Archive for November, 2007

My friend left last night, well really early this morning, and he had such a huge hassle with the weight of his luggage. Because he’s going back to France, he could only carry back about 40 lbs per bag and he was only allowed one luggage bag. This is crazy. I’m so happy the USA has a limit of 50 lbs per bag and two allowable luggage bags. More than double other places. It’s so hard to not buy things here in China. Everything is so cheap and you want to show everything to your friends and family back at home. If I could bring back an old Chinese man that yelled out “Fapiao” all day I would, that’d be great….I’d also bring back as much meat sticks and bottles of baijiu (horrible Chinese liquor) as possible. Since I have a higher weight limit, when I leave I’m going to see how much I can fit in my bags. I have a feeling some baijiu and maybe even some meat sticks will reach the “land of the free”.

There are ro char or meat stick grills all over beijing. You can almost always find one, except near my apartment. But yesterday, when I was really in the mood for some ro char, there was FINALLY one young guy grilling ro char just outside my apartment. F*CKING AMAZING! I love ro char! I told my friend that when I leave, I will probably miss the ro char the most. What is there not to love, meat on a stick grilled up. How much more manly can you get too?

So anyways I ate 5 ro chars then ate a salad at my apartment then drank some beers then went back to the ro char guy and bought 24 ro chars with my friend and watched a movie. It was a good night. The ro char made it a good night. So good. Yeah…..mmmmmm

Acid is falling and I’m not talking about the trippy kind, that kind might actually be better. This morning it was raining, the first time it has rained since I’ve been here in Beijing. No umbrella. And I couldn’t help but wonder if this is acid rain that is falling on me, the infamous acid rain I heard third world countries experience. It looks and feels like normal rain but I’m sure it is eating up my clothes. I wondered if I’d end up making it to work naked. “That damn acid rain!” I’d tell my boss, dripping and disheveled.

But it wasn’t too bad, I made to work. And my clothes….yeah they made it to work as well. I found out that 80% of the rainfall here in Beijing is acid rain. So I could make a mighty fine guess and say, yeah, that was acid rain on me and yeah I’ll tell you if my skin is peeling off tomorrow.

One more thing, I’m now going to invest in an industrial sized umbrella preferably made of steel soon. I think it’s worth it.

I finally went to a gym near me and asked for a trial for the day to see what their fitness center had to offer. Compared to my New York gym or any New York gym for that matter, it was a bit “old-skool”. The tiny gym was filled with outdated fitness machines (some of which were broken), iron weights, rusted bars, broken mirrors, ping pong tables?, and half naked men. As discouraging as this all sounds, the gym wasn’t too bad though. Even though it offered severely outdated equipment that I’m use to, it did have all the equipment and machines I usually use. Two things that an American gym wouldn’t have is a ping pong table and half naked men(well some do). But these two do flow with the Chinese culture. The ping pong I can understand, its China‘s biggest sport. While the shirtless men, okay, they aren’t very sanitary, and for me, who drips buckets of sweat while working out, well I can relate.

So after my workout experience I ponder whether to join or not?

On the plus side they offer all the equipment I use and like and its not too crowded. On the negative side, they have outdated equipment, no hot women, no water fountain, and somewhat far from my apartment.

I think the negatives out weigh the positives however I might pay for day passes occasionally. Maybe I can cut a deal with him…. who knows, maybe I could be his personal trainer and get a free membership.

http://forum.chinaorbit.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=138

not sure which one to get now, but i want oneeee

meizu m7 meizu m6 sl

Everyone around me is sick. As I am typing this people are coughing and sneezing inches away from me. I’m just hoping I don’t catch a cold, however hang out with all my friends which are almost all sick, I feel it is almost inevitable. It’s weird to hold the thought of knowing the future. Well I don’t know for sure and I’m hoping I don’t get sick because I hate it (well who likes it?). I must be cautious. (I feel like a ninja). I must wash my hands, I must dress warm, and I must hold my breath when someone sneezes or coughs. You can actually lessen your chance of catching a cold if you do this. So if you’re reading this and you’re not sick yet, these are your rules of defense to avoid catching the sickness.

A few days ago i went with other people of my school to a gigantic place where you can go and sing in a private room (KTV) and play bowling. The KTV rooms were like spaceships. Everything was white, from the tables to the leather seats. The KTV machines had a great selection of old and new songs in English. After an hour in the KTV room we all got down to serious business by going to the bowling alleys. Once we went on the top floor i was actually gobsmacked how many bowling alleys they had. My team was playing on the alley number 50 and apparently there was another closed off section with another 50 alleys…Making it, apparently, the biggest bowling club in the world! Just before leaving we noticed this place had a great bowling pro shop and a very sophisticated lingerie shop… China: expect the unexpected!!

I am often asked this question but actually sometimes I wonder if I even know how to do SEO for Google. They do not publish their ranking criteria of course; they only give some hints in their Google guidelines for webmasters.
If you follow those guidelines, you can’t go wrong with your site.
For Baidu, the most popular Chinese search engines, there seem to be some differences to Google:

  1. the filename and domain name seem to be more relevant for Baidu than for Google
  2. Except of the title-tag, the meta-tags are not important for most western search engines, for Baidu, they are still more important
  3. Internal links and the linktext in those links are more important for Baidu than for Google.
  4. For Google incoming links from other websites are the most important ranking criteria. For Google, the quality of those incoming links is more important than for Baidu. For Baidu, the number of links is more important.

Somehow it seems to me, that the Google algorithm is more advanced and for Baidu you have to do more “old-fashioned” SEO.

Some more hints for foreign companies, which want a Chinese website:

  • Most important: Don’t save money by hiring an inexperienced translator. Do a professional translation of your site and let it proofread again and again by an expert in your business field
  • Use a cn-Domain for your website. Also foreign companies are allowed to register cn-Domains without having a Chinese admin-c (in Germany, you need a German administrator for your de-Domain, if the owner does doesn’t reside in Germany
  • Host your website in China if you only target the Chinese market but don’t try to save too much money on web space. Many companies I know spent thousand of Euro on their website but are not willing to spend 10 Euro more per month for a good server. Beware that your website might be slow from outside China. If your website also has an English version, this should not be hosted in China but in the US or Europe.

After a two week hiatus, Youtube, a Google-owned video sharing network, is back online.

There is no official answer as to why Youtube was blocked for a two week period by the Chinese internet regulators. Speculations have narrowed the filtration to either the 17th National Communist Party Congress, which is China’s most important meeting of political leaders that discuss the future of China held every five years, or the unveiling of the Taiwan version of Youtube. The YouTube Taiwan site is also accessible in China.

More on chinaorbit news