Robs' Blog: incoherencies from an american ex-pat in exotic beijing,
  or: how i learned to stop worrying and love bureaucracy

Since the celebration of 49th anniversaries seems to be a bit in vogue these days, I think it's fitting to note that the 49th anniversary of Hawaii's inclusion into the United States will be celebrated on August 21st.

Yep, that was the date 49 years ago that the native Polynesian people, without any influence from Americans, Europeans, or other foreign interests, willfully decided on a course that would result with the destruction of some of their most beautiful lands, a severe impact to their native cultures, as well as an influx of foreigners that now has reduced the native population to 16 percent... not including the large tourist or military population.

Then again, it is certainly heartwarming to see a native son like Barack Obama has done so well.

For more information see:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii

And, in particular, the History section.

I had my usual breakfast of bread today. The bread is pancake-shaped, and cooked against the sides of a oven fashioned from a steel drum. The oven is, of course, heated by coal.

There are two varieties... sweet and, well, not. Being an American, I go for the sweet type, which has a couple of tablespoons of sugar put into the dough.

I usually get two, and the couple who operate the stand most often get the pancakes ready for me as soon as they see me approach. The price for this morning goodness? two rmb.

Here's a picture of the stand and the couple who operate it:

And, here's a close-up of the oven:

We had the 15th BJOSUG meeting today, and the fourth meeting of the year. The presentations and discussions were centered around Power Management this meeting. You can find out more about what was discussed by visiting this link.

Here's a photo of Aubrey Li:

Here's one of Jeff Cai:

And, one of Jian, who was the host of tonight's event:

More photos can be seen here.

Great news for ASUS EeePC Users... an alpha version of the SUNWath driver, which enables WiFi on the EeePC, is available for download here:

Many thanks to Judy for making the bits available!

Also, checkout this cool video from Ohta-san, featuring an EeePC run snv_85:

• Web 2.0 is set for spending boom
• American walker goes round the world at 80 years
• California pays rising price for prison growth
• Jewish leader revives Shanghai synagogue

Well, it was a rainy cold weekend here in Beijing. So, instead of just staying at home in front of the television listening to Tagalog, watching DVDs, or playing with my computers, I decided to get out and do a bit of, well, pampering. Or, to be more precise, self-cleanup.

So, this weekend I got, in no particular order, the following done:

• Haircut
• Manicure
• Pedicure
• Eyebrow shaping
• Ear-hair removal

Okay, lemme address the eyebrow shaping. The unibrow gene runs strong in my family. Yep, it'd cross my nose in a bushy mess if I didn't do something about it. And, well, since I'm not lucky enough to be a Russian Cosmonaut, I do something about it.

Folks in the States would do this by tweezing and waxing. Here, it is done only by using tweezers. I think I have a fairly high tolerance for pain (and sometimes enjoy it), but lemme tell you the area above my eyelids hurts like damnation when they pluck it. Argh. Make it stop.

The ear-hair removal was actually done as part of the eyebrow shaping. For those youngsters out there who might be questioning what this is or why it might be needed, well, just wait.

Sooner or later, you'll also start to sprout your own little forest around your ear canal.

I continue to be impressed by my Vonage VoIP internet phone service.

They recently updated their SimulRing© feature to include international telephone numbers. So, when someone calls my 408 area code number in the States, it rings in my apartment here in Beijing and on my China Mobile registered cellphone at the same time. Just too cool.

Also, they now have a plan that gets you 12 months of service for the low price of $US 239.99... that's a 20 percent savings, or around $US 20 per month. I signed-up because I don't especially like monthly bills, and don't mind giving some upfront cash to a company I like. (This type of agreement... money upfront for a 15-20 percent discount, is very common here in China.

I use VNC on my system running xVM. Since a lot of other folks are doing the same, I thought I'd share my settings.

First off, I opted for the "VNC Enterprise Edition for UNIX" from RealVNC, which cost $US 50. I like the extra features that this edition (4.3.2) provides... see the web site for more information.

Here's my xstartup file:

#!/bin/sh

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
/usr/local/bin/vncconfig&
gnome-session &

I'm running gnome, so that's why the gnome-session is in there. The vncconfig, however, is the really cool thing. With it, I'm able to copy-n-paste into and out of my vnc window onto my desktop... even if my domU is isolated from my dom0 whilst using IPsec.

When I start vncserver on my domU, I use:

vncserver -geometry 1500x900 -IdleTimeout 0

This stops those blasted disconnections due to idle time. The chosen geometry fits quite comfortably on one of the two 22-inch heads I run at home.

Oh, and I use the vnpasswd on both my dom0 and domU machines and set the passwords to be the same.

Finally, when I start the vnc viewer on my dom0, I use:

vncviewer snvdom1:2 -passwd ~/.vnc/passwd&

With the addition of the -passwd option, I'm able to start the viewer in the background.

Just some random thoughts for today:

• Wikipedia: At about the same time I noted that the BBC website was now accessible in China, I saw that Wikipedia was accessible as well. (At least, from my home. And, this includes a sampling of pages which had sensitive topics on them.)
• Spring is in the air: And, with it, plenty of pollen and spores. Spores like clouds raining cotton balls. Blowing into taxicab windows that are open because the drivers don't want to use air-conditioners. Yuck.
• Beijing Zoo: I volunteered in the reptile and amphibian department of the Beijing Zoo yesterday. Well, mostly just had a behind-the-scenes look at the operation with Fred and Pockey. I hope to get dirty next time. Yep, Mike Rowe and me are tight.
• From green to blue: Over the past few weeks, the signs around Tsinghua Science Park have been repainted from forest green to navy blue.
• From clear to green: During that same period, the newly-changed water in the fountain of that same park has gone from clear to, well, forest green.