Archive for September, 2006
Running a course on Second Life
Also check out the the about section on the New Media Centre’s Second Life Campus.
Bollywood in China
I was hiding from the heat in Nanchang last week and took to channel surfing. Landed up on CCTV 6, they were showing this popular movie from last year dubbed in Chinese.
Some people in China like such bollywood movies mainly for the song and dance.
Here is a VCD I found in Kunming last year in a pirate video shop near the Yunnan University campus.
Who watches bollywood movies in China? Guys don’t seem to be much interested. The girls seem to like fashion. Infact most of the indophiles I have met in China tend to be women.
In a Chengdu lane this shop selling trinkets from Nepal and India had some bollywood posters enticing the shoppers to try out fashion from South Asia.
Another Chengdu shop selling trinkets.
Laos makes tourists happy
One of my favorite destinations in South East Asia is Lao
Buddha Park, outside Vientiane city
News just in from Lao
Visitors to Lao PDR can now get a visa on arrival for 30 days, up from 15 days previously, the Laotian Foreign Ministry has announced. They can also get an extension of stay of this visa.
Via Samakomlao blog
Message from a friend who was in Lao last year.
Technorati Tags: lao
Sea Outing in Sai Kung (西貢)
Went over to Sai Kung in Hong Kong for a junk boat outing. More pictures on Flickr.
Finding and Using Internet Cafes in China
There used to lots of cybercafes in China but these days they are getting harder to spot. Stricter govt. regulations have forced most of these place to close down. The ones that are running are licensed establishments. They are usually referred to as Internet Bars - wang ba (网 å§). The character wang means a web or network and the character ba is I suppose just a phonetic near to bar. Most Chinese people use them for games, watching videos and messaging and they are very adept at multitasking using many of these things at the same time.
The last two characters wang ba means internet bar.
You pay an advance at the counter usually 10 RMB and they will give you this slip or a card with your login and password. Sometimes it is only a login, you can leave the password blank if it is not printed. In this example 00292145 is the login and 123 is the password. After you have finished your session they will return your change.
The cybercafe might not have msn or yahoo. QQ is the most popular chat client in China. You can use a web based messaging service meebo to log on to msn, yahoo and aol.
The computer is usually newer and has USB ports so it is very easy to transfer your files. I found Chinese cybercafes more reluctant if you want to use your own laptop and connect to their LAN cable. The Thais are more open to this.
At one of the smaller airports in China, this girls was selling a GPRS internet service. Whenever she was not answering customer questions she would be chatting with friends.
Technorati Tags: meebo