Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Qatar is a country I know nothing about. And whenever I hear the name of a country that I know nothing about, the first thing I want to know is if they have Internet connectivity over there. It appears, that I should have be more careful with my Internet criteria evaluation - via via TechCrunch:

Qatar has a single ISP, Qtel, with a single IP address shared by the entire country.

So, the fact that there is Internet connectivity today does not necessarily imply that there will be Internet connectivity tomorrow…

Lame title, I know, but I couldn’t think of a better one and now it’s too late.

One of the things I like about living in Cyprus is that I can meet with people of different cultures. Cypriots, Greeks, British, Russians, Eastern Europeans, Indians, Phillipinos, Pakistanis, Chinese, Lebanese - these are just a subset of people living in Cyprus. Additionally, there are a couple of millions of tourists travelling in and out of country every year.

Meeting these people and talking to them, even if briefly, greatly expands the horizons of cultural understanding. Even just watching them - how they behave on their own or in the group of their countrymen or mixed with others - triggers a lot of thinking.

[Read more →]

Wuhan is the greatest WordPress theme ever. Wuhan is the theme I use for this website. While changing a few minor bits here and there, I’ve noticed a README file in the theme directory. Here is what it said:

I don’t have a wishlist. I don’t need donations. If you enjoy this, please consider putting a link to
my website on your blog. It’ll be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

Meng

P.S: To make it even easier for you, here’s the code:

<a href=”http://www.authenticasian.com”>Authentic Asian</a>

=)

*******************************************************************
Theme Name: Wuhan
Theme URI: http://wuhan.authenticasian.com/
Description: Inspired by Macromedia website. Built based on Kubrick.
Version: 0.4
Author: Meng Gao
Author URI: http://wuhan.authenticasian.com/

The CSS, XHTML and design is released under GPL:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php
*******************************************************************

Of course I could not NOT link to the site. While at it I decided to check it out and see what this guy was all about. I expected nothing more than just another blog with a bunch of posts about everything and anything and mostly computers and WordPress. But what I found was totally different. I found something I was looking for for some time now - a high quality blog about Asian (Chinese mostly) culture. Here is an excerpt from the About page:

Asian culture is becoming increasingly prevalent in America and Europe in the recent years. Yet people who use chopsticks, practice kungfu or eat sushi do not necessarily understand Asian culture better than an average American. To this end, I hope to start a website that will help non-Asians better understand Asian culture.

I recognize that there are many ways in which Asian culture can be explained and demonstrated. After much contemplation, I decided to start off with something specific: tattoo or t-shirt designs featuring Asian art or calligraphy.

…

Apart from that, I also plan on writing articles to showcase certain Asian cultural products, such as martial arts, musical instruments or Asian cuisine.

Everyone knows how much I love Chinese culture, so it is almost needless to say that not only did I link to it from this post, but I also subscribed to the RSS feed.