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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…

Mel and I went to the Nv Ren Jie (女人街, Woman’s Street) Flower and Fish market and bough an aquarium and some fish.

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!

I went out today and drove past the TVCC building (the one that just short of burned down) and snapped a few shots.

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 finally got around to setting up my FON router.  I was given one free by a fellow Beijing Linux User Group member, on the condition I blog about it.  Well, a year later is, well, late, but better than never, eh?

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.

My Toastmasters group had a social gathering yesterday, and this time, we did something healthy (as opposed to eat and drink like we do at the Linux group, j/k), we played Badminton.

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.

Am going to Guangzhou to the semiannual China Toastmasters conference where we’ll learn all kinds of great new techniques of making bread.  In May, it was held in Shanghai.

Will be going by train – 22 hours. Nice!

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

Last night (November 19) was the 6th Anniversary party for the BLUG – Beijing Linux User Group.  Exoweb was nice enough to host the party, yet again, for the 2nd year in a row!  Excellent office / environment for a party.

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

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

Well, it’s Monday – the day after the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Things around the city seem to be pretty much the same – the car ban is still in effect and they still x-ray bags in the subway… I imagine these measures, and many more, will remain until at least the end of the Paralympic Games in September.

The question I have now, is whether our restaurant on the Siemens campus here has green beans (bian dou) and tofu (doufu).  During the Olympics, these two items (and maybe more, I don’t know) were not available “due  to the Olympics”.   Don’t ask me where the logic is here…

I’ll check during lunch today if I can get some toufu.  Let’s see if they try giving me the excuse “because of the Olympics” again – I’ll shoot back last night it ended.  So where’s the toufu?

BTW, I am a bit late, we saw some more events since the baseball photos I uploaded last week.  On Friday, we went to an Athletics event in the “birds nest” and Sunday, we went to the Men’s Volleyball final!  That was an exciting match!  Will upload photos in due time.

On Saturday, we were lucky enough to be offered Baseball tickets (at face value) to the USA-Canada game.

At first, it looked as if Canada would beat the U.S., with a score of 0-4.  But, they must have forgotten they were playing a game because they let the U.S. score 5 runs to win the game 5-4.

For more photos, check out my flickr set.