First, we go to the Beijing 2nd Hand Automobile market located South West 4th ring road.  After being told by a few people there that motorbikes couldn’t be handled here, we found the Beijing Vehicle Management Center.

Second, I had to take the motorbike around the back to the “inspection” hall where they would inspect it.  It turns out they just verified I owned it, my paperwork was in order, and that was it.  Cars had to take their plates off.  Not our my motorbike, just left it on.  I then proceeded to park in the underground parking.

Third, we had to check if I had any outstanding fines on the bike.  Nope!  Normally, one would pay 35 RMB at this step.  Not us.  Maybe because we’re not selling a car, but a motorbike?

Forth, we had to make tons of photocopies.  Basically everything official had to be photocopied, at 1RMB per sheet.  A major scam.  Passports, resident slips, the car registration book, etc. Everything.

Fifth, we filled out one of their stock contracts.  This was the official sales contract between me, the seller, and Ionut, the Buyer.  I suppose I could take this to court if Ionut didn’t pay (he did).

Sixth, we get a number and wait… only 2 minutes, and go to a window, give everything to the lady to process everything.  At this point, I was expecting them to have an accessor look at my bike and declare an official value for the vehicle (so they could assess a 2.5% processing fee).  I read this process step in a few online sites.  But they didn’t.  What they did do is look at the original sales receipt (fa piao) which had the accessed value from 5 years ago (I am surprised I still had this!!), and the amount paid for the sale (240 RMB or thereabouts).  Then the computer did some magic and determined we had to pay 100 RMB for the transfer.  Not too bad. It was here that we got the official change of ownership document.  It is technically no longer my bike.

Seventh, So we go to another window, pay the 100 RMB, and get all our papers and documents back.  We then go upstairs where they handle the reprinting of the registration booklets, issuance of new plates, etc.  They don’t do motorbikes!  So, we had to go to the Beijing Traffic Bureau HQ at South-East 4th Ring Road (where we would go for getting our Driver’s Licenses, plates, etc.) and get it taken care of then.

Eighth, we go to the Traffic Bureau HQ.  We go to the foreigner office (lucky no line!) and are told we need more photo copies and we had to get the motorbike photographed.

Ninth, we go outside, drive the motorbike to the place to get it photographed (on the grounds of the Bureau).  They wanted to charge 20 RMB to take the plates off, and another 20 RMB to have it photographed, but we opted to take the plates off ourselves.  No choice about the fee for taking the photographs though.  At this step, they also did an imprint of the VIN, or frame number.  A photograph and this VIN number imprint were pasted on a slip and we went back to the foreigner office of the Bureau.

Tenth, they told us we needed to get a chop on this paper to make it “official”, so we had to go to the main hall of the building, have it looked at, and chopped.  5 minutes only.

Eleventh, back at the foreigner office of the Traffic Bureau, I handed over my old plates (tears) and registration booklet.  We paid another fee (85 RMB or something), and 5 minutes later, the officer came back with new Yellow 京A plates.  Yellow!!!  Unfortunately, black plates, which I had, are no longer issued for foreigners.  We aren’t special anymore.  Oh well.

And there you have it. A simple, easy to follow 4+ hour procedure on how to transfer ownership of a motorcycle in Beijing!  Now, that was easy!

Picture time.  My pictures are on Flickr, but I have a selected few here:

Here is the official procedure on ownership transfer.  Handwritten, of course.

My bike before the transfer.

Ionut and I shaking hands (a bit early on in the process).

The Vehicle Management hall.  This is where it all happens (well, half of it).

The Beijing Traffic Bureau HQ.

My old plate.

Ionut’s new plate.

It’s no longer my bike, so I’m in the sidecar… riding as a passenger.

Another first for me yesterday was we went to see an Acrobatics show.  In 6+ years of living here, I never went to see an Acrobatics show!  Here are some pics!

Well, today is my last exam at school.  It’s 口语, or speaking exam.  It’s only about ten minutes of speaking to my teacher.  I did well on the mid term, and aren’t too worried for this final.  I should still be in the running to get about 50% or 75% of my tuition back on Friday through my school’s scholarship program.  Weird, they just give you cash on the spot at the commencement “ceremony”.  I think other schools give you scholarships towards the following term.

Things are winding down here.  Jason leaves on the 30th of June, the movers come on the 1st of July to pack up the apartment.  Then I’m off on the 7th!  That’s only 13 days from here.  Yikes!

Singapore Panorama - Borrowed from Wikipedia

Well folks, my long stay, just over 6 years, in Beijing is coming to an end.  It is time to finish this chapter in my life (and boy, has it been an interesting one), and begin a new one.

Melanie has accepted a position in Singapore, and like a dutiful “almost-spouse”, I will be tagging a long.

Timing?  Most likely in July. I have classes to finish up here (ending end of June). I plan on traveling around China for around a month or so (at least a couple of weeks), and then I’m off.

Friends from the states who thought about visiting?  You missed your chance! (except for Jason who’s coming at the end of June). You had 6 years…

We got a mix of some black ones and gold ones. Don’t ask me what kind they are, I have no clue.  All together we have 8 fish, including an algae eater.

No aquarium would be complete without some aquarium accessories.  Here, we got an old man that looks as if he’s turning a wheel.  Why would be be doing something like that?  Your guess is as good as mine… (the air bubbles actually move the wheel).  And, we got a porcelain pagoda too!

CCTV, the owner, and major state broadcasting company, apologized for their mistake.  Some of my favorite quotes of the article:

CCTV said it was deeply grieved “for the severe damage the fire caused to the country’s property.”

CCTV did cover the fire outside its own new headquarters, but it was not the top story.

“According to the Beijing fire department, this fire occurred because the person in charge of the construction of the new building project of CCTV, without permission, hired staff to set off fireworks that violated regulations,” the broadcaster said in a statement on its Web site.

Lucky Mandarin Oriental doesn’t actually own the building, but “[they have] signed a long term contract to manage the hotel and has no ownership interest in the building.”

This guy is going to jail:

Xu Wei - Construction Director for CCTV

Caijing’s article. Good information.

Photo from Reuters

What do you get when you have illegally large fireworks set off at a construction sight in a downtown area of a large city?

Starts nice like this:

Fireworks in Beijing - Chinese New Year Eve 2009 II HD Version from Tom van Dillen on Vimeo.

And could end like this, as it did last night in Beijing:

TVCC Fire Beijing from Tom van Dillen on Vimeo.

So, I suppose fireworks in the city isn’t such a good idea, eh? Fireworks used to be banned in the city, but a couple of years ago the city government allowed ordinary citizens to purchase their own fireworks and let them off any where and any time they pleased (yes, with some, but arguably not enough restrictions).

Here are some fireworks I bought 2 years ago:

The Fireworks I bought for CNY 2007 (Actually, half are mine, half are a friend's)

They turned out pretty nice, but as you see, were pretty close to our apartment building:

My fireworks CNY2007, close to my apartment building. Too close!

So, imagine hundreds of thousands, or even a couple of a million(?) people setting off fireworks like these, or bigger.  And many not thinking about safety while setting them off.  I didn’t buy any this year, mostly to save some money…

Media coverage of the fire last night:

I’m not sure how international media covered the fire last night at the TVCC building within the new CCTV headquarters complex, but local media here in China barely mentioned it (last night). Maybe they didn’t know what to say yet?  I think China has yet to understand how to deliver “breaking news”, especially if it involves China. (I am no expert on media, though, so I could be wrong)

Twitter broke the story

As has happened in many other news breaking events in the past, news of this event was broken(?) through Twitter.  In fact, my eyes were glued to Tweetgrid #cctvfire, because local television had nothing, nor did the popular Chinese news sites such as Sohu and Sina.  International media was slow to pick up on it, yet faster than local media (from what I saw).  Here are some international media stories:  WSJ, CNN, NY Times, BBC, Reuters.

Finally, today, official state media, Xinhua, has some stories.  My favorite one is where they say the fire was caused by fireworks set off by a CCTV-contracted company.  Nice work guys.  Genius - let’s burn down our own building, shall we? Lucky (?) for them, it was the hotel next door and not the “big pants” HQ.

Can’t argue with this evidence: (Watch the whole thing)

What I want to know is, how can the roof catch on fire so quickly?  Could anyone comment?

I am sure someone (or a group) will “pay” for this idiotic mistake.  As they should.  It caused at least one life (fire fighter) and many injuries.  Not to mention some insurance company a lot of dough.  What if they caused a fire in an apartment complex?

Incompetence runs rampant (everywhere) and sadly this unfortunate event probably won’t teach many lessons going forward… (how many times have we seen Melamine?

Is it bad taste to say it was an ugly building any way?

I motivated myself to do this as I’ll be traveling to Hong Kong and Singapore for Chinese New Year (leaving tomorrow!), and I’d like to be able to have a few more free WIFI options, in case my then selected coffee shop only offers for-pay WIFI access.  That, and I want to procrastinate my studying for an exam I’ll be taking in Hong Kong next week.  Hooking up network routers is much more fun than studying, no?

As I already have a Netgear WRG614 wireless router, I decided to take advantage of the fact the La Fonera+ has two segregated networks (public and private), I used it to authenticate to my ISP using PPPoE, and connected my Netgear router to the LAN port of the La Fonera+.  That way, my netgear router, which handles some wired and all primary wireless through my house is segregated from the “public” wireless network the Fon creates.

Do I really need to keep using my Netgear?  Hmm, good question… But I may want to upgrade to a N wireless router in the future, in which case, I would keep my current configuration.

Any way, I’m off tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to post back to see how it works.  Last time I was in Hong Kong, I was disapointed to see how many WIfi spots around the city were not free.  Now that I have the Fon active, I hope I can be pleasently surprised this time.

I was playing fine, probably overexerting myself at times, but all in all, was having a good time.

But then, the birdie was launched way back and I ran back to get it, of course missed.  As I landed on my right foot, I immediately knew I landed on it improperly as I felt some pain and had trouble stopping myself.  I didn’t fall to the ground luckily, as that would have been quite embarrassing!  But I did have to limp back to the seats.

Sitting, there wasn’t much pain.  Once I put pressure on my foot, major pain.  Was very difficult to walk.  Instead of going to dinner with the others, Melanie insisted I go to the hospital and get it checked out.

After a 5 minute wait, saw the doctor, he had me get some x-rays taken.  Turns out I fractured the #5 Metatarsus, the small bone on the outside of the foot leading to the small tow (number 4 in the image below, far right bone).

The doctor said I probably didn’t need a cast - he scheduled a followup for me on Monday with an Orthopedic doctor for the final decision. Ugh.

So now, I’m stuck on crutches at least 2 weeks (prob. more), and the doctor says it will take at about 8 weeks to heal fully - so I’ll need to be careful when walking not to put too much pressure on the foot.

Will be going by train - 22 hours. Nice!

Follow my twitter for updates along the way. Should arrive Friday 11AM or so.

The creme penguins were a nice touch!  Here’s last year’s cake.

Can’t have a BLUG party without Chuanr and Beer.