Posted the new design for Backstreetjazzbar.com today. The new look is really slick. Mad props to the designer, Adrian, and to the Wordpress people for designing such a great CMS system. The whole thing runs on top o WP, and our design is just a theme. It works really well, and I can’t wait to start adding more content. We still have to design and upload the secondary level pages. Look for that in about a week’s time.
We got our official notice today, Alison’s application has been approved by the California Immigration office, and her ionformation has been forwarded to Guangzhou. Once it arrives in Guangzhou, the GZ consulate will notifyu us directly and give her an interview date. It Alison passes the interview, then that’s it, she can come to America!
We are excited, as this is basically the last step in a process that has been going on for the 3 years we have been in GZ. Note, I am not saying it will take everyone 3 years, we were not the most active applicants. It has been almost 1 year since we sent in our first packet though, if you were wondering about how long it might take.
I learned something today while trying to figure out why the new design for backstreet was behaving so badly in IE6. Finally, I narrowed it down to one thing, the < !DOCTYPE> document identifier was not the first line of the file. Instead, I had flippantly placed an HTML comment in the first line, not realizing that it could cause problems. Sure enough, as soon as I removed that comment, everything in IE was a smooth as apple pie?
So if you are going to be a good web developer, and use modern web standard xhtml in your pages, remember that the doctype declaration must be at the top!
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
I had an interesting conversation today, actually, it is a pretty common conversation here in China. I was buying vegetables for dinner in the market, at one of the stands that I often frequent. The lady there happens to be from the town where I taught English for a year, and actually moved to GZ the same time we did. Anyway, today a friend was with her, and once she realized i could understand Chinese, she asked, “You’re African, right?”
“No,” I replied, knowing what was coming next.
“Yes, you look African, how can you not be African, where are you from then?”
I held my tongue, since I have had this conversation at least 30 times. My friend the vegetable proprietor answered for me, “He’s from America! He speaks Chinese.”
“But you look like an African, I can’t beleive it, really?”
“Yes, I am from America.”
“So, they speak Chinese in America too?”
“No… they don’t.” The two of them continued to argue about the possibility of Americans speaking Chinese.
When I first arrived, it used to slightly offend me that people could not believe I had come from America. But after living here for so long, I can certianly understand where they are coming from. In China, 97% of the people are of the Han majority, and another 60% of the remaining 3% only look different if they happen to be wearing their traditional outfit. To be Chinese is simple. The common perspective of Ethnicity and Nationality are that these concepts are one and the same. On the other hand, for me, coming from a multi-cultural background, it is hard to imagine how I could possibly combine my ethnicity with my nationality.
It is times like this when I realize how deeply the ideas of nationality, race, and ethnicity are ingrained in us from childhood. Just as i could never imagine a life without Chinese/Iranian/Lebanese/Mexican/Irish (etc.) Americans, many of the Chinese people I have spoken to have trouble understanding that my mother is Chinese, but lives in America. “So she is American then?”, they ask. I usually just answer, “yes.”
We just got back from your first Hong Kong (HK) trip together. After living in GZ for three years, Alison finally got the right papers that allow her to travel to HK. We decided to take a weekend trip for our 3rd anniversary.
Hong Kong was a lot of fun. We stayed in a nice little hotel at the top of the hill in Tsim Sha Tsui. HK really is a shoppers paradise. We spent our first evening walking along the streets of TST, stopping in random stores and gawking at all the things to buy. I have been to HK several times now, but most of the time I am in a big hurry, and rush through without noticing anything. This time I was able to really see what there was to offer, and I was impressed with the variety.
We had dinner at my favorite Indian Restaurant, Branto’s, on Lock Road. I have been to this place almost every time I am in HK, and I am always happy with the quality of the food. It is pure vegitarian food, but eating like this makes it easy to forget about meat.
The next day we had a great 5 course French meal, the food was not the best I’ve had, but it was a very pleasant place and the service through 5 courses was a treat. There is something to be said about taking your time with a meal, it really lets you appreciate the food. So often I simply wolf down my food, I forget how nice it is to relax and let the meal happen at its own pace.
Then we took the ferry over to the Honk Kong Island side of the straight. I love the Star Ferry, and Alison appreciated the view of the HK skyline. One we got the Central, the finanacial district of HK, we were met with a onslaught of Tagalog. Apparently, Sunday is the traditional day off for all the Filipino Domestic helpers that live and work in HK. On Sunday, they gravitate to Central and hang out in the parks, the walkways - anywhere there is shade - to hang out with their friends, do each other’s hair, and eat each other’s food. I didn’t realize how many ex-patriate Filipnos were living in HK. They literally took over Central.
We ended up in IFC Mall, one of HK newer shopping extravaganzas. Surprisingly, I was able to find a fancy designer shop with clothes on sale that we could actually afford, sort of. There was a steel drum jazz band playing, tons of shops and tons of people, delicious smells coming from the bakeries and restaurants; I could certianly get used to shopping like that.
Finally we headed to Wan Chai, where we could hop on a bus back home to GZ. It was a really ncie weekend, and I hope we have more time to make similar trips in the future. I also hope next time we can actually offord to buy something!
by Charlie, #97 Middle School, Guangzhou, China
Stress! What’s stress? Do you know? Stress is what makes you feel nervous and you may panic about the exam or something. But stress is made by you because you don’t think you’ll do well in the exam or something. So you must make sure your exams are fully prepared and the most important thing is to RELAX!
There are many ways to relax, like listening to music, reading other books, doing sports and so on.
Listening to music -
When you are too tired to review, you can listen to your favourite music if your parents allow. It can make more power for your brain. I like black or white the best, because it can make me relax.
Reading other books -
If you think your textbooks are very boring then you may read something you like. But of course your parents should allow you to do that. You can read in your given time. It’s bad for you that you read it while you are reviewing. I like Harry Potter the best, I can think of more things that I can’t think of in the text books.
Doing sports like Tae Kwondo, table tennis, football or anything you like can make you forget your exams, your stress and the teacher’s “saying”. After that you may have a great deal of power and do better in your exams!
Good luck for my and our exams! Come on! Let’s go!!!