What an eventful last three days it has been.
I had a hard time finding internet. Now, at long last, after three eventful days of travel, heat, meet & greet, fun, and exhaustion, I’m finally sitting here doing my thing, blogging through the UBC VPN.
Flight
I had a wonderful flight over here to Beijing from Vancouver. I was aboard Air China’s CA991, on an Airbus A300-200. I gotta admit, the flight was the best flying experience I’ve had. To start off with, the plane was nice, new, ‘n shiny. Each person has an individual TV/entertainment system mounted on the back of the seat in front. Did I mention that the food was great? The whole experience and plus the pleasentness factor make the flight quite a quick ‘n smooth sail. After a cat nap and a movie or two, I found myself strolling inside the new Terminal 3 of the Beijing Airport. All I can say is: impressive. Impressive not because of the sheer scale of the buildings and fancy lightrails and all the pazzazz, but impressive because of the facelift of the whole system, the whole nation as a whole.
Oh, and this guy sat beside me 
(do the glasses look familar?)
First Looks of Beijing
It is 2008, and the Olympics are coming here afterall. When I first stepped out of the airport, into the Beijing friday-night-crazy-like-it’s-crazy rush hour, I was simply amazed. Lanes on Beijing roads simply serve no purpose. It’s a constant struggle between cars and pedestrains.
What about the weather… the pollution, you ask? I’ve so far stayed for 4 days. Day 1, after landing through a thick coat of clouds, the sky wasn’t exactly clear. So no, the first day wasn’t the great. But the second and third days, however, were simply terrific. Blue, cloudless skies where one can see miles down. Here are some photos:
@ Tiananmen sqaure. Cops everywhere. Every bloody where. We even had to go through a bag check to enter the square. But hey, I ain’t complaining. I see skies of blue and… traces of white t-shirts here and there . Simply beautiful ( <– maybe that didn’t make too much sense gramatically. I’m typing this on the spot… kinda rushed).
@ the National Statium, aka “Bird’s Nest”. Ahh.. see the uh.. blue sky ‘n beautiful sunshine? Happy now, BBC, China-bashers?
More Thoughts
Internet sure was hard to find. Maybe the area I was staying in is somewhat remote (XuanWu District) but there were hardly any wireless connections. I went to WangFuJing — downtown Beijing (where there’s supposedly some sorta wifi) — but could not find a spot to sit! All the cafes and places were swarmed with people. Starbucks was “riduuuuunculus”! Ahh…the sea of people.
Alrighty better pack it in. Will leave you with this:
(Don’t mind the typos in this post!)
14.Jul.08 
Life 
Comments (7)
Here I am, at long last, sitting in the food court of the Vancouver International Airport (YVR), having finished a Japanese beef udon, and sipping on a complementary cup of cold water.
What a frantic couple of hours last night/this morning was! First there was the last-minute packing, then waking up at a not-so-early hour of 9:00 AM… I was hoping for a Toyota Prius on the way to the airport. Guess what? I had myself a nice ‘n shiny Prius waiting for me at the door!
It was quite an interesting cab driver I met. Com’on, how can you not tip him extra when he’s driving a Prius and listening to CBC Radio 2? What an awesome way to start off my day and my trip. I gotta say, the driver I met this morning was the friendliest cab driver I’ve ever met. North-Eastern African guy, works from 3 - 8, got two kids… hahaha now that was totally off topic!
Check-in wasn’t that bad; we were here early and managed to avoid the line-ups and get ourselves (my mom and I) two seats next to the window.
Current Vancouver time: 11:13 AM. Beijing time: 2:13 AM.
10.Jul.08 Life Comment (1)
10:40 PM. Frantically packing.
Now 12:13 AM. Or uh… should I say, 3:13 PM Beijing time? Almost done packing.
@ 1:07 AM Thursday morning. Almost there. I prevail in an epic battle against a gigantic black moth. Wonder if I’ll get any sleep tonight (this morning).
@2:32 AM. The packing’s kinda wrapping up now. Long hours ahead of me.
09.Jul.08 Life Comment (1)
I guess waking up at noon isn’t the best way to spend my last day in Vancouver. But hey, one has to rejuvenate oneself after a 342-km drive to the Seattle Premium Outlets and before an eleven-and-a-half hour flight to Beijing?
Frankly — and not so surprisingly, I haven’t started packing yet. All the pre-trip shopping these days have left me in a daze (especially after staying up for 48 hours the day before the long drive… but that’s a long story )
Hmm… what do I want to talk about today? Let’s see here… Ah ha! I finally got my Thinkpad T61 up and running. I hate to say admit this, but, it’s running Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the difference of night and day from what I’m used to using — Gentoo Linux (who’s latest release fiiiiiinally came out on July the 6th, three whole months late). I have to admit it, Ubuntu “just works”. The installation itself takes less than 30-minutes. Afterwards, the laptop just boots up and runs: all the hardware … just works — sounds, wi-fi, special keyboard buttons. I was simply amazed.
(This is gonna be a bit of directionless post where I’ll ramble on purposelessly… hang in there )
Now my T61 is running smoothly on Ubuntu Hard Heron 8.04. Everything runs flawlessly, even including automated fan control through tp-fancontrol and the fingerprint reader. Now I’ll have to get vpn running before the trip, so that I can keep on blogging (through the UBC VPN) while I’m in China (damn censors.. my blog’s blocked in China!) and browse the net freely.
That’s about all for now. If there’s anyone out there reading this (anyone?), stay tuned!
09.Jul.08 Life Comments (0)
It’s 5 minutes after 6:00 AM. I’m up, munching down a mango-flavoured, yogurt-like tofu snack, listening to Tom Allen on CBC Radio 2’s Music and Company. The sky is gray out – really can’t complain though. I really can’t remember the last time I was up this early. Oh, wait, I can: I went out for a run one eventful morning of May at 5:30 AM, after pulling an all-nighter (that’s probably what messed up my internal clock).
For the past few days, I had the worst experience getting up every morning. It’s not that I felt really tired or anything: I’d drift awake at 9:00 or so, turn to my right side and battle with the alarm clock, or turn to my left and battle with the blinding glare. I’d wake up all grumpy, miss my breakfast, and even lunch.
I then realized that for the past little bit, it’s not that I couldn’t wake up, but had a terrible experience doing so. I happened to stumple onto Tim Ferriss’s post “Relax Like A Pro: 5 Steps to Hacking Your Sleep” (in my opinion, only the first step isn’t ultra-extreme):
1. Consume 150-250 calories of low-glycemic index foods in small quantities (low glycemic load) prior to bed.
Morning fatigue and headache isn’t just from sleep debt or poor sleep. Low blood sugar following overnight fasting is often a contributing factor. Just prior to bed, have a small snack such as: a few sticks of celery with almond butter, a mandarin orange and 5-8 almonds, or plain low-fat (not fat-free) yoghurt and an apple. Ever wonder how you can sleep 8-10 hours and feel tired? This is part of the explanation. Make a pre-bed snack part of your nutritional program.
1-2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil (120-240 calories) can be used in combination with the above to further increase cell repair during sleep and thus decrease fatigue. It tastes like a mixture of cat urine and asparagus, so I recommend pinching your nose while consuming it — thanks Seth Roberts, PhD. for this tip — or using capsules.
I figured that since I’ve been pushing my body so hard these days, and the fact that all this work wasn’t supported by a proper diet (which was getting worse day after day due to getting up late), my body was really in debt the past few days.
So here’s what I had before going to bed last night (yes, last night, as in before 12:00 AM ): an apple — which made me even more hungry, a granola bar, some juice, some antioxidants. Basically loaded myself up with some fast glucose.
Voila. Here I am. Up at 6:20 AM. Alive and bouncing!
(@ 6:43 AM… pffft Urban Fare’s breakfast items aren’t even ready! I’m catching the last Cage Match on Music and Company! 
)
25.Jun.08 Life Comments (0)
