« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »
Tai-Tai took me out for a quick trip to an old Chinese house in Panyu, Yi Yun. She had been there about 3
years ago and had misplaced the information on it...until she found it the other day. Her impression of it back then was somewhat run down but very interesting in how it had fallen into disrepair. Little did we know that in the three years since she had been there, they have done some extensive renovation to the place. It only took about an hour to explore...but it was very good.
I really enjoy the traditional Chinese homes...the open air corridors and the surprises around every corner. A vast contrast to the Chinese architecture of today which is square, cement and built with virtually no crafting skills whatsoever. These old homes are a testament to different times in China. I mean, look at that front entrance to the house in the picture to the right...amazing. Pictures here.
Other than that, we've not done a whole lot over the weekend...just lazing. Yeah, I haven't blogged much, which I thought I would do more of when I was off. But, meh...that's the way it goes.
Enjoy the pictures...
As Tai-Tai continues with her studies at school, Expat Son has the week off, so I decided to take a bit of time off to hang out with him. Turns out, there isn't much hanging out with him to do! He's taken off for a friends house across town and will be there all day.
So, today I sit at the computers...at one point, I had 4 of them running in the house. Two laptops downstairs (my work computer with music on...tai-tai's with the vpn network going to read mail and news) and the two desktops going (burning DVD's of those pesky VHS tapes I am trying to transcode and cleaning up the computer that expat son uses).
The main reason to do the DVD's was to transcode a copy of the 1980 Miracle gold medal game against Finland. Tai-Tai's Dad taped that for us when it was shown on the 25th anniversary. The tape is still in good condition...but its been a challenge to transcode a clean copy of it.
I also found an old VHS of some foodie shows that I have done for Tai-Tai. One of them was a pretty decent history of American food that Tai-Tai thought would be good for her cooking buddies. Along with that was a show about Guangzhou and Hong Kong food...quality is crap, but they'll get the gist.
Downstairs, the computer that expat son uses is full of all sorts of sharing software that I despise. When I first did a disk clean up, I was able to free up nearly 10 GIG of space....in just unused crap. Then, I started going through the programs and deleting at will. Yikes... Right now, the Ad-Aware software is running and has found (only halfway through the scan) 355 threats. Once that is done, we'll defrag the drive and it should be as good as new. Takes forever to knock out all those computer cobwebs though...
Tomorrow is Tai-Tai's birthday...expat son and I are going to try and find something to get her and agree upon someplace nice to take her for dinner. We've got a short list of three or four places...we'll argue about it tomorrow some more.
We've been talking about heading to HK for the day, one of these days this week. Not sure its going to happen, as his schedule seems to be pretty full with hanging out with his friends.
I've always admired the Imagethief...but this long essay on Tibet and China's struggle to handle the PR and information flow in its wake is a must read for everyone...
While there are elements of truth to China's version, China's ability to sell it internationally has always been hampered by the government's time-honed credibility gap with western audiences. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of getting independent points of view. Reporting from Tibet was heavily controlled even before the riots. Furthermore, International opinion is subject to an effective PR campaign run by Tibetan exile groups and the charismatic Dalai Lama. It's safe to say that International audiences will never be entirely convinced by a Chinese state narrative that doesn't even allow for the possibility that there might be genuine discontent in Tibet. China is much better at dictating ideas to a captive audience than at selling them to an open one.
I've been wanting to write a longer piece on Tibet, but this just does it for me...there is nothing more to be said. Read the whole thing.
