At the end of last month I stayed at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco, which I recently noticed was mentioned and depicted in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Beautiful place. Some photos – the last of which was taken from the roof which had an incredible view and buffet:
I went to Chongqing on Saturday morning to enjoy the city for a few days and to play music with Conrank at Nuts, who had just flown in from Shanghai. I had a great time, taking the bullet train there and back from Chengdu, which makes Chongqing so accessible.
Five months ago my sister was in Kazakhstan and sent me an email with a particular quote that made me laugh with fascination: “Horse milk tastes like sausage… Weird”.
Today I received an email from a Kazakh reader who saw that post and generously offered some more information on horse milk. I love getting email like this. Here’s the message I received from “Galym”:
Hey Charlie! I just came across your note about the Horse Milk in Kazakhstan. Well believe me, it doesn’t taste like sausage. I don’t know what your sister was drinking. Sometimes in restaurants in big cities, they mix it with a lot of water just to make it more profitable. The real horse milk, not mixed with anything, is usually really expensive. The thing is that the people in big cities don’t really know the true taste of horse milk. And one more thing: “Kumys” is the Russian pronunciation of the drink. We kazakhs call it QYMYZ! I don’t know if I wrote it correctly in Latin though. Q is for strong K, Y is for more open i. I hope this helps. Anyway, thanks for your interest in my country! You are always welcome to visit Kazakhstan!
Now I know what I must do: travel to Kazakhstan and seek out horse milk.
This year I was fortunate enough to spend my birthday weekend in beautiful Bangkok with my Mother. She had just concluded a 2-week sailing excursion in the Andaman Sea, while I flew down from Chongqing after taking the bullet train from Chengdu.
I had a great weekend and saw many beautiful things! And, of course, got many massages.
I took this on September 8th, 2009 at 2:12pm in Saigon, Vietnam.
After returning to Chengdu this afternoon from a hectic weekend in Qingdao and Beijing, I was happy to pick up this postcard from Phuket, Thailand! It’s good to be back in Chengdu.
On Friday afternoon I flew to Beijing to give a presentation at a mobile developers conference at the Shangrila hotel about iOS (iPhone and iPad) app monetization. Why’d I speak there? Our company, Tap4Fun, is officially the highest grossing iOS developer in all of China so far this year. Because of this, a lot of attention is on our development process and business model. We’re conducting interviews on a nearly daily basis (today CCTV was in our office filming). Exciting times.
Here are some photos from my day in Beijing:
Waited in line for 30+ minutes to get a taxi at Beijing International, the biggest airport in the world
The first thing I noticed inside the lobby of the Beijing Shangrila
Meeting with the designer of Jing.fm, a streaming music service that takes Pandora to the next level
Sitting at the front of the lecture hall
The conference featured three lecture halls roughly of equal size, hosting thousands of attendees
Speaking on stage at the conference, Saturday July 7th
Walking through Beijing International Airport and the line to catch a taxi
I stumbled upon a Reddit post today where expats in China are sharing their experiences of being swindled in China. It’s funny how the same scams are ever-present throughout the decades. Here was what I posted:
The first year that I was in China (in 2005, on the Coors Tour organized by Sascha) I was walking down Nanjing Lu in Shanghai when an English speaking girl approached me. She said she wanted to practice English, but I kept walking and answering her questions after saying that I wasn’t buying anything.
She offered to take me to a teahouse nearby and I said okay, so we go to the fifth floor of some random building and it’s an empty restaurant with a small cove that we were seated in. I check out the menu and it’s clearly bullshit prices but she continues talking and calls friends and says that others are joining us. I decline to order anything and she insists that this is rude – by this point I’m aware of what’s happening, but as she persists I excuse myself to leave as the situation becomes more awkward.
Before I can make it through the door frame, two Chinese guys come out of nowhere and are blocking my path. I got the impression that these were two “threatening looking Chinese guys” but I just laughed. Then they took me into a side room with people counting money in it and an old man told me he’d let me go for 500 kuai. I said no so he said 200 kuai. I held up my phone and said I was calling the police and then they opened the door for me to leave without saying a word.
Lesson learned. A funny coincidence is that almost the same thing happened to my father when he was in Shanghai in 1989. He ended up paying something like $50 for a bottle of beer though after being drawn inside by an English speaking Chinese girl.
Scammed: like father, like son.
