2008 not a lucky year for China

Except for two weeks of near-perfection during the Olympics, China has been awash in bad news, including riots, a massive quake and now tainted formula and sick babies.

Source: LA Times

--

That was the problem, trying to have a perfect Olympics. For 7 years they cleaned up everything, ramped up government control, kicked people out of their houses to build the Olympic Green, hid important news from the West etc etc etc..

The Olympics overtook the Chinese psyche. They were obsessed with this irrelevant 2-week sporting event. I watched the Olympics every night as a sports fan. I wasn't impressed with the hosting of the event. There was no atmosphere in the crowds and no tailgating. There were no fan zones or entertainment. Just go to the arena and go home. I consider it one of the worst Summer Olympics I've ever seen.

As long as Chinese continue to think they are a perfect society and and hide/ignore the problems in the country, they will never grow. The Olympics have been forgotten already.

The Chinese habit of preferring to endure any hardship to avoid losing face in front of strangers doesn't help, either. Losing face to strangers is a fate worse than death ... at least Mao thought so.

Engrish from Pakistan

I think I'll pass....

Chinese Ugly Betty

It will be impossible to find an actress to play Ugly Betty in China unless they just find someone off the street with no acting experience. There are no ugly actresses in China. Such as there were no ugly hostesses or medal-presenting girls during the Olympics.

----------

The first season of "Ugly Wudi," a Chinese adaptation of the American comedy drama "Ugly Betty," is slated to debut on September 28. The protagonist, Lin Wudi, made her first public appearance on Tuesday.

Though the actress wears black-framed glasses and ill-fitting braces like the other Betty, her image was largely dismissed by the audience because she is not ugly enough, Oriental Morning Post reported.

Audiences hold the view that the "ugly girl" is beautiful, with a normal figure, big eyes and long hair, aside from the deliberate ugly costuming.

Hunan Television, which produced the adaptation, declined to disclose any information about the actress's identity in order to whet the audience's appetite. When reporters asked the actress about her personal issues, she was quick to avoid giving direct answers.

Holidays are all about handwriting

Can anyone in Canada hand write anymore? I know my hand writing skills have gone to crap. I type everything now. The only thing that I have to write are cheques and birthday cards.

But I know that in Asia writing(calligraphy) is still very important.

Source: Times of India

Man Actually Struck by Lightning for Swearing to God

China: A man named Xu is recovering in hospital after he was struck by lightning only a minute after swearing to God that he did not owe money to his neighbour. It is thought that he will recover completely.

Xu's neighbour, Huang, claims that he lent him 500 yuan, or about £40, to buy a wedding present three years ago. Huang went to Xu's house and demanded that the debt be repaid but Xu denied that the debt existed.

"I told him that if he dared to swear to God that he didn't owe me the money, then I would waive his debt," Huang said. Xu took him up on the offer and was promptly struck by lighting.

Source: www.ananova.com

The Good The Bad and The Weird

Anyone seen this yet? It looks wild!

Turning Asian Into American?

How Hollywood Ruins Asian Horror

It goes alot deeper than CGI I think. Any modern movie from Asia has trouble translating properly into "American".

Could you imagine Bollywood movies where they sing and dance about forbidden love over and over again being popular in the US? The only forbidden stories allowed are West side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Those two films are allowed to be remade over and over and beaten to death.

There are too many aspects to a Japanese horror flick that Americans don't get. Two main themes are ghosts and reincarnation. Two thing that I would guess less then 50% of Americans believe in or understand.

Asian-Canadian Music Sensation Elise Estrada

Elise Estrada's debut CD in stores September 16th.

295 million listeners and I've never heard of her! I'm really out of the loop.
Anyone a fan? Please add a comment for or against? I'd like to investigate further.

Murder By Taekwondo?

N.Korea used taekwondo group to plot murder.

Really? Other than kicking referees, I'm not sure what skills a taekwono-er has!

Vietnamese Marriage

For you guys who are thinking about going to Vietnam to marry a nice Vietnamese girl?
This is what you will have to go through :)

Getting Married in Viet Nam

- Notice of Marriage
- Certificate of No Impediment
- "Mental" Health Check
- Intense physcological profiling
- “doesn’t understand without any money”
- interview

China chip an Intel rival?

Full Article

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10034825-92.html

China's Godson-3 chip is ambitious if anything. It proposes to be everything a world-class processor should be--and then some.

Developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it also has a larger goal: microprocessor independence for China. "Their motivation is pretty clear. They don't want to be totally dependent on the outside world for something as important as microprocessors," said Tom Halfhill, an analyst at In-Stat.

But its singular head-turning feature is the proposed Intel "x86" compatibility mode.

"The most interesting part of the chip is that they're adding about 200 new instructions to assist with x86 compatibility," Halfhill said.

At its core, it is a MIPS RISC processor--but one that proposes to run Intel-compatible software efficiently enough that most Chinese may not notice the difference. "It won't be an x86 processor. But the 200 instructions will optimize the (Intel) performance," Halfhill said.

Halfhill says it's not an outright Intel competitor. "I don't think they're doing this to compete with (Intel) x86 per se (but) If somebody has to run some software that's only available to x86 you can do it," Halfhill said.

The upshot is that it will compete on some level. "Every processor that China sells is one less processor that somebody else sells," he said.

Oh, and that sticky licensing question. "They don't have an Intel license. It remains to be seen if these 200 instructions they're adding violates any Intel patents or not. They have not disclosed those new instructions," according to Halfhill. (Intel would not comment on the processor.)

But the support from the Chinese government may help it avoid the fate of other x86-compatible processors that had similar aspirations, such as the Cyrix and Transmeta Crusoe processors. To be sure, most Intel-compatible processors have died a slow, painful death.

If the processor succeeds, it will be compelling because of the overall low cost of the platform. The Chinese government can put together a hardware-software package "that's a lot less expensive than if they went with buying chips from Intel and licensing from Microsoft," Halfhill said.

"They want to get a lot of computers out into their schools and companies and they want to make them in China," he said. With a MIPS-compatible processor, they can stick Linux on it, they can stick Open Office on it, and adapt open-source Web browsers."

The silicon is no slouch. The Godson-3, due in 2009, will have four cores, and an eight-core version is also planned. "The four-core chip is the most sophisticated chip we've seen come out of China," according to Halfhill.

The later eight-core version is a "heterogeneous" processor, he said. That is, different

Let's Talk About It

New Canadians will always feel threatened or ashamed to report any family business to the police. Especially spousal abuse.

Let's talk about it...