Greg and Kat's blog

This morning was dominated by the flight from Beijing to Shanghai. [KS: In the airport I had TCBY for the first time. Funny how it’s in another “C”. :)]

After landing, we went out to Zhujiajiao, which is a little village with Venice-like canals. It was like the Hutongs from Beijing, but much less overrun with tourists. Nice. [KS: What was a little sad was that up until the 1990’s this little village was pretty much an unknown to tourists. During the APEC conference the mayor of the town invited the foreign dignitaries to visit his “real Chinese village”, and from then on it was a destination for tourists. Many of the homes were converted into tourist shops, tea houses, restaurants and food stalls. It would be interesting to see how the locals that are not directly associated with tourism feel about having many tourists come to their fishing village.]

Tonight, we saw the Shanghai Acrobats, which was very good. It was as good as Cirque de Soliel, without the higher-end production.

That’s it, I guess. The food here has been much more interesting than Beijing. The guide here [KS: Molly] seems nice too.

Tomorrow… well, I don’t know, really. I’m too tired to read the itinerary.

We won’t be posting this until later, but it’s about the 20th. Too cheap to pay for Internet.

Today was probably the day of the tour I was looking forward to the most: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

We walked north, starting in Tiananmen Square. The square itself is pretty much just a big open area, but it’s a big one. Apparently, Tiananmen is the largest city square in the world. It’s mostly just full of tourists (mostly Chinese, some foreign) walking around and taking pictures of each other. It was actually a really happy place, despite the obvious associations we have.

I missed my chance to haggle with a vendor over an English copy of the Quotations of Chairman Mao beneath his picture. The irony may have overwhelmed me if I’d actually tried, though.

Then, we walked under the street to the south gate of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is huge. It’s like… well… it’s like the size of a city.

It was in the Forbidden City where I hit the wall for beautiful ancient architecture. Through the gate of yet another wall: “look, more stunning ancient architecture. It looks a lot like the last stunning ancient architecture.”

I understand the whole Chairman Mao worship thing more now. The Forbidden City represents 3000+ years of Emperors hanging around, being Emperors. Mao gets the credit for changing the government structure of China for the first time in three millennia. Okay, that probably should get you a big picture in the town square.

After lunch, we took a rickshaw tour of the Hutong (Hutong ≈ old Beijing slum) that has been preserved (preserved ≈ sanitized enough for tourists to go there, but not enough that they notice). The rickshaw took us to an old woman’s house (Mrs. Wong) where she showed us the place and talked about living in a Hutong while our guide translated.

Mrs. Wong had pictures of Henry Kissenger and two European leaders that I didn’t recognise at her place. She’s obviously the go-to authentic old Hutong woman. Still, it was nice to see one of these communities, much like it would have been.

We went to a couple of markets. Both seemed to be old outdoor markets that the government had decided were taking up too much room, and stacked into six story buildings. They were cool, if a little manic. Cheeky souvenirs for all! [KS: I think the old markets were deemed “too dirty looking” for the Olympics and were therefore moved into buildings. The new “Silk Market” is much cleaner than the outdoor one that I remember from 2001, but just as crazy.]

After dinner, Kat and I walked a few blocks around our hotel. Apparently, we’re in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant area. Then again, that might describe every other block in Beijing. [KS: Yeah, I think we saw the typical Beijing block. Lots of food stalls. Didn’t eat anything though! :)]

So all-in-all, a good day.

Tomorrow (probably “today” by the time we get Internet to post this), we’re off to Shanghai.

We got back to the hotel earlier today, so we still have some time on our 24 hours of Internet…

We started today with a tour of a government cloisonné factory. A summary of cloisonné: make copper pot; cover with thin copper ridges to make designs; fill the ridges with enamel to colour in the design and fire in a kiln; repeat the enamel steps 5 more times; polish. It’s a pretty high-maintenance medium to work with, and nothing caught our eye for the amount it costs, so nobody’s getting cloisonné.

We walked (part of) the Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs. This was pretty uneventful, but kind of nice. It was a nice walk, neat statues, and there weren’t many people there.

After lunch, we went to the Great Wall. We went to the Great Wall on the foggiest day in the history of the world. As such, we didn’t really see a Great Wall, as much as small segments of a pretty good wall.

The wall was still cool, but it’s too bad we couldn’t see any of the great sweeping curves of it as it disappeared into the distance. It just disappeared into the fog 100 metres away. [KS: I saw it on my last trip, and it was magnificent. Maybe this means we will have to come back to see it together without the fog!]

[Edit GB: We also stopped quickly to see two of the 2008 Olympic venues: the Birdsnest and the Water Cube.]

The food was finally different: a Peking Duck dinner. Apparently, they don’t do the duck meat and water chestnut in lettuce leaves course that we get in Vancouver. Too bad; I love anything wrapped in a lettuce leaf. [KS: Instead, the first course is carved crispy duck skin with the meat attached, and you eat that with the “pancake”, hoisin sauce and scallions. Then the second course is a broth made from the duck bones.]

I’ll post some pictures in a few minutes…

No update yesterday, since we had problems with the Internet in the hotel. but, it wasn’t an eventful day anyway: a quick walk along the West Lake in Hangzhou, and then a flight to Beijing.

In Beijing, we met our tour group: another couple a little older than us, and a woman and her (88 year old) father. We’ll have more to say about them as time goes on, I’m sure.

Today the tour started. As such, I think our updates are going to be less interesting: we pretty much went to the tourist attractions the tour went to and saw them.

First was the giant pandas at the Beijing Zoo. [KS: We saw two eating and two sleeping. They were really cute.] Then the Summer Palace. [KS: This is where the emperor and empress spent their summers. Apparently the emperor of the time was a figurehead, and the empress dowager, aka Dragon Lady, was the real head of state.]

Lunch was at a government Pearl Store/tourist trap. The pearls were cheap at least, so we bought some. [KS: Not all of the pearls were cheap – only the ones that we bought. :)]

After lunch, we went to the Temple of Heaven. The neat thing there was that it’s kind of a combo UNESCO world heritage site/community centre. The place was lined with seniors playing cards, groups singing, old people playing hacky sack, etc. It was kind of nice: it’s not just some museum; the place is actually used for something.

After dinner, the Peking Opera. This was… interesting. As you read the following descriptions, keep in mind that each act was 20 minutes of high-pitched singing and flouncing around the stage.

The first act consisted of a pantomime fight that was supposed to be in the dark: 20 minutes of two guys hilariously not being able to find each other in the “dark” but coming really close. It turns out the one guy was a general or something, so the other guy didn’t really want to kill him anyway.

The second act: some princess went for a hike. She met some people, but the didn’t really talk. The end.

The third act: some woman had to go and get herbs to heal her sick husband. The emperor didn’t want to give them to her, so she “fought” his guards then grabbed the herbs and ran off.

So, other than the opera, it was a good day. The tour stuff has a distinct “this is a place for tourists to go” feeling. That could wear thin pretty fast.

It was pretty overcast in Beijing today (“overcast” == “smoggy”?), so the pictures aren’t great, but I posted a few.

Update: we may not post tomorrow. Internet is expensive in this hotel.

My turn to write an update…

We started today by happening to find the same cab driver as yesterday. His total English consisted of “Hello” and “Welcome to Hangzhou”. To be fair, that’s more English than we had Mandarin to offer, so good for him.

With a complicated series of hand gestures and pointing, we managed to communicate that we wanted to go back to the silk market, and that he was pretty sure we should go and drink some tea (at the place where he gets a kickback, I assume). With an even more complicated series of hand gestures, we decided to spend two hours at the silk market, then he would meet us to go to the tea thing.

The silk market was properly open this time, so we got a bunch of stuff.

The tea place was basically a tea tasting in somebody’s house (where the whole little village seems to be dedicated to this industry) and then getting the squeeze to overpay for some of the local (and apparently very high quality) tea. We totally overpayed for some tea, and everybody was happy.

Then we headed to Zhejiang University, the other half of our Dual Degree Program.

We met Xiaolan, the staff member who oversees the DDP from the ZU side. She took us to Baoshi Hill, to the north of West Lake. Nobody had mentioned this hill to us before and it’s not big in the guide books we’ve seen, so I’m going to say it’s totally underrated: there was a stunning view of the West Lake and the city. Even though the day was a little overcast, it was worth the climb. [KS: This place is totally in the guide book. There is a pagoda on the hill that we also saw. The view was totally worth the multitude of stairs!]

We met up with Qing (CS instructor and woman who Janice is staying with) for dinner at a restaurant I didn’t catch the name of, but was obviously an upscale kind of place. The food was entirely unlike anything we have had before, but it was unbelievably good. I had come to think that you could pretty much sample the food of China in Vancouver, but I was obviously wrong (or haven’t looked hard enough for Hangzhou/Zhejiang food). [Edit: the restaurant was called “Zui Bai Lou” and is on Dragon Well Road in Hangzhou.]

Then Qing took us for a drive around West Lake at night and back to the hotel. Xiaolan and Qing were excellent hosts and wonderful people to spend the afternoon with.

Hangzhou summary: two days isn’t enough, but you can pack a lot into two days if you try.

A few more pictures up.

Kat and I are clearly in Hangzhou and are both trying to remember that it is pronounced something like “hangjoo”, or possibly “hangjoe”, based on our careful study of announcements in airports. It seems like normal people would have worked that out before they got here.

We have Janice’s number and will be calling her to get together and see the city today.

Otherwise, nothing to report, really.

As some of you know, but we haven’t mentioned here yet… Kat and I are heading to China for a vacation. It’s the first travelling Kat and I have done together for a long time: all of our travels for the last few years were to-and-from North Carolina.

We’re leaving April 13 and starting the trip with three days in Hangzhou, which is where Zhejiang University is: the home of our Dual Degree Program. Janice is there, as are a bunch of students I know from CMPT 120. It will be nice to see them.

But mostly, after a thousand meetings talking about the DDP as an abstract concept, I want to see the damn place. Hangzhou is supposed to be one of the places Chinese people go on vacation in China, so I have a good feeling about getting to hang out there for a few days.

Then, we’re going back to Beijing and joining a tour, “Yangtze Interlude”. Our tour has day 1 == April 16, so you can do the math if you really want to figure out exactly where we are on each day.

The tour is pretty much “tourist highlights of China”. Since I have never been to China, that seems appropriate. I have also never been on a package tour. I suspect that somewhere around day 13, I’ll hear myself say something like “we already saw three ancient temples; why the hell would I want to see another one?”

Anyway, several of the hotels on our itinerary claim to have Internet access, so I’m hoping we’ll at least be able to post updates here and perhaps some pictures.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been on the receiving end of a couple of queries from high school students that all boil down to “is there some way I can get involved this summer?”

Last year, I managed to work with two students on demos that our recruiters could use at career fairs, etc. The thought has occurred to have somebody this year work to help set up a high school robotics competition (which I have had in mind for a while, but never had a chance to implement).

To be fair, I have only had four such inquiries, but based on the metric standard ratio of asked to unasked questions, I’m going to assume those four questions represent 40 people out there somewhere who are actually interested. These have been students finishing grades 11 and 12, who are planning to study CS, and want some outlet for their interest before they show up as a first year student.

Can anybody picture a good way to set up something like a “bridging program” for such students? Imagine a half dozen grade 11/12 students who plan to study CS, can program in some minimal way, and want to (let’s say) volunteer a few weeks of their time to get some good CS experiences.

I feel like there’s a good idea in there somewhere, but I just can’t quite see it. Thoughts?

Okay… it’s Ada Lovelace Day and the goal is…

I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire…

Having just been (gently) ambushed to post something, I have only been mulling this over for a few minutes. It’s a tall order.

Old profs? All I’d really have to say is “she taught that course well” (and I don’t have many examples since I was a math major in undergrad and took relatively few CS courses). Colleagues? I certainly admire some of the women I work with, but it would be a little weird to write about them.

It took be a while, but I finally figured it out: the SFU WICS girls (but only if I can apply the label “WICSies” to them).

I have hung around university student groups in one capacity or another for the last 15 years. I have seen ups and downs, highs and lows, frantic activity and stagnation. I have never dealt with a group like WICS before.

The whole group is uniformly positive and constructive. They all understand the group’s mission and have a huge variety of ways to work towards it. I count many former members as friends and as some of my most interesting students.

I certainly wish we had 50% women in CS. Still, I can’t help but thinking that if we did, WICS wouldn’t be as wonderful as it is, and I’d be a little sad about that.

I’m in the process of learning the Java Spring web framework (motto: there’s nothing another XML configuration file can’t fix). This has turned out to be a bit of an exercise in frustration: I have always had trouble dealing with Java tech because of their jargon-filled docs. Actually, it’s not even the jargon per se, it’s that the jargon is all Java-specific.

An example: the term “servlet container”. A “servlet container” is a web server that can run a servlet. That’s all. There’s no need for a new term: just say “web server that can run a servlet” or even “servlet implementation” and you’ve removed a whole layer of jargon that people have to learn.

As I was exploring Hibernate (which can integrate with Spring) today, I went to the Hibernate home page and realized I had another example of why I hate the Java ecosystem. Their front page contains this description of what Hibernate is:

Hibernate is a powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following object-oriented idiom – including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and collections.

Well… I suppose that’s pretty informative if you’re willing to parse through the overly-dense sentence structure and already know how the Java world uses all those terms. And, the page contains this diagram:

Riiiiight. That totally clears things up. Perfect for first-time visitors.

Now, compare a similar (but admittedly less-powerful) Python technology: the home page for SQLObject. They have this description:

SQLObject is a popular Object Relational Manager for providing an object interface to your database, with tables as classes, rows as instances, and columns as attributes.

I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more clear and concise description of ORM than that. It’s followed by a dozen-line code example of how to work with SQLObject in Python which more-or-less demonstrates exactly what the tool does, how it does it, and what it can be used for.

Basically, the message I get from the Hibernate front page: “boy, this sure looks enterprisey“. From SQLObject: “oh, I see what this tool is for”.

Just to be a little constructive, let me take a shot at rewriting the Hibernate intro:

Hibernate is a powerful Object-Relational Mapper for Java: it lets you save object instances as rows in a relational database, and retrieve them later. Hibernate supports most object-oriented programming techniques, including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition, and collections.

Okay, that’s off my chest. Bring on the Java fanboys…