Micah Sittig

Roo

Micah — 2008-08-28T16:31:00Z

The Ferret notices a similarity between the architecture of Super Brand Mall and the work of a certain artist. He also has some great conversations:

Roo
Maybe the police will arrest you now.

Ferret
Man, I hope not.

Finally, he seems to have snuck into the WFT before the official opening on Saturday?

We're teaching Charlotte to put herself to bed.

Micah — 2008-08-26T14:41:00Z

We're teaching Charlotte to put herself to bed. Now after bath, pajamas and milk, she can walk out to the front room to say goodnight to mom and grandma, and then walk back to her room and get in bed all by herself. Then it's a goodnight kiss, and lights out.

There's been quite a bit of hand-wringing about what London...

Micah — 2008-08-25T15:28:00Z

There's been quite a bit of hand-wringing about what London can do to top the Beijing Olympics, but with a little brainstorming it's not that hard to come up with a few things they could ~~rub in Beijing's face~~ do better than Beijing:

Instead of having protest-zones, have protest-free zones. Make almost the entire of London a welcome zone for protests of all kinds. In fact, the city should fund protests signs and banners, provide transportation for protesters, and organize protest forums. The more voices the better.
Party like there's no tomorrow. The BOCOG has been so uptight about the whole Olympics, and from my experience here it's pretty clear that the GPCR wiped out all notion of how to throw a decent party in the PRC. The national houses? Make them an afterthought to the parties thrown by LOCOG.
Stick it to McDonalds. We all know the British Isle's reputation when it comes to food, and this is a chance to turn that around. Invite culinary masters from the Continent and beyond to dazzle visitors with a night market of exotic snacks and fine dining on the Olympic Green.

There's three suggestions. Any more?

Lately I've been browsing a few Chinese BBSs that are...

Micah — 2008-08-23T16:24:00Z

Lately I've been browsing a few Chinese BBSs that are definitely stuck in the Web 1.0 era, so naturally I have to do a little patching here and there to fit them into my closer-to-web-2.0 web surfing habits. One thing that these BBSs are missing is RSS feeds for individual threads. Since I'd rather have notices of new posts come to me than have to browse through the forums to check for new content, I whipped up a little Perl script specifically for the 篱笆网 BBS that takes a forum thread and turns it into an RSS feed. For example, the following URL takes thread number 2566005 in forum 96 and outputs it as RSS:

http://feeds.wubi.org/liba/96/2566005

Then I can subscribe to that URL in Google Reader, which will alert me of any new posts in that specific thread. Neat, eh?

According to a couple recent articles , non-bank currency exchange...

Micah — 2008-08-22T01:34:00Z

According to a couple recent articles, non-bank currency exchange has been given the green light to start expanding in Beijing and Shanghai. Some company called Aixiyi (艾西益) is currently running two exchange points, one at Pudong Airport and one at Zhangjiang subway station (pictured). The maximum allowed exchange per day is USD 5000, and per year is USD 50,000. The company plans to open more locations as the World Expo approaches, next in Xintiandi and the Yu Gardens area.

It's about time. Hong Kong has these all over the place. I wonder if they'll change RMB into dollars, not that you'd want to that right now.

This evening I did a redesign of my homepage ,...

Micah — 2008-08-21T16:29:00Z

This evening I did a redesign of my homepage, away from the Facebook design which was outdated anyways. Every since I went the "lifestream" route I felt like I was just creating content for the sake of creating, and not for any meaningful reason. This redesign is intended to focus me back on weblogging for communicating with my family and friends, and for writing about the city I live in and what goes on here. This also means I'm effectively shutting down the Public Transportation weblog which was fun while it lasted, but which I'm too busy to justify updating anymore.

I started working on Monday and have been very busy with lots of new meetings in my role as department head. My department is full of interesting personalities and I think we'll have a great year, but the administration of the school is a real mixed bag of visionaries that I want to model myself on and people that frustrate me to no end.

I've got a big decision coming up. The school is coordinating with Oklahoma University to arrange a ME program at our school over the next two years. Participating in the program is very attractive to me because it would equip me with a lot of skills that I miss every day as a teacher, and because the company is dangling a small but helpful financial aid package in front of our noses as an incentive. Still, the program would be a significant investment in terms of money and time, would mean postponing our tentative plan to buy a car next summer, would require me to make a longer commitment to the school, and doesn't fit exactly into my future career plan. With the second kid coming and Jodi starting a weekend program at ECNU, the ME is starting to seem less and less practical. It's a fork in the road that leads to two very different outcomes. A decision isn't due until December, so I've got a while to think about it.

Speaking of money, last month I finally drew up a budget and this month we've been trying to live by it as closely as possible. Well, it's the 22nd of the month and we're over the budget by RMB 2000, which is not disastrous because it's still only the first month on the budget, half of the overrun came out of the rainy day account, and we still spent less than in the last few months. What's really painful is that there's a list of half a dozen things in my mind that I'd like to buy (starting with an eeePC) that I've pushed onto the "someday" pile because I really want to hit the spending targets we set for ourselves. It's hard when your friends are playing with new iPhones and I can only cringe and bear it when the taxi to Jodi's check-ups costs RMB 70 one-way. I suppose it's because John already has an apartment and the other John is off to be a FSO any day now, so it makes sense that we have different spending allowances. Still, not fun. Hopefully after months of saving our planned vacations and car purchase next year will make it all seem worth it. Even then, I don't see a house in our future for many, many years.

I got an emergency translation job yesterday that I turned around in less than 24 hours, which I'm pretty happy about.

By June Shih, You think NBC is bad?

Micah — 2008-08-17T04:49:00Z

By June Shih, You think NBC is bad? You haven't seen CCTV:

Now that the games have actually started, a viewer can find live broadcasts of everything from archery to volleyball all day long. Television anchors are endlessly cuing up musical montages of Chinese gold medal performances in weightlifting, shooting, gymnastics, and diving. When not broadcasting events, Chinese programmers are filling the airwaves with features such as "Mothers Who Are Also Olympic Competitors" and "Kids Who Have Shaved the Olympics Logo Into Their Heads." Enthusiastic coverage is of course not unique to the Chinese—I remember watching my share of slo-mo U.S. medalist montages set to Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time." But what's on television in China right now shows what happens when you combine tight state control with typically overwrought, patriotic sports coverage. CCTV is like NBC on steroids … and growth hormone, and EPO, and albuterol.

It's nice to have 6-7 channels covering the Olympics, but sorta explains why China is winning the gold in downloading BitTorrent coverage of the big O.

(What's with Slate and journalists' wives?)

I went to the Shanghai Book Fair in Gubei today...

Micah — 2008-08-16T10:26:00Z

I went to the Shanghai Book Fair in Gubei today.

The first talk I went to was by Shanghai writer Chen Danyan. I first made aware of her writing when she did a conversation with American-based author and translator Qiu Xiaolong at the Shanghai Int'l Literary Festival in 2007. Eventually I got around to reading her 《慢船去中国》, and I am enjoying it. Today she was promoting her new book, 永不扩宽的街道, a collection of vignettes from protected neighborhoods around Shanghai. After the talk and taking a few questions, she stayed to sign books. Mine is made out to "Micah and Jodi". (I took a video of one minute of her talk and put it on Youtube.)

The second talk I went to on a whim. It was a panel promoting a series of books called 《海派文化丛书》 (Shanghainese Culture Collection), hosted by the chairman of the 上海市对外文化交流协会 (Shanghai Municipal Cultural Exchange Association). The panel was composed of the authors on Shanghaise cooking, literature, history, movies, men(!), and dynastic families. Sitting next to a chatty intern from the Wenhui Post, and some of the panelists being quite the characters (沈寂, 程乃珊) made the talk somewhat bearable.

The Book Fair is being held at the Shanghai Mart in Gubei, a short taxi ride away from the Loushanguan Rd metro station. Don't miss the specialized publishers on the higher floors. A schedule of the fair's talks is available from volunteers inside the front door. Tickets are RMB 10 at the door. Tuesday is the last day.

We've decided that "up" is Charlotte's official first word...

Micah — 2008-08-15T03:46:00Z

We've decided that "up" is Charlotte's official first word.

Went to pick up Jodi's mom at the Shanghai South...

Micah — 2008-08-10T01:59:00Z

Went to pick up Jodi's mom at the Shanghai South Railway Station this morning. Three observations:

1. During the Olympics, you can't enter the station itself if you don't have a ticket. Before the Olympic Games, without a ticket you could enter the building but not the departure waiting area. Now the only space available to visitors (as opposed to passengers) is the arrival hallway on the bottom floor. Thanks a lot, China Rail + Olympics.

2. The arrival hallway, where people wait for passengers arriving on trains, is made of up several wide passageways of impressive expanse — but there is not a single bench in the whole area. You notice this type of thing if you're wife is pregnant, but I'm guessing not if you're head is stuck in your ass like the designers of the South Railway Station. In fact, there are no benches in the entire train station outside of the departure area. This is exactly the same as any other backwards little train station in the Chinese countryside. To get a feel for this, here's a picture of the Express Train Station at the new Beijing Terminal 3, which from pictures I've seen suffers from the same problem:

This means that there's piles of luggage and passengers scattered about the floor inside and ground outside train stations all over China, which makes one wonder about a country whose leaders worry so much about its 形象 (image) so much and promised a 人文 (untranslatable?) Olympics. Thanks a lot, China Rail. (And while you're at it, could you install drinking fountains too? Thanks.)

3. The fabric and trinket market next to the Caoxi Rd light rail station (across from Ikea) has been razed and turned into a parking lot. This is a market that sold cheap, custom-made curtains and beddings sets, as well as providing drinks, snacks and DVDs to commuters making the trek between Line 3 and Lines 1/4 or the bus hub at Shanghai Stadium. Now it's a parking lot. On the other hand, the tacky and always-empty clothing, jewelry, make-up and accessory "mall" on the other side of the light rail station still stands. Thanks a lot, Shanghai municipal government + Olympics.

I often wonder if people do this stuff on purpose, but usually I fall back on Hanlon's Razor.

Jupiter is still loitering in the sky above our balcony...

Micah — 2008-08-06T16:01:00Z

Jupiter is still loitering in the sky above our balcony these days.

A view of Lujiazui from our laundry room in Zhangjiang High-Tech Park.

rt @shizhao Retweeting @imnewer: RT @vvrabbit Retweeting @icorey: 当前北京四种人：...

Micah — 2008-08-01T06:02:00Z

rt @shizhao

Retweeting @imnewer: RT @vvrabbit Retweeting @icorey: 当前北京四种人： 1、避运的：外出旅游避开奥运； 2、受运的：留在北京忍受奥运； 3、宫外运的：恭迎外国人参加奥运； 4、怀运的：只敢怀怨在心，但不敢发帖去骂

Got some errands to run now, maybe I'll translate this later. It uses plays on words to describe people's attitudes towards the Olympics using terms related to pregnancy/contraception.

I'm posting this for the language part, not for the Olympics. Ugh.

I spent a bit of time these days (summer vacation,...

Micah — 2008-07-30T09:16:00Z

I spent a bit of time these days (summer vacation, heh) on a couple of BBSs, but I've only been making one show up on my homepage because I was introduced to the other one by Jodi and she's a more private person than I am when it comes to revealing personal information (I'm sure you can figure out which one if you've been connecting the dots, but it's not like the tabloids would care or anything). Having the threads in which I post show up involves a bit of trickery because Chinese BBSs make it hard to pull/poll public feeds of posts by user, so I end up entering each thread by hand after I post to it.

This makes me wish there was a way to centralize control over my BBS posts across multiple BBSs from one interface. Instead of having to open a separate tab for each forum, I'd like to log into a single account and see which of my threads have been replied to in all of the different forums I post in. This would require the different BBS admins to opt-in or install whatever software made this possible, and it would run against the anonymity that a lot of people like in BBSs. But if we could get past or work around both of those obstacles, it would make something like Friendfeed possible for the BBS part of the internet and that would be cool, I think.

本人对车牌略有研究，以下是详细介绍。

Micah — 2008-07-29T10:25:00Z

It's hard to give credit for things you quote from the Chinese internet because so much of it is copy-and-pasted a million times over, so it's near impossible to know the original source. Here's one such thing that I found interesting:

本人对车牌略有研究，以下是详细介绍。
沪A、沪B、沪D上海市区，沪C远郊区

确切地说：上海的汽车牌照中，蓝色的，沪A、沪B、沪D、沪E都是一样的，为什么有A、B、C、D之分？很简单，沪A用完了就往后排到沪B了，照现在这个趋势发展下去，以后要有沪F、沪G、沪……，呵呵！

其中，蓝沪C是郊县牌照，按规定只能在外环线以外行驶，就是不能进市区。

上海的汽车牌照共有四种颜色，分别是黄色、蓝色、白色、黑色。

黄色：大型客车、卡车或营运车，例如：公交车、载重卡车，只有沪A、沪B、沪C三种，黄底黑字，牌照格式为：沪A（B、C）*****，“*”号中是字母或者数字。另外，对于集装箱卡车，就有“沪A*****挂”的样式，多了一个“挂”字，对于教练车，驾驶学校的，就有“沪A*****学”的样式。黄沪C是郊县牌照，按规定只能在外环线以外行驶，就是不能进市区。

蓝色：小型客车、私家车或营运车，例如：出租车和私人轿车基本都是蓝牌照的，有沪A、沪B、沪C、沪D、沪E共五种，蓝底白字，格式同黄牌照一样。其中沪C和其它的通行范围不一样，仅限外环线以外。

白色：警察和武警、部队使用的牌照。

警察：有沪A、沪B两种，格式为：沪A（B）*****警，白底黑字，其中“警”字为红色，没有通行范围限制，哪都能去。

武警：格式为：WJ(08)-*****，白底黑字，其中“WJ”是武警的意思，“(08)”代表上海市的武警部队编号，“*”号里全是数字。另外还有一种，WJ(08)-*****消，“消”字红色，就是消防员开的救火车。

部队：上海属于南京军区，格式为：南R*****，白底黑字，“南”字为红色，就是南京军区的意思。“*”号里全是数字。

黑色：领事馆牌照，黑底白字，格式为：沪A*****领，比较少，是各国领事馆专用的。

Tonight on Channel Young they had a short segment where...

Micah — 2008-07-28T15:16:00Z

Tonight on Channel Young they had a short segment where they highlighted 错别字, wrong characters on public signs. One that they singled out is the first character in Yoshinoya's name:

According to the host, the first character should have been 吉, where the top horizontal line is longer than the second one. What makes me curious is that the "wrong" character is used in graphics throughout Yoshinoya's Japanese website, but that the text in the website's copy that shows up in my Firefox on Windows XP has the "right" character:

吉野家

Is this a real mistake? Is it a calligraphic thing, or a Japanese/Chinese difference?

We're selling a stroller.

Micah — 2008-07-24T16:47:00Z

We're selling a stroller. This was Charlotte's first stroller. We are looking to sell it in order to prepare for the new baby. More information here.

Via 张江家园 , at the Dongchang Road ferry crossing: ...

Micah — 2008-07-22T14:44:00Z

Via 张江家园, at the Dongchang Road ferry crossing:

If you've been watching the skies lately, you've noticed that...

Micah — 2008-07-17T14:53:00Z

If you've been watching the skies lately, you've noticed that the Moon has been swinging closer and closer to a mysterious planet low in the sky. Now thanks to heavens-above.com the planet is no longer a mystery! It's Jupiter! 木星！

As you can see, the Moon and Jupiter are right next to each other tonight. Taking this prime opportunity, I whipped out my camera, set up the tripod on a stool on a chair on the balcony, and took some photos on various zoom levels at various aperture and exposure settings. Here's a photo illustrating the distance between the two objects, overexposed to get Jupiter two show up (it's very clear to the naked eye, though):

Obviously the moon is way, way overexposed, so I closed the aperture a bit and shortened the exposure time.

Back to a longer exposure time, I zoom in on Jupiter. Originally I had thought it might be Mars, but who could mistake the deep sky-blue color for Mars' red surface???

Lengthening the exposure time even further to probe for details, I captured all four of Jupiter's Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io! Nice!

That's all for tonight. It's a pretty good capture considering the warm Shanghai atmosphere, the Zhangjiang High-Tech light pollution, and my shaky little tripod.

My parents have always told me (and books back them...

Micah — 2008-07-16T04:22:00Z

My parents have always told me (and books back them up) that my name, Micah, is a question asking "who is like God?". Having studied and spoken several languages, I now guess that there must be some serious implied context to be able to get that meaning out of two syllables.

The point of this post, though, is not the above. Today I'm doing some online research to pick matching "English" names for the Chinese names Jodi has chosen for our second child. I'm flirting with the idea of choosing a non-English name for the boy-name (we don't know the sex), and in the course of that train of thought I came across a website with a list of Igbo names from Nigeria, and their meanings. Lo and behold, there is an Igbo name that means "who is like God?", which would be the Igbo equivalent to Micah. The sound, however, is nothing similar: Onyedikachukwu. I should add it to my middle names.

And via Peijin, honey, I'm still bigger than you:

Race past rebel base.

Micah — 2008-07-11T16:16:00Z

Race past rebel base.
Lt. Rat so startles
able Bert's ape car.