Archive for September, 2008

Mega Banqueting

Posted on September 29th, 2008

Last week had to be one of the busiest I’ve had in a long long time. Aside from climatic extremes of heat and rain food has to rank a close second in my new life here. Chinese cuisine encompass such a wide palate from across its many regions that you’re always spoilt for choice. Wednesday night celebrated the anniversary of the new company I have joined with all 500+ Chinese employees gathering together in a massive banqueting hall for an evening of mass catering and performance. I’ve never seen anything quite like it – after initial speeches and dinner various people got on the stage to sing their favourite songs which went on for about two hours! Thursday ended with a delicious meal in…

Typhoon Hagupit

Posted on September 26th, 2008

Photo © AP Photo/Vincent Yu This week brought its fair share of climatic excitement when Typhoon Hagupit smashed into the southern coast of China, not far from Shenzhen. With wind speeds in excess of 200 km/h it was apparently the most powerful typhoon to hit Guangdong province in more than 10 years. Flights and ferry services were suspended and schools closed. While the city of Maoming bore the brunt of it’s strength things got pretty extreme where I was with lashing rain unlike I’ve ever seen before – it was so heavy at one point I couldn’t see out the office windows. I got caught in it on the way home Tuesday evening and even with an umbrella got totally soaked with the concrete environment turned…

6000 Flavours

Posted on September 22nd, 2008

Yesterday for lunch I went to a restaurant called “6000 Flavours” which certainly lived up to it’s name judging by the voluminous menu. We had some special pork bone & sweetcorn soup along with fried eel and some curious vegetable balls containing a kind of mustard. The bones were cut in half and a straw provided so you could suck out the bone marrow which on the face of it is a bit disgusting but I gave it a go! The fun bit came when we ordered fresh noodles – a waiter came over with a strip of some kind of dough and proceed to make them in front of us but swinging it vigorously around in circles. Even the locals enjoyed the performance…

Hotter Than Hell

Posted on September 21st, 2008

So after 5 days in my new home, Shenzhen, the most resounding impression so far is that this place is hot – really hot. During the day it’s been around 32°C and at night 27°C, all intensified by 66% humidity in the concrete jungle of high rise apartments and offices. Air-conditioning is a must-have and makes working indoors much more pleasant but wandering around in the midday heat is physically draining and you’ll probably want to carry around a bottle of water at all times. Most likely having something to do with the heat at around 1 to 1.30pm each day most people take a nap, in fact, in my new office a security guard comes round and turns the lights off then on…

Farewell Britannia

Posted on September 15th, 2008

Photo by Gilbert R As the saying goes “a goodbye isn’t painful unless you’re never going to say hello again” and so it is with my imminent departure from the UK tomorrow. I’ll be back, I’m just not sure when! My flight to Hong Kong departs from London Heathrow tomorrow at midday and will touch down at 7am local time Wednesday morning after eleven-and-a-half hours of economy-class boredom. Then the real fun begins. Photo by slack12 I wont actually have any time in Hong Kong this time as I’ll be hopping directly on a coach across the border into mainland China and my final destination of Shenzhen (about 1 hour away). During the next two weeks I’ll be staying in a hotel while I…

10 Future Trends

Posted on September 13th, 2008

On the 10th anniversary of its founding Google has recently been asking 10 of its “experts” to give their predictions of what’s going to happen in the next 10 years as the internet evolves. I’m no expert but as a curious partaker in this brave new world I thought I’d give a shot at coming up with my own list of future predictions – Computation moves into the cloud – obvious but important. This is the key to the future which will provoke massive social change. No longer will we be tied to our desks or fortified corporate networks. Work anywhere on any device with the same access to all the same resources. Technology is humanised – forget “plug and pray”, it just works.…

Chinese Employment Z Visa Application

Posted on September 5th, 2008

Obtaining an employment visa (Z type) to work in China from the UK has been a real nightmare, seemingly compounded by the Olympics when things were further tightened up. The process isn’t very well documented anywhere so to try and possibly help others I thought I might relay my experiences. Please note that none of the below is in any way official and obviously subject to change – your mileage may vary! To apply for the Z visa from the UK your company will need to provide you with the following documentation: An employment permit An visa notification letter For them to get this documentation you will need give them: Passport (should be valid for at least 6 months with blank pages) Education (degree)…

Google Creates a Browser

Posted on September 1st, 2008

…called Chrome (not yet live) and presented it in comic form. No beta to play with yet but the concept presented looks exciting. To my mind second generation browsers (FF3 included) have almost reached their limit and this introduces some pretty revolutionary new thinking, certainly in terms of the technology behind it, which should hopefully provide some good competition to further propel innovation across the browser market. Best of all it’ll be entirely Open Source. I hate to say “I told you so” but this is moving exactly as I predicted last year – the web browser is becoming the operating system. Lots more detail Google Blogoscoped, ReadWriteWeb and Tech Crunch.

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