Yearly Archives: 2009

Murder in the Hood

Murders in the news are as common as the weather report, and are rarely read with any greater attention. It is not often that they touch your life in some way, even if just remotely. Unfortunately, such is not the case with Suzhou’s most recent homicide, as it happened only a couple hundred metres from …

May 10, 2009
 // 10 Comments
 // Read More »

10,000 years of China tech–celebrating Chinese invention

Lets face it, in our break-neck, high-tech, don’t look back culture, China tends to get a lot of flack for being–ahem–under-innovative. The number of articles written about China’s IP infringement/piracy and massive shanzhai industry are too numerous to count. With this in mind, I thought I’d take a moment and a post to reflect on …

May 7, 2009
 // Read More »

My ChinaTravel.net Feature on Suzhou

A while back I was approached by the fine folks at ChinaTravel.net, an English-language travel site about China that is “editorially independent” but strongly affiliated with Ctrip.com — one of China’s largest online travel booking Web sites. The site’s editors wanted me to put together a summary article on “my Suzhou”, and as of last …

May 4, 2009
 // 4 Comments
 // Read More »

On seabugs, mother-in-laws and holidays

As many of my friends pack up and head out to face the torrent of travel over the May Holiday, I’m just happy to finally have a moment to sit down and type randomness on here. My mother-in-law arrived from Dalian Thursday evening and while Maggie and her enter day three of non-stop-family-gossip, I’m hiding …

May 2, 2009
 // 3 Comments
 // Read More »

Twitter is a tool, and so is Maureen Dowd

I was cruising the blogs here at CNET Asia when I came across Isabella Chen’s recent post “Twitter? Why not?“. Isabella, a fantastic blogger out of Singapore, opens her post by explaining: “To be honest, I don’t really get Twitter.” A lot of people seem to share this lack of understanding about the world’s current …

April 30, 2009
 // Read More »

Understanding Chinese Web site names

Since coming to China nearly half a decade ago, and even more so since taking the reins here at The Tech Dynasty, I’ve become increasingly surrounded by the facinating world of Chinese Web sites. While the West has an ever-convoluted domain pool to deal with, the Chinese are not to be outdone. What follows is …

April 21, 2009
 // Read More »

The Happy Wars–a battle for white-collar SNS in China

There are a lot of facets to China’s buzzing social-networking sites that amaze and amuse me. They’re not only dominating the Chinese market, their figures are pushing past global leaders as well.TenCent’s QZone announced nearly two full months before Facebook that it had reached the 200 millionth user mark. And while successful monetization has become …

April 16, 2009
 // Read More »

Big-time Button

Just got a message via Flickr that a photo I took a couple weeks back of Button made it to Purina’s Pet Charts – a collection of pet stories, pictures and videos. She’s currently ranked #2 – help me get her to No. #1! Vote for the photo here: http://petcharts.purina.com/Default.aspx?day=2009-4-13 UPDATE 04/14: Button’s picture hit …

April 13, 2009
 // 8 Comments
 // Read More »

Electrolux Personal Mini Kitchen a tasty concept

Having just celebrated my second wedding anniversary, my single days are (touch wood) behind me. As such, the Electrolux Personal Mini Kitchen isn’t the most practical gadget for me, but it sure is damn cool–in a high-tech lunchbox sorta way. The concept all-in-one mini kitchen, designed by Kai Yu for the “young Chinese generation who …

April 10, 2009
 // Read More »

Disturbing Dubai

It’s rare that I hit on topics here that don’t involve myself, my adoptive country of China or my homeland of Canada. However, I just finished a long investigative report in The Independent about Dubai, and felt the need to share. The article, written by Johann Hari, shocked me. I had never really put much …

April 7, 2009
 // 7 Comments
 // Read More »

Pupdate: Some new photos

Just a quickie to say that Button is doing great. I’ve started teaching her some basic commands, and she’s a quick study. She’s got sit, stay, come here, lie down, no and ok figured out. Today I’ll work on teaching her “roll over” and “spin”. It amazes me how easy goldens are to train – …

April 6, 2009
 // 3 Comments
 // Read More »

China as world’s next green tech leader?

I’m not much for predictions or speculation. I partake, but don’t put much effort or faith in it. However, when I wrote in 2005 about my high hopes that China would take on green energy, I hadn’t expected that I’d actually see the day it might come true. But a recent NYTs article, entitled “China …

April 3, 2009
 // Read More »