It was the start of this year. I wanted to get a new pair of glasses. I want to get a good pair that look good, for obvious reason. It should be fun. I’m never into eyeglasses, but having done the search, I realize many people are very serious into this, with many more brands I’ve never heard of.

This Alain Mikli was a love at first sight. The 2-color frame is colored in opposite that left shell was dominated by red, but the right was by black. Inside’s color was completely opposite. It was most of his frame’s specialty that it was rarely symmetric. Even a model of 5 years it hardly loses its attention. The design has its price tag, but I like the way things are hand-made, distinctive from afar. Couple months ago I tried and loved this style, but thought I could find elsewhere, and forgot the place I tried. Then I’ve been to many places, even placed a deposit to order, and still couldn’t find it. I end up having the luck to get one @ official store. It was a relieve.

Alain Mikli started his business in frame design on the year I was born, well, long time ago.

Outside Japan Pavilion

It wouldn’t be Expo if its pavilions look like a factory. Most of them look great. On the other hand the content inside may not be attractive as it looks. As my first post writes, here you have to think for yourself:

1. Do you like to go to museums to explore lots of ideas (i.e. readings involved)?
2. Are you more into Science world-kind-of interactive places that you can touch and play?
3. Do you prefer enjoying a performance where it’ll present you a movie and tell you a story?
4. Or, you simply look for something fascinating / cool, regardless of what that is?

I think the best way to describe the pavilions I visited is to tell you how much of these 4 points above. I’m more of a ideas-oriented person, thus I hope pavilions have some quality content to tell me, via any ways they think that best fit. My ratings are very personal obviously (in fact I found many contrasting comments online thus you really have to see that yourself, or go to www.expo.cn to check out). Ones that barely pass are worth a visit if you have spare time, whilst ones higher than 5 are worth to make some time to me.

Zone A

We’ve been to Zone A for 3 days, but not until the last 2 days we finally decided to take actual lineups there, because the place was simply way too crowded! We only managed to get into 3 pavilions, while skipping many others becase

1. Hong Kong: 5 – Small. Lots of steps to go up and down. Interesting short 3D movie (expensive 3D glasses) to showcase HK as a hub of many stuff. Interactive displays that let you take pics and send to your email. Neat design but small anyways. Lack the theme idea: what makes a better city.
2. Japan: 8 – Many interesting stuff to show off their new technologies. Missed their 20-min show but I think it should be great as well. The long wait is really killing (remember go to washroom + don’t drink too much water before lining up! No washroom inside the X-hr wait + 1-hr visit)
3. Vietnam: 1 – Besides a pretty bamboo pavilion design, I don’t see anything interesting.

Zone B

Main interest in Zone B are definitely the theme pavilions plus Australia, along with some not-too-notable world organization (ex. WWF) pavilions. One exception was the MetroWorld, which features some weather stuff that I didn’t know of. The waiting was expected to take 2 hours thus I never got to visit there.

1. Australia: 8 – Unexpectedly interesting. Some Disney-like animated characters introduce history of Australia. Then we are presented with a 10-15 min video with shown in a all-round display of how Australia’s cities evolve in future. Fascinating show.
2. Cambodia: 1 – As you may have seen my previous note of this place. Lots of statues to explain the history of Cambodia, with 3 donation boxes with unsure purpose. No need to waste your time there, even there’s no lineup.
3. New Zealand: 5 – Lots of large picture displays showing how do the lives of NZ feel like. Very visual and nothing particularly interesting stuff. The open space at the slope next to pavilion provides a good place to rest however.
4. Singapore: 3 – Nothing too exciting about the pavilion. Some simple facts about Singapore history. Lots of commercial stuff involved including the new casino + OSIM. The music inside makes me sick after listening awhile and lining up inside for the movie, showing the city life of SG in a MV style. The wait of the movie outweighs the content.
5. Theme – Urbanian: 10 – The best pavilion by far. Using many movies and visuals, they compare city lives of 5 city families from Australia, US, China, somewhere in Europe, and somewhere in Africa. Funny to see how each family adopts to different lifestyles because of the cities they live in. The setup of the pavilion is cool – built using many city stuff like soda containers, office boxes, books, etc. We took like almost 2 hours to visit.
6. Theme – Urban Planet: 8 – Equally amazing is this theme pavilion that it uses 5 elements in Chinese theory to explain some city problems we have. For example water: they demo the problem of keeping fresh water in the world. Another attraction is the big (about 50m in diameter) spherical display of earth. Beautifully designed.
7. Theme – City Being: 4 – I have very vague memory on this. The idea was very conceptual. I had a memory of having seen a movie on something, but pretty much forgot the rest. Watching this after the Urbanian Pavilion, I felt it was a big disappointment.

Zone C - Left side

Zone C is a HUGE area that features pavilions mainly from Europe, Australia / some Asia, Africa, America, plus world organizations. I’ll split up my intro into the left part (mainly America + Africa + Australia) and right part (mainly European). If you have a map, you should see what I mean.

1. Austria: 6 – Interesting small pavilion filled with various stuff. Not very exciting, but we happened to be able to listen to a concert by Austrian musicians on some Mozart pieces. It’s amazing that we got to finish the whole performance (like 15min long) with heck lot of interruptions from mainland Chinese.
2. Brazil: 7 – Equipped with LOTS of huge touch-screen monitors to let you understand many stats about Brazil. At center stage there’s yet another huge special display under our feet giving a bird-eye view of various places in Brazil.
3. Canada: 6 – Beautiful interior design yet message isn’t that clear. One fun thing to do inside is a bike ride with a big display in front. While biking a movie will display randomly giving you a comic view of a Canadian life. That’s much about Canada.
4. Italy: 7 – Lots of stuff to see. Very random. Mixture of some antique art pieces, sponsored stuff like China-themed Fiat / Green Ferrari. Huge shoes and sofas. A whole set of orchestra music instruments hanging on the wall was worth checking. Overall some stuff is quite cool, yet it lacks a central theme that aligns w/ Expo.
5. Luxembourg: 2 – Inside an outstanding structure, I felt like entered a sales seminar. The country simply focuses on promoting its monetary / financial business and that’s about it.
6. Mexico: 3 – Interesting design with lots of kite-alike shooting up to sky. When entered, there’s not a whole lot to see. What’s a bit more interactive are some random videos about Mexico showing behind 20+ funny masks so that when you are watching, you can ask a friend to take some pics for you. And that’s pretty much about this place. DON’T EVER EAT THERE, EXPENSIVE.
7. South Africa: 2 – Forgot pretty much of what’s inside, besides the giant Adidas football outside.
8. UK: 8 – All about plants. The content is not about the ball-like pavilion, that features thousands of spear-like glasses all holding seed specimen of different plants. There’s nothing special about the pavilion interior, but people love shooting pictures inside including me. On our way out, it shows some plant prototypes showing how plants could be transformed in the future with technology. Could plants have feelings? (Avatar?!) Don’t miss it.

Zone C - Right side

Zone C – Right side:

1. Belgium + EU: 7 – Overall the idea was okay. Nothing too exciting but it’s the birth place of “The Smurf” with lots of exhibits showing. The restaurant is worth a visit (therefore 1 extra point!) for a) lots of Belgium beer available b) the price is reasonable (in HK western food standard). Line up is reasonable.
2. Denmark: 8 – One of the very attractive pavilion designs around. Couple of huge TVs showing quality videos showing lifestyles @ Denmark with benches so you can take a rest. Heineken is not imported.
3. Finland: 8 – Featuring Nokia-sponsored Bluetooth system that sends you message of descriptions of what you see. Interactive systems that is sensed thru motions not touch. Only pavilion we checked that has WiFi.
4. France: 7 – Consistent theme of using 5 senses to inspire visitors of how life should be. Nothing extremely exciting but lots of exhibits are interesting. The theme cat is quite cute though merchandise is expensive. Just knew that the restaurant is hosted by 3-start Michelin chef. Lunch is ~ RMB400 I remember.
5. Greece: 4 – Went there at night w/o waiting. Overall wasn’t too inspired by its idea, maybe because they were too poor?
6. Iceland: 5 – There’s only 1 thing to show – a real 3-Dimension movie display on 3 walls + roof showing natural landscape of Iceland (sea, land, volcanoes). Though the angles don’t necessary match. It’s quite a unique experience with limited money they have.
7. Ireland: 5 – Walked in because no line-up. Again a pavilion showing lives @ Ireland.
8. Norway: 5 – Small pavilion with not much to show, but the mood + atmosphere was great with lighting, made you feel like you were in a very cold Norway.
9. Poland: 5 – Idea of paper cutting art. Basically that’s all about the pavilion. There were 1-2 movies but we skipped the lineup.
10. Spain: 6 – Don’t quite understand why such huge lineup. A 3D wall video along with a live dancing performance captured many people’s attention at start. Inside there’s a huge baby with its head and eyes moving, and pretty much it. What interested me inside were a series of inspiring cartoons showing a baby’s life in future. Don’t miss those and focus on that baby who gets happy when bubbles come up.
11. Sweden: 7 – Entering this place gives me a huge hint of IKEA. Lots of interactive stuff like in IKEA where you can sit, try, play. There’s a huge slide that we didn’t have chance to play (closed @ night).
12. Switzerland: 7 – A more anticipated pavilion features a ski-life ride to the top of its pavilion, over-seeing the scenery of Shanghai and Expo with some grass and native Swiss plants on the roof, trying to give you feeling of Switzerland, a hot one. Before the show there’s a repeating IMAX movie showing the breath-taking scenery there. Some taller-than-man TV showing some video stories told by local Swiss people, but they were often interrupted by other Chinese visitors.

Zone D + E

Didn’t get much chance to walk around @ Zone D + E mainly because we spent too much time at the pavilions below, and I think it’s not too worth to wait in line @ many of corporate pavilions just to know more about their products.

1. Theme – Footprint: 3 – A pavilion with lots of history stuff from various old civilizations. Very random and no connections to me.
2. Expo Museum: 6 – It’s good to know how this whole Expo started. With some rare exhibits from early Expo shows.
3. Theme – Future: 6 – Lots of videos, presentations, huge books. I found it quite okay.

Huge... China Pavilion

Just returned from my first ever Expo last Saturday. To be honest if it were not hosted in China, I, with billion of Chinese, may not care or even know what Expo is about. But to say it short, if you plan to go because your gf wants to go, or you just want to check out how enormous the China pavilion is, I’ve got some good tips for you. First I’ll tell you how to prepare yourself before heading.

Mindset: I figured that many in the Expo don’t get to know what to see, besides taking pics of pavilions and rushing to get all stamps filled in passports. To me Expo is a place to see what is that country doing and will do that should make you say “wow”, just as those pavilion design themselves. Once you get that concept in mind, you may get to know where to go among that huge list of places in there. Some countries, such as Vietnam, spent so much time / resource building a nice bamboo-based facility, but has virtually no content inside besides lots of proclain stood up for sale (wtf?). Those place really wastes our time (I will list out ones not worth to go later).

I have hard time understanding they just use pronounciation translation i.e. Shibo Avenue, rather than meaning transalation, i.e. Expo Avenue

Number of days of visit is a hard thing to estimate. While you think you need 4 days, or even more, to see most of the pavilions you want to go, you prob. don’t have that much stamina / mood after first 2 days. I remember on my last of 4 day my feet just felt exhausted right after I entered the Expo. So you may have to play flexible on the # of days you spend and have some backup plans of tickets.

Time of visit, should be based on your usual energy u can take for that 3-4 days of visit. We initially decided it would be too exhausting to take a 9-9 run everyday (remember, you are basically standing 90% of the time during that period), so we started our day @ 1pm just to avoid the crowd and save some energy. I think our strategy was right, because many tend to start their trip (including tours) early and finish by supper time (~6pm) so after 6 it’ll always the golden time: you see noticeably shorter lineups. But the highlight goes to last 60min before pavilions close (from 9pm-10pm): in our case many simply didnt need line-ups to get in! So that was def. more time-efficient to go @ later time.

Tickets should be purchased before-hand @ your home place for obvious reasons, though you may still buy them @ convenience stores (not sure if all but at least some + not sure if they sell 3-day pass) which are located everywhere in Shanghai, so you won’t have to waste time lining up to buy @ entrance. One exception: there are actually night tickets for sale for entrance after 4pm for… 70rmb? I forgot. The good thing about it is that you can avoid the crowd as mentioned above, and do some sightseeing in the city beforehand if your schedule to Shanghai is tight.

Urbanian Pavilion has an interesting idea of comparing citizens 5 different continents live differently/similarly

Where should I head first? I don’t think you should rely much on suggestions from media / books, as I don’t think they will tell you “Cambodia Pavilion is basically a bunch of Buddha statues with 3 huge donation boxes and a food kiosks that offer drinks you’ve never heard of. Though they would give you rough ideas of what they are, at the end you have to decide yourself what interest you the most and what not, not following any suggestions given by book experts (but when you arrive and see almost all pavilions are filled with lineups, you may end up choosing a line that’s shorter ignoring the point that you *really* want to go to Japan Pavilion but will take 4 hours to wait – yet the strange thing is it takes you less time to fly to Japan from Shanghai to understand better of their technology). In summary here is my criteria to go:

• The theme pavilions are worth the time to see what this Expo is about (esp. Urbanian Pavilion, «°¥«¤HÀ]) except Pavilion of City Being, «°¥«¨¬¸ñÀ] which has tons of really random information and I was lost. I suggest to use earlier/morning times to avoid lineups in country pavilions.
• Country Pavilions that you think you want to go. That’s very personal but again to me, I would visit ones that show me the cutting-edge technology / philosophy of how to have a better city life – I don’t need to see what’s about that Country, which I could find via Wiki already. In that cases poorer countries, unfortunately won’t be on my list.
• Urban Sanctuary «°¥«¹ê½îÀ]: this is what I really missed the chance to explore further. There should be some that are worth visiting – ones designed by cities that try demonstrate how they could be lived better in the future. Without much introduction we simply visited a few, not-too-notable ones, and left that area.
• Corporate Pavilions shall be put to lowest priority, as I suppose would be interesting as these companies would try these best to “sell” their ideas to potential customers like us. But if I need to wait for 2-3 hours to see companies selling things to you? I don’t see the point of lining up.

Where should I live? How to get there? I don’t see that’s a very big deal if one of your hotels is @ the busy area / nearby a subway station. Just go to the nearest station that is closest to your targeted zone of the day and that’s it. Just check the time of last train to make sure you can return hotel easily (taxi is hard to catch at night). Try not to take the special subway line to start your day (i.e. changing @ ³°®aÀد¸) because the security checking gate will take you long long time to walk to there. We happened to stay @ Peninsula and they have a special shuttle bus to take us directly to gate 7 and return. To us that’s a big big bonus.

That’s all for heads up before you go. The next post will be all about the logistics to get you survived inside Expo. Stay tuned

Initially I did think it’s missing, but think it won’t be possible to lose it in such a small room (not small but still it’s just a room). I searched for long but still couldn’t find it, so thought that it might’ve been the case that I even forgot to bring it to trip, even though I remembered I charged my phone once (was I hallucinated?). Anyway I figured a phone charger can be very expensive when lost, while worthless when you switched phone. I thought there should be plentiful in everyone’s home (I’ve got like 3 sony ericsson chargers with different plugs which is living @ my home useless), but too little value to place them on yahoo auction to sell. But u know what, they cost heck lot (like HKD50) and create much CO2, i.e. Feel bad buying one. Still I bought one that uses USB to charge my phone (just think it might be more useful), but the charging speed is so slow. So if you happen to have an obsolete nokia charger (newest model) let me buy from you, just to keep our environment slightly better.

Posted by Wordmobi

Just dropped by this place just now @ ifc that sells purely coffee and nothing much, at least no juice or sandwiches (there are some biscuits or cookies stuff). A regular caffe latte is more expensive than your local starbucks ($36 for 8oz, i.e. Short, but it’s a double) but what you get is some good barista skills there. A double espresso full of aroma without burnt flavour, rich in crema and a thick layer of milk foam. I say thick as it’s over an inch thick over a small 8oz glass. With the perfect warmth, I’ve only had similar glass of caffe latte @ my coffee class.

My only small complaint would be the use of glass over a regular coffee cup, yet it was used in my gf’s hot chocolate. Strange. So if you wonder how great it is, go check it out sometimes. Just once awhile for the guarantee great coffee w/o making a bet @ Pacific Coffee.

Posted by Wordmobi

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SDCard - the exact card I have and destroyed

First, as my usual unconsciousness, I blamed it to the bad Apple empire that killed it, because even my Windows PC has problem reading as well. When I was about to shout “Damn you Steve!” I wanted to make sure I scolded the right person. I looked up Panasonic’s website for help, and it pointed me to a SD card formatting software, developed by the SD card committee. Blame to this committee, they don’t have a formatting software for Mac. Why?

There’s no use to whine, so I hoped this program works. I used my Windows to format, and quick enough the card now runs fine in Windows finally, but my “PANASONIC LX3 DOESN’T SEE A THING!”

It’s really annoying problem because I really can’t find a solution (besides buying a new card, thanks for your suggestion. In fact I saw a guy bought a new 16GB card but made the same mistake formatting it again!). Anyone has any idea?

This string, if you don’t know what the heck is, is like the ID of your browser, just like the logo plates and / or the names that bear with a car. When you are driving around with a car, the logo in front tell others “oh it’s a Mercedes.” And it tells more, such as “C200″ tells you that is a C class with 2L engine. “SE” tells it’s a sedan not coupe. But of course not all cars show in such detail. Some just say “Hummer” and that’s it. And there’s no system inside / between manufacturers. Some models/cars reveal more, while rest do less.
This is exactly the same scenario for browser industry: there’s no system. Checking the spec from Opera site, the earlier Symbian Opera browsers would at least bear a word “Symbian,” but things changed. Now this Opera Mobile 10.0 shows “SymbOS”. Hey is that a spy? I guess so. But now my site finally supports this browsers and I’m happy, tho I rarely visit myself except post this.

Brunch Club@CWB used to be behind Lee Garden, which I’ve been there once only and the feeling is so so. This new location is much bigger providing more comfortable and relaxed environment. The coffee was done right, with thick, warm milk foam on a small 8oz cup, enough for my needs. The espresso smelt great and tasty – yes we are supposed to be able to drink both the taste of the milk *and* the coffee, yet many places lack either one, which is just too critical to miss.

Something strange happened: 1) I took an all-day breakfast 2) and it’s a benedict. I rarely take these so-called breakfast @ non-breakfast time. Think about it, 2 eggs, bacon or sausage, hash brown, toast. The most difficult thing to do would be the hash brown, which u could still buy some instant ones @ supermarket, while the rest is damn easy to make even for ppl like me who rarely cook. For mine, the most difficult part of cooking would be the Hollandaise sauce (I had a deja-vu that it should be this sauce and I was right). But a normal restaurant should have no problem making one. I should think that as long as I have my meal happy I shouldn’t think much of how easy it is to make the dish.

Old look of Yahoo.com, have you seen it before?

Ever been to a website where you feel lost?
“Wait there’s so much information there. What do I want to do here actually?”
“This is not what I expected.”
“How does this thing work? Do I have to read a manual?”
“Is the web guy out of his mind? How come I need to see a useless Flash *everytime* in order to see what I want? Does he want to brainwash me?”
Certainly the so-called “web designers” aren’t doing what s/he’s supposed to do. Maybe it was her/his boss that made the order. Anyway I think it’s time for our websites to have another “modernization” going.

Openrice.com

First there are different kinds of websites and I shouldn’t say all / most are out-dated or whatever. But think yourself, how many times you go to a frequent website only to look for certain things, and find the majority of other features useless? For example I go to openrice.com just to search something. Click to right pic to see what I see. I think of what I do there:
99% of the time I go there, is because I want to search for a restaurant.
I’m not interested in promotions, let alone ads.
I don’t read English so please leave me alone from that big button.
I don’t talk in forums.
I will search for restaurants, THEN see whether that restaurant has any promotions with credit cards. Don’t tell me to *look at* the list of restaurants bank X credit card has to offer.

There are lots of “I”s there, as I see a huge gap of what I want and what they offer. Websites have the capability to remember more habits of you, customize the way to show the stuff you are more willing to see (ex. Amazon does lots of stuff at your back while you surf its website so it’s always guessing what you wanna buy). The work behind, like Amazon, might be a lot, but I thought of taking out of things you don’t need, shouldn’t be too difficult. Indeed there’s also a huge space of improvement to get the site personalized, to fit what users want. Unfortunately currently you don’t see website designers offer much to let you move around the content, hide things you don’t use, or setup a function of a website (ex. search) as default thing when you go to the website.

tabelog.com: screenshot of a sushi restaurant @ Sapporo

And I let alone whether website administrators are smart enough to digest the information they have in hand to provide better results for us. That sounds fairly “geeky” or “googley” or magic but maybe it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Go back to openrice.com again. After its enormous popularity and growth it should be HKese’ top search box for restaurant ideas – no doubt about it. At the same time it attracts many owners of restaurants, esp. new ones, trying to push their ratings a bit in order to get more noise. Plus the fact that some people’s tastebuds are better, yet some are worse, the site’s simple and outdated system would yield me about 30-50% chance of a surprise that some highly-rated restaurants may not do that good.

Then I saw something smarter. Last time when I did my trip planning I headed to a Japanese restaurant commentary site tabelog. It has a fairly sophisticated system (already implemented 1 year earlier) that each restaurant rating is not based on the number of “good”s vs “bad”s that Openrice uses, but on the actual rating out of 5. Not only it’s more statistical (and I think it takes the median not mean btw), if you look carefully at the reviews (or you can check this link, the sushi restaurant I tried to go last year @ Sapporo but was too crowded to), reviewers’ scores are weighted (to non-statistics people, it’s like to add more/less weight to a score) according to reviewer’s reputations, the “likes” given by others, and even the time when reviewer took the food (according to the poorly translation by Google).

Maybe you think I’m too much of a statistics person (I’m not, but just working in such a company I can’t think less of it), you should check out its other features: reviewers can be filtered by lunches/dinners, get a real average of budget (as contributed by reviewers) by the type of meal, and how about an actual menu of restaurants (not scanned but text) so you know whether they have something your picky friend might still enjoy?

There are so many things that web site can be improved, but currently it appears all the attention is working towards communications, or “how to move all of our daily work to online: word, excel, powerpoint, filesystem, OS”. We kind of forget how website itself can communicate better with us. Sooner or later that’ll be the trend, starting with Google the data master I assume.