Gibson Blog

After almost a year off, William Gibson is blogging again. The tone has changed since last years posts. He's focused on the coming election right now. Regardless, I appreciate his prose, just finished reading Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and am happy to be able to peruse more of his material.

A Library Funding Juxtaposition

Two articles showed up in LISNews the past couple of days. This article is about the Cooperstown, NY Public Library, discussing how they only have enough money to pay for their online catalog for another year or two, and may have to go back to using a card catalog instead. Compare that to a Register Guard article about the Eugene Public Libraries new technology system for reading to the blind. They also have text magnification workstations and a device that translates text onscreen into printed braille.

Now, granted, Eugene and Cooperstown are two very different towns, and it makes sense for a place Eugene's size to have a bit more funding available to it. That said, I still think it's pretty amazing how variable community support for libraries is. Perhaps this is part of what brought me to, and keeps me in, Eugene.

I think this may be somewhat related to general civic engagement. NPR reported this morning that 29% of ballots sent out have already come back, over a week before election day.

This is up from 18% at this point in the 2000 election, and in some demographic groups, it is nearing the percentage of total voting age population who voted at all in the 2002 elections. From US census info.

Granted, fewer voters turn out for federal elections during Presidential election cycle off years, and the comparison is unfair given that the returns only indicate that almost 1/4 of registered voters voted. But given that a very high percentage of Oregonians are registered (1.94 million of 2.6 million voting age in 2000), this seems pretty significant.

A quick look at info on the Secretary of State website - 2.147 million this year. Lane county's at 36% election return as of late Monday.

Maybe I'm completely making up the relationship here, but somehow one makes me think of the other. People in this town, and this state in general, are engaged in politics, they care deeply about what happens in the nation and the world, and they are very involved in what happens in their community. It's quite nice.

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

Possibly some of you missed this. The exchange between Stewart and Tucker Carlson is amazing. Stewart really ripped into Carlson about Crossfire, and exceedingly partisan political analysis shows in general.

There's a great section where Stewart is accusing them of a lack of integrity and they turn around and accuse the Daily Show of the same thing. Stewarts response is absolutely priceless: "You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?"

The whole 12 minute exchange is online here:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2653047

This also includes a link to Stewart rehashing the discussion on the Daily Show last night.

For those of you on slower Internet connections, CNN has the transcript up here:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/15/cf.01.html

West Wing

For my fellow TV addicts out there, the West Wing season premier is tomorrow night.

I thought last season was pretty hit and miss. Hopefully it won't go any further downhill this year.

Chronicles

Bought books Sunday night.

Had to buy The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America The Book: A citizens guide to democracy inaction. Looks to be really good.

Also bought Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan's new autobiography. The excerpts from it, as well as the interview, that were in the October 4th issue of Newsweek were just great. By the way, Dylan was on the cover. I bought it in the airport on the way to China. Really facinates me that Dylan has turned around and written a memoir. He's always been so reticent to do much in the way of publicity. I've spoken with some fellow die-hard fans who think it's another stitch in the tapestry of Dylan selling out, following closely on the heels of Canadian car commercials, Victoria's Secret adds, and feature films. The verdicts still out for me until after I read it. I'll post a sort of review at some point.

Another Dilemma

I'd like to set the time back to reflect reality, which is increasingly seeming real now that I've been back in this time zone for more than 48 hours.

Problem is, when I do that, all the timestamps on my China posts will be updated accordingly. I'll have to do math to determine when I actually wrote something. And when Daylight Savings Time ends, and the time difference becomes 16 hours, the math will be even more confusing.

I guess I could change the time zone back then go through existing posts, clean them up, and edit the time stamps to reflect the reality of local time at time of posting. But that just smacks of far too much effort.

This is certainly a quandry.

Hmmm...

Now I've got a bit of a dilemma. I need to find a tone and a theme for this blog now that I'm no longer traipsing around foreign countries. The travel thing really only holds water while your actually traveling. Will it prove difficult to keep the few readers I've found while I had something interesting to say? Only time will tell.

I think I'm likely to use this space to reference random, entertaining stuff that I stumble over during my virtual wanderings, as well as items that fall into my email and aggregator.

I'll probably also post a lot about metadata, digital libraries, web design, xml related technologies, digital preservation, and perhaps a bit of programming.

To keep it interesting, I'll likely continue to drop in some more pics from my travels abroad, and from the rest of my life. Also likely, the descriptions of these pictures will be much less rich now that the content is not as fresh in my mind. But hopefully it will still be interesting. Or at least it will hold your interest enough to make you see past all the boring technology stuff that will start showing up here in the near future.

We shall see.

Home

Well, after just over 2 weeks of travel, I'm back home. I haven't changed the time zone on any of my electronics, so I can tell you that it's really tomorrow. See, I'm convinced that my local clocks, the sun, and all that is lying to me. It's actually a little before seven tomorrow morning, and I've been up for over 24 hours, minus an hour or two of napping on the plane.

It amazes me that one can get on a plane in Shanghai and get off in San Fransisco just over 10 hours later, or actually five hours earlier if you pay attention to the local time.

The trip was absolutely incredible. I had an unbelievably good time and saw a great many amazing things. I took hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. Some of the best were posted to flickr and to this blog, but there are many more good ones (along with a bunch that are of considerably lesser quality).

The conference was also excellent, and as I cull through my notes and find all the (mildly to some of you, not at all to others) intersting tidbits, I'll post a selection of meeting highlights.

Spending over 2 weeks in China has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It has re-ignited the travel bug in me in the worst way.

I think I want to eat pizza tonight. I like pizza, and during my two weeks away, I found myself occasionally missing pizza.

I'm not really looking forward to returning to work on Monday. Hopefully I'll have my wits about me again by then, as I have at least two important meetings, the first of which is far too early in the morning.

Looking forward to seeing all of you soon.

Yet Another City Scape

city-scape
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

So this is really, truely my last post from China. My flight leaves in about 14 hours. I need to get some sleep, finish packing, and get to the airport.

To those of you who continue harping on the guilt trip about gifts: I hope you ingrates are happy with the crap I give you. I forsook (damn, making up words again) any more sightseeing on my final day in Shanghai, instead running all over town looking for the perfect personalized gifts for a bunch of people who've never given me anything. Now I have no idea what to do with the dozens of chopsticks I was orginally planning on giving to you all.

There's a pretty cool open air market right near my hotel. If I get up early enough, and can cram any more junk into my luggage, I'll probably head back over there for a few last minute things. Got some Yuan left over and, as it's a minority currency, there's no changing it back to US dollars.

The one bit of tourism I tried to do today was super lame. I took a couple hours to take the subway all the way across town to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. It was a complete waste of time. Maybe I'm just "tourismed out", as I couldn't even sustain the interest to go back into the Shanghai Museum or the Art Museum today. I think it was lousy though: a smattering of exhibits that mimic things that have been in the Science Museum in Boston since 1985, and a who lot of empty space.

All told, this trip has been amazing. I have hundreds of pictures beyond what you've seen here and on flickr. The conference was great, inspiring even. As I said, I'll post a nice long summary of my conference notes when I get back to the States. Maybe I'll post something more interesting for those of you who don't care much about metadata. I'm hoping to retain my readership, and continue doing this blogging bit, despite not being on the other side of the world. We'll see how that goes.

Food at Conference Banquet

banquet-food
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

So, that last post had some odd formatting issues. That's what happens when you cut and paste from notepad.

Also, it flagrantly lied and claimed to be posted before lunch yesterday. The writing of it began before lunch yesterday. Didn't get posted until 5 minutes ago.

Again, sorry about the silence. You see, the late night carousing precludes getting to the library before the sessions, so no early posting. And the various meetings don't have between speaker type pauses in which to post. And immediately after each day of conf, was out carousing again. One point of fact though: most of the librarians here don't carouse too much. It's the other folks that are out quite late. But that's neither here nor there.

Seems all Hank's computers for anymore is Brenda saying hi... You actually working Hank? Maybe a little bit??

See you all on Sat or Sun or Mon depending on when I see you.

City from Art Museum rooftop bar

rooftop-bar-view
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Wow. I think every year the DC conference gets better. The presentations I was able to attend were excellent. Missed most of the short papers, including Dav's, who was my boss from my

NIEHS days. Really too bad, as I wanted to see him speak. Unfortunately, the User Documentation WG meeting was concurrent with that session of short papers. The bibliography issues

came up at the tail end of that session, so I was unable to slip away. I was roped into registering as an expert for the AskDCMI service while there. I had promised to do this before, but had

never gotten around to signing up.

I guess I haven't posted since Tuesday morning. I'll give a quick rundown of the conference, which is now drawing to a close. Makx Dekkers just wrapped up his closing plenary, and I'm

posting quickly before lunch, then I have a day and a half of free time before returning to Eugene on Saturday. As always, trips to exotic places never last long enough. This is likely to be my

last post until I get back to Eugene, at which point I'll post a much more detailed account of some of the conference highlights, as well as some of my own thoughts and reflections.

Tuesday's Keynote was by Wayne Hodgins, Strategic Futurist at Autodesk, Inc. I talked to him pretty extensively at dinner last night. Fascinating individual, with a very interesting job and

take on things. Tuesday also saw a number of excellent presentations, including a talk about preservation by Douglas Campbell of the National Library of New Zealand. I'm planning to pass

this on to interested members of the Digital Content Coordinators group on Monday. There were also very good papers from Ann Apps of the U. of Manchester and Diane Hillmann from

Cornell during this session.

Tusday afternoon saw the betginning of working group meetings, which kept me out of most of the short paper sessions throughout the next two days. The working group meetings seemed

more productive than in either of the past two years. It also seems like most of the groups whose meetings I attended had come a lot further on accomplishing items on their workplan

between the Seattle and Shanghai meetings.

I attended the Libraries, Architecture, Preservation and User Documentation Working Group meetings. A bit of accidental volunteerism created a bit more work for me in the coming year.

Mary Woodley and I decided that the Glossary and Bibliography would be better updated semi-annually rather than annually. Not sure if this will mean more work or less, but it will certainly

help with maintaining the currency of these documents. I also finally got around to registering as an expert for the AskDCMI reference program. Finally, the preservation working group will

be getting an early peek at the preservation element set that PREMIS is working on. I offered to co-ordinate the group's comments on this document. I have a bit of an ulterior motive, in that

the aforementioned Digital Content Coordinators group at UO has been tasked with addressing our own digital preservation issues. Summarizing the comments of the DC working group will

give me a much stronger sense of how the community at large would be likely to make use of the work being done by PREMIS. I don't expect coordinating these comments to be too much

work. Essentially, I'll just have to look through responses on the list serve, pull out the salient points and write up a summary to pass on to the PREMIS people.

The evenings have been much fun as well. Have stayed out far too late the last 3 nights, hanging out with various groups of interesting and brilliant individuals. When at DC, I find that I

learn as much if not more from the coffee breaks and evenings out than from the conference itself. Last night, a large group of us went to the Shanghai Center Theater to see the Shanghai

Acrobats. Amazing stuff. Pretty incredible what these folks could do. Weren't supposed to take pictures, so I only took a couple.

Today, I'm going to be doing a bit more sightseeing and shopping. My last free day. Not really looking forward to going home. As soon as I get back, I have a massive stack of work that

needs to be done, and a variety of meetings beginning early monday morning. My leisure time here blew by, and the conference elapsed remarkably quickly, too. I managed to corner most of

the people that I had specific questions for. Once again, I'm coming away with an increasingly strong understanding of DCMI, it's efforts and directions, and a variety of related work. I think

the concept of application profiles has really revitalized the community and begun to lead us in new directions. The work is moving well beyond the original element set. I think that DCMI is

going to continue to have a very significant impact on the metadata community in general. For the second year, IEEE-LOM colocated their meeting with ours, and it looks like there is

tentative agreement to make this a more longstanding arrangement. As in the past, a number of individuals from the W3C, and from SWAD-Europe were in attendance, and the connection

between the Dublin Core and the technologies enabling the Semantic Web is becoming increasingly formalized.

The conference was a little smaller this year than last, but still unbelievably international. Here are some stats from Makx Dekkers closing plennary:
There were 160 attendees, 68 of these were from China and the other 92 represented 21 countries in Europe, North and South America, East and Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. There were representatives from the corporate sector, governement agencies from around the world, libraries, the larger library and information science community, educational institutions, the educational technology sector and a variety of international organizations. It's a remarkable group, very tight knit, very friendly, very ambitious and very, very industrious. I feel honored to be a part of these efforts, and inspired by what the people in this group are doing.

I'll likely post a much longer summary of my notes from the conference sometime over the weekend, or next week. This may be my last post from China. I fly back tomorrow in the early

afternoon. I'll see many of you next week, and talk to the rest soon.

Conference Reception

cruise1
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The conference has officially begun. My free time now becomes much much less.

Yesterday say the opening ceremony, including the DCMI Reports and Intro by Makx Dekkers and an interesting Keynote by Zhang Xiaolin of the Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The paper he was speaking from was excellent.

There were also 3 other papers, the best of which was "Maintaining a Vocabulary: Practices, policies and models around Dublin Core, presented by Thomas Baker. It focused on aspects of the DCMI community other than the element set itself, looking instead about how the initiative works, data models around metadata in general and, perhaps most importantly, work going on around the edges. The relationships of DC to other metadata standards, developments in the area of interoperability and cross-walking, and best practice for documenting terms, dealing with namespaces, etc. This is an area where DCMI is a bit ahead of the curve, and can provide other projects & initiatives with excellent insights.

I also attended an interesting Semantic Web special session, with representatives from both DCMI and the W3C, although I slipped out for a few minutes to check things out at the Collection Description Working Group meeting.

I'm sure you all care immensly about all of this. Please don't stop reading. If you must, just skip to the end of upcoming posts, where I'll try to have info about evenings and responses comments.

Definitely have no pictures of textiles, although there are some photos of really old looms in museums, and there is a picture of a woman weaving a silk rug. Haven't posted them, but may eventually. Either that, or just show them when I get back. Music has been good, when I've seen traditional music. I've heard way to much modern chinese pop music being played far too loudly out of storefronts. Haven't purchased any music yet.

And, yes: I'm a thoughtless jerk. Sorry, but there's too much to see here. One of the nice things about being a complete egotist is it allows one to focus entirely on oneself at all times.

Lunch was Dim Sum. The reception was definitely a dinner cruise down the Huangpu river. Beer was free, conversation was excellent, and the view was magnificient.

Quicky Night-time Posting

bund-tunnel4
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had to pop back online quickly to download the latest Western States DC Metadata Best Practices document and the conference schedule. I keep forgetting that I'm ostensibly here for work. I figured I'd post quickly while connected anyway. So here's one of many images from the absurdly trippy journey through the Bund Tunnel this afternoon.

Apparently, there is an element among my readership that cares not for my depictions of historically significant sights or my astute observations about Chinese culture. Nor do these perusers of this blog wish to hear about pockets of astounding beauty, either hidden away in the corners of immense urban centers or on their more rural outskirts.

No, this group of readers is interested in hearing about one of two things: food and gifts. I'll indulge this group with a post that addresses both of these topics.

I think I had my best meal of the trip (thus far, anyway) this evening. No, I didn't go back to O'malley's pub for corned beef and cabbage, although I suspect I will before the next week is done. Instead, I went to a place called Fragrant Camphor Garden and had a pot of fruit tea and one of the chef's recommendations: Matsuzaka Beef Shaba Shaba.

The dish seemed somewhat similar to hot pot, although not in the traditional sense. This was very much a gourmet type fusion restaurant, so the meal was updated accordingly. I was served a plate of very thinly sliced raw beef, a few raw shrimp and a raw egg. Along with this was a bowl of rice, a soy based sauce (with dried red chillis, chopped garlic and green onions for adding to taste), a few chunks of cantalope and a metal device full of fire. Yes, a metal device full of fire. Atop this flaming tripod was a dish full of seeting, simmering, boiling broth and pieces of cabbage, mushrooms, various bits of processed or re-formed seafood in the shape of roll-ups or scallops (perhaps they actually were scallops, but didn't seem so to me). The raw meats and eggs were to be added to the broth and cooked in it. Then you pull them out, drop them onto the rice to cool, dip them in the soy-based sauce and devour. Absolutely delicious. I have a couple of photos, which I'll post later.


On to the second topic. I recently read a comment that stated an expectation of personalized gifts. Let me remind you: I'm in a Communist country, attending a conference at which the primary topic of discussion will be metadata standardization. The word of the day, folks, is uniformity. To mix my metaphors I can promise you cookie cutter gifts, all from the same cloth. The only uniqueness will be the flaws of poor craftsmanship that come with shopping at the stalls of street vendors and hovel-like back alley shops. Even the text of postcards is selected from a collection of pre-composed phrases. To personalize any of this smacks horribly of effort. Frankly, I just don't care enough. You'll have to be happy that I'm buying you things at all.

The comments have been entertaining. Thanks for being interested, reading along, and sharing your reactions. Knowing that family, friends and colleagues are following my journey provides a warming feeling and helps temper the effects of the whole "solitude in the midst of millions" thing.

Yu Yuan (Yu Gardens)

yu-yuan2
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Last day of vacation is drawing to a close. Conference starts tomorrow morning.

Dinner last night was sauted pork with garlic, red chillis, and red bell peppers. Cantonese, I think, as the place I grabbed it at was a combo Cantonyese / Thai joing. Did some bar hopping in the vicinity of my hotel after dinner. Good fun. Scoped out a few places where I'll likely grab drinks with fellow conf attendees this week. Found an Irish Pub called O'malley's: first place I've been in all of China where Westerners outnumbered locals by about 3 to 1. Mostly Euros there to watch the Wales v. England World Cup football qualifier on the big screen outside. Had a few too many (too expensive) Guinesses and Kilkenneys and stayed there later than I meant too. May go back there tonight for Irish style dinner. T

Today was a busy one. Wandered around the Old Shanghai area. The Yu Gardens are here: absolutely beautiful and quite easy to get lost in, especially without a map. The area around Yu Yuan also has some great souvenier shops and markets, and some excellent food.

Many of you know that I hate to shop, but I would hate it a lot less if this haggling thing were standard fare in the states. The marked price, if there is one, is always way to high. Folks see you looking and offer a 20 percent discount. I've been able to talk them down to 40-60% off the ticket. Seems that this works pretty much everywhere, although stores with no markings will try to get you to offer the price first. You can usually refuse, get them to offer too high and begin talking them down. Often negotiations are done by passing a calculator back and forth. Makes shopping so much more fun.

After wandering about that area for far too long, I grabbed a quick bite to eat: steamed dumplings and some fried bread type stuff with seseame seeds and what seemed like date inside. Then I wandered back up to the Bund, went through the gaudy psychadelic ride that is the Bund Tourist Tunnel under the river to Pudong, wandered around there a bit and took the subway back to my hotel.

I got a hotel account to post photos. .60 Yuan a minute. I managed to post the 6 on flickr in under 5 minutes, so that's not too bad a price. Then I can make my way over to the library (and conference venue) and use their internet room: half hour for 2 Yuan. Should end up being pretty cheap. Can't get to Gmail from here, but can get to yahoo. Also, Anonymouse is back up, so I can read comments again. I'm going to go grab some dinner somewhere. More tomorrow.

Xi-an's City Walls

me-on-wall
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

and me standing on them.

Yep, another post with a picture of my ugly mug. Can't find anywhere to post pics from yet, but hopefully soon enough. I'm safely back in Shanghai. I'll be here for a week. The conference starts Monday morning, and it's currently Saturday night. I'm at the conference venue, as they have the cheapest internet access in town here.

I'm going to go grab some dinner soon, maybe hit a few bars here in the Ol' French Concession, wander back to the hotel and crash. The Donghu Hotel cetainly isn't the classiest place I've stayed so far, and it's a huge step down from the Bell Tower Hotel in Xi-an, which probably was the classiest place I'd stayed in so far. But the Donghu gave me vouchers for free breakfast each morning & it's less than a ten minute walk from the Shanghai Library, where the conference is. So I won't complain. They do have internet access there, but again: somewhat pricey (by Asia standards). I'm beginning to think about money in terms of Yuan, without thinking about how cheap things are in terms of US$. I'll probably log in there once or twice to post photos if I can't find somewhere else to do so from.

I'm going to do a bit more sightseeing and shopping tomorrow, and try to get some rest before the conference.

The anonymizer I use is down til tomorrow, so I can't read comments at the moment. Hope you're all well.

unrecycling?

unrecycling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

No time to upload new photos from last night and this morning, as I've got to check out of my hotel and catch a plane back to Shanghai, so I'll use this image uploaded yesterday. For some reason, I find the translation funny.

Found the Muslim Restaurant last night. Had a meal called yangrou paomo. It's local muslim cuisine. You're given a loaf of flat bread and a bowl. You break the bread up into tiny chunks and put them into the bowl. They bring it back to the kitchen and add a soup made of mutton broth, mutton, green onions and celophane noodles. The soup is absorbed by the chunks of hard, dry bread. It's served with pickled garlic and a sort of red chili paste, which can be added to the soup. It was delicious.

Went up the drum and bell towers early this morning, caught traditional musical performances in each, then went back to the muslim quarter for more haggling.

Came back to the hotel, caught the last half hour or so of the debate, and commenced packing.

Audbren - washed boxers with woolite in the sink. They dry quickly enough that there's no need to pay. I'm not running around in dirty undergarments!

As I said, posting will probably become more work related soon. Not sure how internet access will be in Shanghai. Hopefully I'll be able to post new photos from the Shanghai Library in between conference sessions. We'll see.

unrecycling?

unrecycling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

No time to upload new photos from last night and this morning, as I've got to check out of my hotel and catch a plane back to Shanghai, so I'll use this image uploaded yesterday. For some reason, I find the translation funny.

Found the Muslim Restaurant last night. Had a meal called yangrou paomo. It's local muslim cuisine. You're given a loaf of flat bread and a bowl. You break the bread up into tiny chunks and put them into the bowl. They bring it back to the kitchen and add a soup made of mutton broth, mutton, green onions and celophane noodles. The soup is absorbed by the chunks of hard, dry bread. It's served with pickled garlic and a sort of red chili paste, which can be added to the soup. It was delicious.

Went up the drum and bell towers early this morning, caught traditional musical performances in each, then went back to the muslim quarter for more haggling.

Came back to the hotel, caught the last half hour or so of the debate, and commenced packing.

Audbren - washed boxers with woolite in the sink. They dry quickly enough that there's no need to pay. I'm not running around in dirty undergarments!

As I said, posting will probably become more work related soon. Not sure how internet access will be in Shanghai. Hopefully I'll be able to post new photos from the Shanghai Library in between conference sessions. We'll see.

Museum Fun

really-old-art
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had a pretty mellow day today. Slept in, woke up, got a little work done re: prep for conference next week (I am officially here to be involved in proffesional development), wrote a few postcards. I was up pretty late, im-ing with my dad, getting absorbed in the news of crazy shit transpiring in Iraq, posting numerous pictures, etc. Woke up to more news of unpleasantness in the middle east, this time in Isreal. Now CNN's talking about US airstrikes in Falujia. Great.

Well, I'm not here to rant politics. I did something I've never done before: had a few pieces of laundry done by my hotel. Again, much cheaper than it would be in the US. 100 Yuan, about 12 bucks, got me clean jeans, slacks, 2 pair socks, 3 t-shirts and a polo shirt. Plus washed some of my own stuff in the sink. Thrilling post so far, eh?

Went to two museums, took a walk on the city wall, wandered around the Muslim Quarter, stopped into a bar for a beer. That was my day once I got a late start. Took 109 pictures, most of which are museum pieces. Probably would bore the hell out of you if I posted more than one to the blog, but there's two or three more on flickr. And you can always ask me to see more pics when I get back. Maybe I'll put together a cd or dvd as my dad suggested.

Between museums, I was getting a bit hungry. I often skip lunch (as many of you know), but wanted to do a late dinner tonight at a muslim place near my hotel. I'll be going there right after posting. So I did something I've been wanting to do, but feel guilty about. I had a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. I wanted to see if it was the same here. It is. Exactly. The place was packed. Absolutely packed. They all always seem to be. There's even little walk up McDonalds on the street that only sell Ice Cream. We don't even have those (do we?). So I guiltily indulged in American Fast Food while in China. You gonna hold it against me? Huh? Are ya?

Aside for the techies reading: I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but shell scripts are cool. My camera's 5 megapixels. 3 or 4 pictures would wipe out my monthly flickr allotment. So, I've been automating the generation of large thumbnails using a combo of imagemagick and bash. All I have to do is say:
for img in *
do
convert -resize 500 $img small_$img
done

This creates a small version of each image in the current directory with a width of 500 pixels. It's these I've been posting. When I first tried to do this, I had image magick too far back in my path, and windows was trying to run the windows convert app, which reformats a partion. Fortunately, the arguments weren't right and it resulted in an error rather than converting a Fat32 partionion to NTFS.

Aside for the photography buffs reading, I've discovered that the flash on my camera is pretty well useless beyond 4 or 5 meters. The secret to taking night photos is to click into manual mode and shoot at 100 ISO or lower. Now, what I don't understand is the fact that reducing the EV by 1/3 to 1 step improves the image as well. This is the equivelant of increasing the f-stop to let in less light, right? Why the hell would that help? It makes the image a bit darker, but greatly increases the clarity, makes the likelyhood of blurring much less. Don't get it, but it works.

I've thrown a "Dave Attel style" shot of me on the city wall on flickr, to appease my mom. I've got ones like this from the great wall and a few other places, too.

I'm going to go out and eat dinner, and maybe do a bit more street shopping. I find that I really enjoy the bargaining with vendors for random trinkets, knick-knacks, souvineirs and gifts. I've gotten myself some pretty good deals (I think...)

Hank, the football stadim was built in the 70s. They since realized that the sunlight really isn't good for 2200 year old artifacts, so the other two pits are much more dim. Not as great for photography. But, until recently, they didn't even allow photography in the pits, so I can't comlain. By the way, the only other person who posts as many comments as you is my father. He's retired. What's your excuse? Shouldn't you be methodically making your way through the names file or something? Jeez.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go up the Drum and Bell Towers early am, then come back here, write a few more postcards, try to do a little more work, maybe hop on AIM and see who's around, and watch the debates. Then I'll check out, leave my bags with the concierge, and do a bit more wandering around before my 3 pm flight. Then it's back to Shanghai. 2 more days, and the blog becomes considerably less entertaining for most of you. Instead of posting about exotic travels, I'll be posting about DC2004, metadata, digital libraries, and interoperability. I'll probably lose most of the readership I've established thus far, huh?

Dumpling Banquet

duck-dumpling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had a "Dumpling Banquet" at a restaurant called De Fa Chang this evening. Consisted of 2 cold dishes, 16 different varieties of steamed dumplings, and a final course of dumpling soup. All that, plus 2 half-liter bottles of Chinese beer, for 80 Yuan (about 10 bucks). The reason I mention this is to point out how inexpensive it can be to travel in China. 4 star hotels can be had for 65-100 US$ a night. You can get a room comperable to what you'd get in a Holiday Inn or Best western for half that. The dumpling banquet is the most expensive meal I've eaten so far. Plane tickets are cheap, a full day's tour is really cheap, admission to sights and museums is cheap.

The cold dishes at dinner were interesting. One was a delicious plate of some kind of sea-weed. The other... well I managed to eat about three of them, left the others on the plate. I'm pretty sure that they were pickled chicken's feet with hot peppers. I've got pictures of that, too.

The dumplings came in varieties like pork, ham & corn, shrimp, walnut, yam, beef, vegetable. Some of them are shaped like what's in them, like the duck pictured here. Hopefully eating more duck won't lead to another losing week in fantasy football.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking it a bit easier. I'm going to go to the local Shaanxi Museum, which is supposedly one of the 4 best in the country. I'm also going to check out the inside of the bell and drum towers, walk down to the wall, and maybe wander around the Muslim Quarter a bit. I think I'll actually take advantage of the free internet and do a bit of conference prep in the evening.

A few notes to some of you out there:

-I've been able to read comments by getting to the blog through an anonymizer type proxy. I'm pretty certain blogspot is blocked here in China.

-Hank, thanks for the frequent comments, and the updates on your work schedule. Tell CMET that I said hi. Tell Brenda that if she wants a counterfeit, low quality, cheap-as-hell Louis Vatton bag, she should post a comment. Funnilly enough, I wandered past a Louis Vatton store this evening.

-Hi Eric, Hi Claire! Hope all's well in Arizona.

-If there are more of you out there lurking and not commenting, I'd love to hear back from you. Let me know what you want to know more about, see more of. More pictures of food? More pictures from museums? My mom wants to see more pictures of me, but that probably isn't going to happen.

-I'm surprised none of my librarian friends are pointing out errors in spelling and grammar. Hopefully I'll come back to these and clean them up someday. For now, it's all the time I have to write them and keep seeing stuff.

Dumpling Banquet

duck-dumpling
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Had a "Dumpling Banquet" at a restaurant called De Fa Chang this evening. Consisted of 2 cold dishes, 16 different varieties of steamed dumplings, and a final course of dumpling soup. All that, plus 2 half-liter bottles of Chinese beer, for 80 Yuan (about 10 bucks). The reason I mention this is to point out how inexpensive it can be to travel in China. 4 star hotels can be had for 65-100 US$ a night. You can get a room comperable to what you'd get in a Holiday Inn or Best western for half that. The dumpling banquet is the most expensive meal I've eaten so far. Plane tickets are cheap, a full day's tour is really cheap, admission to sights and museums is cheap.

The cold dishes at dinner were interesting. One was a delicious plate of some kind of sea-weed. The other... well I managed to eat about three of them, left the others on the plate. I'm pretty sure that they were pickled chicken's feet with hot peppers. I've got pictures of that, too.

The dumplings came in varieties like pork, ham & corn, shrimp, walnut, yam, beef, vegetable. Some of them are shaped like what's in them, like the duck pictured here. Hopefully eating more duck won't lead to another losing week in fantasy football.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking it a bit easier. I'm going to go to the local Shaanxi Museum, which is supposedly one of the 4 best in the country. I'm also going to check out the inside of the bell and drum towers, walk down to the wall, and maybe wander around the Muslim Quarter a bit. I think I'll actually take advantage of the free internet and do a bit of conference prep in the evening.

A few notes to some of you out there:
-I've been able to read comments by getting to the blog through an anonymizer type proxy. I'm pretty certain blogspot is blocked here in China.
-Hank, thanks for the frequent comments, and the updates on your work schedule. Tell CMET that I said hi. Tell Brenda that if she wants a counterfeit, low quality, cheap-as-hell Louis Vatton bag, she should post a comment. Funnilly enough, I wandered past a Louis Vatton store this evening.
-If there are more of you out there lurking and not commenting, I'd love to hear back from you. Let me know what you want to know more about, see more of. More pictures of food? More pictures from museums? My mom wants to see more pictures of me, but that probably isn't going to happen.
-I'm surprised none of my librarian friends are pointing out errors in spelling and grammar. Hopefully I'll come back to these and clean them up someday. For now, it's all the time I have to write them and keep seeing stuff.

Army of Terra-cotta Warriors

me-again
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Today's tour was a great experience. The english speaking guide made the day all the more educational, and my fellow travelers from Australia, the UK and France were very pleasant company. The culmination of the tour was the Army of Terra-cotta Warriors, which was just incredible. I can't resist the tempation to provide more history lessons. Qin Shihuangdi was the first emperor to successfully unify the various states that make up modern day China. He ascended to the throne at the age of 13, and by the time he was 21, in 221 BC, had successfully conquered the 6 other neighboring states. Because he was such a despotic ruler, he burried the army of warriors to protect him in his second life. They were eventually unearthed just east of his tomb.

China's history seems to be constant cycle of unification and division. Someone will succeed in conquering and bringing together all of the various factions, this will last for a period of time, and civil war will eventually break out and the empire degenerates into seperate states again. A famous Chinese classical novel, "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" begins with this sentence: "They say the momentum of history was ever thus: the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide." I think I'd like to read this book.

I took somewhere upwards of 150 pictures today, so what you see on flickr is only a small, small fraction. This is only the 4th picture with me in it that I've taken, and it will likely be the last time I impose my countenance on you in a post.

Xi-an

bell-tower
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Xi-an has probalby been the highlight of my trip thus far. This is surprising given that it was added as a side excursion, the main purpose of which was to see the Army of Terra-cotta Warriors. To start with, Xi-an is much more in line with my preconceptions of what a major metropolis should be like. Perhaps it's more the result of the national holiday coming to an end here, and things getting ready to settle down again, but the scale of Beijing and Shanghai while I was there was just far too much for me to comprehend. The culture and language barriers are enought to make it really hard to find the proper context for the things I'm experiencing, but the intensity of activity in both those places added to the disorientation. I'll find out better when I get back to Shanghai during a more normal weekend whether my experiences were the result of the holiday or the fact that both cities are twice the size of NYC.

But, yes, back to Xi-an. For starters, it's one of the few cities in China that has a City Wall still extant (insert crass South Park references here). My hotel is right accross the street from the Bell Tower (shown here), and a bit up the road is the Drum Tower. Actually, looking more closely at the picture, I think this may be the drum tower. During the Ming Dynasty, in the 14th - 17th Century, the Bell was rung to mark the opening of the city gates, and the drum was sounded to signify their closing. Similarly, there is a Bell and a Drum tower in the Dayan Ta (Big Goose Pagoda), which was the first stop on today's tour, although they served slightly different purposes. The bell told the monks that the workday was to begin, while the drum signified it's end. As a side note, the Big Goose Pagoda was originally built to house the scriptures brought back from india by the monk featured in the story "Westward Journey", also sometimes called "The Monkey King". Read this back in a lit course in Alaska, and remeber it being a great book.

Proof - Great Wall Trip

Proof
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Relatively brief post, but lots of new pictures posted, mostly from the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, and Ming's Tombs. I'm in Xi-an now. Nice hotel, I've got a balcony with a great view of the Bell Tower. The place has free internet access, too, so I'll be able to post a bit more in the next couple days.

The language thing was tough on the great wall trip. Tour guide spoke no English. I know enough Mandarin now to ask what time the bus leaves.

I managed to find the Tibetan place I was looking for after posting last. The menu included some bizarre fare such as Yak Genitals Stewed with Tibetan Caterpillar Fungus. I went with tamer food, a creamed spinach dish with tofu and a half rack of lamb ribs. Great stuff. Some of the wait staff ended up playing some traditional Tibetan music. There's a picture in the flickr stream.

I did manage to get to the Summer Palace for a couple hours this morning, but not before being distracted by the beginning of the VP debate. The grounds of the Summer Palace are way too big, simply too much to explore in an entire day, yet along a couple hours.

I booked a spot on a CITS tour tomorrow, goes to the Terre Cotte Army Museum, the Huaqing Hot Spring and the Big Wild Goose Pagado. Normally includes the Banpo Neolithic Villiage, but it's apparently closed for restoration. The CITS tour has an English speaking tour guide, which should be nice.

I'm debating wether to do a Chinese Language tour of the sights west of the city on Friday, but am not sure whether I should do that, or just try to catch some buses and see selected stuff on my own.

I'll be posting pics and thoughts probably each night while in Xi-an, before heading back to Shanghai on Saturday.

Hall of Supreme Harmony (Great Wall pics coming later)

supreme_harmony
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Now I find a relatively cheap Internet Cafe, with decent cheap coffee and the ability to upload photos of cd. But I don't have a cd of photos, since I haven't been at the hotel since 7 this morning. Once again, I'm just starting to get accustomed to Beijing and I'm leaving tomorrow.

I spent today up north, visiting the Great Wall and the 13 Tombs of the Ming Dynasty Emperors. Actually, only went into one tomb, and spent the rest of the time wandering around the complex.

The Wall is huge. Climbed about a mile segment of it over the course of a couple hours. My legs are probably going to be killing me tomorrow. I probably took over 150 pictures today, so there will likely be some posted in the near future. I ended up going to the Badaling section of the wall, which is the main tourist attraction and significantly restored / rebuilt. I was hoping to get to one of the less crowded, more genuine sections, but the logistics would have been tough. There's a cheap tour bus you can pick up near Tian Na Men Square that takes you to the tombs & the Badaling with a couple of irritating diverisions to a wax museum, a store that sells all things jade, and a massive junkfood emporium. The total trip took about 10 hours, with a 2 hour stint at the Tombs and a 3 hour stop at the wall. Traffic gettin back into town was insane. I thought Boston, Montreal and LA were crazy traffic-wise. This has them all beat hands down.

Here's another pic from the Forbidden City to hold you over until I get some of the Wall & Tomb pictures up. It shows the Hall of Supreme Harmony and the Three Tier Terrace below.

I'm pretty tired already, but I'm going to head down the street to try and track down this Tibetan joint for dinner. Maybe pay a visit to some of the shopping areas. Hopefully, I'll be able to get over to the Summer Palace tomorrow before my flight to Xi-an.

imperial_garden

imperial_garden
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Spent the vast majority of today inside the Forbidden City. Roger Moore narrates the english language version of the audio tour. Pretty funny. Took over a hundred pictures while there, of varying quality. I really like this one of part of the Imperial Garden. The archecticture and history of the Imperial Palace is all pretty incredible.

Everything is taking considerably longer than I originally anticipated, so I'm expecting to have to scale back my original, exceedingly ambitious Beijing itinerary. I did get back to Tiananmen Square during the day today, and did some walking around in general. I'd been hoping to get up to the Summer Palace as well, but that just didn't happen. Possibly because I spent the morning relaxing, watching football and posting pictures.

I'm planning to get up ridiculously early tomorrow, take the bus to the subway, the subway to a location where big tour busses run off to the Great Wall and the 13 Tombs every half hour all morning. My book indicates that I should allow 9 hours for the trip. I'm hoping to get there for the 2nd or 3rd bus (they start at 6:30), so there may be a chance that I have time to see something else later in the afternoon.

I spoke to some students from Beijing University today, and found out that the National Day holiday is a week long for many people. This explains why everything is so packed. I won't be able to go through Mao's Mausoleum; I looked today and the line was at least 2 hours long.

I'm thinking I may try to head out to the Summer Palace by cab Wednesday morning. That should give me a few hours out there, since my flight to Xi-an doesn't leave 'til 2:30.

I managed to find the Beijing Duck place I was looking for this evening. Wow, was that good. It didn't occur to me until just now, but I should be taking pictures of food, too. The roast duck is just amazing. They coat it in molasses, pump it with air, fill it with boiling water, and dry it out before roasting it. First they give you a plate of skin and meat, served with shallots, a plum sause and thin pancake things. Then comes a soup made of the bones and innards. Both stages are delicious.

I've made the pictures a bit smaller so that I can post more of them. I can only post 10 mb a month, and I'm already through almost 1/4 of those. I altered my script so it generates thumbnails at 450 pixels width rather than 600, which should help.

I'm also not going to blog every picture I post. For those of you who want more picures, you can get a stream of them off of flickr directly:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/china/
These are all the photos tagged china, so mine are interspersed with a couple other people's. I think you can get a stream of just mine by clicking the "Wasting Moments" link under any of my pictures. For those of you who are syndication fans, flickr provides both rss and atom feeds of images by user or by tag. You can subscribe to mine, and not even bother reading my blog. Although, if you want to do both, the blog also has an atom feed.

It's only 9:30, but I'm going to sleep pretty soon so I can get an early start on this Great Wall trip tomorrow. I'm not going to pony up for another day on the hotel network here, but there's a net cafe near where the bus should be spitting me out at the end of the trip tomorrow. I may post some thoughts, but may not get to post the next round of pics for another day or two though.

old_bells

old_bells
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Last post for the morning. These are the Bells of Marquis Su of Jin. They date from the King Li Reign, in the Westrn Zhou province in the mid 9th Centry BC!! When I see things from 3 thousand years ago in Western museums, the objects never represent as much civilazation. It's just amazing how long ago a rich cultural heritage was established here.

Since I'm already eating the 10 bucks on the internet for the day, I'll hopefully post some Beijing pictures when I get back to the hotel tonight.

bund

bund
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Looking across the Huangpu Jiang from the Bund. The Bund area is an intense, crowded raised walkway along the western banks of this beautiful river.

cityblock

cityblock
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

So much neon!

inflatable

inflatable
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

I mentioned that the Friday I arived was National Day here. Shanghai was pretty crazy, and from what I gather, Beijing would have been even more lively at that point. I still suspect that the Tianamen Square area was probably more crowded than usual last night because it was still a holiday weekend. Here's some of the inflatable stuff. The two guys in the center are selling a variety of inflatable toys.

park_hotel

park_hotel
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

The building at left-center was my hotel in Shanghai. It was built in 1934. It was a bit more pricey than my other hotels, but the comfort after extensive travel was worth the price. Plus, they upgraded me to a suite.

Beijing

I updated the setting that keeps non-members from posting comments. Kind of lame that that's the default. I wouldn't have thought to check. Clearly blogger wants all of you to blog.

So, it seems that as soon as I start to get oriented in Shanghai, it's time to head north to Beijing: a very confusing city. To start with, it's the size of Belgium. A major road can change names 6 or 7 times alongh it's length. Two such segments will only differ in name by 2 letters: Jianguomennei and Jianguomenwai Dajie. Literaly, the road inside or outside a gate that no longer exists. This naming issue foiled my attempts to find a couple of the places I was looking for.

My hotel's on the outskirts, a massive posh tourist hotel in the midst of construction and suburbs. I tried to do the bus / subway combo to get to the center of town this afternoon, but failed dismally. Well, not quite: I did find my way to Tianamen Square (much bigger than I expected) but it took me much longer than I anticipated. I took the bus the wrong way, and ended up in a pretty sketchy neighborhood. Got lots of odd looks while waiting for the return bus at the end of the line. I'm likely going to try again tomorrow, but fortuanately a cab rides only about 3 or 4 US dollars.

I'm still having much trouble finding the Internet cafes. The one's listed in Lonely Planet don't seem to exist anymore. Too much turnover. Just discovered that my hotel's got broadband that I can jack into in my room, though. It's a bit pricey, at 1 Y per minute, topping out at 80 Y for the day. That's really only about 10 bucks, and since I've thrown $5 at T-Mobile for an hours worth of connectivity before, it doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

So, I'm posting this from my room, shortly after eating an absurdly large and ridiculously spicy Sichuan meal. Chicken with green onions, red chiles, peanuts all drenched in chili oil. Amazing stuff. Plus a side of fried dumplings stuffed with pork. Now I'm really full, and really exhausted. I've been up before 6 both mornings here so far. That just has to stop! But I don't expect it will. I'm going to take it a bit slower tomorrow, although Beijing's really got too much to see. My hotel has ESPN, so I think I'm going to stick around here and see if the Sunday night game between St. Louis and SF is on. If not, maybe I'll sleep in. Either way, I think I need to get a 10:30 am or so start on the day. I'm hoping to get to the Summer Palace, the Lama Temple, the Forbidden City the Monument to the People's Heroes and the Mao Zadong Mausoleum tomorrow. I saw most of the stuff around the Forbidden City this evening, but it was all closed. The area was unbelievably packed. I'm not sure how much that is because it's a holiday weekend, and how much it is that this is just a huge city. But it was intense. Streets were shut down to allow for the throngs of padestrians. I couldn't even get to the Peking Duck place I was looking to eat at, and by then I was so worn I decided to make my way towards the Sichuan place instead. That got me out of the crowds, anyway, and the food was fantastic (although 3 hours after eating it, I'm still sweating).

Since I've got this connection in my room, I should be able to get caught up on photo posting tomorrow. I'm just too tired right now.

Um... Deer in my yard in Eugene??

small-IMG_0031
Originally uploaded by Wasting Moments.

Okay, so this is strange. I'm at an Internet cafe in Shanghai. Last night, from my hotel (really expensive internet access), I could post through blogger, but couldn't access my blog. A bit of googling leads me to believe blogspot domain blocked in China.

Now I can't access blogger either (at least from where I am). I've tried a variety of anonymizers, but they're either blocked or don't support cookies. But flickr works. Alas, I can't get to a cd drive here. What a pain.

So, I'm having a fantastic time so far. Last night was a national holiday, so the streets were just insane. Everything was either inflatable or blinking. Seriously. Folks were buying and selling inflatable wings, hats, boxing gloves and a variety of inflatable bats and hammers. Random groups of teenagers and children would accost one another in the street with their toys. It was really neat. I actually was bonked by a couple of inflatable hammers at random.

It's unbelievable how well organized a city of 16 million people can be. It would be pure chaos if it weren't for all the police, military and other random public service folks exerting control over the throngs of people. Shrill whistles stop the flux of pedestrians when the lights change, and the crossing guards take their responsibilities quite seriously if someone tries to ignore their pleas (which it seems they always do).

My somewhat posh hotel upgraded me to a suite for the same price. More space than I need. I didn't realize this until today, but the elevator is key coded for my floor, where the suites are. I had been using a poorly lit stairway to get from the floor above mine to my own floor, but now I figured it out.

I got up super early today, and was on the streets again by seven-thirty. There's a bloody Starbucks down the road from me. My morning coffee cost twice as much as my breakfast (xiao long bao, a sort of dumpling / dough blob, quite tasty). Then I walked a couple miles down to the Bund, an area along the river separating Shanghai proper from the Pudung New Area. Scoped out the Bund tourist tunnel, a psychedelic train ride under the river, but decided to hold off on that. Wandered back up to my hotel, near the Peoples' Square. Walked around that area for a bit and found my way to the Shanghai Museum where I spent most of the afternoon. Amazing place. My camera battery ran out on the second of four floors, since I don't think I've charged it in a month. Must remember to charge it more frequently, like nightly. Got some really cool pictures of ancient bronze work, stone carvings and some ceramics. Was out of luck in the galleries of painting, calligraphy, seals, furniture & more. I may have to stop back and try to grab those last few pictures. It's pretty near the Shanghai Art Museum, which I hope to pay a visit to when I'm back down here. Admission was only 20Y, or about US$2.50.

Had a really good, really cheap dinner of stir-fried pork, shrimp and celery (among other ingredients), soup, salad (which I didn't eat), tea, slices of melon, an odd egg that was somewhat unrecognizable, but definitely hard-boiled, and an interesting fruity, custard-like dessert. All for under 50Y!! The place was somewhat near the French Concession area, near the Shanghai Library where the conference is. I was hoping to get online at the library, but it was closed (I still can't quite figure out why). But then I found this place, which is really a haven for gamers. Getting to this end of town involved the metro, which was a fascinating experience. Unbelievably crowded. Again, people with whistles trying to keep you from getting on the train while the doors are closing. When I was finally far enough up the queue/mob to get on one, the inertia of the crowd launched me onto the train when the doors opened, where I was packed into no space and got off 2 stops too late due to difficulty exiting. Had to backtrack on the northbound train. The number of people here is almost overwhelming. It's just too wonderful.

I've got to get up early tomorrow, and cab it to the airport for a 10am flight to Beijing. Hopefully the blogging will be easier from there. Shanghai is a beautiful city, and if I can find a way to get the photo stuff to work better, you'll see that for yourselves. Hope all's well on both coasts.

In Shanghai

I'm here. First off, a note on time. I've set the timestamp to GMT +800. Hopefully that won't effect previous posts. So, it's 15 hours later here, than it is on the West Coast, 12 hours later than on the east coast. I'm posting this at quarter to 10 pm local time, so it's 9:45 am in NY and 6:45 am in Eugene. Sometimes I'll actually be in a different day, but I believe it 's now October 1 for us all.

I've got crazy airline stories, it's a national holiday here, the streets are insane, and I'm very tired. I'm going to wander around a bit more, then go to sleep. I'll be posting a bunch of photos sometime tomorrow, then Sunday it's off to Beijing.