Joey's Diary

Finally, a brand new season of The Amazing Race begins!

This season of The Amazing Race has the most multi-culture players that I've ever seen so far, there're American-Born-Chinese (or ABC for short), Indian, Muslim, African Americans ... very interesting And in the very beginning Phil told us that there would be surprise during this race, there was surprises -- the first of all, at least for me, was that the very first pit stop of this season's racing is Beijing China! It was a really surprise for me, after all it was teh first time that China's city be placed on the first pit stop of The Amazing Race. And those two ABC brothers, obviously that they're not able to speak Mandarin ... hmmm, reasonable if they were born and grew up in the States.

And the second surprise, and probably the first surprise for most of you guys, is that even there was no pit stop, chances are players can be eliminated. it turned out that the Muslim firends became the first victims, they were eliminated right in the huge square, even that was not a pit stop. And in the end of this episode, the Indian couple were eliminated too. So over all that there were two teams eliminated in the very first episode! To the best of what I know, that never happened before on the previous season, it looks like there'll be more surprise in this season's The Amazing Race. Look forward to the next episode!

Spice Girls, what a romantic band name ...

Spice girl showed up in my life when I just got in high school, which was the time that I was in the age of hungering for everything new and cool. Spice Girls impressed me so much that I could listen to their albums like all the time even now. But beside those albums, there're still many hiden stories that I wanna know, just had no chance.

It didn't happen until I watched Behind The Music -- The Spice Girls this morning which I happened to download it from Internet. I've gotta say it was a great episode! Basically it tells everything behind the once-most-famous-female-bands in the world and uncovers the inside of several important events for those girls. I felt I'd got much closer to those girls' life and career trace, never closer before.

Now Spice Girls is a legacy band, but I'm still, and will listen to their songs, cause those songs always remind me of the good old days back in high-school, when I was such a innocent and naive boy ...

Spice Girls, let's cheer!

Finally back to Fuzhou city this afternoon, finally can get access to quality American TV series (well, not just American ones ), no more stupid, brainwashing news and 'thematic' series, it's over ...

You know I've been to Quanzhou this week. During the time I stayed in Quanzhou, I lived in Telecom Hotel, of course you could imagine there's a pretty good TV set available in the room, they even provides wireless ap. and ADSL modem (wired) access, free of charge! All sounds great but the thing is I don't have notebook, I could only watch TV set ...

Let's me think, what was the last time I watched actual TV? Oh, it was last week, yes, last week because I went to two cities to give lectures. You know once I go out for business and live in hotel, I could be able to watch actual TV. Make sense. The point is, when I'm at home I nearly never watch actual TV (except CCTV news when I have supper with parents) -- I just watch series downloaded from Internet and check out news from, you know, something like cnn.com. Yes, all of these operations depend on Internet and computer, definitely nothing to do with TV set.

You may now start to wonder why I don't watch actual TV from TV set? Wasn't it be much easier? What's wrong with TV set? Of course the TV set is innocent, watching TV from a TV set is way much easier, you just need to press the button and then watch what's on.

But, the point is, watch what? Are you talking about those stupid 'thematic' series which tell stories about how brave officials fight outlaws and corrupt officials, and how bad guys finally admit they did something horrible and request punishment? How about those ridiculous news and talk shows which are basically all good news and all about 'important' meetings, 'important' audience and where the leader have been to and how he feel about this place? Basically they're pieces of crap. If this is all I can watch from TV set, I rather watch porn all night long.

Luckily enough we live in Internet-times. By the help of P2P technology, we could download the latest TV shows which were on in America or Canada or Australia just one day or two ago directly from the Internet. As you know there's no big difference that you watch series from TV set or from a LCD monitor, I don't care much about the display effect, I care about the CONTENT.

Now here comes the deal, you have to take the common one or two days long's delay, but you could get quality series. Is that fair? Well, my point is, it sounds quite reasonable, it's a good deal. What do you say?

Now let's back to our topic. In these business trip days, since I didn't take notebook with me (I don't have one!), I could only watch TV set ... Hoooooo, that was a really horrible memory. You know what I did when I watched it? I switched it from channel to channel like all the time, but finally still have to rolled back to the initial one because all the other channels looked same crap as the first one.

Now it's time to look back. I think I've learnt a lesson from it: make sure to bring a notebook when you go to other cities, and make sure the hotel you live provides Internet access.


Trackdown: A brand new DELL notebook is expected to arrive later this month. I've made up my mind to buy a new notebook, reasons are simple and clean: firstly is work requirement, without notebook I couldn't quickly get my work done and send feedback to colleagues when I'm out for business; secondly is that since I'm about to move out to live alone, I'll need a computer to let my life carry on. God it would cost me a lot of money to buy this notebook! And the trip to Qingdao this October and trip to Vietnam & Cambodia next year ... Man I must start saving money from now on

I have no idea why this should happen in our country.

Everytime before I watch a episode of The Apprentice for the second time, I'll go to NBC The Apprentice's site to read through the recap of the episode I'm about to watch, just try to get something important for me to understand the keynote of this episode.

From a couple of days ago, I found a bloody truth: I couldn't get access to NBC's website!

Well you guys may think it's just something wrong with the website or my local network so it's not a big deal, if you're not a CHINESE.

OK, let me provide you some information:

Last year, more than ten big blog sites, whose servers locates outside China, were blocked by Chinese 'po' "lice" without explanation.

If this doesn't shock you enough, there's another one: Wikipedia was blocked by Chin "ese" pol !@ice since last year. Google has been blocked for so many times these years that I couldn't even remember how many times there actually were. Google really has a good luck cause it'd been blocked for a while, then got freedom for a while, and then got blocked again, then got freedom, over and over again.

If NBC is blocked ... then CNN, BBC, Answers.com, del.icio.us can also be blocked ... yeah that probably could happen.

I wanna breathe some fresh air. I know fre @edom is not free.

// Sorry I broke some characters into pieces. I don't wanna this post be scaned and censored by robot if you understand what I mean. I just try to protect myself, sorry.