Wonderful January weather

A few friends asked me what is the best period to visit Hefei, especially if you don’t want to experience Chinese summer. After this first winter over here, since also most of my friends that were thinking to come over are “Norwegian” friends (“” because most of my friends there are not Norwegian!!), I would strongly recommend the winter time!

I have not really understood if it is common or not, but apparently it is not that strange that we got so many sunny days, or snowy ones, almost no rain in the past month. The month statistics from a Chinese weather page are actually surprising:

Accumulated Rainfall 35.9mm

Average Temperature 2.6℃

High Temperature 20.2℃

(I admit I do not remember 20 degrees in January!!! 😛 )

The minimum temperature has never been lower than -10 and the humidity always in the dry range. For seasoned “Norwegian” friends it is almost summer weather 😀

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – The cold feeling I constantly have it is not due to the real low temperatures but mainly the normal Chinese habit of not heating rooms and offices. Quite funny, this morning during a very early meeting (it means the room had the warm air condition still off) the team leader was talking and warming his hands on the warm air fan output of the projector!!

Dignity

Maybe the law in Italy is really not the same for everybody and the damn dwarf will find a way out this time too, but I have been deeply touched by the words of the president of the Italian ANM, Associazione Nazionale Magistrati (National Magistrate Association): Pasquale Profiti.

It is in Italian, as it should be since all these problems are Italian only..

A pity only the dwarf and its follower will not understand a single word.. as they do not understand the meaning of dignity..

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

Clearly a quote from one of the best movie ever, The Shining:

I hope the link shows what I remember to be the typing scene.. because youtube is still blocked here.. And this post has actually a double reason. It is both about this long working week before Chinese New Year holidays and the sad discovery that one of my other favorite sites is still completely blocked in China: imdb.com!!!!

That obliged me to find alternative sources for helping my memory to remember movies I watched or wanted to watch again, and I admit that Wikipedia is equally effective. Wikipedia was also blocked until a few years ago. Given the amount of information present on Wikipedia that the Chinese regime does not really like to share, it is surprising (but great) that Wiki is free but IMDB (that could at most include some prohibit movies or documentaries) blocked. Besides it is more and more possible to find the same amount of info on both sites, when concerning famous and not so unknown material.

When thinking about the “work and no play” topic, the long 9 days working “week” is going toward its end, and probably the 1st of February will also not be a full day at work. Most of the people in fact use that day for reaching their home town for proper Chinese New Year celebrations. Among my colleagues, probably 90% will be away. We have anyway to come in the morning at work, but the hopes are high to get a free afternoon, and more time for shopping.

Last bits before visiting Veronika in Anqing. Once back, after few days in Hefei, I will go for one day to Bengbu, little town north of Hefei, where Yuming’s family lives. Yuming is a nice new colleague who lived several years in Singapore. He speaks a great English and.. Japanese, since he is married with a Japanese woman! She is in Japan now but she will come here in April, together with their daughter. And they promised me already some Japanese food evenings 🙂

In truth, a couple of evenings of this extra long week I had some fun too, together with Yuming and a couple of Korean engineers visiting our company in order to install an advanced machine. And tomorrow night I planned to repeat the seafood buffet experience with another couple of friends! 🙂 It means no lunch tomorrow and light dinner tonight. Also some home cleaning to do before the Chinese New Year holidays! And if I am good boy, some more blog/pictures updating!

Mollo tutto!

🙂 …such a long way I have come.. but I am still not tired…

Blue sometimes, but sure it will pass and the motivations, at least for not failing, will come back..

Again visible!

For no apparent reasons, the blog is again completely visible.

No need of VPN (bought only for this actually, since it still does not work for FB and youtube), and after a few months I can again easily log in wordpress..

Magic..

Better then post a lot these days and recheck the previous posted posts that came out weird, as one earlier!

🙂

Tonight dinner offered by the company for the R&D department and CNY celebration.. then hitting the road for enjoying some night life, even if tomorrow back at work..

Walking around Shanghai

Walking around Shanghai,
by ..AikiDude in China...

Exactly one week ago, discovering beautiful Shanghai together with a good friend, Arielynn, that is also a great artist, and LeiLei..

Enjoy the pictures as we enjoyed the day!!

Little less blue

What’s better to have a laugh when you feel down?