High school revisited

I had a quick visit to my High School yesterday, just before I went to see my therapist.

The school is under a huge renovation this year.

I don’t know much about the plan, but what I can say is that I believe school is on the right to become a great school. We don’t have lucky fires like Avondale did, so the inconvenience caused by the renovation is just bit unavoidable.

I did not see much as I was in a rush, so just some general impression:

• Many new staffs, but also become more unfriendly.
• Noise everywhere.
• Still feels like in a combat zone.
• A lot of wagers passed by my eyes.
• And most importantly,  the school still smells... bad… reminds me Bart’s catchphrase:
  “Smell ya later”

I am definitely looking forward to smell the school later.

Dalai Lama’s New Zealand Visit

As many Taiwan separatists, Dalai Lama's visit to every country on this Earth would have cause a lot of spins. The Chinese strategy is pretty simple: force every country to against those so called 'troublemakers' therefore the closest country ... oh no, I should say closest planet those 'troublemakers' can live peacefully is Mars.

Australia PM Howard ignored the pressure from China and officially met Dalai Lama.

New Zealand PM Clark also has just met him ... On Australian soil. Therefore there will be no official meeting with Dalai Lama during his New Zealand visit.

However, National Party Leader John Key and New Zealand First Part Winston Peters have all expressed the interest of possible meeting.

I am not a supporter of Tibetan Independence but it is very sad to see NZ bow to the pressure from China.

Dalai Lama maybe is an unwelcomed person in the eyes of Chinese Government because his political standing. But another thing not to forget is, Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader of many Tibetan, and from what I have seen in my last year’s Tibet visit, he is still respected by the vast majority of Tibetan people in China. For that, he deserves to live and travel without any spins on the planet, the one called Earth.

There will be three speeches in New Zealand during his visit. I was interested about what he gonna say for a long time, but sadly I have exams during the period and the ticket is bit expensive for a student.

2008 Beijing Olympics

Source: a Chinese blog 不许联想

One comment after the original blog states:
“I’m now bit worried about the safety of that iron fence because the theft will just take them all.”

Another comment:

“I don’t think there is a theft dare to steal this one … the theft will definitely be convicted guilty of ‘threaten the integrity of International Olympics Community’ by Chinese court.”

Xiamen Protest

According to number of chinese netizens and bloggers, today in Xiamen, a Southeast city of China, at least 10,000 people were on the street today to protest an extremely unpopular plan to build chemical plant.

Details are still coming in, but it is known that yellow ribbons can be seen across the city and police failed to stop the protests.

If you don't know what I am talkin about, or just want to know more general thing about this protest, you can do a google news search with the keyword "Xiamen".

I'll update the details of this protests throughout the weekend. In the meantime, I am currently unable to reach Bear's Blog China after published a post includes the keyword "Xiamen" and the name of the chemical plant, seems that The Great Firewall of China is start to work again.

UPDATE 17.39(NZST): All blog entries in Bear's Blog China have been deleted by the BSP. This is how things work in China.

UPDATE 18.04(NZST): After my protest email to the BSP, the service to my blog resumes and all posts came back, but without any explanation of why they are doing this.

UPDATE 19.05(NZST):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78205250@N00/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NIp2kXboVI

UPDATE 2 June

17.35(NZST): People in Xiamen staged another protest today. Various reports estimated number of protesters from 500 - 5,000.

Large amount of police present at the scene. It is believed that the communist party is taking this seriously, given that the 18th anniversary of Tian'anmen massacre is just two days away.

Avondale Photos

Thanks to the loads of university works, I don't even remember when is the last time I had a weekend out.

So this break to Avondale today is very precious to me - possibly the last before the exams at 19 June. It sounds a long way away but don't forget I now again have 3 assaignments need to be done simultaneously.

Photos below are just for one of my assaignments, which is an insight investigation on Avondale. As other contents in this blog, they are available under Creative common license by-nc-nd. Read more

An illegal number

13256278887989457651018865901401704641-1=?

WARNING: FINISH THE CALCULATION AND/OR CONVERT THE RESULT TO A BINARY NUMBER ARE BOTH ILLEGAL.

I actually don't against Digg's decision to took all that number out. It is always a hard choice between business interests and individual conscience. If I was in the position, I would choose the second one, but I fully understand  the people who went for the first one.

Here has more information.

Also there is a coverage of this story in Bear's Blog China(in Chinese).