August 2006 Archives

Typical of my luck. One wish I had before returning to Brisbane was a massive dose of South-East Queensland's famous weather - clear, warm and bathed in sunshine.

Considering Queensland has been gripped by drought for a few years now, I thought this was pretty safe bet.

But no. It has been pissing down since I arrived. No beach. No sunshine. Absolute pants!

Good one weather! Everyone is rapt with the sudden soaking of Brisbane, except for Linda and myself. We thought our escape trip to the wonderful tropical oasis that is Magnetic Island would be respite from the rain and we'd be able to get our yearly UV dose. However, it does appear the rain will chase us up to Townsville.

At least I hope it is a fine day for my sister's wedding next Sunday.

My rainy day listening includes songs from...

• "Breakfast At Fatboys" album by Butterfingers
• "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" album by Arctic Monkeys
• "St. Elsewhere" album by Gnarls Barkley
• "Under The Iron Sea" album by Keane
• "The Eraser" album by Thom Yorke

It was like stepping onto another world. A world of comfort. A world of ease. A world of convenience.

I stepped onto a Western-owned airline.

Now, this might seem a touch judgemental coming from a foreigner living in China, let alone an Aussie flying Qantas. Well, it is. Dead-set, after flying short, two to four hour flights on China Eastern, Hainan Air and Air China for the past 18 months, a 12 hour flight on a Qantas plane felt like heaven.

Doesn't really seem right does it? Well, let me explain.

Firstly I would like to point out what I would consider (1) usual, and (2) unusual occurrences on flights within & from China.

I will deal with the unusual first, as these events would probably be weighted much more heavily by the average air traveller as a prerequisite for the 'perfect flight'.

The core 'unusual' factors that contributed to the comfort on the this trip include...

• a half-full plane
• extra-seats to spread out
• inflight entertainment including movies on-demand.

These events make a flight worthwhile for me. But, I didn't weigh these as highly as the average traveller. Why you ask? The answer is that I've been flying within China for the past 18 months. And the below is a refreshing change from the usual chain of events.

What I did experience on this flight...

• the flight boarded on time.
• the flight taxied to the runway on time.
• the flight left on time.
• bodily fluids actually contained within the correct receptical.
• everyone had turned off the mobile phones.
• brewed coffee!
• the flight arrived early.

None of these aforementioned factors are usually found on most airlines in China - so I guess this isn't a fair comparison. But what can be compared with the general flying experience is the people involved - the crew and the passengers. And what was great about this flight on Qantas is what I didn't experience.

What I didn't experience on this flight...

• constant throat clearing/hocking from the seat behind you.
• passenger in front of you smashing their chair back (because it can) into your knees.
• being hit in the head by 1-tonne's worth of Jingdezhen pottery and ceramics.
• the weird Chinese-Western hybrid meal that no-one finds appetising.
• the fella at the back of the plane having a conversation with his mate at the front of the plane.
• no one rushed to get their bags from the overhead-locker just as the plane's wheels hit the tarmac (except the super-bogan on our flight who called the hostie 'a dickhead..' after she asked him to sit down).

An awesome flight. Awesome.

Did I mention that I'm now back in Brisbane? It's awesome.

Geek alert.

One thing that's been annoying over the past few months has been the lack of battery life of my G4 Powerbook. On top of running to below an hours worth of charge, I had noticed that my laptop appeared to be running much hotter than usual. Lithium ion batteries have had a long history of dodginess. Apple had been running a recall of select Powerbook batteries over the past year, but my particular model was excluded from this. Many users have been told to expect to replace a lithium ion battery between 1 to 2 years of owning a laptop, so despite my annoyance I had resigned myself to getting a replacement.

Towards the end of July I called Apple Australia to complain about the battery life on my 18 month-old computer. I was given a case ID and pointed to several Apple Support articles to prolong battery life. Needless to say I didn't get around to following the directions straight away, and a couple of weeks back one of the Support Articles I had been pointed to (#86440) was removed / deleted from the Apple Support site.

Strange I thought. I didn't give it much thought and resigned myself to purchasing a new battery. Since that time, the 'flaming laptop' story broke and now every geek worth his salt now knows of the Dell Laptop/Sony Battery debacle. I even threw in my 2 cents worth when it was reported that a certain approach to engineering wouldn't allow for such poor quality to hit the markets. Yeah right.

As part of breaking my post-GE funk, I planned to hit Xujiahui yesterday to pick up a new Powerbook battery for my laptop. Needless to say my laziness was too strong yesterday and I didn't make it out of the house until Linda me peeled off the couch to go buy Chinese souvenirs for our trip home. Shopping at the market was harrowing enough for this little black duck, so an expedition to Xujiahui around peak-hour was a laughable idea.

So this morning, I learnt that Apple had announced another battery recall of Powerbook and iBook batteries that were supplied by Sony.

Guess what? I'm now eligible for a replacement battery.

I'm sure there's been a growing consensus about my model of Powerbook and its battery concerns over the past year. How long has Apple known about this? And, was this announcement released after both Dell and Sony had taken the heat for this dodgy technology? I believe that they must have known about this for a long time.

I haven't been so enthusiastic about blogging over the past few months. There's many reasons, and also many events that have occurred that I'm not yet sure about in my mind's eye at this point. I'm also spending a lot of time in our apartment thinking, tinkering on my Mac, and stringing-out all of the few tasks I needed to do for our impending visit home to Queensland (Brisbane & Magnetic Island). Vacillating between a personal horizontal and vertical orientation has been the flavour of the past few weeks. Copious amounts of snoozing, DVDs, and satellite TV with a sprinkling of the odd meet-up with friends and other small day excursions. A lot of the latter activities have been organised in part in shame for my complete lack of spark.

This week I've picked up my socks a little, and thought summarising the past few weeks would be a good start to get back on the writing horse. By the way, I'm going to be doing a lot more writing very soon.

Ok, here we go.

In terms of a sequence of events, Linda has written a nice summary of what has happened to us since the beginning of August (awesome summary TimmyB - good start).

There's a couple of other things that weren't mentioned, like a side-trip with Lin & her parents to Tongli. Tongli is one of Jiangsu Province's famed "Water Towns" that is located about 90 minutes from Shanghai and is worth a day trip. Perhaps not in the middle of Shanghai's latest heat-wave (like we happened to do), but rather in a cooler clime and perhaps with some early morning fog on the water for some cool photographic opportunities.

As I brought up photography, you can see the photos from my flickr Tongli set below.

I've actually spent quite a bit of time on my flickr site over the past few weeks. Why? Well, I'm not entirely sure. There were a few problems a few problems with my older digital images when I migrated my Gallery install over to my Flickr page. Many of the images were improperly titled, and few of the tags/keywords were copied over correctly. So, I spent a bit of time cleaning them up. Really something you wouldn't do unless you have oodles of time at your disposal. Lucky I have that then eh?

I've also started to re-explore Shanghai in my spare time. Infrequently, I've been jumping on my bike and setting off around town looking for a cool and quiet place to do all the things I was doing in the cool and quiet place I call home. But with better coffee. In the last week, many of these little trips have involved purchasing little bits and pieces from two of the new fake markets around Shanghai. In summary, I can say these markets contain all the same stuff at the same prices, and most importantly it is still a pain in the neck to buy anything. The only plus for me is now the markets are indoors/underground and air-conditioned.

I haven't been playing any sport either. My knee is still giving me grief. One of the first things I'm doing when I hit the ground in Brisbane is arranging a few doctors/physio visits to see what's going on there. Needless to say lack of exercise has been adding to my doldrums and also my beer gut. I haven't been able to tear myself away from basketball completely though. Each Sunday morning I've been coaching Reign Design to reach their potential. Unfortunately my skills in this regards aren't that great - and the team that won last season's title is now 0-8. Ugh. There's still one game to go though. Fingers crossed for you fellas!

That's right!

Lin & I are popping home this weekend for a visit of a few weeks (and something minor like my sister's wedding), so make some room in your diaries if you want to catch up.

I'll be in Australia until the 19th of September, whereas Lin will have to be leave a week earlier due to the approaching start of the school year in China.

Our visit should be a lot of fun. On this trip, we'll be looking to catch up with my Brisbane and Townsville/Magnetic Island-based friends. Drop me an email if you want to arrange a schooner or three over the next three weeks.

Thanks to JM & DaDan for my new nickname (TUB). See the title if you're a little confused.

I've been in a bit of a funk over the past couple of days. Not really doing much except for being horizontal on a couch or on our bed, avoiding sunlight, embracing air-conditioning, and believing that a trip to the refrigerator really constitutes some type of exercise-laden expedition to the farthest reaches of Shanghai. Ok, well our apartment.

I'm unsure why this is. I really believe that leaving my job was the best for me professionally and personally. I didn't have such a laid-out plan ahead of me when I left my employer. I think what I didn't count on was this vacuum period which I am currently faced with. The combination of visitors here in Shanghai along with an impending trip back home to Brisbane at the end of August (for 3 weeks!), I know find myself in a situation where I might have a 6 week break before I can sink my teeth into my next foray in employment. Six weeks isn't such a big amount of time. I know I should be scheming, networking and branching out in the wider yonder that is Shanghai to ensure I don't spend another 6 weeks nailing down a job. I should do it.

But, yeah, the but, I haven't gone after these tasks.

Six weeks you say? Take advantage of it. It should be spent out exploring Shanghai, doing cool things like writing in my blog (I have low standards of excitement), improving my poor Chinese language skills, spending oodles of time with Lin's parents, or just relaxing in style beside a pool somewhere.

Nah. I just vegetated on the couch for probably a bit too long.

At least I got out of the house today and did something under my own steam.

Oh, just to add. The only activity that has been mildly productive for me is my posting of various photos that I took over the last few weeks of my life when I haven't been resembling a three-toed sloth. You can go and check out my flickr page for some photos from our trip to Beijing with Lin & her parents. Some Tongli photos will be coming along shortly too.

And then you read articles like this...

Gays targeted for monitoring

Gays targeted for monitoring
2006-08-14
STATE authorities are considering a plan to monitor gay men and other high-risk groups for sexually transmitted diseases in an effort to control the spread of the AIDS virus.

The Ministry of Health is now soliciting opinions from local disease control and prevention centers on a national plan for monitoring STDs.

Under the plan, monitoring stations would survey the incidence of STDs among prostitutes, gays and long-distance drivers and test their knowledge about STDs.

The article goes on about several points, most of which I'd jump up and down about at length at. But seeing as I'm oh so busy right now, I'll just try and emphasise one main point.

Improved monitoring doesn't solve problems. It highlights a current problem. Duh! To solve this, educate people in safe sex practices whether they are straight, gay or inbetween.

Want to stop the spread of disease - educate, don't indoctrinate.

Geez!