Shanghai China Snippets

The Best Tuangou Ever, a Ticket for Noah’s Ark

Tuangou, or Group buying, is hot at the moment. The whole internet seems to be destined to become one Tuangou. In the end though, whatever you buy now, you only need to join one Tuangou and you’ll sail away in 2012 on Noah’s Ark leaving behind all those Tuangou’ers that were happy with getting a [...]

Spot the Missing Letter

Spot the missing letter Crossposted on Shanghai Daily Photos © - visit China Snippets for [...]

How to Backup Your Gmail in China

It’s time for a backup of your Gmail account(s) if you live in China. Google has announced it’s contemplating leaving China and the ramifications might well be that in doing so their Gmail service will become unavailable as well. There’s no certainty but don’t be naive and think it could not happen. Stranger things [...]

Blocked Hotmail a Hot Search in Google.cn

The Chinese firewall had an active day. Twitter blocked, Flickr blocked, Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.com blocked. In general the average Chinese user won’t give a a hoot. Twitter….. Flickr….. and that pancake search engine. It’s mostly the foreigners here that will have to find other ways to express themselves. Should be good for productivity, although [...]

Osteria Italian Restaurant - Less guests is better

Clicking an ad I ended up at the website of the Osteria restaurant I’m a bit puzzled by the fact that if I bring 7 or more friends I’ll be charged 10% more. Still, I may try out the place one day, just with a small group though. It seems from the pictures like an [...]

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My Wife Wants to Divorce Me

I just asked her if she felt less happy after US bank Lehman Brother’s went bankrupt in september 2008. Yes, of course, was her answer. Since that moment my happiness index plummeted to very low levels. Before all was ok, also thanks to Lehman Brothers but now…. “What’s the exact score now”, I asked. Well, at [...]

Brand America, Chinese omelettes and running 1 km

Weekly Snippets Brand America The Brand America is getting close to Sanlu status. Unfortunately it’s easier to change to melamine free baby milk powder than to an USA alternative. Healthy Running Chinese school kids have run 3 km since the mandatory exercise program started. “Primary schoolchildren run 1 km per day, junior high school students 1.5 km, and senior [...]

My Favorite Beijing Olympic Quote

Yesterday, just before the football match Belgium - Brazil was about to start. The anthems had been played and the referee was about to start the match. Behind me, on row 3, a little girl asked her dad, “Which one is China?”. note: I had promised myself that I wouldn’t write anything during the [...]

Bill Gates Makes It To Baidu Logo

Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and co-founder, who officially retired has made it into the Baidu Logo. Click the logo and you will get to his profile (in Chinese) He is the second American who makes it to the top of the page of China’s most popular search engine. US Presidential candidate Barack Obama was the [...]

Vertical Blogging in English

┏━┯━┯━┯━┯━┓ ┃ｉ│ｌ│ｎ│ｐ│Ｃ┃ ┃ｃ│ｏ│　│ｐ│ｈ┃ ┃ａ│ｇ│ａ│ｅ│ｉ┃ ┃ｌ│　│ｌ│ｔ│ｎ┃ ┃ｌ│ｖ│ｓ│ｓ│ａ┃ ┃ｙ│ｅ│ｏ│　│ｓ┃ ┃　│ｒ│　│ｃ│ｎ┃ ┃　│ｔ│ｂ│ａ│ｉ┃ ┗━┷━┷━┷━┷━┛ Hope you can read it, formatting didn’t go so well. Do it yourself. Read for the reasons of this vertical blogging here. [...]

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Is that water or alcohol?

Entering the building the female guard looks at the big jug (5 litres) I’m carrying. When I open the door, she asks, Is that water or alcohol? I wonder what else they’re thinking and not saying [...]

Black and White Search

Search engines in black and white for the 3 days mourning period that started yesterday with 3 minutes of silence on 2:28 PM. 3 minutes/days to think of the devastation the earthquakes in Sichuan have caused. If you like to donate, I suggest you to check the Shanghaiist website which is very up to date with [...]

Google and Kingsoft Launch Free Chinese Dictionary

Google and Kingsoft launched today a free Chinese-English-Chinese dictionary. Now go and read the Chinese bbs yourself to really find out what’s going on in China. If you install it on a non-Chinese operating system you probably see a lot of weird symbols (not Chinese but more machine language like), on the first page of the [...]

China Olympic Torch Relay on Google Maps

Just noticed that Google maps is keeping track of the torch relay. Check here for yourself. [...]

Olympic Flame On Top of the Everest

The torch has made it to the top of the Mount Qomolangma/Mount Everest and was ignited by Norbu Zhamdu at 9:18am May 8. It’s the first time the torch went that high. Let’s hope the rest of the journey will be in the same spirit. [...]

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