Category Archives: china

Hong Kong Ruby on Rails User Group for 2009

Hong Kong Ruby on Rails User Group

HK ROR user group deserves some long waited actions. I think there’s enough critical mass in Hong Kong now, and there’s definitely a community. The old google group was disappeared without much given reasons, but we’ve formed a new one. http://groups.google.com/group/hkror

Please sign up again and follow the new blog http://rubyonrailshk.com.

Also let me know if you’d like to help organise or contribute as a speaker in upcoming meetup events.

Advertisement

Heading to Ad:Tech Shanghai

I’ll be heading to Ad:Tech Shanghai next week. I managed to score a ‘free’ consolatory ticket from Napolean, one of the winners from Web Wednesday pulled out. My China Mobile will be: 15805816124, just give me a call or sms.

November turned out to be my conferencing month. I’ve met alot of people and had a lot of fun at the Big Question in Taipei. Bill has written up a good summary from his blog. One thing that did surprise me was the lack of people in Taipei, even at the 101 Building, maybe I’ve gotten used to the congested HK.

I’ll consolidate my learnings after this Shanghai, Hangzhou tour. I’m also little surprised to see there’s actually alot of westerners speaking very good mandarin and doing alot of things within the Chinese community – in HK, Taiwan and China.

Why did RoRCraft choose Hangzhou?

This is a good answer. 5th consecutive year ranked top from Forbes’ best places to do business in China list.

Taking from their 2005 report:

The thriving eastern China city of Hangzhou’s lush hills and scenic lake plus a pro-growth business environment put it atop FORBES CHINA’s rankings of the country’s best places to do business for the second year in a row. The capital of Zhejiang province, Hangzhou is home to Internet firms including Alibaba, which just landed a billion-dollar-plus investment from Yahoo for a 40% stake. Several key players in China’s thriving textile trade are based there as well.

The other top places are also surrounding Hangzhou: Shanghai, Wuxie, Nanjing, Ningbo, Beijing.

Beijing Olympics withdrawal

YaoMing

As you may know I work from home, I’ve actually been able to watch alot of the games this time around. It still feels like its finished in such a short time, maybe because I’ve been so god damn busy. The success of this Olympics has made me very proud of the Chinese as the host nation as well as top country in the gold medal tally. There’s also some new things I’ve learnt from this Olympics.

  • Its very classy watching the Olympics muted with classical music
  • Yao Ming is the best Chinese Basketball player
  • I’m starting to hear metaphors like “The Michael Phelps of rubyfu” just like saying “The Michael Jordan of table tennis”
  • If Australia has the same population as China, they should get 784 gold medals
  • If you liked the artistic beauty of the Opening and Closing ceremonies, directed by Zhang Yimou, you should visit Hangzhou’s Impression Westlake or Yunan’s Impression Lijiang

Here’s some Chingrish humor when I was in Hangzhou:

Tony & Gay

Saw this on ABC’s MediaWatch just last night as well. How poor is the Australia online streaming of the games!? Yahoo7 streams 2hrs out of 24 hrs vs CBC Canada’s website, for example, where you could find live coverage of up to nine events at a time.

Yahoo7

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2346180.htm

The Australian appetite for viewing live streaming has not reached the penetration of the US or Canada.

— Email from Kath Hamilton (General Manager, Media, Yahoo7) to Media Watch, 22nd August, 2008