voyage to mars
Beijing. After a nine hour journey - including a four hour delay at the airport, a bumpy flight, and an insane taxi-ride from the airport in a rickety mini-bus - we made it to our hotel at eleven thirty last night. Today, following an AM meeting, we explored the Summer Palace, and tomorrow we're taking in Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. There's so much to see and do in Beijing, and only a week left of our trip.
The weather here is as hot as it was in Shanghai, but not nearly as humid, which makes it just about bearable. Got a bit of a burn today, but the sun and I have never gotten along properly, so no surprise there.
Blogger seems to be a bit more stable up here, so I'll try and write a proper post tomorrow. Gmail, on the other hand, is not, so don't expect any replies to e-mails.
Blogger has been incredibly flaky here in China this past week - I don't know who to blame, the hotel's ISP or the Great Firewall - and so I've not had the patience or time to try and post anything. My apologies to those of you who have stopped by expecting regular updates. Gmail has also been going up and down like a yo-yo (more downs than ups; I'll consider myself lucky if I can post this), and I haven't been able to check that mail account very often.
Other than that: China is amazing, and Shanghai is one of the best cities I've visited - up there with New York, San Francisco, London, and Tokyo. It really is another world, and it suits me well. Ni hao! I have taken a bunch of pictures the past week and a half, and promise to post some of them here when I get a chance.
Tomorrow we're heading north, to Beijing, where we're spending one week - starting with a sightseeing-packed weekend (it's not all business). Looking forward to that, even though it's sad to leave Shanghai...and this hotel suite. As I write this, I'm watching the sun setting behind the downtown skyscrapers, from the 17th floor. Through my floor to ceiling windows. Life is good.
The food has been amazing, the people even more so - even though it's hard to make yourself understood here - and the nightlife is particularly vibrant. There have been some very late nights, and I'm quite sure our final evening in Shanghai won't break that pattern. Lots of work, too, of course, but it's been good.
I'd love to come back soon, and see more of the country, but for now I'd heartily recommend Shanghai to anyone. It's cheap, it's easy to get around in, it's safe, and you're guaranteed to make new friends.
More tomorrow (I hope).
Not so much with the daily blogging, no.
Busy days. Busy and hot. Shanghai is a boiler room, and thank God for air-conditioning. We keep our suite at a balmy zero degrees Celsius.
I'll write a bigger update this weekend. Right now I need to get some sleep.
Back online, back in business. I just returned to Shanghai after visiting the Philippines - a truly memorable trip - and am now safely ensconced at a hotel with a view over the Bund. 'Returned', as in I visited Shanghai for a few hours last week, between my early AM arrival from Amsterdam and my late PM departure for Manila: I hopped on the maglev (an insane top speed of 430 km/h), and dipped my foot in the no-English-anywhere metro system. Since I'd conveniently left my Lonely Planet book at the airport, I had no idea where I was or where I was going, but I ended up smack in the middle of People's Square, found a Starbucks, and got something out of my whirlwind tour of the city.
Today I've only seen the inside of my hotel - sharing a very nice suite with two colleagues - but tomorrow we'll venture out into the heat and the humidity for meetings and more. Looking forward to that.
I'll keep this Blog going with daily updates from my trip, and maybe even some pictures, if you're lucky. Right now, however, I'm bed-bound. I've travelled more than I care to think about these past five days, and I'm dog tired.
I'm not getting any more bounced mails or death threats, so it appears that there's no more spam spewing forth from my webmaster address - at least for the time being. Thanks to everyone who offered their sympathies and suggestions: much appreciated.
I greatly enjoyed
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, although I also feel it's the movie that suffers the most from being an abbreviated version of the novel. There are bits missing that I would've loved to see, but since it's also the most plot-heavy of the movies thus far, some things obviously had to go. Visually, it's leaps and bounds beyond the first two movies, and the acting - Daniel Radcliffe in particular - has improved; a consequence of placing a 'proper' director at the helm. It's a shame Cuarón won't be doing the next one, although Mike Newell is an interesting choice. He's not the most visual of directors, at least from previous experience, but he knows characters and humour.
Sorry to hear about your SPAM problems. I sympathize - I've had similar problems with SPAMBOTS stealing my addresses off my webpage. Anyway, I thought you might want to give your readers another tip: In addition to not replying to SPAM, you should also turn off your HTML graphics, because the loading of images also informs the spammers that your address is valid and that you're reading their SPAM.Thanks, Dustin. I'm categorically against the death penalty, but I do believe that spammers ought to be lined up against a wall and-- well, have their pants pulled down. Or something. Something demeaning and
bad. All right, so a bullet in the head may be a little harsh...
Speaking of China: I'll be in Shanghai next Tuesday, and then Beijing a week and a half later. All in all, a good eighteen days behind the Great Wall, preceded by a brief sojourn to the Philippines. This is turning into my big Asia-year. (Next year: South America! Or possibly the moon.) I'll be working most of the time while I'm over there - top secret stuff, of course; isn't it always? - but I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities for hijinks and horseplay. And also some touristing. But mostly work. Still, a free trip to China: who could resist? Not even the excruciating pain of a needle in my arse has managed to dampen my boyish enthusiasm. Almost, but not quite.
Oh, and NBT has morphed from C into TSW. Still tinkering with that in-between all the important
Dreamfall stuff. It may not be my number one priority, but it's coming. Two letters: E3. (Fingers crossed, etc.)
My e-mail woes continue. Some evil, pesky spammer has used my 'webmaster' address as a fake sender on thousands of "Work from home!" mails, which means that I've been getting hundreds upon hundreds of bounced messages and desperate retorts. I therefore have to shut down that address in order to prevent my inbox from exploding.
So, again, if you want to contact me, write to my regular 'ragnar' address at this domain. If that bounces (which it's prone to do these days), try 'ragnar.tornquist' over at 'gmail.com'.
And for those who are sending me mail accusing me of being a spammer: I'm not, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. It's easy to create a fake sender or reply-to, and I'm as much a victim of this as you are. If it keeps a-comin', just filter out all mail sent from my 'webmaster' address. One tip: don't ever reply to spam, no matter where it originates from. If it gets back to the spammers, it'll just confirm that your address is in use and that you read all your mail.
I'm acutely aware that a lot of the mail sent to any and all ragnartornquist.com addresses is being bounced back to the sender; for some reason, a number of domains - including all of my own alternate e-mail addresses - are listed on my hosting service's shitlist. Go figure. Seeing as service is hard to come by over at Fastnet, I don't know when or even
if it'll be fixed. So, for the time being, if your mail bounces, please send your questions, comments, and rambling thoughts to 'ragnar.tornquist' AT 'gmail.com' (without the quotes and with an '@' instead of the 'AT', of course - just trying to outsmart those pesky, evil spambots).
July! Summer still nowhere in sight, however. It's been cold and wet in Norway this past month, and things aren't improving. It'll probably get all cozy-warm and dry once I'm off to China, because, God knows, the weather revolves around me.
I just noticed that the typewriter logo on the
front page is still being snowed on. I used to change that with every season, but I've just plain forgotten, and it's not like anyone's reminded me. Unfortunately, I don't have the Photoshop source file on my new laptop, so until I go digging into the ol' Deller, it'll have to stay all winter...ish.
Monday sees our final
Dreamfall deadline before the summer holidays, and things are going rather well. The locations we have up and running are simply gorgeous, and now we've even got some fancy sound technology running - in full surround - including real-time occlusion, a Doppler-effect, and all sorts of EAX-y goodness. At this point, it's obvious that the game is shaping up to be an audio-visual feast - a smorgasbord of sight and sound, if you will - but of course, gameplay is equally important, and we've got that sorted, too. Promise. Scout's honour.
