Beijing MUG gathering

I attended the BeiMac 5th anniversary gathering today. the turnout was great with about 70 people showing up for the special occasion. They had a display of old apple computers which was really nostalgic like the venerable old Classic, LC, first generation powerbook 145B (which really look like a brick). old warhorses would point out museum pieces like the Classic to new users who are more used to PowerBooks and iPods.
the song n dance sequence to kick off the event was somewhat painful, altho I think they were trying very hard. but my best accolade goes to the great organisation. everyone were given well-designed event passes (can use for future events as well) and new membership passes were issued at the end of the session,

BeiMac is well organised with many services like Macinwiki, news letters n forums and a help line. I can see that the team put in a lot of effort to promote mac usage. we were told that the MUG started off in 2002 with 7 members and now there's 370 members.

A comm member said that she was not comfortable intel processors in the new macs (hear hear!) and worse, seeing ppl running windows on mac! must liberate the window users (I like the edited revolutionary poster they used in the Keynote). we were told that there will be an OSX Leopard sneak peek when its released.

Interesting strawpoll of those present showed that majority used QQ (Chinese version ICQ) and MSN (clucks of disapproval). turns out very few used AIM or google talk and only 2 iChat users (I was one of them). apparently it cost RMB800 (S$180) for an iChat account in China? as a service, David Feng (the BeiMac Pres) demo-ed BeiMac Chat, accessable from the BeiMac site.

the iPhone presentation was really cool. BeiMac will demo the actual hardware, once release in US in June. Straw poll: everyone want to buy one. bulk purchase was mooted when iPhone is released.
a very brave vendor did a demo of Parallels: for those who need to run windows XP in their work (egads!). Seeing Windows desktop on Apple machine was quite disturbing, I watched with shocked disbelief. There were sniggers when it seemed the thing was gonna hang. Good thing was that Parallel can support linux, solaris apart from windows and mac os. Can partition hard disk into diff servers. the chap was actually quite apologetic and said that he's a mac user (fearing a lynch mob?).

BeiMac gatherings are quite different from the relaxed Mac meetups in Singapore, where we just gather in MacDonalds or Burger King as long as there were free WiFi. In S'pore, we like the personal interactions and sharing of useful applications and trouble-shooting. In Beijing, I think the mac users prefer more structure and like presentations and demos.

soba

tried this "quaint" Soba joint in a local neighborhood. it came with a good review in one of Beijing's english magazines so we decided to give it a shot. the chef was trained in Hokkaido and Kyoto and the specialty was hand-made soba.
the soba was great! Robina's only complain was that the sauce was too salty. the helpful owner/chef promised that he can reduce the saltiness for Robina. we think that the chef had to accomodate to local tastes.
Robina ordered cold soba while I tried the soba with ribs. it was good with a light broth and tender ribs.
the other speciality was "jiaozi", Japanese-styled meat dumplings. actually in Japan it would be considered as Chinese food. I liked the Hokkaido jiaozi the best. gobbled them down too fast to snap a pic. btw, the chicken wings were good as well!

unfortunately the joint took over from a Hong Kong style cafe and retained the name. While we were there, people would wander in and when they discovered that the place was under new management, they would whine and complain. for crying out loud, complaining wouldn't make the owner change their menu in 5 seconds! one group spent 10 mins griping before they dragged their collective asses out of the place. since it was a small joint, Robina decided that it was no fun having a bunch of locals talking at the top of their voices behind our shoulders.

technorati tag:Beijing

pork knuckle

I experimented with making roast pork knuckle, minus sauerkraut though. followed a simple recipe, boiling the knuckle in broth (chicken stock, chopped onions, carrots and garlic with vinegar and beer) for an hour before roasting to make the skin crispy. glazed it with a honey and beer mixture to turn the knuckle golden-brown. turned out not too bad, the boiling kept the meat moist and avoided drying-out if I had simply roasted it direct. I added oven-roasted vegies (onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, fresh fennel and fennel bulbs) to the left-over broth to make a vege stew.
tossed in two drumsticks into the oven as well. Robina enjoyed the meal and so did Sally who got to try some of the meat for dinner.

epidermal bread anyone??

Robina and I was on a hunt for decent bread last evening when went to a Taiwanese bakery franchise nearby. Both of us read with jaw-dropping amazement at the english names of the types of bread on offer...
It says "Almond milk of Epidermal Bread" when the chinese name refers to a conventional almond milk bread. Robina's craving for bread was instantly killed by the mental image of a baker shedding "epidermal" flakes aka dandruff on the dough.
the next perplexing bun on offer was a cryptic "coast moat of Song" when it was actually pork floss with dried seaweed (in Chinese). I don think even Google translator would churn out such a weird phrase. A point of mitigation, the other signs were OK like Ham and Cheese bun etc. but the two sure beat the "Anus Hospital" signs that I have seen around the city.

Well, we could expect more language police efforts in Beijing from now till 2008.

From a recent AFP report: "But there has also been criticism of inaccuracies in written English, and the city government recently launched a campaign to improve the quality of translations and remove embarrassing linguistic gaffes.

Teams from the city government are touring the streets correcting street signs and rewriting restaurant menus.

Classic menu offerings, including 'fried crap', 'corrugated iron beef' and 'cow bowel in sauce', are rapidly disappearing.

Also doomed are other linguistic offenders. Beijing's Park of Ethnic Minorities is signposted 'Racist Park', while emergency exits at Beijing's international airport read: 'No entry on peacetime'."

technorati tag:Beijing

war zone birding

is it some form of displacement activity or an attempt to find some moments of sanity or serenity while dodging bullets and IEDs? but some US soldiers had taken up birding while on active duty in Iraq. One Iraq veteran,Jonathan Trouern-Trend, had maintained a bird blog, later published a book based on the blog. Even Michael Yon, a freelance war correspondent had penned an article about birds of Bagdhaq.

one instance of wartime birding I remembered was Major Meinertzhagen (British Army, not German) who charted the migration of storks across Palestine during WWI. this incident was featured in the movie, "The Lighthorsemen".

actually war zone birding is not surprising, considering the DMZ along the 38th parallel is teeming with wild boar, barking deer and otters despite the minefields, barbed wire and armed guards on both sides of the North-South Korean border. Nature is very resilient, it will bounce back if given half a chance. I just read this report about the wildlife recovering along the former Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia. Tigers and elephants now roamed the intensely bombed border.
the closest I got to a war zone or actually birding in a war zone was while travelling along the Lebanese border. There were actually kestrels hovering just besides the highway. On top of Masada fortress on the shores of Dead Sea, the endemic Tristram's Starling (see above) were as common as mynahs (they looked like mynahs as well).

technorati tag:birding