mamafufu

北京一夜 – QQ爱 – 我的最愛 – 隐形的翅膀 – 有沒有人告訴你 – 老鼠愛大米 – 還有我 – 有一種愛叫做放手 – 我可以抱你嗎 – i believe – 死了都要愛 – 想念 – 挪威的森林 – 小酒窩 – 揮著翅膀的女孩 – 天使的翅膀

although beijing is a city where i would call second home today, back in 1989 it was rather an unfamiliar place to me.   this year marks the 20th anniversary of the june 4th massacre in beijing.  while some still debate over what did or did not happen 20 years ago in tianamen square, i am sure it did change the lives of many.

i remember when i first visited tianamen square about 10 years ago for the first time, the local tour guide asked me whether i carried any banner or whether i planned to protest.  he said he wanted to keep a distance from me if i did plan to protest so he didn’t get caught in between.  i didn’t know whether he was joking or being serious.

in the movie kung fu panda there is a reference to this beautiful quote: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.”

there is also a similar quote in chinese: 昨天已逝，明日是謎，面對今朝，盡力而為

the picture was taken in beijing 香山 last year. it was mid fall and leaves just started to change color. also found this poem of 香山: 香山紅葉夕陽醉, 雨前新茶續前言

it was a casual water-cooler conversation in the office over the traditional chinese snack in the kitchen that was brought over by a visiting co-worker from the china office a few days ago.  it was a good gesture although, apparently, others may not like the snack much.  the conversation went like this:

person A: i wish they have chocolate in china
person B: have you been to china before?
person A: WHY would i want to go to a third world country like china?

i was there but didn’t want to participate in that conversation.  first of all china is not a third world country and it doesn’t matter even if it were.  i wonder whether that comment would have been made or been worse if i were not there.

regardless, it hurt.

as much as i love to stay with verizon, i waited in line for over 7 hours on the iphone 3G launch day and got myself one.  why?  because i needed wanted a phone with a good music player, email, im, youtube and web browsing that supports the chinese language.  by supporting chinese i mean the abilty to display (i.e. id3 metadata), to input (handwriting and pinyin) and to operate (search, sort, sync) in chinese.  just like many of other apple products, the iphone does it beautifully.  and it is almost perfect.  almost.

when verizon made the LG Dare available just a few days before iphone 3G launch, i was so disappointed that it didn’t have chinese support.  since the phone itself certainly has the ability, i suspect the issue is with the verizon software side.  so why did verizon and many other wireless carriers totally ignore this market in the US?

in software engineering, supporting different languages and locales is called globalization (g11n) which include internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n).  i18n needs to be planned from the beginning of the development life cycle.  it will be a lot more expensive to add later as an afterthought.  do you notice the open source communities are doing a lot better in g11n than others.  i guess there is a simple explanation to this – open source projects are built by the world and used by the world.

for many of the companies out there, wake up and smell the 玫瑰 or 咖啡.

sun village (太阳村) is a beijing based non-governmental charitable organization dedicated to providing foster care and education for the children of convicted parents.  i visited there twice this year – july and december of 2007.  i met the children, its staffs, and its founder zhang shuqin.  i was deeply touched by what ms. zhang, its staff and supporters around the world are doing to support these needed children.  they give them another opportunity to life.

we first met ping-ping in july during our first visit to sun village.  she was 13 years old.  she helped taking care the younger children in the village and many of them were as young as 3 years old.   her mother was in prison for more than five years.  ping-ping has been living in sun village during that entire time.  we didn’t ask about her father.  may be because we didn’t want to know or afraid to ask.   she became our first sponsored child there.

i visited her again in december.  i took her out for lunch in a restaurant close by.  she told me her mother will be released from prison in a few months.  she will be leaving sun village and will be staying with her mother.  i was so happy for her.  although the road will be tough ahead for her, i know she will be strong.  she was sick that day so she went back to her room after lunch and we said good bye.  it was a room where she shared with 4 other children.

i stayed for a while and was talking to the staff there.  when i was leaving the village, i happened to pass by her room without knowing.  she pounded the window and got my attention.  she waved at me and i was able to see her big smiley face through the dusty window.

i know this could be my last time seeing her but i will always remember her smile …