The story behind identifying an unknown song

I should start this with "Once upon a time..." but everyone knows the way I switch topics between conversations... OK, this time I try my best.

Today I was searching for some videos showing the lake Houhai (后海) in Beijing (北京) cause this is one of the spots you shouldn't miss in when you are going to Beijing. Last year I was at Houhai during Mid Autumn Festival (中秋节 / Zhong qiu jie) and with this year's Moon festival approaching on September 14, I remembered the beautiful scenery. So I searched at Youtube for some Houhai related videos but only found few results. One of these results was a video showing friends or a couple ice biking and heard a nice song. Unfortunately I didn't remember the Artist and the song title. But luckily for me I know a nice nifty tool called Tunatics which searches its online database for some beats and stuff like that.
Downloaded, installed, done. What an easy task ^^ This is one of the reasons why I like internet :-)

Oh by the way: The song was Island in the Sun by Weezer.


Download Tunatics

Germany got 5th place in Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Congrats Germany. A way better result at the summer Olympics than 4 and 8 years before. Of course China wasn't beatable this time. Anyway: There are no 1.3 billion people living in Germany so compared with the 82 million Germans the result of a 5th place isn't bad.
In the end it is funny how countries like the USA (who suddenly count the total numbers of medals to win the first place) are changing the statistics...


Another interesting table was created by the blog abgeschmackt.blogspot.com cause they created the 'only true and fair population adjusted medal table'.

	Country	Inhabitants	G.	S.	B.	Code	Inh./G	Inh/S	Inh/B
1.	Jamaica	2,80	6	3	2	JAM	0,47	0,93	1,40
2.	Bahrain	0,72	1	0	0	BRN	0,72	0,00	0,00
3.	Estlonia	1,31	1	1	0	EST	1,31	1,31	0,00
4.	New Zealand	4,17	3	1	5	NZL	1,39	4,17	0,83
5.	Australia	20,60	14	15	17	AUS	1,47	1,37	1,21
6.	Mongolia	3,00	2	2	0	MGL	1,50	1,50	0,00
7.	Georgia	4,63	3	0	3	GEO	1,54	0,00	1,54
8.	Norway	4,64	3	5	2	NOR	1,55	0,93	2,32
9.	Slovakia	5,46	3	2	1	SVK	1,82	2,73	5,46
10.	Slovenia	2,01	1	2	2	SLO	2,01	1,00	1,00
11.	Latvia	2,25	1	1	1	LAT	2,25	2,25	2,25
12.	Netherlands	16,65	7	5	4	NED	2,38	3,33	4,16
13.	Belarus	9,69	4	5	10	BLR	2,42	1,94	0,97
14.	Denmark	5,48	2	2	3	DEN	2,74	2,74	1,83
15.	UK	60,94	19	13	15	GBR	3,21	4,69	4,06

...

33.

USA

303,82

36

38

36

USA

8,44

8,00

8,44

...

47.

China

1.330,04

51

21

28

CHN

26,08

63,34

47

...

82.

Chinese Taipeh

22,92

0

0

4

TPE

0,0000

0,0000

0,1745

So, choose your medal table (Medailienspiegel or 奖牌榜 of favour ;-)

China is ready for Olympia 2008

Today on 08/08/08 the Olympic 2008 games in Beijing will start with a big festival. So take a look how China and its supporters prepare for Olympia here on this Adidas commercial:



Good luck China. And remember folks: chinese government ≠ the chinese people

PS: Finally something I can read in Chinese :D

Zai Jian China :'(

Today is a sad day... I have to return to Germany...
After 14 really nice days in the middle kindom it is now time to head back home and leave a really great time behind. I am sure, this wasn't the last time I went to China.
So, Zai jian China. I will miss your cities and your people :-(

PS: Day 14 - Shanghai Pudong, last night

The first ten days - picture overview

Here's are the pictures of my China trip that I have uploaded so far:

• Day 1 - Duesseldorf Airport, Charles de Gaule, Guangzhou Hotel
  
• Day 2 - Teemall, Citic Plaza
  
• Day 3 - Baiyun Airport Guangzhou, Beijing Airport
  
• Day 4 - Tian'anmen, Houhai
  
• Day 5 - Wangfujing shopping street, Sega Game Center, Da Dong Restaurant
  
• Day 6 - Tian'anmen, Forbidden City, Liqun Restaurant
  
• Day 7 - Tiantan
  
• Day 8 - Bus trip, Great Wall, Wangfujing shopping street
  
• Day 9 - Houhai, China Post, Liqun Restaurant, Bars
  
• Day 10 - Beijing University, Shanghai Transrapid (Maglev)

Have fun ^^

Ta da :)

As promised, here are some of the picture gallery links ^^

• Day7 - Tiantan, Houhai Lake
• Day8 - Great Wall

The rest will follow later.

Zai Jian Beijing, Ni hao Shanghai

To be honest at the beginning I was a bit shocked about Beijing. Whereas Guangzhou was a positive suprise with its blinking neon lights and modern architecture, Beijing appeared suddenly so dark, boring and old-fashioned. Another reason for the first disappointment was that I lived in Guangzhou on Shamian Island in the 4* Guangdong Victory hotel, in Beijing I only had a Home Inn appartment that costed only a fifth of the first hotel.
So the first impressions combined with a 2 hours ride in a taxi to the hotel because of f****** traffic jam weren't very good.
But after a while I got used to it. Breakfast only costed 10 yuan (1Eur) and the location of only 400 meter distance to Tian'anmen plaza was faboulous.
Another hotspot of Beijing was Houhai. A beautiful lake with at least 40 different kinds of bars and restaurants. Well, today I had to leave Beijing that left a weird feeling. On the one hand sad about the nice time, which passed by so quickly and on the other hand happy to see Shanghai.

PS: Picturegallery upload works now. So some new pics will come soon :)

Chinese cuisine...

Well, everybody I guess, tried 'so-called' Chinese cuisine in his home country before. But believe me, this what you get in Germany, USA or elsewhere, has nothing to do with Chinese cooking.

1. a traditional Chinese meal is never served with a softdrink or any other juice, but only with tea or somem kind of drinking soup.
2. most 'Chinese' restaurants in western world are often run by Vietnamese, Mongolians or Thais, so no wonder you don't get real Chinese food.
3. Eating sweet snacks at the beginning is no problem here.
4. Some Chinese use western knife and fork but not like western people

AND:

Some stuff looks a bit weird....

New country, new cellphone

Because sending SMS home is very expensive, I bought a new (second) cellphone in China.
'My weapon of choice' was a Nokia 2630 with China Unicom SIM-card. 150Yuan (15Eur) were included and the total price was ca. 80Eur.
Nice side effect: SMS to Germany only cost 1Yuan (10 Cent) BUT it only works in Beijing... :(
So I need a new SIM when I'm heading for Shanghai tomorrow... Tamade (Shit)

PS: Of course you can switch between Chinese and English language on your cellphone ;)

Some news about Beijng

Long time no see because of 2 reasons:
1. Walking 10 hours a day make you somewhat fainted and
2. the Internet in the hotel is not as stable as in Guangzhou.
OK, but after some stress I finally arrived in Beijing on Monday evening.

UPDATE:
Seems like the hotel intern network is really a pain in the ass and some websites that usually work in China are blocked. Suprisingly koteshi.com is one of them...

Well stay tuned for some updates when I go to Shanghai on October 1st.

Guangzhou to Beijing

The day before yesterday I went from hot and sticky Guangzhou to Bejing.
The whole day started with a nightmare: I overslept :-(
So I had to pack my lugguage, take a shower and have some breakfast within 35 minutes.
"Quite" stressy ;)
During breakfast I noticed that most Chinese try to eat with fork and knife and most westerners tried chopsticks. BTW:Cantonese dumpling and Dim Sum are very delicious.
While cleaning my teeth I noticed, LG (from Korea) does not only produce electric stuff like TV, radios or microwave ovens but also toothpaste.



Well yesterday I also felt bored, so I made some business cards for iucon in English and Chinese. They weren't very expensive 250 cards with double side four color printing for only 100Yuan (8,50Eur) and the quality seems to be ok for this price.



But enough about the trip to Beijing. More news about Beijing roast duck will follow tomorrow.

And before I forget: Happy mid autumn festival :)
On this day people usually met with their families, they give little moon cakes as presents and I have to admit they really taste good^^

Ni hao from Beijing

I thought maybe I should say 你好 (Ni hao/Hello) from Beijing to all the people who are in Germany right now and wish to be in 中国 (China)... gaga~

PS: In case you only see squares or hieroglyphs, click here to get a picof the posting.