Condition of air-condition

If here you stay without AC at work, you... go home.

It was a hell hot week last week, and at weekend our AC just could not cope with it, so it ... passed away.

Then company which takes care of it in Tsinghua Campus needed 2 days to get someone to fix it. Tuesday was just incredible hot, outside wind was helping to breathe, but inside TIARA there could be only us making winds on our seats who could help (however we'd be making Stellar Winds in our computers), so after few hours of sauna, I just quitted to pretend being Finnish in the Tropic of Cancer, and went home. Under my own AC and a fan.

Clever decision.

After the heat in the streets lost its power for a promile (when sun went to Europe), we went for RT-Mart. And I allowed myself, for a first time in almost 4 months here, luxury of spending 3.8 eur for a bottle of wine ("Sizanani", South African red, Merlot/Pinotage/Shiraz), quite decent one, cheapest of a kind there in the shop, buty I am sure better than any of French or Italian in the double price,even. Taste quite hard, of a kind of middle class Spanish Reserva. Good, I go well with it.

I also added to luxury piece of cheddar cheese from N.Zealand, also primer for this time, even I bought a (german) butter and some decent tost. All together 10 eur I spent on myself, ghosh, what a crime! I should go to confess, immediately ;-) .

Not that I'd feel some nostalgy for Western food, but here is virtually impossible to buy Muesli, and surviving on breakfasts of pure oeat flakes is rather impossible. Mueslix, American breed of muesli,is a)too expensive, b) it seems it is more flakes than dried fruits? Even if I'd have money and and wish to buy REAL milk here (where? This what they sell here as milk did not even meet the cow in the way to shop, I think), it would hardly be enough. So...luxury. Heh!

I got hooked on Sudoku. I learned to do it when flying to Europe last time, and now I loaded one magnificent program for it in my Treo and am jogging my brains.
See it on http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/pdas/palm/myprogs/sudoku/ ,
my thanks to Andrew Gregory, it's really well done PDA application.

Funny thing, but helps, I really feel my mathematical synapses re-connecting. Obviously relying on ZEUS to solve my maths for too long leaves serious scars on my own mathematical thinking. Time to refresh it, or I will again finish with some serious mathematical obsession of the type of Differential Forms or so. I know myself!

Have a nice hot days, wherever you are! And stay away of snow, also-Times of Weird Weather came!

Beer for Wili; war story.

It was a long time ago. 15 years.

May 17, 1992, student dormitory 'Sava' in Zagreb, Croatia.

How is it when they kill someone who gave you his place in the student dormitory? In Croatia, then freshly recognised country after break-up of Yugoslavia, student dormitories were financed by government, and if you managed to get the place, you could live much cheaper than renting an apartment. Criteria were good degrees. I had too bad ones and did not get my place in the year 1991/1992, but friend of a friend, Wili, 5th year of Veterinary study, obtained it.

My friend's girlfriend was a refugee from Dalj, and Wili gave place to me, that we would make place for her.

Wili could sell his place, it was common to do, for some 700DM. Zagreb was full of refugees, and dormitories were very popular hiding places for young people from Croatia and Bosnia, no problem to sell the place. But he gave it to me, we agreed I treat him with beer "when chance". Wili was a Jew, one of 2000 small community in Croatia, please do not tell me jokes about money-greed of Jews.

Wili had to come every month to personally pay the rent of the room, as it was a demand by dormitory rules, to avoid manipulations. For him, who was spending most time in Austria then, where his family sent him away from everyday bombing of Osijek, his city (he was the single child in family), it was a burden to come. But he did it regularly, and no problems for us.

Then his father in Osijek died of heart infarct. Not hard to happen, with almost everyday bombardments of the city.

And Wili came to fathers funeral. When he went, by bike, to buy apaurine pills for his distressed mother, bombshell found him, and they had to scratch him down from the walls of his house.

We would say: "this was the one with his signature on it. If it is your fate, you can't escape it, hide in Austria or on Mars, it will find you."

Irony: it was 2 days AFTER the last (20th) truce was signed in Sarajewo between Yugoslavian army and Croatia. May 17th 1992 is considered as end of the war in Croatia. Wili was one of last victims.

It gives a weird feeling to think about this now, in this "normal" world. Our "normality" then obviously was something completely different.

And I have to drink a beer every May 17th, for Wili. As I never managed to go with Wili to treat him for the place he gave to me. It is as lighting a candel.

Thanks for the place then, Wili.

Hong Kong & Macau

During the last Golden Week in Chinese history, we decided to visit Hong Kong. The last, as from the next year (Mainland) Chinese will not have one week free for the 1st may, but more moderate holidays, as in the rest of the world.
Sure, in Taiwan we did not have any free day, how they could celebrate not-working? Unanimaginable.

Hong Kong is for Taiwanese what Trieste was for former Yugoslavia: place for shopping. Up to the level that tourist agents sell packages flight+hotel+bon for 10kg more luggage :-D . It is 1.5 hour flight from Taoyuan Intl. and it really feels as jumping to the nearby city for a stroll in the markets and shopping malls.
We came at night, and our first impression was glow of the Hong Kong island, as visible from Kowloon.

Mala shopping, yes ;-)

Hong Kong deserves its fame completely ,it is 7 trillion people dense packed piece of land with tall skyscrapers and feeling of Jackie Chan movie everywhere you go. Incredible place, but liveable, really. There are even some trees ;-)

No, it is not at all so bad, Kowloon, from the window of YMCA hotel nearby Mong Kok:

Classical view of street in Hong Kong:

Notice thet the double decker is a TRAM, not bus!

OK, there is traffic jam sometimes, and there are also busses, as we see:

But this you could expect in such a city, no? Use metro, it is cheap and convenient. Ferries from Kowloon to Hong Kong also operate well, albeit crowdy...it reminds Istanbul a bit. Here one viewe to waters of Hong Kong:

They have also longest fast track, going uphill from the center, 800m long

Funny is it is one way. so up to 10 AM it is downhill, when people goto work, and later it is uphill. Views from it are...classical.

Also classical?

Sometimes Escher would have fun, one of the series of such views:

Sure, I could go like this for next 100 pics, but it is time to move to ...Portugal.

Macau is smaller (some half million) city, but is really a strange one to see here in Asia. Portuguese left more mark here than English in Hong Kong, I am curious why? Only longer time spent here, or it has something to do with Catholic Church etc.? Please yourself.

Really as in Porto or Lisabon:

And it is not?

Well, some minor elements are different :-D

They also have their 'Gedaenkniskirche' (like in Berlin):

Packing density is much larger in Macao than anywhere in Europe:

Home altars for burning incenses are here differently posted than in Taiwan:

You can even find some bike-rikshas

In general, view IS a bit different than Europe...and Asia. It is Macau, mix.

This IS Portugal, anyone who was there will remember their crazy passion for loooong bridges. In Macau it also left some trace:

This is our vehicle for coming back to Hong Kong, one hour fast ride.

Interesting event our last day in Hong Kong: we found, by chance, 2nd hand book store. One exactly as should be in Megalopolis, books of mixed provenience, really a collection from everywhere. Owner book-wormish, real book-lover. We chatted some half hour, he exposed to us his philosophy of book-sharing, some funny stories about people leaving books anonymous in front of the door, for him to protect them... As books in sub-tropic are endangered, highly endangered species. In fact, I failed to find some big book store, anything like Page One in "101" in Taipei. Sure, we were there for too short, I believe there is some really good one there, but...for sure HKong is not the city of books. In fact, culture here is something else.

And then back home...megalopolis of the Hong Kong airport will from now on have much different, more familiar taste for us.

I bought there, and am just reading Chun Sue 'Beijing Doll', and again, utter vacuum of thought, some of the sense of 'Christianne F.' in Germany 30 years ago {!}. Seems they are somewhere on that level now, maybe coming to 'eighties. Interesting.
No history, culture or geography in first 100 pages, and I am sure there will not be in the next (and last) 100 pages. "What for? We are Chinese!", as if everything here would be speaking.