Tibet Trip from my friend

I know I have to write about this before I forget again. I have a very poor time management lately!

Anyway, sometimes I am amazed how small the world can be. We met an old friend accidentally through the internet. He is a Dutch guy who used to work for our old company in Indonesia and then transfered to Beijing. Later he decided to marry a chinese lady and settled down here in Shanghai. We met through his blog and were invited to his company party.

He told us that he will fly north to Tibet for the labour day week and stay there for 3 weeks. He will bike from Lhasa to Kathmandu together with 3 other persons, among them is a cameraman who will document the trip. Yes, Lhasa to Kathmandu by bicycle! In total is 1200 km and altitude of more than 3500 m above sea level! Unbelievable! I am really excited to see how the trip goes! This is really an adrenalin adventure that I have to lift my hat for! As for me, let alone 1200 km biking at 3500 m, I am still not sure if I can do the Inca Trip in Peru and I do really want to see the Manchu Picchu!

For those who wants to follow his journey, you can check his blog

The Great Firewall of China

It is no longer a secret that Chinese government blocks and unblocks access to certain websites to limit certain informations flows into the country. Among them are Wikipedia, Playboy, Blogger Blogspot and Typepad. Some genius created some websites and tools to pass thru the firewall but they are also "from time to time" blocked by the firewall. But one can always access the blocked website using any of the thousands open proxies provided in internet. If one is blocked, you just try the next one.

Isn't the net an amazing world?

Shanghai

We've finally arrived here 2 weeks ago. Things have been very busy; catching up with work situation as well as private life. We are in the stage of finalizing our apartment contract and we hope that we can move into the new apartment next week, or at least before the upcoming golden week in May so we can start feeling "homey".

We still miss Germany of course, sometimes we wake up late on Saturday and start thinking, "damn, we are late for Wertstoffhof (garbage recycling center) and grocery!!" but then we realize that we are in Shanghai now, where all shops are open Monday-Sunday till 10 pm and no garbage recycling is in place. I guess it just take some time to get used to new life.

But Shanghai itself is nice, there are lots of new things to try and learn and we will have the 2 years to do so. Unfortunately the weather is (almost) always foggy (partially due to spring and also the air pollution control is still low) so it's a bit difficult to take clear picture of the city. Perhaps it is better in summer.

We will have a golden week in beginning of May and we might fly north to Beijing and meet up a friend who is currently working there as well as revisiting the touristic places in the area. For those who wonder, China doesn't have regular religious holiday due to the communism. But throughout the year we have in total 3 golden weeks; the year is always opened with Spring Festival/Chinese New Year, then a week off for Labour Day (first week of May) and ended with National Day week (first week of October). No Easter/Christmas or any other religious holiday is celebrated.

Link to our new apartment click here