I don’t know why the idea to name a bus station “Silver lake”, but that’s exactly what they did in Shenzen.

I took me more an hour to find it and it would be impossible without hand scribed paper scrap from Sherly. The Chinese who were around didn’t speak English and were of little use and some were of little use and additionally wanted 20Y for it.

Eventually, the policemen put me in the right bus (no 7), after they had almost directed me to the perfectly wrong bus. Still, on the right bus passengers varied on the topic whether the bus goes to Silver Lake, but the driver confirmed that, yes, it goes there. It took something like half an hour drive.

On place I managed to buy ticket no problem. At the cashier I was assisted by one Chinese guy who didn’t know English the same as cashier, but could nevertheless add value to the conversation, and it was quite impressive.

The bus was fun. My first time on bus with sleeping berths. My only remark would be that the berths feel like they’ve been designed with a Chinese factor in mind.

On the minus side, I had to sit in Shenzen for whole day doing nothing; or rather almost nothing, for I learned some more Chinese, though.

Added: I failed to mention that the very aim of finding Silver Lake was to have a direct bus to Yangshuo, without having to go to Guilin.

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Ok so everything works great in China, buses etc., but with exception of Gmail, which hardly works at all.

I may have trouble responding to any email because of that, my apologies.

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I was told that ad business is one of the easiest way for foreigners to earn money in China, but to get inside this business took shorter than I thought (but np money yet).

In the very late evening I sat in McDonalds with ice cream – always eat ice cream in the evening – and right away I was approached by a Chinese guy, later introduced as Steve.

Steve was asked by his boss to prepare an ad in English and it was a problem for him. The ad was about some skin medicine and he already had a draft. He asked to review it and we did with this final effect:

- Lately I really don’t feel very well. I’ve got pimple, ringworms and chapped skin as well.

Moreover, I’ve just got cut in an accident a moment ago.

What should I do?!

- Don’t worry! I have ABC oinment.

When we were sure that the ad will blow competition out of the water Steve wanted to teach me the following sure-fire dialogue in exchange, so I can easily survive in Chinese-only mainland (dialogue originally in Chinese):

- Where is hotel?

- xxx (some answer in Chinese)

- Do you speak English?

- No

- Who speaks?

Then it turned out that Steve was previously studying European history in Latvia and that’s why he can draw contour of Poland better than me.

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This I didn’t expect, that I will speak Russian sooner than Chinese here.

They were both Sevastopol and one even spoke some Polish because he worked here. Main topic – communism good / no good, Ukraine could be like China if it didn’t collapse, etc.

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With her small, black poodle, it was easy to recognize Sherly – at that moment it was the first dog I had seen in Hong Kong. Without a dog, it would still be little problem to recognize Sherly, for she is something like one of its kind.

I own her for seeing how living in HK looks from the inside, tasting first Chinese dish, and even taking some business lessons from her.

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The air-conditioned airport and swift airport train and clean air-conditioned central station hide for almost an hour what Hong Kong really is – a giant glass-house with over 30 degrees and 90% humidity.

Under a sky white like milky glass you start to think of fresh air as kind of luxury. It all sounded like an exotic weather forecast before, but you never know until you go.

And there is this specific smell in the air, like one of mold in the hot wet undergrounds of some buildings. Or maybe it’s smog?

My hostel exceeded the expectations i.e. they knew about Internet reservation and there was no problem to get a room and the room is more or less ok to sleep (but nothing else, so small).

Turned out a sleeping bag was no dead weight after all, for the sheets are hardly clean. But heavy trekking shoes are so far a joke in these conditions.

I need to meet Sherly today and then probably take a train to mainland tomorrow.

To think of Warsaw air to have nearly mountain quality and of my apartment as a luxiorously big space, not bad for one day.

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Ciao:)

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I don’t remember reading any of King’s novels – maybe once I tried one and didn’t finish, not sure – but I enjoy his “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”.

For the record, it’s the third book on writing for me. After the academic and the poet, now I could read this to-the-point piece by the renowned story teller. The book covers both the topic of writing and author’s biography, and both are fun to read.

But I will not be able to finish it before leaving.

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I should have a place to sleep, for the start, so there is one element of chaos less. All the hostels (I’m in backpacking-budget mode, of course) seemed more or less equally disgusting, judging from the reviews, and they are apparently all located in the same two buildings in Kowloon.

I picked Vincent Guest House because at least the service was appraised as friendly. I was considering taking a dorm to be 100% budget, but thought maybe it’s better to take it easy in the beginning, after flying for two days.

It was fun to read all the people coming before me, e.g. Myra, Agnieszka (funny internships they have in DaimlerChrysler).

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Now they’ve got even my Monty Python’s favorite, Lumberjack song (with barber sketch in the beginning):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M9Ly2XCE3jQ

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I was quickly descending the stairs near the central train station, deep in thoughts like ? what things should I still buy for the trip, and how to furnish the apartment on time just after the return – when, at the base of the stairs, a homeless on a wheelchair suddenly came to view, looked up at me and asked to be brought up. The lift was broken, apparently.

I stared at him for a second, dumbfounded, thinking how to excuse myself out of this, but then the young guy appeared; together we could give it a try.

We lifted the chair. It was difficult in the beginning, but then I found the right grip. What couldn?t be helped was the sharp, acid smell, one of human dirt and excrements, filling our nostrils as we bent over him. Finally we reached the top of the stairs, and the homeless thanked us, and the other guy nodded goodbye.

I turned downstairs again but then I noticed another person, a woman this time, who had started climbing the stairs, holding herself close to the railing. Her tricycle, the one on which she normally supported herself by pushing it in front of her, was left below, with a plastic bag next to it. She, too, asked to be assisted upstairs. (read more…)

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Best excel trick that I’ve seen for a good while:

These bars are created with in-cell formulas and do not use chart objects. Pretty lightweight and may well be useful.

Take the opportunity to explore the whole blog. Last post deals with Tufte-style charts in Excel.

I was once briefly exploring the topic of Edward Tufte and data visualization theory; if you are somehow into data analysis, you would benefit from doing likewise (so you can create charts and not “chartjunk”). From that time, I found this link to gallery of data visualizations in my bookmarks.

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Lately I started to wonder. But here is some reality check from the Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/

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I received a visa. Spent some time reading Lonely Planet, too, and settled for this (preliminary) route:

Hong Kong
Guilin and the vicinity
Kunming
Chengdu (from here I count on having a plane)
Shanghai
Beijing

So I basically miss Xi’an, which some of my friends say is a must, and the others consider it touristic trap; but I will still have time to make up my mind.

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It is a matter of fact that the unemployment rate, as reported by the Statistical Office, keeps on declining, or even, if you compress the scale like below, seems to be falling like a stone:

At it doesn’t yet take into account data from July, when the rate is reported to drop further from 16.0% to 15.7%.

What conclusions should follow is a matter of heated discussion and depends on whom you ask. The government will be happy to accept the credit for the positive trend, while the unemployed and casual nay-sayers will point at increasing migration as the main culprit for this statistical miracle.

If you dive into peculiarities of the unemployment rate definition, you might think the latter may have something to it, for the indicator is not exactly intuitive. It is a ratio of number of the unemployed to the total economically active population. Then, the unemployed are defined as non-working people aged 15-74 who are actively looking for job and are in position to accept it within following two weeks, while active population is a sum of employed and unemployed people.

From this you can easily imagine scenario when unemployment rate would fall but little good would come out of it. For example, when unemployed people simply reached retirement age and left the active population pool, lowering unemployment rate but hardly helping the economy anyhow. Same effect, I suspect, could take place in case of migrations, but here the picture is so blurred that the experts do not seem to know any better so I will leave the topic for now.

Nevertheless, to satisfy my curiosity as to the topic question I found it most intuitive to simply take a look at the other side of the picture, that is, the number of people employed. These are the people paying the bills. Also, in contrast to the unemployed and the others, the concept of people employed seems more tangible.

Below the chart on how the number of people working in Poland has been changing: (read more…)

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