ZHONG GUO REN

I’m here at the office, working on the Mono release. I got in at 10 in the morning, Erik gave me a ride on his Porsche.

We’re all pulling our hair out, working really hard fixing all pending issues. At 1:00pm, the power suddenly went out. The entire Kendell Sq. area. The network equipment has back-up power, so we still have net connections going out, but all our desktops just died. The lights are all off, I turned on my ThinkLight.

It’s so dramatic, it’s just like the movies.

Update #1: Hrm. 1:30pm, power just came back on. Back to work.

Update #2: 2:30pm. Power is out, again. SO MUCH LOVE.

Update #3: 2:50pm. Power is back.

Last update: Erik woke me up at 8:50. We got to work by 10:00. I got home before midnight. At 3:30, I’m going to sleep now. I got this done.

I finally watched Spring Subway tonight. It was very good. The score was really good. Cinematography was also superb.

The reviews are unanimously good. It’s nothing earth shattering, but it makes me feel good to see such a polished film coming out of China.

Jeri told me she saw Green Tea (Lu Cha) at the DC film festival last week. She didn’t say much about it though. Before reading the reviews, I already envisioned it as one of the image-heavy type of movie — really beautiful shots, brilliant colors (thanks to my man Christopher Doyle), but rather light on the storyline. Judging from Jeri’s response, as well as from the reviews, I guess that must have been the case.

I haven’t seen Green Tea yet, but I bet the sky above Beijing must be stunningly blue in the movie; it definitely was in Spring Subway. However, that is simply not true

: the sky is Beijing is nasty. At least, that’s how I remembered it.

Even though I do like the polishness of these movies, somehow, I feel like it is only exposing this one side of China. This article also made a similar comment. This is all consistent with the impression I got from my last visit to China (Shenzhen, December 2003). There is this emphasis on presenting the shiny and the new in Modern China. Everything is brand-new and everything is chrome and glass. They sure look nice, but as my mom says, “these are model homes, if someone really lived there, it wouldn’t look like that”.

I have this image of a woman I saw in Hong Kong stuck in my head: I was with a friend, looking for some hair product at a cosmetics store. While queuing up for the checkout counter, this woman standing at the top of the line just kept on talking to the sales girl, going on and on about her SK II purchase. I knew she must be from China, she was speaking loudly in Mandarin. “How often do I put this on?”, “What happens if I forgot to apply the cream?”, etc.

Just as I was thinking to myself, “Oh, yet another one of these clueless mainlanders, fresh off the boat”

, I saw the price tag on the cashier’s display: nearly HKD$4,000, which translates to just about $500 US Dollars.

Satisfied with the answers to her questions, she picked up her purchases, turned her heels and strutted out of the store with another girlfriend of hers. She couldn’t have been in the store for more than 15 minutes.

It’s past 2:30 in the morning. I’m still at the office. I’m getting ready to leave though. It’s been a long day.

We will be shipping beta 1 of our product on Tuesday. I just finished putting it together tonight. Tomorrow, we will be testing the packages I put together and make sure there are no major flaws in them. After that, I’ll be making the set of final packages for this beta release. If all goes on schedule, we will meet the beta 1 milestone.

There will be beta 2 next. After that will be the grand finale — Version One Point Oh

.

I believe the glory that I will feel when we finally ship 1.0 is worth the amount of time I spend in the office. I hope I am not wrong.

I met David A. Smith and David Reed at XDevConf this afternoon. I got to see a live demostration of Croquet.

This picture to the right is a snap from a movie called Workaholic. I haven’t seen this movie yet.

First day of work. I wanted to wake up early, but ended up getting up at noon.

As I was heading out to work, I saw that I got all these mailings in my mailbox — two Ivy CDs I got cheap from Amazon Marketplace and Greencine also sent me 3 new DVDs.

Had dinner with my faux-Australian co-worker Mike at the Asian food court in Allston tonight. The Bulgogi Bibimbap

was tasty. Their language may sound harsh, but their food is damn tasty.

Started watching So Close after I got home, one of the DVDs I got in the mail. It’s supposed to be pretty good, but I just can’t concentrate: Shu Qi and Zhou Wei, two of the leads in the movie, spoke Mandarin, which makes sense because they’re from Taiwan and Mainland China. Karen Mok, on the other hand, is from Hong Kong, so she spoke Cantonese. If I watch the movie in Cantonese, then I get the horrible Cantonese dubbing when Shu Qi speaks; if I go for Mandarin, then it’s the other way round. I really don’t want to watch it in English, either. Maybe French?

p.s. If my last few postings were an indication of any sort of trend, it looks like I’ll be posting photos of beautiful Asian dark-haired women everytime I write here. Not that doing so is a necessarily bad thing…

I know it’s just a rip-off of jackass, but seeing this at 2 in the morning makes me homesick. The escalators are in the same neighborhood as where I live in Hong Kong.

I went to Chinatown and picked up some DVDs for cheap. The images in Hero still look stunning on my dinky little TV.

The storyline of Infernal Affairs 3 made more sense this 2nd time watching it, but compared to the original, it’s just not as good. Maybe it’s because they didn’t get Christopher Doyle again as their visual consultant.

I also picked up Leaving me loving you on VCD (it’s cheap). I got it because it’s supposed to be really beautifully shot, it’s a movie that will make you fall in love with Shanghai. I’ve never been to Shanghai, so I bought it to see how it looks like.

Verdict: The cinematography is only so-so, and it didn’t change my perception of Shanghai at all. I’m a fan of Wong Faye, but just like Okinawa Rendez-vous (oh, seeing that movie was a horrible date experience!), it’s just fluff. She was excellent in Chungking Express and she’s also in 2046, which Wong Kar Wai has been making for years. Hopefully it’ll be good.

Picked up another Chinese movie: Spring Subway. I’m not done with it yet, but this movie makes Beijing look good

. In reality, it’s all smoggy and nasty, with all the pollution from the factories and the sandstorms from the Gobi desert, but so far, the movie feels very modern and polished. They call this the “sixth generation” of Chinese cinema. Zhang Yimou (from Hero) is the “fifth generation”. I don’t know of any other directors from the previous generations.

I went to the Asian Supermarket with my Korean friend Jinn this afternoon. I learned that the word for flower in Korean is goht

— what a harsh sounding language!

I bought tons of ramen — I grew up with Damae Itcho and that’s why I go all the way to the Chinese store to get them. They’re nothing special, but I just like them.

Jinn, like Deanna before him, wouldn’t believe me that adding cheese to your ramen is not gross

.

Ce matin, j’ai pris mon dernier examen. Le resultat n’est pas si bon. J’espere que je ne vais pas la rater.

Finally took my last final this morning. Algorithms. 6 questions, I think I got one question completely wrong (it’s false

, not true

, doofus!), and part of another one wrong. Sigh. It really frustrates me that it takes 2 hours for me to do an exam (mid-term, or final), but he can probably example to us the answer within 10 mins.

Oh well, looking forward, at least I’m done

with this semester.

There is still lots of bureaucracy to deal with until I can get the paperwork straighten out so I can legally work this summer, for money.

Money. L’argent. Dinero. 金钱 (I hate simplified Chinese characters)

That’s not gonna stop me, though. I’m still gonna be in the office on Monday. Maybe Erik will pick me up on his Porsche.

I’m going to see Anthony this afternoon. That should be fun.

Spoke with Jeri for the first time on IM yesterday. Within 10 mins, we started talking about renzhi (人治) and fazhi (法治). We’re oh so

sophisticated.

In an attempt to make more friends, on Wednesday, I went to the monthly French Meetup at Trident with my friend Dan. It was pretty fun. Mostly older people though. Met this guy who also goes to the Japanese meetups. Maybe I’ll go next time.

I bought a copy of Norwegian Wood again last night. I got my first copy of the book when I was in high school, but it’s in Hong Kong now.

I read about half of it this afternoon. It really is as good as I remembered it. I found an excerpt of the original Japanese on-line and tried reading that for a bit as well.

I wanna get a copy of the Chinese translation, I first read that when I was 12 years old. Of all the versions of the book, I think it’s the Chinese translation that moved me the most.

I’ve been listening and recording shows off

I hope this doesn’t make people think I only listen to chick songs.

P.S
I got the US edition of the book. The cover is hideous compared to the British edition (see right). I miss buying books back home. We get the pretty British / Australian edition of books.