Recovery from hell

10 days ago, one morning, when trying to read my email from the laptop, Windows stop loading properly but got stuck on the logo page. After checking and trying I figured out that the hard disk had been suffering a breakdown: even mounted as secondary on a working pc (got plenty, it has been the main part of my job in the past months to fix hardware) I could not “see” it.

Using some hard disk recovery application (HDD Regenerator, from a recovery disk my dad made for me) I could detect tons on bad sectors in the first partitions of the hard disk, probably exactly in the boot sectors.. No tool I tried was able to do more than just tell me the problem, so I resort to take a trip to the famous electronic city here in Shenzhen.

Located in and around 华强北路, North (běi) Huáqiáng street, close to SEG building (Futian district), the Shenzhen electronic market is really the paradise for electronics, both real and of course fake gadgets. Besides the products that when original are more convenient in Hong Kong, the market here offers also a full set of electronics related services, spacing from buying components (capacitors, LED, transistors, transformers, the whole lot!) to repair of any electronic devices, either the full system (PC, printers, etc.) or just parts, like mother boards, power supplies or, in my case, hard disks.. both repair or data recovery.

..counting the money well earned and that I was almost happy to pay to recover my data..

For data recovery, here they use some basic tools based on PC-3000, a Russian system able to perform miracles from time to time.. but of not so easy use (manuals are in Russian and Chinese.. we had a previous version at work, but with missing certifies and of course no more any engineer able to use it!).

But the guy at the specialized shop saw at once that the data were recoverable even if it was not possible to repair the hard disk, so I invested in a new shiny external hard disk of 1 Terabyte, and in the extraction/recovery job.. it was not cheap, but at least I could recover several GBytes of pictures I did not have any recent backup!

Next time in Hong Kong I will buy a new laptop hard disk (cheaper and of better quality than here, for sure no fake!) and then recover completely my laptop.

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – As said, the electronic city is wonderful for mobile phone copies, as the new Samsung S4 copy a friend purchased (and I will as well soon), but when we checked it out we noticed that the default keyboard had a slighlty little problem: one letter was missing!!! Typical China!!

something’s missing.. something’s double.. guess what!

New book, new drink, same place

I can’t actually say “same old place”, because even if I am again enjoying Starbucks drink and a Murakami book in one of my usual places in Hangzhou, it has changed a lot since last time I was here!

I started reading Murakami book about running, maybe to find some inspiration for doing something very healthy that I totally dislike. Or maybe just because I would read an essay about eating crap if it was written by Haruki san!

For a change I’m drinking a frappuccino even if I will take also a double espresso soon, because the weather demands it: continuous heavy rain, probably since a couple of days ago!

Yeah, the place is quite different from.. 6 months ago or so.. I don’t really like it now. They made it more modern looking, more functional (at the table there are a few extra power plugs) but I think it is much colder than before (and I don’t mean the air condition!).

That’s life probably… Everything aims to be practical losing on the way some warm feelings. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

The answer in a couple of hours: practice and it’s about 6 months (last time here) since the last session I taught, with the exception of a class in my home town in Italy.. At least tonight I can speak English: easier!!

Discovering a new airport!

As planned I spent the night in a new airport: Hangzhou. This is my way to discover what airports can offer, and Hangzhou had been quite comfortable. I could in fact sleep in a massage chair at the departure floor.

Also, being a quite small airport, even if it is open during the night the departure floor is extremely quite and they even switch the lights off!!

The night there was planned, but not the delay of the flights from Shenzhen. Maybe because most of China (central and north part) are having a terrible storm rainy weather, almost all flights have been delayed and some even cancelled. My flight for Hangzhou was on time as scheduled until the boarding time, then they start adding delay until they gave up and just said to wait.

Total lack of information, typical attitude of Chinese society, towards the masses that usually are too afraid of authorities to raise their head.. But after waiting for hours, the sheep there must have realized that air officers are not really officers, ie. they got no real power, differently from police or army.. so along the many hours of wait at least 2-3 times I heard shouts of angry passengers towards the air representatives. Once especially a large amount of people group around one guy shouting and probably threatening the gate officials, to the point that some of the security people arrived to calm the situation. After that, nothing changed. And the gate people keep being very unkind as if it is normal the passengers should just wait and shut up. I am happy to see even the Chinese passengers sometimes do not accept this.

At the end we were boarded around 1am (flight time was 22:05) and had a first sleep on the plane followed by a couple good hours on the massage chair!

As last note: the weather in Shenzhen had been cloudy and rainy for maybe 10 minutes.. most of the time sunny and hot as usual!!

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – I like very much this hotel in Hangzhou because there is a pc in every room and also I had already tested my VPN tunnel with good results, but the internet explorer version is so old (6.x) that most pages do not open correctly.. so even if I will hopefully manage to post this, I did not manage to include the pictures.. I just could set the links (maybe.. if they work!)

Add — I can save the draft but I can’t publish the post!!! The “Publish” button does not appear in the screen, probably because the coding too advanced for this IE version!! I will have to use one WordPress application from iPhone (that amazingly let me open the blog even if I do not have any VPN set on the iPhone), but for doing that I have to go to the nearby Starbucks, because no WiFi in the hotel!!

Good time in Tokyo

Not much else to add! Just a great time off the mats!

(the pictures have an iPhone 3Gs bad quality, but it was so much faster for then sharing at once.. I go for social, and soon change the crappy mobile for one with good camera!)

Fashion?

As one that has been using glasses since very early age, the fake-glasses fashion in China (frame, no lenses) always looked like a bad joke!

But there is no limit in.. fashion!

I never had to use braces (maybe I should have used), but all my friends that had complained about it.. I also usually do not think a girl in braces is sexy, but clearly I know nothing about fashion:

Fake braces: Asia’s curious teenage fashion trend

For now this is more common in Thailand where they got also several related problems..

Finally!!!!

It was about time.. and nobody is better than Vauro for celebrating this moment!

finally also Andreotti left us.,..

Finally Italy can rest, but not in peace.. so many secrets has been lost now.. so many truths will never be revealed..

Mafia is crying today..

Decency in politics have a little new chance.. after Italy missed the first one given a little more than 10 years ago..

20th Saku dojo anniversary – Endo sensei enbukai

20th Saku Dojo Anniversary & 19th Saku International Aikidô Kenshûkai in Saku, Japan – 2013/05.

This time I was a little farther…

Part 1:

Part 2:

I will upload soon the embukai of all the other people as well