The View from Here

Today at 2:28pm everyone in China stood in silence for three minutes to remember the people who lost everything in the recent earthquake. Cars had been instructed to honk their horns and alarms were ringing everywhere. I knew it was going to be an emotional moment but I was not ready for the real impact of hearing all those horns and alarms start at exactly the same time - it was like the whole country was crying out together, still trying to grasp the magnitude of the horror that shook the country exactly a week ago. And the whole country was united together in empathy with Beichuan and the surrounding regions. The Chinese prime minister has been traveling through that region recently and he's said several times the way he wants China to react to this crisis: calm, confidant and united. The united part was certainly showing this afternoon. People mobilized quickly and respectfully to show solidarity.

There's a women in my team named Rachel Zhang who was in her hometown of Mianyang when the earthquake hit last week. She was very very close to the epicenter and it's a miracle that she and her family survived with no serious injuries. She wrote here about her experiences this week delivering some supplies to one of the hardest-hit regions (all in Chinese).

Rachel's city has something like 4 million residents. About 8,000 people have already been found dead, 20,000 are believed to be buried in the debris, and 26,000 others were injured in the wake of Monday's quake. It is such a blessing that Rachel and her family are okay, thank God for that.

Many many thanks to all of you who sent messages asking if we were okay. We didn't feel much of the earthquake in Beijing, just a little bit of vibration. In fact I didn't feel it at all, but maybe that's because my building (Sun's BJS07 building) is new and has an earthquake-proof architecture.

The damage in Western China is obviously more severe. When we went to bed last night the death toll was around 50. When we got up this morning it's already over 9,000 and there are many more people trapped under rubble.

More later. For now I just wanted to say that we're okay in Beijing, and thank you for being concerned for us.

So precious, the portrait is almost as loveable as the artist. Those are nostrils, in case you were wondering.

3 stripes, just like Adidas. And he didn't cry when he fell. Or even notice.

Yesterday I saw this little red car driving the wrong direction on a one-way exit ramp. Not only was she going against traffic but she was on the left side of the road, which made an already bad situation even more ridiculous. How in the world did she get herself into this pickle? And what is her plan when she makes it down the exit ramp and finds herself going against traffic on the highway?

This artwork is on a bulletin board outside my son's preschool classroom. Their teacher told them to draw a picture of a slide. From a distance, everything looks okay.

But hold on! Grant pointed out this picture that one of his friends drew. "It's a kid being cooked," he told me.

Now there's something you don't see every day. :)

See how long it takes you figure this one out. It took me about 30 seconds. But maybe I was tired...

That's what this sign says -

On April 30 Beijing celebrated the fact that there were 100 days left until the 2008 Olympic Games. To celebrate I took a picture of the Olympic stadium (aka the Bird's Nest) for you on my way home from work.

The Chinese letters on this China Post truck are written from right to left, in the traditional Chinese style. This is the first time I've seen anyone do the same for the English letters though.

Today I was fighting my way through the morning rush hour and I noticed this truck next to me transporting a beautiful tree. Somehow the truck and I managed to stay next to each other for several kilometers. There I was snaking my way through the urban jungle and yet I got to sit in the shade of this gorgeous tree for a few minutes. I snapped a photo of it just before I had to exit the highway.

BTW I know my friend Shubho will leave me a comment saying that I should have been on the subway, putting less stress on the environment, so that poor little tree wouldn't have to work so hard to clean the air back up for me. But Shubho I was driving the car that we won in that contest. What am I supposed to do, let it sit in the parking lot...? :)

This post isn't about me but I will start by saying how astute I am to have recognized Linda Skrocki's greatness many months before a major industry magazine did the same. You might remember I recommended her blog last May as a good tool for staying digitally literate.

Well last Friday Skrocki was recognized by ReadWriteWeb as one of the "New Robert Scobles", meaning she's one of the leading corporate social media evangelists of our time. Kudos Skrocki! Twitter on! :)

Today is my son's fifth birthday. Like many kids his age he's generally a blur to us - he dashes and crashes around the house, cheating death all day. Every day that goes by without a visit to the ER is a good day for us.

But once in a while I get a glimpse of a thoughtful young man hidden beneath that Tasmanian exterior, like the time I told him a story about my pet rooster Joe. When I was three my dad took Joe out behind the woodshed and "taught him how to fly", and then we ate Joe that night for dinner. (In an ironic twist - which my dad apparently didn't appreciate - Joe was named after my own father Joe Parsons.) Grant didn't react to the story at the time but several days later when I was putting him to bed he asked me seemingly out of the blue, "But did you feel sorry for your chicken?"

I did. I still do. I'm happy that thought would occur to him.

Happy Birthday Grant!

I read about Pandora on Skrocki's blog and fell head over heels in love with this website. It's something like an online radio station that you can customize. You can tell it for example that you want to hear songs from artists like Celine Dion, and it might not play Celine for you but it will play songs that are in her same genre. Then you can vote on the songs it plays for you and it's more likely to re-play the ones you liked.

So now that I'm completely hooked on this site I logged on this morning and found this message:
"We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative."

That totally stinks! I'm going to need to check myself into some sort of music halfway house now.

There's an intriguing article in Forbes today about a guy named Gordon Knox who tries to pair artists with high-tech companies for short-term projects. He says when brilliant artists meet brilliant engineers, "so many opportunities right in your face are suddenly possible."

Mine would be a downtown diner. The food you get here wouldn't be haute cuisine or especially nutritious but it would always taste good. Basically I'd be the grilled cheese sandwich of blogosphere. But the waitress here knows your name and she always has a smile for you, and it's a good place to stop by whenever you need a little break.

If your blog was a restaurant what would it be like?

Update: Lalo Martins described his blog/restaurant here. It's the kind of place where I'd like to hang out every Friday after work.

On Friday we went on a team-building event - tree planting and then a safari at 八达岭野生动物世界, a wild animal park north of Beijing. The tree-planting part was great - a light snow was falling and it was absolutely beautiful. I remember hoping that you'd be able to tell from the pictures that it was snowing that day. Yeah, be careful what you wish for. (Thanks to Aaron, Yong and Xue for these pictures!)

Then we loaded onto park buses and started through the wild animal park.

The first stop on the safari was the wolf exhibit.

Next brown bears. Awesome.

As our tour progressed the snow was falling harder and harder, and pretty soon it was what I would call by Alabama standards a blizzard. And the road through the safari park was hilly and narrow.

Next stop was the lions' den. Ferocious. And do you see how close we were to them? These shots were not taken with a telephoto lens. The animals were literally right outside our window, not caged in or anything.

Then the tiger exhibit. Way cool.

And then the bus got stuck in the snow.

And that was terrifying. Because we couldn't get out and push the bus. Couldn't shovel snow. Because we were in the tiger exhibit and tigers were walking all around the bus. Then our bus slid back a bit and off the road and leaned up against a tree. A thick branch of the tree pushed hard against one of the sliding glass windows and I had a terrifying foreshadowing that the window could shatter and a tiger could climb through it and ...

The bus driver and our tour guide were not exactly confidence-inspiring. They had called the park manager to come get us but when no one had showed up to help us after half an hour, the driver and guide seemed helpless.

I sent my husband a text message that said, "stuck in snow at the badaling safari. surrounded by tigers. if i don't make it out, please remarry. i love you." Apparently I didn't do a very good job communicating the gravity of the situation because he replied "You're funny. What's our ebay password?"

Finally a park manager did arrive and climbed from the window of his jeep through the window of our bus. He managed to navigate the bus away from the tree without breaking the window, thank God. Then he spent the next hour-and-a-half backing the bus out of the park inch by inch down the snowy road. Fortunately he managed this feat without killing any humans or animals.

So what did I learn from this? I learned that you can't make assumptions about safety. You can't assume that just because someone opened a safari park that they maintain a fleet of good vehicles, or train their staff or have evacuation plans in place in case the unthinkable happens. If something seems too thrilling to be safe, it probably is...

And I learned, once again, that my team can show good humor in the face of adversity. As we were waiting for the park staff to arrive and wondering if we would ever get out of this situation alive, one guy from the back laughed, "This will be something to blog about!"

An engineer from my team named Jim Jiang is going to host a Sun University World Tour event at Hefei University next Sunday. If you live in that area please join him. If you know someone who lives in that area please encourage them to attend. There will be swag!

DATE: March 30
TIME: 13:30 - 17:30
LOCATION: 合肥工业大学学术活动中心一楼报告厅
AGENDA:
- The latest in Java technology
- Sun and Open Source
- Cool Features for NetBeans IDE
- Java Puzzle

For more details you can see Jim's blog.

We got the key to our new house on Friday and we love it although of course there are a few minor bugs that need to be fixed. We can't wait to move in but it's going to take us a while to buy the furniture and get it decorated. Meanwhile we'll stay in our current house in Wangjing.

As Buddy and I did the walk-through I was reminded of November 17, 2000, the day we walked through our new house in California for the first time. Audrey was five weeks old and I remember she spit up on the carpet in the upstairs hallway. We quickly cleaned it up and apologized to the guy from the developer who was doing the walk-through with us. But he just laughed and said, "Don't apologize to me! It's your carpet now!" Buddy and I looked at each other and smiled. Our carpet. Our floor. Our house. Our little piece of California.

It was an amazing feeling and I felt the same way on Friday. Our marble. Our floor. Our condo. Our little piece of Beijing. Definitely for the next 70 years and after that we'll have to see what happens.

Here's the California house:

This is the Beijing one:

Saturday night I was dyeing eggs with the kids in the kitchen when my husband walked in and said, "Why did you send me a blank text message just now?" I had been in the kitchen with the kids for over an hour so there was no way I had sent him the message. He said, "Where is your cell phone?" And when I think back on it now, I always hear him saying those words in slow motion, and all the background noise fades away and all I can hear are those words. "Where is your cell phone?"

Where was my cell phone?

Well apparently it was in the hands of a pickpocket who had picked it from my backpack at the store earlier that evening. Yes, I know, backpack purses are totally dangerous, and on top of that I keep the phone in an exterior pocket, which is almost like asking for somebody to steal it. But I have young kids and I need to keep my hands free at all times, and when my phone rings it needs to be easily accessible to me.

Which unfortunately means it's easily accessible to pickpockets too.

I'll go back to my 100-year-old Sony-Ericsson cell phone now, which will never get stolen and will never break and I will never accidentally throw it into the washing machine. And if a pickpocket ever steals that one he'll probably call me later and ask if I'll take the stupid thing back.