Yup, that IS the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in “summer”. I went out on a Sunday ride and saw that I was heading into that, so it was worth a snap.
Summer here means bone chilling wind and the sun disappearing around noon. That ain’t haze or smoke (for all of you in SE Asia), it’s just plain fog!
I live IN that fogbank, BTW…
Upgrade Complete!
Took a tad more work this AM, but got the NetPBM module to generate thumbnails of pictures with a little help from IPC Run!
I know, waaay too much geek speek this early in the day…
Here’s a lion from a fren’s wedding.
There’s a tradition during the lion dance that you throw oranges for good luck. At this wedding, an orange, hurled from one end of the room, hit a waiter square on the head on the other side of the room. He cursed up a blue streak in Guangdongwa, despite the fact that he probably is more familiar with some of the obscure traditions than anyone else in the room!
The Longest 3 hours
Six Apart has released the latest version of Movable Type, 3.2, a long overdue overhaul of its blogging software. With lots of anti-spam goodness. And because this goodness is built in, it should make leaving comments easier!
The upgrade instructions seem simple enough.
Replace files in your installation with the files in the upgrade package. Make sure permissions are correct. Then log in as you usually do and blammo, it upgrades itself. Sounds easy, right? Not by a long shot!
New Line in Tokyo! With Wi-Fi!
There’s a new train line in Tokyo!
The Tsukuba Express begins in Akihabara and ends in the college town of Tsukuba, some 35 miles northeast of Tokyo. Here’s some english info.
Why is this important? Well, one of the stops it makes is Minami-Senju, the JR/Subway stop where the Juyoh, the New Koyo and other low-cost lodgings are clustered around. That means convenience!
But what’s really cool is that the train cars and five of the stations have Wi-Fi! It’s on a trial basis for now and I’m not sure how much this will cost, but it demonstrates that it is possible.
Of course, in San Francisco, this technology will probably be implemented after we get cell phone coverage in the trains and stations.
Maybe in the year 2100. How “progressive”!
No more Yum Cha…
at Harbor Village. They’re closing. Something about rent going up and not being able to get a new lease.
There seems to be a lot of that going around.
Harbor Village was in Embarcadero Four for close to 20 years and was one of the few downtown yum cha places that was worth the money cuz of the food and the view.
And even though many tong-yahn dismissed Harbor Village as being too “gwai” because of the location, every time I’ve been there, it was 90% Chinese inside. More so than other places here link Ton Kiang or Yank Sing(which is horribly expensive).
Guess I gotta find another yum cha house. Or at least until Harbor Village’s chef opens up a new place.
More Airline Ranting
You know the asinine movies that they show on long haul flights?
The ones that usually suck rocks or are just yeeech? Like, erm, Like Mike, Hitch, The Ya-Ya Spinsterhood, Cheaper by the Dozen, Beautyshop (but they never showed Barbershop, wonder why?), ad nauseum. Movies you normally wouldn’t accept money to watch because they’re bland, simplistic, inoffensive and politically correct (which is bad bad bad).
Well, guess what? That’s EXACTLY why they show them!
Maybe it’s to lull you into a coma so you don’t notice that the sausage that came with your “breakfast” tastes suspiciously like soy…and the service you’re experiencing is crap! =P
Of course, the best cure for this if you’re on a US flag airline is to bring your own snacks (Costco trail mix and Shin Cup come to mind), The Scorpion King on DVD and something to play it on.
US Airlines, bleagh!
Once upon a time, many years ago, traveling was considered a whole experience. It wasn’t just the experience of actually being somewhere else; getting there was part of the experience too. Nowadays, the journey to wherever you’re going to is considered a hindrance (or a necessary evil), hopefully disposed of as quickly as possible.
I was asked recently about my travel addiction and the discussion turned to airlines.
Yeeeeeeah!
So my favourite daan taat place, the Tai Cheong Bakery, has a new home! And the irony is: It’s across the street from their old location!
From the unlinkable South China Morning Post:
While the $60,000-plus rent is much higher than the $38,000 the bakery had paid, it is considerably lower than the $80,000 the former landlord demanded.
“We’ve decided not to raise the price of our egg tarts despite the rising cost, and people can still get them for just $3.50 each,” Mr Au Yeung said. “As an additional way to help cover the extra rent, we will also sell tea and coffee to take away. It’s trendy and is what people want.
“We treasure our loyal customers and they can expect to find the same Tai Cheong – down to the shop’s old decoration – up and running again next month.”
That’s still a pretty steep rent increase (US$2831 vs. the US$5400 a month that they wanted in the old place), but they will be back in business.
They’re going to have to sell a LOT of coffee/tea. But I’m glad that they are.
oh-oh
I read about the merger of JetStar Asia and Valuair over the weekend.
Corporate types are excited about it. But when that happens, passengers usually lose. Less flights and more expensive tickets.
Look at UAL for example. Each time their union bosses announce a “good thing” (such as being able to purchase “good food” on flights or having “special service” between SFO-JFK), it raises prices on travellers. The end result of this is that now if you fly on a connecting flight from SFO to the East Coast, you don’t get food unless you buy it. I’ll accept that if the fares come down to compensate, but they’ve gone up, especially to JFK. This is because the SFO-JFK run are now served by PS flights. Great for bigshot flyers who don’t have to pay for their own travel, bad for everyone else.
But back to the topic at hand. Does that mean that the brief sunshine of cheap travel in SE Asia is at an end? I rather liked my experience on JetStar Asia on my recent trip to BKK…
Brrrrr…
I was in Los Angeles last weekend.
Went for a fren’s wedding.
Met up with a bunch of old frens from my LA days who are all married also.
I know that once a person gets married, there’s change in the air. And based on my recent experience, the guys change more than the girls.
It’s almost like the guys are forced to close the book on the “single” part of their life and discard everything from that so they can begin the “married” part of their lives. It’s more of a bummer when they were once your “homies”.
The worst part is that I’m now one of two “Last Men Standing”. Disturbing…
Of course if the right girl comes along, maybe I’ll be transmogrified too…