China05 Apr 2009 08:53 am
Airing clean laundry in public …
Despite all the signs pointing towards spring and a turn in weather, my last entry might have been a little preemptive.
Horticulture22 Mar 2009 03:59 pm
China19 Mar 2009 08:35 pm
Oddities and paradoxes of China …
brands are such a great thing. As a marketer they make you go weak at the knees when they are well designed, eccentric, idiosyncratic and well marketed, when they have something distinctive to say and when they manage to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside…
Photography05 Mar 2009 09:44 am
Will somebody please turn the tap off …
As some of you might have read: China was facing a severe drought not too long ago (sometime at the beginning of Feb). Indeed, China declared an emergency water shortage in eight northern and central drought-hit regions, where almost four million people were suffering water shortages. With much of China’s farming still relying on rainfall, since farming communities still have a poor irrigation system, prolonged drought and therefore a meager harvest could have devastating effects.
And you might have also read about the artificially created snow fall in Beijing, where a special chemical (most probably silver iodide) was sprayed into the clouds to make artificial snow to combat the drought. Results were pretty immediate and within a few hours Beijing was covered in snow, ending the longest drought in 38 years. Ah, the wonders of cloud-seeding … and ignoring some of the controversy surrounding the effectiveness (and ethics?) of this process: problem solved you might think. But think again …
Personal22 Feb 2009 12:54 pm
With the weather finally improving (temperatures went up to a whooping 21C this week), things are looking up again… trees and shrubs are starting to bloom and life on the streets is slowly resuming after several months of hibernation:
Personal09 Feb 2009 11:10 pm
Happy Birthday Blog – or why I don’t do F*cebook
With the social networking site turning 5 last week and this blog turning 1 today, I felt compelled to write something about …
Horticulture06 Feb 2009 05:03 pm
We are in an age where morality preachers tell us what to do and what not to do to save the planet. All of a sudden the UK government is lobbying its people to become more environmentally aware, buy UK produce to reduce food miles, plant trees to counterbalance CO2 emissions, use the car less and generally revert back to ‘the good life’. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, in fact it’s great, it’s just the condescension and hypocrisy that goes with it, when countries like Germany have been saying this stuff for two decades or more …
Personal23 Jan 2009 02:02 am
A significant date in world history certainly: the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is finally under construction, Einstein arrives in the US after fleeing Germany, the original version of King Kong is premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York, beer is legalised in the US … I could go on, but …Â
Personal21 Jan 2009 11:21 pm
Shanghai’s World Financial Centre
or ‘The Bottle Opener‘ as I like to call it. With Launce having a soft spot for tall buildings, I got my arm twisted to go and see what Shanghai from the top of an almost 500m tall building looks like. Little did I know that our journey would take us on a time travel, using a psychedelic elevator, make us see the floor of an alien space ship and then finally take us to a replica of Hugo Drax’s Moonraker space station.Â
我爱 上海 – wo ai Shanghai
Shanghai is so multifaceted that every time I go and spend time there, I discover new and exciting things; so before flying out to Frankfurt from Pudong for a new year break, I spent a long weekend in Shanghai.