Great Asian Internet disruption of 2006 continued

Although 90% of the sites I visit are not affected, I have noticed that sites hosted in Hong Kong or Mainland China are loading VERY slowly indeed. Sites and e-mail accounts hosted over there.

Furthermore, many friends in Hong Kong and China continue to complain that maybe they can get Skype to work, but not MSN Messenger and that foreign sites (such as blogspot blogs) load very, very slowly for them if at all.

Great Asian Internet Disruption of 2006

The earthquake last night near Taiwan seems to have caused quite a lot of Internet access issues:

My colleagues in China report huge problems accessing foreign sites and Hotmail and Yahoo mail. I, in Taipei, Taiwan, however, have had absolutely no problems today accessing any of the "usual suspect" sites such as Yahoo, Google, Gmail, Blogspot, Techcrunch, etc.

One friend in Taiwan indicated that he is accessing Web sites rather slowly though.

Photos from ITU with Hulion

At ITU Hong Kong with Hulion.















Albert Yao and me.















The Hulion (video conferencing) gang and me.

Friday afternoon stroll through Shenzhen

A random walk through Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China on a Friday afternoon.

E-learning seminar video clips

Distance education and e-learning are taking off in China. The following are some video clips from a seminar held by iTech Holdings Limited on the subject.

Street vendors at night in Shenzhen

Street vendors at night in Shenzhen.

The New China?

Interesting juxtaposition. The New China?

Dim Sum Breakfast

Breakfast may be the best meal of the day in Canton (Guangdong Province). Dim Sum. Here is a video of a typically crowded dim sum restaurant in the morning in Zhuhai, China (across the border from Macau).

Random walk through Shenzhen

A random walk through a residential community in Shenzhen.

Amusing pirated DVD covers in China

Check out this pirated DVD cover as seen in China for the movie on 9/11, "Flight 93." As is the case here, the priates simply construct a hybrid English and Chinese cover with random bits of

English inserted no matter what the meaning.

The first photo mentions that Flight 93 is "Terrifving! - Thrm trlr Boct."

The second and third photos mention that the film is quite jovial and entertaining:

"Nick Love'S follow up to The Football Factory may be the best bloke film of the year."

"Deliciously entertaining. - The Observer"

"Savagely funny. - Nuts"

Fantasia Investment

Only in China would some sort of investment company name itself "Fantasia Investment!" :-) I cetainly would not entrust my funds to "Fantasia" Investment!

只有在中国会有投资公司的英文名字是 " Fantasia" 投资. "Fantasia " 英文的意思差不多是 "幻想".

Annoying elevator ads in China

Almost all residential and commercial elevators in China (as well as elevator lobbies) have small monitors that broadcast, almost 24 hours a day, annoying video ads. Here is a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoG5LSCawfk

To me, this says a lot about Chinese culture. I am sure most people in the West would not accept such invasions of privacy.

However, more and more Chinese are indicating to me that they are finding these LCD monitors annoying as they proliferate to each and every aspect of Chinese life - elevators, buses, trains, taxis, super markets, etc.

Amusing pirated DVD covers in China

Pirated DVDs are still on sale ubiquitously on the streets (and in shops) in China. Of interest are the covers of the DVDs which often have rather poor or amusingly incorrect English.

Witness the cover of this collection of 24 episodes:

"Wenty Four"

Hunanese Cuisine (湘菜) + Beer = Crazy Delicious

China is chockablock with restaurants serving delicious, spicy and greasy Hunanese cuisine. The food is very good but spicy. Furthermore, since Chairman Mao was from Hunan, often eateries have a Red Guard, Cultural Revolution or Maoist motif. Below are shots from a Hunan restaurant in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province:

How would you like that stir fried?

Waitress in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China discussing the methods for stir frying the ordered vegetables. At a Hunanese cuisine restaurant.

Tea kung fu

A tea master pours tea out of a long-spouted kettle. It's a sort of herb and flower-ladden tea mix. This was taken in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China. In an Hunanese restaurant.

Really bad air in Shenzhen

Really bad air pollution in Shenzhen:

Breathe the air in southern China - lose 3 weeks of life over the next 5 years

香港大学研究员发布： 未来5年呼吸香港的空气就失去150，000“人生年”。 平均每人失去3个星期人生。

http://totallyhk.scmp.com/thkarts/health/ZZZN97TH8JE.html

By Robin Kwong

Delays in combating air pollution can be deadly, sometimes literally so. By the most optimistic projections, Hong Kong's air quality won't significantly improve until 2010, the deadline set by the government for local power companies to meet emission reduction targets.

Likewise, while several large-scale power plants, fuelled by relatively cleaner liquefied natural gas, are to be commissioned in Guangdong by mid 2007, how much less coal and oil will be burnt as a result depends on energy demand in the province.

In the meantime, Hong Kong will still be paying the costs. But how much will air pollution cost us in these intervening five years?

At the South China Morning Post's request, the University of Hong Kong's department of community medicine has worked out a rough estimate of life years lost as a result of the wait.

"We have estimated the effect if we could remove all air pollution right now compared with if we removed it in five years - that is, what is the difference caused by the delay," said the department's Dr Sarah McGhee.

Measuring just the impact on mortality rates for people aged 40 and above, Professor McGhee said the cost amounted to 150,000 life years, or about three weeks per person. This was a conservative estimate, partly because it did not take into account the impact on younger people.

Life years, moreover, may be just the tip of the iceberg in cost evaluation, because it does not factor in ill health and loss to quality of life. "We can't estimate all of this effect yet, but we know it must be substantial," she said.

"Since we will not remove all air pollution, we would only save some proportion of that effect in real life, but it gives us an idea of what we might aim for eventually."

China's air pollution - the world's problem now

The New York Times as reported on Boingboing.net confirms the horror of China's air pollution -- now the world's problem:

China is already the world's second-biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to surpass the United States as the biggest. Roughly a third of China is exposed to acid rain. A recent study by a Chinese research institute found that 400,000 people die prematurely every year in China from diseases linked to air pollution.

Nor does China's air pollution respect borders: on certain days almost 25 percent of the particulate matter clotting the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental experts in California predict that China could eventually account for roughly a third of the state's air pollution.

However, an interesting analysis ensues -- 400,000 deaths a year is only about 175 deaths in Guangdong Province each year (given that the population is 70,000,000 in that province).