Living Abroad

And it was completed in just FOUR year!!!

nobody@vox.com(xmangerm) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:29:09 -0800

This is some amazing news. Are the Chinese the trend setters from now on? Do they set the pace were others merely follow? You can imagine a story of this magnitude has generated many comments and one of them I will paste to inform you how I tend to feel. For the full story click here.

As it's Chinese, maybe it will fall to pieces just outside its warranty period. As for Eurotunnel, Britain had very little or nothing to do with the train technology because we don't make engines anymore (except steam replicas).

- Howard, Commune de London, EUSSR., 26/12/2009 17:08

No wonder you got red arrowed. I would hazard a guess that you are within 1 foot of an excellent product mad in China as you typed your comment! Try turning your keyboard over!

Having used the trains in China I can tell you that they put the UK to shame. The fast trains are clean, run on time and are cheap. No multi price ticket deals, simply 1st or 2nd class. Each ticket is lettered/numbered. The letter tells you where to stand on the platform and the number is for your seat (yep, you GET a seat!). The train arrives on time an leaves on time.

The MagLev from Pudong airport into Shanghai hits 430kph. A road journey time of 45 mins is reduced to the first 2 tracks of Dark Side of the Moon!

- Pete, No Snow Cyprus, 27/12/2009 7:45

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A new years meal

nobody@vox.com(xmangerm) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:32:45 -0800

My Mother-in-law cooked a very nice meal and thus makes this a very nice start in 2010. I didn't have any dessert because I am planning on consuming it later. I was told to stop by the bakery around the corner and I will just do that:))) life is good!

Sunday's dining in at the in-laws

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Gotta love these marketing techniques

nobody@vox.com(xmangerm) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:16:56 -0800

Gotta love these marketing techniques

The mighty Media Markt is advertising in today's newspaper Shopping For Nothing!. All one has to do is be the lucky every 10th buyer from today until 9 January. And to find out the winning number one must visit their website mediamarkt.de
everyday at 22:30 or call their toll free number. This is some clever bring them into the store techniques that will likely move a lot of those overpriced pre-Christmas stuff out the door. With that written, I think that a super sale would work better than an every 10th buy is for free gimmick. Any thoughts?

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Where’s the I?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:35:23 -0800

Time elapsed for compose window to appear: about ten seconds. Have they fixed it? (Last time I asked that, I jinxed it, and the next load took something like 16 hours.)
I was at Newtown Mall last week (not a regular shopping location for me) and noticed a pretty big typo. Where did the missing i in responsibility go?

Where’s the I

Oh, there it is, just down the steps:

Oh, there it is

Maybe they could take the extra I from here and glue it to the other one once they finish with the special. Though with the LT kerning in the top photograph, it’s going to be tricky fitting it in.

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Spring photos: ASB’s unconvincing campaign and my ﬂowers

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:51:26 -0800

I lost count of how many hours it took for the compose screen to come up, but since it is night-time now, and I am pretty sure there was sunlight when I first began clicking ‘Create’, we can say a good quarter of the day has passed, at least.
   The good news is that Daisy at Vox—a.k.a. the only lady who seems to care—has written back to me to say my issue has been passed on to the boffins there. I hope they can sort it out, but I believe that since I have tested Vox on Macs and PCs, and in two different cities using two different ISPs, and all manner of browsers, then we can rule out anything I am doing wrong. I have, after all, been on the web since 1993 and kind of know what I am doing.
   The other good news is that I have something other than technogripes to post.
   First up, the Auckland Savings Bank, which is owned by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is trying to push how “Kiwi” it is. Kiwibank, in New Zealand, must be a real threat to ASB, because people are conscious of how much Australian banks have been ripping off New Zealand customers. Hence the whole local angle, which is not really convincing anyone except for a few people in the boardroom at ASB. (In fact, a whole Facebook group has been set up to refute these advertisements.)
   Here is the outdoor ad that reminded me of the campaign:

ASB is not Kiwi and has not been for years

to which Helen Baxter, others and I say, ‘Cobblers!’
As it is nearly impossible to get a compose screen on Vox, here is a second image I wanted to share. The yellow roses that I posted earlier were the worse for wear after some gales here, but you can’t beat nature. Here’s one of the new arrivals, photographed earlier today:

The brightest yellow rose today

Like Chance the Gardener, I have other flowers. In the spring. In the garden.

Other flowers

As you can see, the spring weather has finally come, albeit very late in the piece.

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Walking and German weather prediction.

nobody@vox.com(xmangerm) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:05:56 -0800

Walking and German weather prediction

Today was rather nice even though it being the 21st of November. Fluffy and I enjoyed our walk of over 4 kilometer greatly.

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Spotted: ’69 Mustang

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:01:23 -0800

Wow. Six minutes to load the compose screen. That’s definitely this week’s record.
This is the other photo I wanted to show:

1969 Ford Mustang Fastback 351

A beautiful 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback with a 351 in³ V8 under the hood. I asked the owner for permission to photograph his car which, sadly, had lost all oil pressure. I drove him to the petrol station in case the car was ‘out of gas’; when I came back along this route a while later, his car had gone, so I hope he was able to get it started.
He says he has a friend with a Cobra Jet 428, which we both thought was the best of this series, and that this shape was probably the nicest before Bunkie Knudsen’s fat Mustangs hit the streets for the 1971 model year. Sometimes I like the ’68s, and the ’65s, but right now, the ’69s seem to appeal to my taste in 2009.

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Gripe about Vox, Ben Kingsley, and Wellington scenery

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:43:23 -0800

“Only” took 20 minutes for this screen to come up this time. In a day and age when we should wait no more than 20 seconds. Still, I’m sure Vox believes I should be happy because 20 minutes is less than 16 hours. ‘Yay!’ they must think, ‘our load times have come down from hours to minutes!’
   I know, no one likes the pissy tone I take when I begin these posts, but it’s so darned frustrating when technology does not work as advertised. And no one seems to think there’s anything wrong: I’ve heard from neither my ISP nor Vox on this bug.
   That’s not totally true. I haven’t heard anything recently. TelstraClear says there is nothing wrong and it can reach vox.com. Duh. I know that. So can I. I just can’t do anything while I’m there except make comments (hence I am using one post’s comment space to blog at—this is how ridiculous it has become—and to keep track of how often Vox’s massive bug is keeping me from doing what it says on the tin). I can’t compose, add photos, add videos, etc. Except once every long while when it opts to let me have a screen to write in.
   And Daisy, who seems to be the only person working at Six Apart who cares, has written to me as well. But I’ve heard nothing for a few days.
   Remember how long the Amazon conduit took to get fixed here? Considering this “can’t do stuff on Vox” bug has been around since August, and has gotten worse by the week, I’d rather sacrifice the Amazon conduit in favour of, well, being able to blog.
   Readers, I’m sorry you’ll have to put up with hugely long posts because I have no guarantee on when Vox will let me compose again.

Ben Kingsley
Here’s one thing I wanted to blog during one of the many, many blackouts on Vox.

Don Logan rants for Live Aid 1st vid

I always thought Sir Ben Kingsley’s role in Sexy Beast was a cult favourite, but that the general public did not know of it. However, here he reprises his role for a charity advertisement. Linked to this was a brilliant one of Sir Ben impersonating Sir Anthony Hopkins:

Ben Kingsley does Anthony Hopkins

More scenery shots
These would have warranted individual posts, but that’s not going to happen.
Remember when masonry was a real art, done by people and not a computer? This was beautiful work at one of our government buildings, where I was meeting a friend.

Lovely masonry

Here’s one for the car nuts:

Czech mate

Get it? A Škoda Octavia with a number plate about its origins, and a pun in the plate! This motorist has thought it through.
At last night’s launch of the Chinese New Year Festival, painter Stan Chan created a work live while Natalie Foy (niece of comedian Raybon Kan) sang a traditional song. As I remarked to the Mayor, the last time I saw something like that was Rolf Harris on the UK version of The Generation Game in the 1970s. A bit far away on the photo here:

Stan paints live

Then, we wondered, what was an ambulance doing outside some restaurants on Blair Street? Was the curry that explosive at one of these joints? (Monsoon Poon is owned by a friend of mine and does some wonderful cuisine, incidentally.) Or, did one of the Mac operators at the recruitment agency collapse of exhaustion?

Bad food experience

There were more tourists last night in Wellington than normal, which is lovely to see. Here are some examining the bucket fountain (part of most Wellingtonians’ childhoods; it was infamously desecrated when Elijah Wood urinated in it when he was here filming The Lord of the Rings). Darned Hollywood types.

Tour group and bucket fountain

Now, I can’t see the name of the establishment in this due to the lights, but I believe it was for either an adult shop or sex toys. It does make you wonder why they spend so much money advertising this stuff, but the headline was still funny:

Adult shop billboard

There is one more, but I’m going to gamble to see if Vox will let me in again. Any bets on whether it will be minutes, hours or days?

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This way was blocked!

nobody@vox.com(xmangerm) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:54:21 -0800

this way is blocked off.jpg

Fluffy and I had to take an alternate route because of favorite was is under construction for the couple of weeks. I think the city is spending my tax money (Euro) on new fiber optics cable. We managed to find another way home:))

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Bad parking job today

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:45:41 -0800

Here’s today’s bad parking job. Unless this Toyota’s driver wants to tell me that originally, there was a bike in front and a Smart ForTwo behind. Otherwise, being in the middle of a two-car space and not allowing something as small as my Renault to get in behind is not cool.

How to piss motorists off

Naughty Auris

Technically, this driver is not breaking the law, though I am sure plenty of people cursed this selfish parking today.
However, the Honda Accord driver from June still ranks in my book as 2009’s worst. Interestingly, that was just a block way from here.

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