Category: Personal

Despite being at work all the time, and being constantly busy, I am still a human. I am social. I have a life, family, and friends. I have thoughts and experiences. Once in a while I share them, and when I do, I do so in this category. If you don’t know me personally, chances are you’ll find posts in this category particularly boring.

Authentic Asian helps non-Asians better understand Asian culture

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.

I love China

I have realized something today. I love China. I never thought I do. Actually, I never thought on the subject. Neither about China, nor about any other country. (Well, maybe Cyprus, but that doesn’t count since I am living in this country).

Before you start looking for a different blog to read, let me tell you that I have never been to China. Nor have I read any books about China. I have met a few Chinese people, but I haven’t been really close with anyone of them. At this point you might be wondering how did I arrive to the conclusion.

Well, I was sitting there doing nothing when this Chinese girl popped up in my ICQ. Her English was good enough for us to talk so we did. She asked me if I ever visited her country or if I knew anything about it. I started thinking. And here is what came to my mind.

  • I am one of the greatest fans of Chinese martial arts movies. There is a special place in my heart for all of them collectively and few of them individually.
  • I really enjoy Chinese cuisine. Of course, all those places that I have tried might have nothing in common with the real meal in China, but as far as I went and as far as my imagination can take me, I really like Chinese food.
  • I like Chinese art. Especially paintings, but anything works. Some of the best decorations that I have seen were embroideries on Chinese silk. And, of course, the china porcelain dishes. Those are really cool, though I haven’t seen many of them. But I liked those that I have seen.
  • I like Chinese dragons. Dragons have a special place in Chinese culture and I totally dig them. Dragon dances, pictures, fairy tales and all the other dragonware – I like it.
  • I like Chinese architecture. I haven’t seen any in real life, but those that come on pictures and in the movies look really cool. If you can’t think of any, I’ll remind you of Imperial palaces, Great Wall of China, and monasteries.
  • I like Chinese people. I met a few. I didn’t get very close to any of them, as I have already mentioned above. But all of them seemed like decent people. What I liked about them was that they knew how to have some real fun without crossing too many of cultural borders. This is a rare quality, if you ask me.

I was surprised by myself. First of all, I never knew that I knew so much about China. Secondly, I couldn’t believe that with all these positive emtions towards China I never thought about the country or culture separately. Strange. I am really glad I discovered all those feelings. Now that I’ve done that, I put a visit to China on my todo list. It is one of the first things to do after I fix my financial situation.

Road tax saga

During the last few days everyone and their brother reminded me that today is the last day before police will start issuing fines for unpaid road tax. My budget for the next few months is tough enough without those fines, so I decided to take proactive measures. Few people warned me that I will need one additional paper – the MOT. MOT is a technical examination of the vehicle, which was introduced to make sure that all cars on the road have operational breaks, don’t emit too much of CO gas and stuff like that.

MOT examination can be taken in alsmot any garage, so I called up my mechanic and asked if I need to make an appointment. He said that the test takes about 20 minutes and that I can come any time I want without prior appointment. All I need to do is pay 25 CYP in any branch of COOP bank and bring him the receipt together with the insurance contract and vehicle log book. I did so and brought my car.

MOT examination is very well automated. Mr. Perry started up the sequence on the computer and followed the insturctions on the screen. All he had to do was to move the car a bit in and out of braces and rollers when the computer asked him to and place and remove all sorts of measurement devices on the engine and in the exhaust pipe. The test indeed took about 20 minutes.

When we reviewed the MOT report, my mechanic complimented me (why? :) ) on the engine of my car. He said that more than half of GDI engines that he and his collegues saw in Cyprus have all sorts of problems. They suspect that the problems are caused by software in the computer chip embeded, but noone except for the factory has any tools to tweak it. Anyway, he said that he has seen only about 8 or 10 cars which have good GDI engines and that mine was the best he has seen in the last 4 years. That, obviously, made me very glad.

With MOT report in my hands I went to the traffic department office. Somehow I wasn’t the only one who knew that today is the last day before the fines start. There were a lot of people. And I came late (about 10:00am). Traffic department is one of the worse organized ones in the Cyprus government. Most of forms are in Greek only. There is virtually no information posted anywhere. Queues to the clerks are totally uncontrolled and disorganized. You get the picture…

I spend slightly more than 2 hours in the queue before I got to the clerk. There were many British people in the crowd, who are a real fun to be around in the traffic department. They are fun, because:

  • They are not used to queues and disrespect from the government offices
  • They have a great sense of humor

These people were making all sorts of funny comments like “This must be the high priority queue”, “Is it a self-service department? I afraid I don’t handle computers so well…”, and (after staying on the same place for half an hour) “Did we move? I might have missed it. Can we do it again?”. My favourite was by a young guy who was talking to a woman for about an hour and than said: “I feel I know you so well! Would you merry me? We can ask for the certificate here. It is a government office, isn’t it?”.

So, after spending about two hours in the queue, I’ve paid 129 CYP for 1838 CCs of my Mitsubishi Galant engine. I am not afraid of the police patrols anymore. They can stop me all they want. Oh, wait, I have to change a couple of tires before that. Oops…