My Nexus Holiday - 5 A sour ending

Day 6
Herbal medicines... great. Everyone loves hearing about how they're on the cusp of death. And how they can cheat death if they just take a few of these overpriced musty roots for a few months.
I say avoid answering questions clearly – try on their cold reading skills. They probably have profiles of common, plausible but difficult to disprove ailments for certain age groups.

The attraction for today was some pavilion. The highlight of that leg was a Chinese old guy taking photo of Caucasian baby. The mother was not pleased and forced him to delete the photos.

Later there was a 2.5 hour shopping stop at silk road. Same deal as usual - find something to do. Maybe sit down at Maccas. Go change money at a bank.
Lastly there was the optional show at Happy Valley. My mother and I didn't go in. Instead we had a walk through Tesco. Tesco bags up your bag inside a larger cloth bag and tags it with some sort of technology. This method reduces the need for lockers.
Anyway, there was some crazy traffic outside.

Oh where shall I sit?

 












Fully dimmable sun.

Chaos in turning lanes. The third and sixth from left are lanes for left turning. Lanes four and five are for through traffic. Good planning... Not!

Day 7
The most appalling day of the week. We were on a coach for most of the day, getting to and from Chengde. Basically we visited a paddock. There was an unannounced cost of 50 yuan for the electric 'bus'. Some had flat tyres.

The 'guest' tour guide for today - some local woman - said it would take about 2 hours to walk and that those not interested in taking the bus should walk directly to the exit. Well, the hour spent in there only took us 2km. I think Chinese people don't like walking. Or something.
There was a temple at the top of a really steep road. Not much there either.
Stackage (this was actually on the main highway in the morning):

Appalling
Anyway, we were on the road since 1530 and encountered some traffic jams getting back to Beijing. We ended up disembarking the coach at 1945, but not for dinner. Instead we go for an 'absolutely free' foot massage. Of course there has to be some catch. People start coming out and try to peddle more herbal medicines. I get my laptop out and do a bit of programming on my MSP430 launchpad. One of the girls, dressed up in a lab coat, asked what I was doing. Strangely she was actually interested and didn't want to kick me out. Hmm.
Now another thought was why these highly regarded herbal doctors/professors would stay until 2100 to receive us. Surely if we missed the schedule, they'd just go home. We're not that important. Plus the group has a track record of being stingy. Ah, I suppose it's all in the headcounts. But both parties could have called it off. I don't think anyone was in any state to buy things.
Finally at 2105 we leave for dinner. There were chipped crockery and bugs too. Dinner takes an hour and we're bussed back.

The tour guide said give him the AUD10 per day tips based on however many days you think you should. Well definitely don't give for eight days, as I heard one man complain about but still submitted. I think the USD tips were slightly better value due to the exchange rate.

Food:
I had a bit of a laugh one morning to do with breakfast jams. I came up to the table where the toast is and take two small packets. Then a guy turns around and tells me that they're his. Whoops! It turns out he had made a bit of a collection and I mistook his plate for the main one, which was concealed by his torso. Hoarder! Well, I suppose it's representative of the kind of person who would go on a tour like this.

My Nexus Holiday - 4

Day 5

Mostly at Tianji. There was a touristy shopping strip that seemed a bit dead.

Lunch at 11AM. Good on the tour guide. More tourist shopping after lunch.

Today was when the tour guide advised of an optional performance. Some people were not prepared for the 350 yuan per person fee. It did cause some anxiety with the other travellers. My mum and I decided not to go.

It would have otherwise have been a waste except for the second jade outlet visited on this trip. The girls tried presenting first but found that the group was a bit more difficult than normal. One of them found the manager who was surprised to find that the group had such a diverse background. He then proceeded to use some good psych while talking a lot!

Hatred of Japanese - not quite forgiven following WW2, he jokes about making enough money from the Japanese with ridiculous mark-up earlier on this day.

Self-deprecation - he claims that he can't do business and has been in trouble particularly after the lack of Japanese travellers following the tsunami.

Global experience - he has done business and travelled in many countries, some of which overlap with the fellow tourists.

Sympathy for need for connections - apparently making his business more difficult to run.

Reveals some figures in the cost of doing business. There's no way to tell for sure how much jade costs for him at his mine. However, if he's happy to sell things at 'cost price' and the sales staff don't have any hesitation, then it's probably rehearsed.

He goes for reverse psychology in telling people not to buy. That he has made enough from the Japanese.

Revealing ‘secrets’ about a variety of topics including picking good quality jade. Good fun all round - just try not to spend any of your money in the process.


Food:
By this stage, lunch and dinner are looking rather similar to each other and to every other day. Spicy, salty variations of cucumber. It is worthwhile finding a supermarket during the off-peak to stock up on some palatable food. 
Protip: Keep your airplane knife for use with fruit. Beijing subway can be a pain for carrying even a fruit knife around, due to the entry security check. The staff will usually tell you off and let you be on your way.

My Nexus Holiday - 3

Day 4

The first stop of the day was a jade outlet/manufactory. This was very dodgy as this is a good time of the day to enjoy some of the sights – before the heat of the day really kicks in. But perhaps the tour guide was thinking that the tourists would be too tired to make purchases after sightseeing. Nevertheless, it was a pretty slow sales session with most people creeping out to the bus and staying there waiting for the tour guide.

The emperor’s tomb wasn’t much of a sight. There was some silly security checks though. Camera bags were exempt. People didn’t have to be scanned. I’m not really whether it’s useful to have those people there.

After lunch (which was back at the jade outlet) it was sightseeing at the Great Wall. Not much to report on except that there is an abrupt end to the walking trail, and wall for that matter. At the bottom there’s a rope on the ground that somehow is meant to stop vehicles from passing. The security guards on the end of the rope are something to look at. They sit on plastic chairs all day and don’t really have to move. But they still do that noisy whock-spit! So there’s spittle on the ground bunched up quiet neatly.

China is assembling electric power wind farms somewhere on the other side of the Great Wall.

I though the Dr Tea session went quite poorly. Some of the fellow tourists led the sales people on in exclaiming how good the sample teas were. They were also the first to leave saying that they had enough tea at home. The staff even started saying how they had strategies for Tian Qi flower products to beat customs and quarantine of certain countries. Sales were poor enough for the sales girls to badger people outside, next to the coach. No need to sit anywhere strategic or even to feign a toilet break. Just walk out of the room when you've had enough.

The day ended with looking at the night scenery at Olympic stadiums. Notable: silly security bag-only check. 

My Nexus Holiday - 2

Day 2This consisted of a few obligatory Beijing sights - Tiananmen, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and an acrobatic performance in the evening.
The tour guide talked a bit about the background of the tour and why it was so cheap. He said a lot of things and the horn-friendly motorists of Beijing didn't help with clarity. I think he was trying to say that there wasn't any government subsidy and that it was all sponsored by businesses. He didn't say whether they were government-owned businesses though. The fact that he said part of the tour was to show the Chinese diaspora that China had become great and developed sounded suspicious. No business would want to do that… Surely that's the role of government.
There's daily 'fines' of USD99 for non attendance as his paymasters require a headcount through the stores. Also if you 'borrow' an entry ticket to one of the sights for whatever reason, he requires you to return it.
Protip: choose the right side of the bus – the legroom can be better due to the different pitch to accommodate the rear door.

Day 3
The day started off with sightseeing at the Summer Palace. Which essentially means take photos.

There was an unannounced but compulsory CNY10 fee for the boat ride across. Compulsory because of time constraints and the logistics of keeping the group together.
Silk quilts were interesting…

We stayed there for quite some time. Sales were slow and people were quick to return to the coach. It looked like the tour guide was copping some behind-his-back criticism about the stinginess of his group.
After lunch there was 'fashion shopping district' for a whole two hours, twenty minutes. Hiding out at McDonalds meant there was a seat and table to use. The highlight of the day was seeing a coach attempt a U-turn on an undivided main road, here:
They turned that bus around after 75 seconds of hearing horns and three-point turn (maybe more points).

Last for the day was Wangfujing. I swear those metal plates on the road were there last time I went, six years ago. Makes a huge racket when the buses drive over them.
Tip: Bring something to keep you occupied. About three hours' worth of stuff should do it for this day.

My Nexus Holiday - 1

Have you seen one of those ultra-cheap tour packages for Beijing and wondered what you really get for $99?
TL;DR? Although the trip is supported by excessively-long shopping sections, you can still be a winner in terms of value. The shopping sections can be a waste of time for some depending on how you value your time abroad.
Day 1
The hotel was a total pain to find. Beijing addresses still have a long way to go. It's rather inappropriate to have an address on the ring road when that chunk of land has been subdivided into little neighbourhoods, and the taxi drivers are themselves unsure of how to get there. Something like suburbs might also be useful, rather than huge districts that only give you a feel for which side of town you should be looking at.
Protip: look it up on Google Maps first. Leave the page open on your laptop in case you want to refer to it while underway.

The Maya Island Hotel
I have a few thoughts about this place. Mainly that it's a good try. Why is it a good try and not a success?

• Poor location in being in the middle of a business park with no metro station nearby.
• Poor build with some strange decisions made.
• Trying too hard with the theme rather than making the hotel work.

The staff were good. There was a lot of 'stuff' in the room for keeping - but I think some of these were replaced too often. One does not need new soap or slippers everyday. Bath lotion, shampoo, conditioner, moisturiser and a two-blade disposable razor with tube of shaving cream were notable extras. The shower/bath had some design flaws which meant that water pooled on the ledge and could not drain properly, making the floor wet.
Protip: sacrifice a small towel to act as a plug.
There's mention of saving the environment by indicating that you don't need towels replaced. To do this one is supposed to hang the towels on the towel rack. A towel rack is notably absent from the bathroom fitout. Black tea bags are absent from the table. There are only enough ingredients to make (sweet) black coffee.
The rest of the hotel seems under-utilised. The gym was not in use at the times I walked past. There's also some massage parlour and spa that seemed rather quiet. A restaurant on level two provided breakfast each day. Differences from day-to-day seemed to be on what was unavailable rather than what other dishes were added. Management seemed to be learning how best to fry eggs during the week and shifted from cooked-to-order to undercooked in a tray.

Still, not a bad deal when bundled in that package. Normally there'd be no reason to live in a hotel out that way though.

Myki workings

I thought I may as well have a go at some commentary on the Myki system after having enjoyed Octopus for five months. Not the food.

Myki rollout
Obviously the timing could have been better and whether it was delayed due to engineers watching Youtube on their second monitors or something else, I don't believe allowing it to be used only on trains in Melbourne was very useful.
For example, a smartbus driver yelled at a young brunette with earphones in and an older lady who probably doesn't understand all that much English for trying to use Myki. Partial implementation doesn't really help these people and just adds another opportunity for confusion or ignorance.
Is it really necessary to promote a system that's not fully operational with mobile kiosks and all? Especially at shopping centres like Chadstone which aren't even in walking distance of a train station... Fantastic - it'll just make more angry bus drivers and more boarding delays at their bus terminals.

Concession
Concession doesn't really need to be printed onto the card. Really. Octopus allowed time-limited concessions to be applied on photo-personalised cards. The same deal could happen here and upon showing proof of concession, the card could be coded with concession status for another period.

Periodic Tickets
I don't think periodic tickets have any reason to exist anymore. There should be something like "Myki money rewards" instead of periodic tickets where once you spend enough, you get a discount. I think I worked the threshold out to be 18 days of travel in a month for zone 2. Myki is supposed to be able to calculate the best fare for you. I received a pretty boring reply from Myki as regards this matter at the end of last November, suggesting the use of Myki money for uncertain travel (read: I don't know whether I feel like attending class). I still don't believe it should be necessary to commit to such a ticket that doesn't need to exist in electronic form.

Passengers that didn't plan ahead
This one lumps a few issues together. I found that "exact fare only" worked pretty well on HK buses, minibuses and trams. There was also some whinging in the paper about the loss of city saver fares under Myki. Since you can't select anything at the touch-on panel and a tram driver is in no position to change it for each passenger, it doesn't seem like it could have worked. However, I think that an immediate-use fare machine catering for exact fare and Myki will be a suitable compromise. It could be just one specially-marked machine on the tram, replacing the vending machine and giving a paper receipt for exact fare passengers, with a timestamp and route number. The Myki passengers shouldn't need anything since it the system would know about it.
For buses, the bus driver could toggle the fare (rather like how one asks the 'bus captain' for the cheaper Central fare if not proceeding all the way to Causeway Bay on the number 8 minibus). We could have an exact-fare bucket and receipt printer near where the Metcard machine is currently.
Fares don't need to be complicated. A flat $2 for the ride or $1 for concession doesn't seem too far-fetched. Honesty system applies for concession. Interestingly, I've never had my Octopus checked by any ticket inspectors and my classmate expressed horror at the Youtube video of Melbourne authorised officers on the train network.
No-nonsense top up on trams and buses. No change given. However much you hand over is that amount of credit added onto the card. I haven't read any information about how this was planned to work on buses and trams.


My own whinging (not about Myki)
People who complain in the Whitehorse Leader about how hot or cold or whatever Box Hill bus terminal is... in my eyes Doncaster is far worse than Box Hill. The shopping centre grew so much bigger, has a complex active system for counting car park spaces and yet hasn't improved conditions for public transport users. Sure there are two smartbus routes ploughing through but the bus shelters are no more than the standard roadside ones. Puddles form at the waiting areas! Harumph.
On another note, I seem to be able to rely on a smartbus being on time/closer to being on time than a train on the Belgrave/Lilydale line. Weird... and it really shouldn't be that way.

Perhaps I could get a better view of the other side if I were to gain a summer vacation position at the transport department.

Easter - Lijiang account

I have an excessively long account about my Easter travels here:
http://hklogs.blogspot.com/2010/04/easter.html 

Lunar New Year - China attacks the senses

Last week I had the pleasure of travelling by coach from Hong Kong to Shantou to stay with relatives over the new year period. The border crossing is quite something with no metal-detecting arch for people and an optional x-ray scanner for luggage. Also, it seems that a RHS driven coach doesn't detract from driving quality in a LHS drive system.

After exiting the coach, Shantou, China stimulates the senses in several ways:

• The air is surprisingly reasonable after being in Hong Kong for a few weeks
• It's noisy - horns are used unsparingly, quite like how children use bicycle bells. Consumer fireworks make noise and then cause car/bike/scooter alarms to go off.
• It's bright - useless lights show off wealth, but also flood the night sky such that stars cannot be viewed. And again with the random fireworks.
• The place does feel rough and unmaintained. There's vision impairment tracks along the footpath but the footpath itself is uneven and there are huge gaps between the footpath and the elevated shopfronts.
• The taste of the food is much more to my liking.

 

My uncle's home was quite cosy... here my smallest cousin doesn't look too impressed at my uncle taking the random picture. Also note the ridiculously small teacups - managing and drinking from these can kill a lot of time, even with only intermittent conversation. I think it helps with under/unemployment in Shantou.

Here's grandma. Note my uncle's place is on the sixth floor with no lift.  We managed to talk about stuff in Mandarin, although she got some tones mixed up once or twice. Everyone watched 'the show' on the night and I helped uncle pull the song off QQ news so he could practice singing it. >.<

Number Two trying to enjoy GTA2 with little English and the Chinese way of driving. He took the laneways and drove the wrong way up highways, but wanted to stop at traffic lights. A start eh? Hmmm
The Chinese also kindly blocked Facebook, Blogger/Blogspot, Youtube, Picasa web and Google documents. Very kind of them except I actually wanted to wanted to waste time.

Here's some cool consumer fireworks - apologies for not making up my mind about the orientation earlier.

Usually thrown individually.

Launcher reuse for mini-rockets.

Anyway, onwards to another matter - Chinese traffic.

I've found that Chinese traffic doesn't paralyse at an incident in town - they just go around it as usual as they weave and come from all different directions (there's no uniformity to turning from one major road to another like how we have an arc marked out). However, their dodgy ways causes trouble on the expressway. When traffic slows down for some reason [requiring an ambulance], traffic fans out to three lanes. That's not really helpful for the emergency services who need to get there with haste to clean up the mess.
My coach had tried to overtake on the shoulder but had to merge back upon seeing a motorcycle. The same driver also got lost in Shenzhen and had to ask for directions. The second bus driver used his GPS which complained about the matter of speed.  A coach in Shenzhen tried to do a three-point turn on a three lane dual carriageway highway. Weird stuff.

There's also a rule of thumb for wet weather travel.

1. You may ride a bicycle and hold your own umbrella.
2. You may ride a scooter and have a second person hold an umbrella (or launch medium-sized fireworks on the go)

Overseas banking/Evolution and Christianity reconciled over 100 years ago?

Comparative Student 'going-away' banking
	NAB	CBA	WBC	ANZ	SGB	HSBC	Market
Monthly fee	-100 (0)	0	0	3	0	0
Card provider	VISA	MC	MC	VISA	VISA	EFT only
Card Overseas
Pay for something	2%	$1+2%	3%		2.50%	$1+1.1%
Cash withdrawal	$4+2%	$5+2%	$5+3%	$5+3%	$5+2.5%	$4.5+1.1%
Telegraphic
Rates 10/12/09	6.9323	6.9216				7.0228	7.0559
Fee	22	22				20

I suppose the card fees are not that useful without their respective foreign currency exchange rates. Plus at each branch they said it's not available until you see the entry on your statement. Lame.

Anyway, recently I read Dawkins' God: Genes, memes, and the meaning of life by Alister McGrath - a professor of historical theology at Oxford University. It does seem like it's more about bashing Dawkins' bashing religion rather than putting forward religion but anyway... here's some of the points I took out:

1. Various people in history were to blame for the ills of religion and anti-religion - not the movements as a whole (yeah, people always screw up things... take humans out of the system and it'd be fine)
   
2. religion needs to keep changing with the times and McGrath says that the modern church is compatible with natural science (but where to stop with the picking and choosing/reinterpretation to fit?)
3. In Victorian England, people were turned off Christianity because of the idea of everlasting hell
4. In 1887, a few decades after Darwin, the Bishops of Carlisle, Bedford and Manchester said natural science was okay with religion - it's in the same sphere but in different planes or so. (But people can't agree so we've still got sentiment against evolution...)
5. People can rationalise many things into others... Shoehorning as it were. eg Benjamin Warfield thought that biological evolution was quite magnificent and so it must've been guided by devine providence.
6. Some stuff is unexplainable and does not need explanation - just leave it. (Well that's what I do when I'm lazy and my circuit or code just happens to work after a while.)

Still, an interesting response to Dawkins' stuff.