Categories
in china traveling

summer recap

snacks

summer has been good, despite the silence.
the olympics have come and gone and i guess now we’ll see how much life changes (or not), when it all fades away.
my company changed offices to a shiny new place, which unfortunately is located on the other side of town. the commute is now much lengthier, but watching shanghai in the morning through the bus window can be eye opening.

a couple of couchsurfers have surfed our couch too, true citizens of the world hopping between countries and cities. their stories and energy is what makes new this hobby so much interesting. i hope we can make use of this good karma on an upcoming trip to kuala lumpur and singapore. the weather there looks lousy right now, but we need a break from this city. a lot of exploring and sightseeing are in order, some gastronomical adventures and tons of pictures. if you have some tips, leave them in the comments!

Categories
in china in shanghai

claustrophobic?

a year and some months ago, this was the view from our tiny 1 bedroom apartment – the first we rented in shanghai. :)

Categories
in china in shanghai

on writing about china

digital watch has a very entertaining piece filled with advice to foreign journalists coming to china. what puns to avoid and all the things that have already been reported to exhaustion. a snippet:

You’re not really surprised to see how many Starbucks, KFCs, and McDonalds there are here, are you? Your readers won’t be either. If you have any sense, you’ll take full advantage of your time in Beijing and try out lots of the city’s excellent restaurants. There will be plenty to write about your culinary adventures without resort to “those exotic Chinese – they’ll eat anything” clichés. Yes, there are restaurants here that specialize in donkey meat and in pig faces, and even – gasp! – dog. Whoop-de-do.

you can read the rest here.

perhaps the portuguese folks at jornal de notícias could learn something from it?

(photo by sonyasonya on flickr)

Categories
photography

riding a wave

lukestedman_deadbeats_poster.jpg

kaiotton_zisco_poster.jpg

the beautiful and strange photography of dustin humphrey, via photoshelter (with more pictures and an explanation of the purpose of the photoshoot).

Categories
postcards postcrossing

one, two… three!

postcrossing


like vicki says, time really flies when you’re having fun. it’s been three years since i received the first postcard ever sent through postcrossing… and here we are now, three years and over a million postcards later, still going strong :)

this has been postcrossing‘s best year so far, i think. the project went through a heavy recoding to move it to the symfony framework, and a re-design at the same time. the re-coding made it easy for p. to introduce new features, which have been coming out steadily.
the over 55k-users’ community happily exchanges postcards and joins meetups around the world. oh, and on average, 2 postcards are being received each minute, somewhere in the planet. :D

this year, there was even a marriage celebrated between two people who met through postcrossing! how cool is that?

here’s hoping for another 3 years of growth, smiles and busy mailboxes!