Chris Drumgoole

Folks,

If you’re like me, you have a sidecar motorbike, you like to drive year round. And if you’re like me, it’s because you hate taxis for a multitude of reasons - those of which I will not go into now.

But, I have a small word of advice:

During the winter, check the damn weather report for current conditions before driving to work.

Today, I didn’t. Oh my god… Pain. Pain all over my body.

When I finally got to my office (lucky I didn’t freeze to death), I checked the weather on CNN’s website, and this is what I found:

New rule: no driving in below freezing with wind more than 5mph.

Sorry to my 3 loyal readers - I haven’t posted here since December 22nd! Many apologies!

So, what’s going on these days? Well, I’ve been back in Beijing since the 4th of January. Back at work since the 7th. Melanie have been here for the last almost-2 weeks, so that’s been nice.

Oh, and we moved to a new apartment! interested to know where it is? Have a look at this Google Map I made:

View Larger Map

Hopefully it shows up. I think Internet Explorer has some issues with it, so use Firefox.

We moved on the 8th on January, and we have been busy unpacking and planning our housewarming party, scheduled for tomorrow! Let me know if I forgot to invite you. Be be forewarned, it could have been for a reason! (j/k, or am I?)

Some things we’ve been preparing:

The drinks fridge. Hopefully people won’t go home thirsty…

The “bar”. I tried to get some key ingredients for the popular cocktails…

I’ll be sure to manage my alcohol intake at this party so I can be sober enough to take photos. Rest assure, I’ll post them to flickr “as it happens”.

I got an email today in my company email box from the conference organizer that I dealt with couple of months ago (for the BCP conference).  The email was a Christmas Greetings.

It’s classic!

Go ahead, click on it to see the full size!

Imagine all the little people graphics are animated.  They’re jumping up and down (including Santa), doing whatever it is they’re doing…  My favorite is the “If you are a girl, wish you more beautiful (pic) more considerately (pic), where the first pic is of the girl nitting, presumably a sweater, and the second is of her making eggs.  “Make me eggs, woman!”

Pure classic.

And the big bunny at the bottom, well, he’s just walking in place…

But, don’t get me wrong - I like it.  It’s certainly the thought that counts!

Not sure if you’ve been following my flickr photo stream, but I posted a photo I took the other day of a notice in my elevator.  I knew it had something to do with turning off electricity as it had the “dian”, or 电 character, a date (Dec. 20), and a time range (00:00 - 02:00).  So I pretty much guessed what this was about.

Thanks to one of my few loyal readers, Ray, who can read Chinese, he translated it for me in the flickr photo comments:

Power outage from 00:00 to 02:00 on Dec 20. Affected area: South region building 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, Kindergarten, Office building and elevator.

Well, I’m in building 7 (By the way, that’s 6 numbered buildings, and the office buildings, which is pretty much the whole complex! [almost]).

I’m a great pre-planner!

I went out to dinner last night (Dec 19) with some friends, we then had a few drinks, and left for home around 11:30pm.  Plenty of time, I thought. 10-15 mintues to get home - time to spare!  Ha!

I did get home around 11:45.  The lights in the building were still on - a good sign!  I enter my building, and low and behold - they turned off the elevators already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Both of them!

People: remember, I live on the 26th floor.  Minus the superstitious floors, so I effectively live on the 23rd floor.  Ouch.

I managed to get into my apartment before the whole building shut down…  No TV for me…

Ray requested I post some photos I have taken with the N82.  Well, here are some, but go ahead and check out my flickr site for all photos tagged “N82″.  There aren’t many yet, but I intend on changing that!

Oh, and it seems that Shozu is getting much better at geotagging the photos automatically!

I woke up today to the first snow of 2007. While it’s not a nice thick dry snow (it’s actually thin and wet and the roads are gross), it was a nice sight, nonetheless. But then I remembered “SHIT! I’ve got to get a taxi!!!”

Good thing that I’m getting in the habit of waking up earlier (7:20 as opposed to ~8 - which means I can get out of the door by 8 instead of 8:30 whcih gives me an hour to get to work - for the just in case moments we all love…)

Waiting for a taxi wasn’t too bad - 20 minutes or so - and it was a “hei che“, not a proper taxi (i.e. unofficial car-for-hire - hei means black, che means car.) Normally if I take a taxi, it costs ~30 RMB to get to the office (depending on traffic). The “hei che” normally charges 40 RMB. The driver this morning charged me 35 RMB - I think he was a reletively new “hei che” driver as he probably should have charged even more due to the snow…

Oh well.

Picture Time!

The above is a picture of the road and trees in front of my office. You can see the snow isn’t real thick.. but it’s a start for the season!

As China is getting in the yule-time spiri, Christmas Trees, like the one pictured above, are popping up around town. This one is in front of my office. Sorry for the out of focusness (hmm, that’s not a word…). Also, the flash on my camera was unintentionally on, so it gave a neat (I think so) effect reflecting off the falling snow.

So I guess I should retire the ‘ol “N95″ category for this blog.

“Wait, What?!”

…you may be asking yourself… Yes, I did just buy it in June of this year, so that’s… 5 months and a few days of ownership. Man, I think that’s a record for me!

Here’s the reason:

I want an iPhone. There. I said it.

My dutch friend (yes, the fact that he is Dutch has just about zero relevance here) accused me of “flip flopping”. Yes, I would agree with that….

I went from using an Apple for my first computer, to hating Apple, to buying an iPod, then Airport Express, then a Powerbook, to hating Apple again, to installing Linux on my Powerbook (a post is in the works), and now back to wanting to get an iPhone.

Can I not just make up my mind and stick with it?!

Simple answer: No. With technology, I cannot make up my mind. 

Great, but didn’t I just buy the N95? Money don’t grow on trees, son!

Read the title of this entry: I sold the N95 for RMB 2600 (yes, he did a good look over today and found all the nicks and scratches….). I’ll be in Portland, Oregon on the 21st of December. I’ll buy the iPhone there for US$399. Tax free. That’s around ~2950 RMB. So, it’s a NETT ~300 (depending of exchange rate fluctuation from now ’til then) for a new phone.

The ONLY two things I am going to miss are the 5mpx camera and the GPS mapping. But I can live with that. I have a nice 6mpx Canon point-and-shoot, and maybe I’ll get the Garmin Nuvi. Maybe not…

China don’t have no 3G, so don’t need that shiz.

One of the things I critisized theiPhone was in the past was the lack of earth-shattering technical advances - specifically that it only packed 2.5G (Edge).

The N95 worked on just about any network available on earth. quad band GSM, UMTS, WCDMA, X59TQP, AJAX75, POS1000, whatever blah blah. (Ok, not the U.S. 3G network, but I don’t live there, so…) I now realize: who gives a crap!? I don’t travel much outside of China…

Seeing that China won’t be getting 3G (or at least a western-standard for 3G) any time soon, it doesn’t make any difference.

Also, let’s not forget that Beijing just upgraded to EDGE. So the iPhone fits perfectly here.

So, Chris is a Mac geek now!

Not so fast there. I am perfectly happy with my Linux set-up at home. I still don’t like OSX, for various reasons. And I still don’t support Apple’s sadistic genius business model(s), as a consumer, that is.

But remember - I won’t be using the iPhone in the states. I’ll be hapilly using it, unlocked, on the China Mobile network. No profit sharing from me! I’m sticken it to the “man”!