Bagels from Glick's

I like to eat bagels for lunch. I like to get my bagels from Glick's, which is a chain of Jewish bakery stores across Melbourne. Their logo is a picture of the founder:

I went to get my bagels yesterday. I was served by Mr. Glick himself!



Two things about Mr. Glick:

• He thinks tongs are unnecessary: Just grabbed the bagels and shoved them in the bag. Hey, when you're a baking god, germs just run away, right? Right?
• I ordered 7 bagels. He said "now how much is that". I said "7 8s are 56, so that's $5.60" and offered him $5.60. He looked totally lost. He started muttering "Well, I know 6 bagels is 4.80, that must be"...
  Several more confused seconds. I repeated "7 8s are 56, so that's $5.60". He's still completely at sea. Finally he just agrees to take my money.
  

So he may be a baking god, but it's a fair bet he's innumerate.

Still, he runs the biggest Jewish baking chain in the country. Well done, eh?

Back from China

Hello everyone. As you'd know by now, about three weeks ago I arrived back from China.

Best thing about being back: Family and food.

Life in China is so strange. Shop attendants very rarely smile or seem glad to see you. Some seem quite annoyed if you ask them a question. Chinese shop staff just don't have the "service oriented" attitude of people in the West (and in fact, of places like Hong Kong and Singapore).

And yet, my friends in China were just so overwhelmingly generous and helpful. Time and time again, as soon as I said that I was looking for something or planning to do something, my friends were thinking about how to help me, and often spent a great deal of their time helping me. They were so helpful it was often quite embarrassing for me, because I'm a very independent person.

It wasn't just my friends, it was perfect strangers too. Several times I would talk to people on the bus or the tram, and if I said I was going somewhere, that person would insist on coming with me to make sure I knew the way. And they didn't even know me!

How can friends and strangers be so friendly, yet people in shops be so cold? I don't know. But I know that the thing I miss most about living in China is my Chinese friends.

Heading off

Well, in 10 minutes I'm leaving for the airport. Fly to HK, stay a night, then fly to Beijing, stay a night, then catch the train to Dalian.

Been working so hard at home to get everything shipshape before I leave. But I haven't done any Chinese practice! My characters are so rusty. I'm going to practice them on the plane with the use of the character program I wrote for my phone.

Bye Australia! Back in July!

Countdown for launch

Worked like a crazy cat getting stuff ready at home. The garden now looks pretty damn good. Pity I left the house in such a mess. Finished outside at about 10:00pm, and started on stuff indoors. Making notes of phone numbers, charging batteries, copying music and files to my portable hard disk, etc. Finally finished about 5:30am. This is going to be one short sleep.

Linux Conference 2008

Well, the conference is over. Heard some really amazing talks, caught up with friends, and got some great ideas. Probably the best talk I saw was Doug Chapman's talk about a robot he built to go through a maze and find a burning candle. When it found a candle, the robot would blow it out (and the audience would clap and cheer). As well as some interesting ideas for building the robot, I really like the approach he took to the software which controls it.

I heard a talk earlier that day where another guy showed a movie of a walking 6-legged robot he'd built. The walking looked so unnatural and "forced". It looked to me as if he had one main program that was telling each leg what to do. And the robot seemed to be doing a really bad job of coping with unexpected situations. It would only work well if the environment around it didn't have any challenges. Watching his movie frustrated me so much that I wrote down some notes on what I thought was wrong with his approach, and how I'd do it if I was making one.

To my surprise, Doug Chapman's robot is very much along the lines of what I'd written down! I spoke to him and found out some more about his ideas for software for robots, and what references he used. It's definitely given me
many ideas for how I can write software in the future, especially software which has to interface to the real world.

I started putting insulation into the roofspace tonight. It's a very difficult job because the roof is almost flat where the insulation needs to go, and so moving around in the space between the ceiling and roof is extremely difficult. Night time is best because then it's cooler. On a hot day, the roof space can get to 60C, which is very unpleasant to work in.

I haven't started studying Chinese yet. As I mentioned earlier, I'm leaving Australia on the 24th. That means there's now less than three weeks to go! I have to start studying soon.

Finishing work, now for the visa

I have two pieces of news. The first is that I finished working at my company today. Although the deadline we were working under was extremely tight, the team worked very hard and very well together, and the goal was reached. I feel proud of having been a part of this team.

The second news is that the invitation from 大连理工大学 (Dalian University of Technology) has arrived. What that means is that I can now apply for my visa. I'm not sure how I'm going to fit that in with the conference next week, but we'll see what happens.

I'm really under time pressure here! I have a placement exam at the university on February 29, and I'm flying out on February 24. After the conference, I have three weeks to fix everything up at home, and study Chinese like crazy!

Feeling very nervous!

Gadgets

One way of lightening the weight of baggage when travelling is to take something which can do two (or more) jobs. For example, it's really no fun to have a bottle of something that needs opening, but you have no bottle opener. So it's a good idea to carry one. But for only a small increase in weight, you can take a multi-purpose tool that opens bottles, but does so much more. This picture shows one like I'm taking.

Electronic things are another good chance to double up on functions, and it applies not just to baggage, but everyday use. There are two areas I'm hoping to do this with:

Phone

Here are the things I will be using my phone for. (I already use it for most of these functions):

• Camera (it's 2MP and good enough for everyday shots, as my Wilson's Promontory blog article shows).
• File storage (2Gb card, which I can take out and put in someone's PC to copy files). I also use it for my spreadsheets of financial information, website passwords, photos of passport, credit cards, account details, ticket photos, etc, in case I lose them. It's all encrypted of course, so if I lose my phone, that information is not revealed to people.
  
• Chinese character learning tool. I wrote my own program to help me learn and practice Chinese characters.
• MP3 player, video player (I don't use these at the moment, but it may be useful for my course later).
  
• Alarm clock, address book, countdown timer, calendar, and TO-DO list.

I think the biggest weight saving is in renot taking a separate camera, if I'm willing to put up with a drop in image quality, and poor low-light performance.

Computer

As well as doing the boring stuff such as email, chat and websurfing, I want a computer with Chinese input to work on assignments, and to use as a dictionary. The latter two don't need an internet connection. It would be really useful to take the computer with me to class, to a study room, downtown, etc. But one problem is that like most average laptops, the size of my laptop is just too large to carry conveniently. So I have been thinking about getting a smaller laptop for my trip.

The one I'm looking at is the ASUS Eee PC. I went to look at one in the shop today. It's seriously small! There are several good things about it:

• Really small, this is something that can be easily thrown into a schoolbag.
• Quite cheap as far as laptops go, about US$500 for the top model.
• Has Chinese input.
• Has English/Chinese dictionaries built in.
  
• Uses Linux, which I'm very familiar with.
  

The biggest negative things are:

• The size of the screen, only 7" from corner to corner.
• The size of the keyboard. Those keys really are tiny! It's only just possible to touch-type on it, and when I tried it out today, I found that when I wanted to press the right Shift key, I always hit the up arrow instead. Still, people say they get used to it after a while.

Here are some pictures. I've tried to choose the pictures to really give an idea of how small it is.

An over-all view. The thing's about as wide as two hands next to each other.

Here's the Eee put on top of a regular laptop.

Here's someone's hand near the keys. That's not some giant freak of nature holding it, that's a regular person's hand. Fitting both hands onto the keyboard is a real squeeze.

Having said that,I really want one. Not sure whether to get it here, in Hong Kong, or in Beijing...

Continuing on with the theme of multi-purpose gadgets, I think the Eee, with an external keyboard and hard disk, might be able to do all the things I want a computer to do, plus I can take it with me to school, on the bus, etc, and if I get stuck with something, I can use it as a dictionary.

I'm almost certain I'll get one.