has a cruel sense of humor:

• All the seats in the theater were two-people love seats, with no handle bar in the middle
• My two friends sat together...
• ... so I ended up sitting next to a burly man who slept and snored lightly watching what essentially is a very good date movie

I sincerely hope other theaters are different, or this may be the last time I watch one in China.

I said "more on this later"... "this" being the marriage advertisements. Today, I was taking a nice stroll in People's Square when I saw a massive crowd gathered for... none other than marriage advertisements! While there were a few people who were advertising themselves, most of them were parents advertising for their sons and daughters. I wish I could tell you how fascinating it was, but I didn't want to be too rude to take a picture.

And the answer is...

To my earlier post on interpreting a sign...

Happy new year by the way! Let's review my performance...

• Number of posts in 2006: 173
• Number of posts in 2007: 173 (I kid you not, it was not intentional - shows you that the frequency of my mind striking my keyboard is quite consistent)
  
• Number of posts in 2008: 100

Which brings me to my "new year resolution"... I've never quite believed in new year resolutions, only because of the timing. Why can't I have a birthday resolution? Or a Chinese new year resolution? Or a moon cake festival resolution? Xmas resolution? I don't celebrate much during new year eve besides telling the people I love that I love them and happy new year. There's nothing really special on Jan 1. Nonetheless, this year, I did feel the urge to post some resolutions.

I often wonder why suddenly I did so. Maybe because I didn't accomplish anything in 2008. Maybe because my weight is going up. Maybe because 2009 is the year of the bull(shit). Maybe because I was bored. Or perhaps I felt empty in some parts of my life and that my resolution could fulfill that emptiness. Um... I'm going for the last reason. Without further ado:

1. Blog more (100 is despicable, I apologies to my 2 readers - hi James, hi PNGF)
2. Read more
3. Connect more

That's it! Happy 2009! (Ah the irony that I blog on Jan 10 about the new year... by the way, I'm on pace for 110 posts right now)

Malaysia, Part 2

So you want to know why there are 2 posts for the same subject?? Because Picasa annoyingly only does 4 pictures at a time. Arg. You'd think Google would have sorted this out by now.

Anyway, on with the Malaysia trip.

The Urangutans were cute, but they were still not entirely wild. Here's a wild proboscis monkey ready to make the leap... um... the school of proboscis monkeys were fleeing from us tourists. A moment ago, they were all enjoying a quite morning eating leafs and tree bark. Then one boat spots them, 5 ram up the engines and congregate around the tree, and the monkeys flee from their comfortable rest stop into the dense forest behind. Yup, wildlife tourism. It's great.

Fleeing monkey

All of us have heard about leeches. Here's one that allegedly latched on to my pants, made its way onto PNGF's thigh (to her absolute absolute horror... and to my absolute amusement). This also made my 2nd biggest regret on the trip: not taking a picture of leech on PNGF thigh. Dang it! Nonetheless, my kindness of not squishing it in toilet paper (PNGF Buddhist speech) gave the leech a second life.

And here it is in the morning, climbing the shower curtain in search for more blood.

No trip to a third world country is complete without a native dance. Here's a (fake) headhunter.

Malaysia, Part 1

Well, when I first told PNGF that we'd go hike Kinabalu during our Christmas break, I was met with skepticism: "You mean climb?"

Let the record show that she's right. It was climbing. As in hold on to that rope or you will fall to your death climbing. Or a broken limb. Or whatever. Yeah, the websites did tell me that Kinabalu was "one of the easiest mountains to climb"... I guess I should have read that carefully. It didn't say hike.

I'm not sure if I will be writing a travel blog (I didn't in Korea... sigh... and www.josekin.com has been taken over by some unknown Japanese assailant) this time, although the thought of continuing to fill my world map remains highl motivating for me. Anyway, here are the pictures.

Summit of Kinabalu, without Mountain Guide

That's where we were 8 hours ago

Orangutans enjoying a meal (the one on the left is a homosapien)

You can tell that this one will be trouble

Can stand vs. Cannot stand

In China, I can stand...

• Lack of personal space - this is the number 1 thing you'll notice in China. In the West, your personal space is basically beyond arms length. In China, it's your shoulder length. Thank God HK is considered in between.
• Spitting - I've mastered the skill to know when and where the spit is coming from... and ignore it. Trust me, these people have spit in public for decades and they won't miss their target - the ground. Your shoes will be fine, don't worry. Just ignore it.
  
• Smoking - most of Chinese men are going to die of lung cancer. I am sure of this. While I do miss the nice clean air in HK and US clubs, it really doesn't bother me that much. And somehow, they don't blow the smoke at you. I'm still perplexed.
  
• Drinking games - I'm not sure why the Chinese insist you must get piss drunk to prove that they are good hosts. Since I can act drunk, along with my bright red face, I've been able to duck the most ridiculous drinking games
• Pushing - see lack of personal space. A side product is where everybody just pushes you all the time when you are lining up (if there is such a thing as a line... most of the time its a mob). I'm not ashamed that I've landed a few special elbows to the groin to those who push me. And my suitcase serves as a good divider in taxi lines. They hit my suitcase with the legs, and I turn around and push the suitcase right up their calves. It'll hurt.
• Speaking loud - Apparently, they understand "Shut the fuck up"... or maybe it's just my angry tone with a finger on my lips.
  
• Squat toilets - no problemo. I can hold it.
• Attitude - most service industry people don't care about you. All you have to do is yell at them and curse. It works. (Loving the big city, eh? I've been reassured that away from Shanghai, it's much better)
• Inefficiency - I guess coming from Hong Kong, we can never be satisfied. Luckily, I lived in Chicago and brought expectations to a new low. You see, it's all relative!

Only one thing I cannot stand in China:

• WHY DO PEOPLE TALK TO YOU WHEN YOU ARE DOING YOUR BUSINESS IN THE LU?

One more, actually:

• WHY DO PEOPLE TALK TO YOU WHEN YOU ARE DOING YOUR BUSINESS IN THE STALL? I CLOSED THE DOOR ALREADY. SHUT THE FUCK UP!
  

Life after Lost

I finished the ridiculously good season 4 (I do not like the Hurley episodes) of Lost... and am at a loss afterwards. What do I do in my very little spare time at night?

Considering that DVDs are $5 a piece, maybe I'll just buy all the sitcoms. Imagine that.

By the way, I had a very interesting insight today... in China:

• $ double stroke is US dollar
• $ single stroke is Hong Kong dollar

• ¥ double stroke is Japanese Yen

• ¥ single stroke is Chinese Yuen, or Renmenbi, or RMB

Upon knowing this, my analyst asked why the Japanese copied the Chinese symbol... (um, no dear, the Chinese copied the Japanese symbol.) anyway, not quite a LTFU (lunch time follow up, for those of you who aren't from AG - Analysis Group, for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about)... but I dug in to these symbols of currency:

• The dollar sign, HK dollar, Japanese yen, and renmenbi
  

So the Americans copied from the Spaniards, and the Japanese copied from the Europeans... although the name yen comes from a Chinese character meaning round.

That's enough learning for the morning.

Mother of all cliff hangers...

My god Lost season 3 just ended on a ridiculously good cliff hanger. I've tolerated the show through its first 2 seasons because of the Momento similarities and the generally okay plots. But Season 3 has just turned the whole show around. Wow.

Anyway, I wanted to make a quick comparison on why I like Lost much better than other conspiracy dramas such as 24, Prison Break, and Heroes (Note: I'm still in love with Law & Order, CSI, and other gruesome detective shows).

• 24 was novel for the 1st season. Real time TV! Who would have thought. Anyway, by season 2 the side plots and general stupidity among CTU agents, government bureaucracy, and bad guys was just too much to overcome. At the end of season 2, when President Palmer was poisoned through a handshake (Note to bad guys: there are much better ways to assassinate a president if you are that good at it already), I lost interest.
• Prison Break. First season was phenomenal. I did wonder outloud though: once they break out, there wouldn't be a season 2 or 3... and of course the producers had it in for us: we'll put them in another prison! Season 2 (the escaping act) deteriated quickly as all the characters started to drop like flies. Season 3... I won't dignify it with more than a sentence. Ops, I almost did.
• Heroes. Save the cheer leader, save the world. Great plot to bring different fractions of the story together and having the audience put the plot together for them and keep everybody's attention. Season 2 was a downer due to the strike, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in season 3.

However... in the mean time, Lost Season 4!!!

Taking pictures of a crowd

Taking pictures of a crowd is a test of patience and luck. As a photographer, you are waiting for a moment so you can "capture the moment." For a picture that is filled with heads, you may look for unity: everyone focused in one direction. You may look for uniqueness: I still remember the picture of a lone German fan (in yellow, or white) in a sea of red shirt Korean fans during the 2002 World Cup.

In this picture, I find the diversity in anticipation.

And yet to have this picture taken the way it is taken, you need things to fall in place. You need the two people in blue (they do stand out, don't they!?) to look back for their friend. You need the ladies in frnt to be lookng for something in the bag. You need that bored looking man in dark grey. You need the little girl in red who is loosing patience. You need all the folks on the left to all be in anticipation.

And that is life. Sometimes things just fall in place. All you have to do is click. So click whenever you can.

What is this...?

Well, I saw this attached to my analyst's phone. Quite normal right? Female sign with headphones, perhaps...?

Except that when it first caught my eye, this is what I saw:

So, what is this?

Services in China

Restaurant services in Shanghai are notoriously bad. Most of the time it's a matter of attitude. And then there's this:

Josekin: May I have a glass of warm water?
Waitress: I'm sorry, sir, we only serve bottled mineral water.
Josekin: Not warm, right?
Waitress: No.
Josekin: Do you serve anything warm?
Waitress: Green tea or red tea.
Josekin: I'll have green tea then.

About 10 seconds into me sipping my nice and warm green tea did I realize... didn't she use warm water to make the green tea (RMB 38, by the way)!?

Stupid Josekin? Stupid waitress? Or smart business?

Trade off analysis

I'm a huge fan of The Sports Guy. Despite his decline as a writer since he joined ESPN, I always read his articles religiously. Thanks to Google Reader, I'm extremely updated on his articles... as opposed to checking into ESPN every 10 minutes to see if The SG posted a new article. Ah, the good times.

Anyway, this morning I saw that SG put up a whooping TWO articles! The first one was on home field disadvantage... which should really be the home field betting bias given the lack of advantage that home field really has. The home team is overly favored, not that the field is useless. Whatever, he's a journalist, I'm an economist. Anyway, back to my trade off analysis.

Damn I digress too much.

I've never delayed reading SG articles... except that I was watching Lost Season 2 this morning. The show was getting good, and I did the very unexpected: I stopped reading the article!! And let me tell you, it was quite a struggle.

The problem with the SG is that his articles are usually constantly good while a TV show like Lost has ups and downs. When the cliffhangers are good, it makes Lost so irresistible! Of course, as I turned my attention to Lost... my mind would wander back to the article. Perhaps I should finish the article before I watch the TV show. It's going to take only 5 minutes...

So I went back to my laptop and started reading... except that I was completely distracted. Back to Lost.

Literally, this went on for 2 minutes before I realized the obvious solution... play the DVD (by the way, RMB 5 per DVD, RMB 30 for the whole 4 seasons of Lost!) and take my laptop with me. This will work.

Not. I ended up watching 2 full episodes (the cliffhanger was too much for me to press the stop button) before I turned my head to the laptop to read the article.

Oh, dilemmas in life.

Different perspectives

Dug up an old picture and really liked it. It seems like the girl in dark (AL) has a bit of a photofront (i.e. she's reacting to a camera being pointed at her)... nonetheless, I like this picture quite a bit.

Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge is indeed quite photogenic from all sorts of angles. I remember seeing it for the first time about 10 years ago when I visited NYC with FK. We took a ferry tour that went under several bridges. Only the Brooklyn Bridge caught my eye (and the Statue of Liberty). On this visit, PNGF took me to the Brooklyn side and we walked back to Manhattan.

Lots of patterns to play around during this nice day out on the bridge. I think I took about 100 pictures before distilling it down to about 8 to 10. I especially like the last one.

Signs from New York

Wall street, what have you done...???

How would you read this?

In Obama, we trust?

Meet THE Brand in China: Me & City

Several weeks ago when I arrived in Shanghai for my new case (yes, I've moved on to skin care from telecom), I was surprised to see Wentworth Miller of Prison Break to be plastered all over the city, starting from being on EVERY SINGLE in-cab TV. In the biggest shopping street in Shanghai were his posters everywhere.

There was a big launch of the brand Me & City that was hosted by Mr. Miller sometime in October, and the buzz apparently lingered until now (and possibly beyond), hence all the advertisements.

There was only one problem: I've never heard of Me & City! It sounded like an old European brand that's trying to revive itself or something. Or a very new US brand.

Luckily, there's Google! Ops, I forgot, this is China. Google isn't very good in China. Luckily, there's Baidu! Ah yes, a much better search result.

Turns out, Me & City is a "high end" brand for a local Chinese apparel retail company, which of course is called Meters Bonwe... don't laugh... I actually think this may work.

I mean it'll definitely work in China. But the brass at Meters Bonwe must have a much larger view for M&C. Their "mass brand" uses Taiwanese singer Jay Chou as their spokesperson. Upgrading to Wentworth Miller is a whole new ball game that has eyes on exporting the brand abroad more than on preying on the Chinese middle class with overpriced over designed products.

I took a quick look at the store and the products. Not a bad selection but quite expensive for China... if I never did any research, I would have thought it's a foreign brand with a good local twist. Price wise it's similar to Esprit and slightly lower than Zara.

Not bad, not bad.

A Chinese brand that may compete with the likes of Esprit and Mango? I'm excited already. (Though I wouldn't buy from it)

You win, and then?

Obama wins as expected. Now what? For Obama's tireless supporters, I hope they find something to fill their lives. For Joe the Regular, I'm definitely looking forward to a new presidency that will act competently. That's all I ask: competent.

Obviously Obama is a fresh force with a nice and clean resume for the White House. It doesn't seem like he is just another politician (that's you, Hilary). It seems that he will bring about change. After all, that's been his campaign for the last 2 years! It seems that he can bridge differences. It seems that... all this is very Utopian and idealistic.

Many people interview very well; only a fraction of those people will actually do the job well.

Many couples have a galmorous and perfect wedding; only a fraction of them will have the long lasting perfect marriage

Mr. Obama, people say you've ran the perfect campaign with the perfect events (e.g. financial crisis, lame duck president, Sarah Palin) going in you favor. People say your speeches are among the best (his speech at Chicago was very good and almost moved me to some tears). People say you are the agent of change. People say you will bring perspective and humility to the White House. It is now your chance to do it.

"Yes we can"? "Yes we did"? All this will be bullshit if you don't "yes here goes".

Bad Blogger and Election Day!

*Note: you MUST read to the end and click on the link... it will put the smile on your busy day

I am a bad blogger. Last post was on October 19th!

Since then, I could have shared...

1. Beautiful pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge... I actually think my photography has improved a little bit for whatever reason. I've been more patient in preparing my camera for the photo instead of snapping away
2. The end of my 7-month telecommunication case
3. The my half day beach time (sigh)
4. Attending a recruiting session as a recruiter or (welcome, former IB recruits!)
5. Attending a recruiting session for Chicago GSB (welcome, laid off bankers!)
6. Finishing the ironic book "Damn it feels good to be a banker"

Anyway, I was watching US elections on CNN in Shanghai and just heard the following:

• Commentator X: Let me share with you what we know for sure based on our projections
• Commentator 1: As you can see, McCain is leading Obama in by votes...
• Commentator 2: These numbers mean nothing since only a very small number of votes have been counted...
• Commentator Y: We've just beamed in from Chicago. What you are seeing here is the hologram of ... this is the first time on cable television....

(Josekin: so... do you know for sure? or are you projecting? Did you just report for 5 minutes something that doesn't even matter? why do I care about a Hologram?)

By the way, the analysis on early results on Indiana was excellent. They went into the State, looked at county by county votes and compared it to the 2004 election, showing that some of the key Democrat counties have not been counted, that Obama is actually winning some counties that were previously Republican, and that he's only losing by a few percentage points in counties where John Kerry lost by a landslide four years ago. Therefore, Obama is doing quite well in Indiana. Now THAT is what I call a good analysis.

(I know you don't care... but I'd vote for Obama. As PNGF aptly put, President Palin just sounds like a real disaster. My precinct is in Mass and my vote doesn't really change anything. Um... or does it matter...!? This is HILARIOUS!)