Thursday, November 10th, 2005
|
|
10:16 am - haven't used this blog for a long time
|
|
this is the one I opened when I was still in Australia from 2003 to 2004. And now I am working in Hang Zhou now. I don't know why I tried to search "cuanyu" by google this morning and found this blog again. It is very interesting to review these entries and good memories come up again.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Sunday, May 16th, 2004
|
|
7:49 pm - craving for love
|
You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is still a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
And when two lovers woo
They still say "I love you"
On that you can rely
No matter what the future brings
Time goes by
Moonlight and love songs
Never out of date
Hearts full of passion,
Jealousy and hate
Woman needs man,
And man must have his mate
That no one can deny
It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by
Moonlight and love songs
Never out of date
Hearts full of passion,
Jealousy and hate
Woman needs man,
And man must have his mate
Oh, no one can deny
It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
'Cause time goes by...
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Wednesday, March 31st, 2004
|
|
4:49 pm - strike again
|
|
There is no bus service in the morning again and I have to ask my friend to drive me to the university. Finally there is bus coming in the afternoon. And I had a chat with several drivers at the bus stop. It seems that the strike of this time is about the same issue of last one, air conditioning on every buses. But one of the femal driver told me that they call it a "vote" instead of "strike". The bus she is driving is very old and she told me that it will retire very soon after 20 years of service. And then it may be sold to other small cities after that.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Monday, March 22nd, 2004
|
|
9:31 pm - Even hotter and out of power
|
The record has been broken again and the temp rises to 42 today. And finally it is the turn of my suburb to lose power. Can't stand the heat in the house, I decided to drive to the Mt Coo-Tha which is the highest place in Brisbane to enjoy some possible cool air. On the road to the peak I stopped at a petrol station to fill the tank of my car. The guy there told me that there are many people coming to his place asking to buy some candles. But actually it is very difficult to find candles in this area.
There were already some thunder and lightening when I left my home. And when I reached the lookout on the peak, I can finally watch the amazing view,with shinning city under and bright lightening in the far south. There are several people who have set up cameras trying to catch the beautiful moment when the sky and the earth was linked with that great power.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Sunday, March 21st, 2004
|
|
3:38 am - HOT
|
|
Today is the hotest day of Febrary in the recent 80 years in Brisbane and the temp rises to 40 degrees. All the shopping center are full of people who escape from their home to enjoy the air conditioning. I plan to go to cinema to avoid the heat. Although "The Lord of Ring 3" has been in cinema for two months, I haven't had time to watch it yet. So tomorrow will be a good reason to see it!
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Saturday, March 20th, 2004
|
|
6:25 pm - where is the bus?
|
My roommate went out early this morining to catch a bus to the university. But half an hour later he came back with a frastrated face. It seems that there is no bus service in the suburb today and a friendly taxi driver passed by told him that there is a strike of bus drivers. There are nearly 400 bus drivers who turn off their engines and claim for better working environment, like installing air conditioning on every bus and have 10 minutes of rest every 2 hours. They have chosen the hottest day so far this year to go on strike. Some drivers said the temp inside the bus without air conditioning could reach as high as 50 degree. They said that not only the bus drivers are suffering but also do those passengers,especially elder people. I think, besides the lack of air conditioning, many of the old buses in Brisbane should be replaced. This is a city with lots of slopes and some are so steep that those old buses can hardly handle. Every time when I was in such an old bus climbing those slopes I just couldn't help thinking if it could finally made it to the top.
The heat not only bring those bus drivers down, it also take out of electricity supply of many suburd of Brisbane yesterday and some of them are still out of power now. It is reported that even the coast is not cooler then city and we have put off our plan of bbq at some beach this weekend.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Sunday, February 15th, 2004
|
|
10:59 pm - back to Stone Age
|
|
There has been several thunderstorms in Brisbane these days. And each time there will be some suburbs to black out. And usually it will take more then 10 hours before the electricity is restored. I have never expected the power supply so weak here and I think it is because there are many big trees standing beside those transformers. As far as i know those who is damaged during the storm were hit by the falling tree. Because there is no power in the house, people all went out for dinner and the shopping malls were all crowed. There is nothing to do at home when there is no power. I suddenly remember the article I learned in middle school, saying how modern techonoly changed our life style. Yesterday I went to the Roma St parkland with two Aussie friends,and then went to one friend's sister's home and had a pleasant chat. It is a great night without TV,computer and internet upon which I rely much to spend the night. And I found this night to be the most enjoyable one after I came to Brisbane.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Wednesday, February 11th, 2004
|
|
8:59 am - Friend back from farm
|
|
one of my roommates came back from the farm in Stanthorpe this morning. He has been working there for 3 months during the summer break. On December last year I drove there to see him. Before that I first went to Lamington National Park in Gold Coast and spent 3 days in the mountain. Because most of my journey is on the east side of the Big Divide, most of the view are of green moutains and beautiful plains. But on the west side of the Big Divide one would expect more dirt and stones. We have planned to drive to the Big Rock sometime until I found an article on Wheel magzine about a cross-continent journey of three people in a 4WD sedan. It seems that although most of the road condition are of very high standard, there exists some dirt road which only 4WD could handle. I am happy that I didn't made the wrong decision to drive my old Falcon to that route. But anyway to explore the beauty of the outback of this big island will be on my list for a long time.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Saturday, February 7th, 2004
|
|
11:12 am - Brisbane International Motor Show
|
|
Today I went to the International Motor Show here in Brisbane. Although I am always interested in cars, this is my first time to see a auto show. This one is a not a high level exhibition and most of the products are just those ones which could be seen in the show room of car dealer. But there are still something very interesting for me. The Roadster of Smart first appears in Brisbane and there are only 6 of this model running on the streets of Brisbane right now. Smart is always one of my favourite and I have seen many in Paris. Although it looks tiny but the inside is very spacious because of the clever design of the engineer,both from Swatch and Benz. At the very end of the hall there is a display of the product of Bullet,which is a local small auto maker with only 10 employees. They build cutomized sports cars at the requirements of the customer and their products are around $10k. They use Luxus engine and transmission and build their own chasis. One of the car displayed there could accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in 4.9 seconds and it is already a very remarkable performance for a car of this price.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Thursday, January 29th, 2004
|
|
6:06 pm - FO
|
In Chinese we use a system called PINYIN to decribe the pronunciation of each chinese character. And a chinese dictionary uses PINYIN as the index. Many chinese characters is pronounced in the same way, so usually you will find many characters under one idex.But under the index of "FO" there is only one character.
That character means Buddha.
I can't find any other chinese character which is so unique as FO. It seems that no one dear to stand at the same position with Buddha.
Isn't it interesting?
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Tuesday, January 13th, 2004
|
|
4:49 am - yak butter tea
|
An article about Tibet in National Geographic reminds me one of the most unforgetable beverage I have ever had till now-Yak butter tea.
I only had two chances to taste it only during my trip to the Tibetan area of Si Chuan province in China.That is Dao Cheng and if you have read the book "lost horizon" you will know that is the "final Shangri-la".
The first time I saw real yak butter tea was when I reached the camping place of Yading Natural Reservation Area,which is nearly 4000 meters above sea level. For an electrical engineer who is lack of exercises like me, every step there is pushing me to the limit of my resource. Although surrounded by the three divine mountains worshiped by all Tibetans around the world, I couldn't feel any strength in my body. And it it at that time a smiling,bright faced Tibetan gave me a bowl of yellow,oil surface,salty liquid with strong smell.
That's Yak Butter Tea!
At first sight you may find it quite unacceptable and I know many people who has great reaction to it. But for a worn-out traveller like me it not only warmed up my body but also revivaled me. And the shrine was then covered by the red light of the sunset.
After a cold and wet night,awaked several times by headache caused by high altitude, we begin to go on the 12 hour journey of surrounding the holy mountain. The local guide promised us that there will be a yak farm in the middle of the trek and we could enjoy hot yak butter tea and dry our clothes there. That almost became the only reason surpport us to keep going after climbing over a 5000 meters valley.
The snow-covered yak farm was finally proved to be a summer-season farm and there was nobody there when we arrived, not to mention long promised bright fire and hot yak butter tea.
The awkward guide again promised to bring us nice and hot yak butter tea once we arrived at his home. And since he is only local people we can find in the moutain at that time, what we can do was continuing following him until we saw his 3-floor temple-like house under the glimmer of the star.
It is very hard to decribe our feelings when we saw that liquid again and you can never have more fresh yak butter tea then that because the yak which produced the milk just lived under floor. Each of us finished one pot of yak butter tea and then we got the strength to talk about the passing day.
Yak is to Tiebtan as water to fish. As soon as you enter the Tibetan area, you will see herds of yaks wondering along the mountain,showing good balance jumping rocks. People there take it as sources of transportation,food,drink and clothes. They even make candles from yak butter. I even smells like a yak a week after I returned home.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Thursday, January 8th, 2004
|
|
2:54 am - Bangee Jump
|
I did some search one day and find the following post of myself posted several years ago. I still find it interesting to read something you write long time ago. And maybe that is one motivation of me to setup this weblog.
The photos taken during that Bangee Jump could be found at http://cn.photos.yahoo.com/cuanyu, it is listed under " Beijing "
Bangee Jump I
by cuanyu at 02/24/2001 16:28 Beijing Time
The first time was in HuaiRou near Beijing. It was a sunny saturday when I was lying on the bed in the hotel waitting for a call never come. Suddenly an idea come out. Why don't I go out to have some fun and release me from the work. I have been told many times before that the most exciting bangee jump in China was located in QingLongXia not far from HuaiRou. Immediately I jump off the bed and ran out diving into the beautiful sunshine.
QingLongXia is a very small reservoir which you can hardly find on the map. You can see part of Great Wall there. A smart man setup a platform on the top of the damp and opened the bangee jump business there.
You have to sign on a small paper declaring that you don't have any disease that will cause death or harm before you buy the ticket. You also have to sign an insurance contract . I hesitated for a moment. Should I donate the money to the Hope Project? I wrote down the name definitely--my father's name.
It was on the top of the tower when I start to wonder if I really want to do this. 150 yuan for strong heart beating of one minute while all my life depends on the elastic band around my feet?
No time to think. The guy controlling the rope pushed me to the edge impatiently. He must have an plane to catch, I thought.
A girl was holding a video camera on the fourth flooor of the tower.She will capture every seconds of me in the next minutes.
Hmm,Pretty girl.
Smile to her !
Wave hands to her !
And...
Here I go !
Actually you don't have too much feelings when you finally jump off since all the blood seem to be pushed into your head. I wonder how could those parachuter act when they are in the air. I tried hard to find the girl taping me but only to find that I lost the sense of direction at all.
Later when I read the book "Into the thin air", I learned that many climbers, especially those adventurers take bangee jump as a stupid thing.
I agree with them. I forgot to take out the key for my room in hotel from my pocket and dropped it into the lake when I jumped down. I have to pay 5 yuan more to get a new key as a compensation for the hotel.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Monday, January 5th, 2004
|
|
3:15 pm - cell phone
|
"Yes,I am having a meeting" You answer your wife's phone call.
Actually you are in the hospital with you ex-wife who has just given birth of your own son.
"He is with me all the time this afternoon dicussing about that script" You answer your friend's wife's call
Actually your friend is on a bed of a hotel with his blonde postgraduate student.
"Hello!.....Speak louder,i can't hear you!....." You shout to your cell phone
Acturally even the people sitting beside you could hear the voice of the caller very clearly.
These are just some scenes from one of the hotest film right now in China--"Cell Phone". It tells a story of how people lie to each other,even to one's wife who suppose to be the closest one you should never cheat. At the end of the film all the secrets are revealed acidentally by the cell phones people use to tell those lies.
This "Cell Phone" is catogaried into "He Sui Pian" in Chinese, which means film to celebrate the New Year. The director of the film has made several successful He Sui Pian before and most of them are just comedies. But this year it turns out to be more like a ethic one. Some file critics say they are waiting to see how many husband would dear to take his wife to the cinema to see the film.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
|
Sunday, January 4th, 2004
|
|
11:40 pm - MovableType
|
I successfully installed MovableType on my machine. Now I can write my dairy with it. I try to keep writing working dairy everyday recording what I have done and learned during the work. It is good way of accumulation of information and it could help me a lot when I need to consult previous work for help. Although MovableType is basically a tool to manage and publish frequently modiffied contents especially for web users, I find it still a very handful tool to organize personal information. If you are interested in MovableType you can visit http://www.movabletype.org for further information. My friend Wang Jianshuo introduced it to me and you can also visit his websit http://www.wangjianshuo.com.
Although I have decided not to write too much technology stuff in this blog, I just don't have anything to write for today because it took me almost a whole day to fine tune it and the Apache web server. And that's also part of my life as an engineer, isn't it?
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
Friday, January 2nd, 2004
|
|
8:15 am - World Idol
|
|
The final result of World Idol turns out to be a big surprise. Kurt Nilson from Norway won the final contest with his "Beautiful Day". And it is really a beautiful day for himself and it seems that even himself would not believe that he finally defeat the hot hit American Idol Kelly Clarkson. Guy Sebastian, "the newest but not the least idol on the block" ranks 6 and I am really disappointed with this because I think he deserves a much higher score. But maybe Australia is the farest contry to the other contries which have sent their idols and voted, and maybe Guy is still a new face to them while Kelly has already sold millions of records, and maybe his special hair style is just unacceptable.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
|
Thursday, January 1st, 2004
|
|
11:40 am - Bikers
|
|
It is reported that there is a group of bikers travelling across Queensland heading to Sydney. The number of the people in the group is increasing because there are always new comers to join the group along the way. I am always interested in them ever since I first saw one in Las Vegas several years ago. They all looks to be "Bad Boys" because of their black jackets,long hair and tattoos. But actually they are just some kind big guy according to my experience, especially when they smile. They never refused the request of taking photos with them and they will hug you firmling just like you are are their long time pal. I have once seen a film called "Running Cool" and it tells a story about those bikers. It really shocked me when I saw in one scence hunderds of bikers and their bikes. And their free life is just what I dream of.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
10:49 am - Happy New Year
|
|
I suddenly realise that I am now in a country which will greet the new year earlier then most of the other countries in the world.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
10:44 am - Nudgee Beach
|
Today I went to Nudgee Beach which is the nearest beach to where I am living now. It took me 20 mins of driving to get there.
Actually it could not be called a beach because it is only the entrance point of Brisbane River to the sea and most of that area is wetland well protected by the government. I have spotted several really big trees standing in the sea water. It is a popular place for local people to off leash their dogs and I met lots of dogs over there. Even the drinking foutain there is specially designed for dogs. And dogs seem to enjoy the water activites very much. There is one special dog who paid much attention to me once I sat down by the beach. After a quick inspection it soon decided to make my legs its perfect resting place. I don't know much about dogs and could not tell its breed. It is well feeded and looks to be very healthy and active. I would like it to stay on my legs for a longer time if its body was not wet and full of sand, obviously a sign of happy enjoyment of water.
Nudgee Beach is also a good place for fishing. According to a guy I met there, everyday is a perfect day there for fishing, only your lucks counts. It seemed that he is not very lucky today. But I think most people only take fishing as good means of relaxation instead of food hunting for the dinner.
Nudgee Beach used to be a resort place for retired people and untile today it is still a very quite community with kindly people. Just before I reached for the beach, I stopped once to make sure my actual position. A bold shoulder guy warmly welcomed me and pointed the position for me on the map. Usually Aussie will greet people with G'day, but the first sentence he said to me is:" Oh, you speak English!" . Maybe it is because of my aboriginal T-shirt and dark skin :-P
Here is a link with detail introduction of Nudgee Beach -->"http://www.northgateward.org/page6.html"
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
|