Selected articles from this morning's Youth Daily paper:

公交轮渡票价维持不变

Despite rising gasoline prices, the price of a ferry ticket across the Huanpu will not rise. City gov't promises protection of ferry operator salaries.

交大辅导员必须建博客和同学交心

All 208 professors who are advisors at Jiaotong University are required to set up personal websites and make a minimum number of posts to the school BBS in order to stay in touch with the students. Profs who fail to meet the requirements will not be included in the promotion process. A "blogging contest" will be held at the end of this year.

机场公交专线延时运营3小时

To accomodate passengers on the new red-eye flights flying into Hongqiao Airport, the special airport bus lines will extend their operating day by 3 hours. The last bus will leave at 1:30am.

百零五间小憩天天猫厕所

Shanghai's white-collar workers work so hard and don't want to be caught slacking, that they have taken to napping in toilet stalls on their lunch break. According to posts on "white-collar BBSs", this is not an uncommon thing.

出租车内男婴顺利降生

A baby boy is born in Mr Sha's Dazhong taxi.

易趣热卖名牌服饰惹官司

eBay China gets sued over the use of brand names on its website.

I got through about 2/3 of the paper on my ride to school this morning. Those articles are just a sample that reflect my interests. The rest are the usual national, international, financial, entertainment, etc.

My school is having a prom, and I'm having a hard time convincing myself to support it. I wrote up a long post detailing the reasons but I'm reluctant to publish it because I don't like writing about my work on here. If you want to know why, drop the topic into a conversation or send me an e-mail.

(cf Marxy on prom)

After realizing that the David Wu on Wikipedia wasn't the one I was looking for, I was motivated to do a net search for info on him. After finding the biography which I translate below, I came across... his new weblog. Yes, Wu Dawei has a weblog. Now that's talking da talk! (Make sure to read his first introductory post, which contradicts some of the info I translate below.)

身兼演员、歌星、主持人及VJ数职于一身的吴大维，在香港出生，十三岁移民美国。个性随和亲切，活力充沛，酷爱打篮球，活脱脱是新一代阳光男孩，女孩子梦想中邻家的大哥哥。

As an actor, singer, TV show host and VJ, David Wu does it all. Born in Hong Kong, at 13 years old he immigrated to the USA with his parents. Cordial and friendly, never lacking in energy, and basketball-crazy, he's pretty much this generation's ideal "big brother next door".

吴大维的生活方式，犹如他在银幕前的风格一样活跃，像是一个永远停不下来的好动宝宝，多才多艺的他一向都希望在娱乐圈，主持五个 CHANNEL [V]的节目、令吴大维忙得不可开交，节目包括：《大潮流》、《NO SWEAT》、《GO WEST》及他周日晚上的清淡节目《吴满秀》及《百事可乐中文TOP20》，吴大维对工作非常认真，但却又是卫视CHANNEL [V]最爱开玩笑的主持人．

David Wu leads a very active lifestyle, just like the ones he acts out on the silver screen. Like a kid on permanent sugar high, he's always in the middle of things, directing/hosting five shows on Channel V, which makes him super busy. The list of shows he's worked on includes "Da Chao Liu", "No Sweat", "Go West" and the laid-back weekend "Wu-Man Show" and "Pepsi's Chinese Top 20". And while David Wu is an extremely hard worker, he is also the VJ for Channel V who likes to joke around the most.

　　 吴大维在CHANNEL [V]主持节目，能够以自己的名字作为节目的名称，可见他有一定的份量和有其过人之处，在摄影棚内轻松的气氛下，加上WU MAN吴大维无拘无束的谈话方式引领下，难怪每位受访者都能畅所欲言，下节目后能与每位艺人成为好朋友．主持节目方式除音乐既是固定话题，但东拉西扯，上至天文，下至地理；深奥如人生哲理、做人态度；鸡毛蒜皮如家事料理或是城中八卦新闻、热门话题等等，DAVID也是无所不谈，百无禁忌，从而引发受访艺人的性情．

The fact that as a Channel V host, David Wu was able to put his name on several shows proves that he as a person carried a bit of weight and seniority. In the relaxed atmosphere of the studio, adding in David "Wu-Man" Wu's chill conversational style allowed guests to open up and speak their minds freely, like talking with a good friend. Besides talking about music, David was prone to wander with topics, touching on anything under the sun: deep mysteries of philosophy and human behavior; trivialities like daily chores, food, and local celebrity gossip; or any other hot topic. There is nothing David won't talk about--nothing is forbidden--and in this way he is able to draw out a celebrity's true colors.

　　 吴大维肯定是最佳VJ之一，而他可以在拍电影与担任VJ之间取得平衡，应付裕如，套用他的说话：＂容易之极＂．

David Wu is assuredly one of the best VJs around. He is able to balance being a movie actor and a TV show host, and makes it look like, in his own words, "a piece of cake".

中文名：吴大维 英文名：David Wu 生日：1966年10月2日 星座：天秤座 身高：174cm 体重：78kg 学历：华盛顿大学商科毕业 偶像：李小龙、Bill Gates 兴趣：吃、看电影、篮球、网球 擅长的语言：中、英、粤语(日、韩语一点点) 志愿：世界和平

Chinese name: Wu Dawei
English name: David Wu
Birthdate: October 2, 1966
Zodiac: Libra
Height: 174cm
Weight: 78kg
Alma Mater: Washington University (Business Science)
Idols: Bruce Lee, Bill Gates
Interests: eating, movies, basketball, tennis
Languages: Chinese, English, Cantonese (a little Japanese and Korean too)
Wish: World peace

电影：
《我有话要说》(第一部电影)
《今夜星光灿烂》
《莎莎嘉嘉站起来》
《我和春天有个约会》
《霸王别姬》、《烈火战车》
《风月》
《虎度门》
《我也有爸爸》
《独自等待》
《火爆警探》

Movies:
"I've Got Something To Say" (first movie)
"Tonight's Starlight is Splendid"
"Sister of the World Unite"
"I Have a Date with Spring"
"Farewell My Concubine", "Full Throttle"
"Temptress Moon"
"Stage Door"
"I've Got A Father Too"
"Waiting Alone"
"Vigorous Cop"

电视： 《千年之恋》
《从台北到上海》
《刑警的故事》

TV: "A Thousand-Year Love"
"From Taipei to Shanghai"
"A Police Story"

A while ago I took this photo with my phone on a subway platform here in Shanghai:

Riding on the metro to work today, I saw that the English bit on the copy of this sign at the Longyang Rd station platform had been covered over with white tape. Needless to say, I applaud this move.

Say hello to the California real-estate bubble:

This weekend was wild.

Friday night sorta disappears into a haze. I think we stayed home and cleaned, and did some planning for Saturday.

Saturday morning I went to work to teach the SAT class. I raced back home to find Jodi up and cleaning the house. Immediately, we left and went to the market to buy veggies, fruit, and sugar/yogurt/stuff at the grocery store. Arriving back home at 12:30pm, we cleaned and baked straight up till the start of the potluck party. Guests started arriving at 4:30pm or so, and we ate at 6:30. The table was full of yummy stuff: banana bread, Japanese curry, potatoes-and-green-beans, guacamole pasta salad, Thai fruit salad, fried shrimp, Malaysian coconut beef, fish wraps, "ancient" pork with pineapple... and a not-so-successful pineapple upside-down cake. For drinks I made a sherbert punch that was "better than McDonald's 麦乐香" according to one guest, yogurt, and coke. After eating we played "Eat Poop You Cat" and Person-Time-Place-Activity. At that point, the non-English speaking guests bowed out so the left-overs broke out the Scrabble game, and snacked on coffee and biscotti. We chatted until midnight or so.

On Sunday Jodi and I got up early, ignored the mess in the living room and kitchen, and took a taxi out to 七宝 (Qibao), a suburb of Shanghai with a longer history than the city itself. After meeting with a business contact, we had some extra time so we ate Guilin noodles and milk tea on some tables that McDonalds put out on the street in front of their shop, because it was a gorgeous day. Then we walked down to Qibao's "Old Street" area, a historical district filled with a bustling Sunday crowd that competed to taste local treats like "soup balls" (rice dough balls filled with peanuts, crushed black sesame seeds, or jujube paste) and 海棠糕 (crabapple cake). After a walk through the on-site temple and a climb up the pagoda, we took off for a dinner date in Pudong with a colleague from my new job. We didn't get back home till 11pm.

When I get home from work today, we still have a party mess to take care of.

How to take a utopian Shanghai real-estate ad illustration, and turn it into a closer approximation of the truth:

1. Take your colored pencils and fill in one-third of the balconies with glass, brick or plastic panelling. If there is lattice work, just stick the bricks in haphazardly, don't bother to cement it up or anything.
2. Use a fine-tipped black gel-pen and draw in laundry bars on the rest of the balconies, hanging from the bottom of the balcony above them. Then use markers or colored pencils to generously add in drying clothes.
3. To each air-conditioning unit (add these in if they are missing), use a pencil or white-out pen to add cabling that dangles loosely, and add water stains from drippy units to the walls.
4. That glass ceiling over the front door of the apartment building? That's right, it won't stay clean for long. Use a light brown to add a permanent dust "frosting".
5. Park bicycles all over the lawn.
6. Use an eraser to turn green grass into a dry, tan carpet, and take most of the leaves off those trees. The combination of harsh Shanghai winters and absent sprinkler systems can semi-kill even the hardiest lawn (though I don't think landscapers here even try).
7. You might as well just use scissors to cut out the fountains, as the odds on the lottery system that determines their state of on-offness has such bad odds that even the math-handicapped wouldn't bet on them.

Optionally, add the sound of hammering and drilling and a few migrant workers trekking across the parched lawn toward the apartment they have been hired to finish furnishing, and you have a pretty accurate picture!

(Note: this is only for the new apartment developments; I live in Gumei 7-cun, built in 1996 and we have no lawns, but also no hammering.)

I put a couple new posts on Shanghaiist:

• Fixing the Wrong Problem
• Center of Shanghai: Where the hell is it? (that's my editor's title)

A couple reactions to the SUBS concert at Shuffle on Saturday:

Subs当天的表现，盖过了我最近看的任何一场演出。 我很想直言不讳地说“我拒绝大部分试验音乐”。

Yesterday I had the first really good music night in Shanghai. The Subs from Beijing in Shuffle Music Bar.

Shuffle is a pretty cool venue; comparing it to Harley's, it's got no backstage but it does have great air circulation. And it's really not that far from Xujiahui.

Headlines from today's 时代报, Shanghai's free morning commuter newspaper:

京沪高速铁路将用国产装备
High-speed Beijing-Shanghai rail line to use domestic construction materials
我国多个省份将建核电厂
Several provinces plan to build nuclear electric-generation plants
上海东方男篮连续四个赛季无缘季后赛
For the fourth season in a row, Shanghai Sharks men's basketball team doesn't qualify for post-season play (Yao Ming left the team 5 years ago)
巴格达一保安公司50名员工被绑架
50 security company personnel kinapped in Baghdad
申花战胜越南隆安
Shanghai's Shenhua soccer team beats Vietnam's Long'an (in first game of Asian runner-up tournament)
计生委副主任建议实施免费强制婚检
National birth-planning committee vice-director recommends implementing free and compulsory health exams at marriage (these were abolished a few years ago; the logic behind re-instatement is that DINKS aren't having kids, and farmers are having too many; also in the works are stricter punishments for the increasing number of rich people who are choosing to pay the fines or skirting the law to have a second child.)
欲甩婚外情人惹麻烦女总监遭遇裸照敲诈
Rejected lover extorts female boss with nude pics
认为《霍元甲》侵权霍氏后人正式起诉
Ancestors of fighter Hou Yuanjia file a formal protest (of rights infringement) against Jet Li's movie "Fearless"

I know some people already found it, but here's the official announcement: I put up a Flickr set of pictures from our new apartment here in the Gumei area, just north of Jinjiang Amusement Park. There's a few notes on each picture, so if you're bored you might enjoy them more.

At the shopping "amphitheater" outside the Jing'an Temple metro station, I took the following picture:

The gold letters say:

伊美时尚 靜安寺廣場 伊美时尚

The red banner says:

认真学习贯彻《上海市实施〈中华人民共和国国家通用语言文字法〉办法》

(Notice the simplified/traditional characters.) The law mentioned above is published online. Now tell me, the picture above, is that irony? Or intentional? Or intentional irony? Or am I interpreting this wrong?

Peter N-H thinks the Great Game is still alive:

Looking for something completely different, I accidentally stumbled across this account of a Khunjerab Pass crossing from 1991.

It should be emphasised that most of the struggles and discomforts described in the account of crossing China are long gone. Tickets are much easier to obtain, highways everywhere, and there's a rail route to Kashgar now. I first travelled across the top of the Taklamakan the following year, also taking three days on a wooden-seated bus on largely unmade roads, but even by 1995 there was a highway and the journey time, on vastly more comfortable buses, was down to 18 hours.

Now there's a better road still, luxury buses (I'm told), and, as I said, the train as an alternative. But anyone who travelled in China back in those days will likely feel a nostalgia for what was a completely different country.

Wooden-seated bus? Oooh, how bold! But obviously there was a bus line running across those mountains, so give that entrepreneuring Pakistani guy who set it up some credit for pioneering the path before you could ever plunk down your cushy tush on his bus-bench.

In today's world, luxury goods get all the attention. Wikipedia defines "luxury goods" as a good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises; that is, goods that have high income elasticity of demand. In simple terms, luxury goods are goods that add little practical value for the hefty price they carry.

But it's the opposite kind, the inferior good, that really makes a difference in the life of the average man. For just a few dollars (or less!), they will add endless pleasure to your life. Today, I'd like to hightlight three inferior goods I've acquired in the past year that light up my daily existence:

1. The toilet seat cover: ever since I picked up this bright green cloth toilet-seat cover, I no longer cringe when I sit down to take care of business on cold days. Worth: daily moments of desperation. Cost: RMB 3.
2. The non-stick frying pan: tired of using a wok to cook things that need a flat-bottomed pan, I picked up a frying pan on a shopping trip to Carrefour. The non-stick surface not only cuts down on oil usage, but also makes for easier flipping of pancakes and french toast, and saves scrubbing at dish-washing time. Worth: quarts of elbow grease. Cost: RMB 69. (Carrefour also carries non-stick pancake griddles.)
3. The electric blanket: Jodi suggested this one, and I'm glad she did. I have a life-long warehouse-full of memories that include me pulling the bedcovers over my head and breathing deeply to heat up the ice-cold sheets. No longer, as the electric blanket does all this before I even hop into bed. Worth: teeth-chattering fits. Cost: RMB 69.

What inferior goods make your life a little brighter?

天蝎 VS. 水瓶

2006年03月05日
配对评分：50　需要努力维持的一对
星座比重：58:42

水瓶和天蝎都属聪明，直觉强，具有很独特的人格，并坚持自己的独立性。你们这对都是个性强硬的情侣，决策有力，行事突兀。除非你们性格圆滑些，否则你们的爱情之路将吃很多苦头。你们之间冲突的方式有点类似跟狮子座的关系，都是权力的问题，此外水瓶座的他向往自由不受规范的心态也让你痛心不已，因此在你心中又留下不少心结。

Pretty accurate, hehe.

Ignoring the fact that the site faded from view for all practical purposes years ago, I'd like to note that Geocities is unblocked in Shanghai on China Telecom ADSL at this moment. How do I know? The image of my homemade RSS feed for Hemlock showed up when I checked it today.

It's good to point out positive improvements, so did you notice...

• ...the new station maps appearing in subway cars these days? Super-bubbly look with thick lines and natural English make these a winner in my book.
• ...that China Mobile recharge cards, the paper kind, now list the PIN grouped into units of four numbers separated by commas? This makes it much easier to remember the long-ish number as you type it into your cellphone. China Mobile, good on ya!

Awesome points for you, if you too can figure out what the word 丁克 means in this quote from today's 新闻晨报:

搂住有点杞人扰天……我不是性开放主义者，但也不是处女主义。我反对非婚生子（对孩子是极大的伤害），反对堕胎（对母体是极大的伤害），理解丁克（他们负责任），对婚姻慎重。

(The context is a debate on sex education surrounding the popularity of an online essay being circulated around the BBSs called 《女儿，别相信那些老师——一个父亲的泣血劝告》, "Daughter, don't believe those teachers: a father's blood-and-tears advice." The gist of the essay is that the "father" believes that current sex education practices in China/Shanghai are treating sex too flippantly, making it common and cheap.)

(Oh, and no fair looking it up on Adsotrans: I already entered it into the database.)