China Musings

Finally, after 3 years of waiting and 2.5 years after officially filing the petition for Alison’s Visa, it was approved friday afternoon.

We have already booked tickets for Jan 21 (in 2 weeks AHHH)

Maybe we’ll see you then!

Last week I had to take care of some errands so I grabbed the camera so I could give you guys a tour of Guangzhou.

We start off at the riverside near my house. This area is pretty nice, but its a little too far to walk from our house, so we don’t come down here all that often.

The next location is the Guangzhou Train Station ???. Every time I pass here, it is like a beehive with all the new arrivals pouring out, and people flowing out to destinations all across the country. It is also surrounded by 4 long distance bus stations, and there is a Metro station underneath. Madhouse!

After that, rode the metro to the Tian He district, and hopped on the brand new #3 line. The #1 line has been here since we first came to GZ, and the #2 opened the first year we were here. This #3 line should be pretty useful, and of course it is decked out with all the latest technology, with flat screens showing ads and the train even has a map with LEDs embedded to show where you are.

Finally, I went to CITIC Plaza ???? to meet Pietro in his office there. CITIC is the tallest building in GZ at 88 stories. I don’t know how tall it is, but it really stands out.

Finally, I took some shots from the park that lies north of CITIC Towers. Between CITIC and the Guangzhou East Station there is a large green area. I can’t really call it a park cause you are not allowed to sit on it. It makes for a nice view from the office buildings though.

CM #20 GZ Highlight Tour Part 1

Wow, I just installed WP2 and I could not be more impressed. Alison was asking me what is wrong, cause I just whooped in amazement. You won’t see much change on your end, but here where I type in this stuff… man it is SLICK! Hmm, maybe I should put a litle effort into the page design?
Enjoy!

Oh, and happy new year!

Also! comments are back…

For the backstreet project, I wrote a WP plugin that allows the user to control what shows up on the front page. One of those items was the main graphic, the big pic that sort of sets the tone for the whole front page. The reasoning behind it was so that they could use that space to promote big acts. Of course, they have not used it even once!

Anyway, I have recycled that plugin now for CCIC, and tonight, I decided to update it a little. The idea is that the users can upload as many pictures as they like, as long as they are the right size, and the front page will rotate through the pictures randomly each tome the page reloads.

Since I did backstreet, I have been using Gmail, and I really like how it is able to grab content in the background without me doing anything. So I got to thinking… what if you didn’t have to reload to see a new photo on the front page. How can we use AJAX to reload the images in the bacground, say on a timer.

Well, I have been following the XMLHttpRequest movement very closely, but I had not actually written any code. I decided this was the place to start. And you know what, it was rather anti-climactic. 5 minutes. It literally took 5 minutes to turn the front page into an automatic Javascript based slideshow that works like a charm. Now granted, I already had the infrastructure in place. So the images are already uploaded, there is already a function that returns a random image name. All I had to do was hook that function to a GET level parameter and copy some code from this excellent tutorial. (It is rare when a 1 page tutorial leads you to a point where you can do something useful, but here I am)

To be fair, it really isn’t AJAX, since I am not returning any XML, just a plain string. However, I find this extremely useful, and I think I am going to be using it in other places as well.

So go ahead and check it out http://cameraitacina.net.cn

If you have been paying attention, you will remember that Alison and I live in a district of Guangzhou called Liwan ???. This is one of the 5 main Guangzhou City districts, and maybe the 3rd oldest in terms of history. In terms of urban renewal, however, liwan certianly lags behind more central parts of the city and is just now receiving its fair share of skyscrapers.

Guangzhou as a city has been around for ages (predates Song dynasty ~900AD), and so while Liwan is not the oldest, it certianly isn’t new. In fact, on this little tour, we pass the alley where my Grandfather’s house used to sit, before it was torn down in 1992 to build one of the early high-rises. In fact, problably the thing I like the best about living here is that truly, this is where my grandfather grew up. Literally. He must have walked these streets on his way to primary school, or ran around with his friends in the Liwan Lake park down the street. When I mention a large tree, it excites me that my grandfather, at 10 years old in 1921, might have seen that very same tree get planted for all I know. My grandfather left home in his early 20s to study abroad, and most likely 95% of the buildings are no longer standing, but I am sure that the flagstone alleyways are the very same ones he and his cousins and brothers must have run down, giving their caretaker’s heart attacks. He’s #11 in this photo.

Anyway, this little tour takes us from my street, Duobao Lu ??? down Longjin Xi Lu ???? to the parking lot where Alison was getting her driving lesson. Sorry about the wind noise…not quite sure what to do about that though.

CM #19 Motorcycle Tour of Liwan

Hey everybody! It’s that time of year again. We both hope you are warm, happy, well fed, and with people who love you.

CM #18 Merry Christmas from Guangzhou

Alison’s closest co-worker (seated in the next cubicle and working under the same boss) announced she was pregnant soon after Alison arrived at her company. Alison watched as her friend’s belly grew and grew, and we visited the new mother and new arrival 2 days after the baby was born. Now, the healthy little girl is 7 months old and under the care of both of her grandmothers while mom went back to work.

We decided to go visit the baby the afternoon after our trip to the consulate. We had a very nice afternoon with this baby. We were feeling kinda bummed, but the child was oblivious to this and easily brought smiles to our faces.

Also, our friends live in a Small District ?? that is designed in a very different way than out little neighborhood. This kind of apartment complex is very common, and most new housing built since the 80s is in this format.

CM #17 A Visit with Yuanyuan

Our current client, Camera di Commercio Italia in Cina, or The China-Italy Chamber of Commerce , or ??????? (I like the Italian name best), has set up their new China based hosting -> http://cameraitacina.net.cn.

The site is backed by wordpress with the multingual plugin. I had to fix some bugs and add some additional code, but multilingual was awesome.

The site will be ready in the first week of Jan… until then you can continue to check that site to watch the development progress. Right now the biggest task is continuing to hack multilingual to add support for links, and for site-wide language pref cookies. After that, we need to ensure the member directory is working and looks good. Finally, the site will be a well-designed, informational site with a very rich back-end editing platform. Hope they like it!

Maybe this is a sign of the times, yesterday morning i had 50 new blog comments. Wow, I thought, I finally hit the big time. Then I checked and found out there were all complete and utter SPAM. Nonsensical spam at that. Carefully crafted non-sense to get through the baysian filters packed with completely unrelated links. All I have to say is “WHY?”

I have turned off comments temporarily while I figure out how to stop them while still alowing my friends and family to leave messages here. You can always reach me at adeh -at- desandies, if you need.

Boy, I make myself sound a lot more important than I really am. No one even reads this…

Coming home late Monday evening, I decided to put together another story podcast. This one tells the story of my first day teaching in China. The first class did not end up being a good indicator for the rest of my classes thoughout the year. I really enjoyed my time teaching and the students and classes, in general, were the best part of my first year in China. The little altercation regarding my first class was, however, a good indicator for my relationship with the administration. We can leave at this, communication was not their strong suit. Maybe some other day i can talk more about the politics and psycology of teaching in China, and why ultimately I couldn’t take it anymore, even though I truly did enjoy my time.

The links mentioned in this episode are:

Lance Anderson’s Verge of the Fringe

and sponsored by:
The Camel’s Back - Discover Central Asia, Visit The Camel’s Back.

CM #16 The First Day of School