A Week in China pt 2

Food is weird in China.  It's not that they serve food that I don't eat regularly, but they prepare the food in such a fashion that it is nearly impossible to distinguish what exactly you are eating.  While this can be nice, sometimes it can hide nasty surprises (such as bones) or other interesting oddities.  Probably the weirdest concoction I consumed was pork with some kind of mash with sweet potatoes.  While not totally indigestible, it definitely wasn't the most delicious thing I ate.

Yesterday the group went to the Summer Palace.  I'm not sure of its historical importance but it's an amazing place to visit.  Miles of greenery with also birds singing with various plants everywhere.  We only explored half of the Palace in about 4 or so hours of walking.  There was also fun off-road bit where we climbed in a place where we weren't supposed to be but it was fantastic to do something which you know you probably shouldn't be doing.

During this time I discovered that people seem to sell the same thing everyone.  Yesterday everyone was trying to sell Persimmons(or something similar?), corn, vinegar cucumbers, and annoying masks which made blowing noises.  Today people were trying to sell metal engravings of people's names on some sort of medal.  I guess they make some money as it but I don't think it would be a reliable source of income.

Today we visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.  Both of these are awesome places to visit and walk, but I'm a little disappointed that the renovations of the Great Wall used modern building styles, especially in the pathing, rather than sticking with the older style of bricklaying.  I really didn't confirm if this is true but you could see the renovated parts were much different from the original brickwork.

The Forbidden City was amazing, with more pagodas and pathways and such than you can shake a stick at.  The problem was that the colors were always the same, red and gold, and the entire place just felt redundant after a while.  The place is beyond massive however, and definitely an impressive feat of engineering.  I got kinda bored at the end simply because as huge as it was it all looked the same.

That being said, I was able to get some great pictures while I was over there.  When I can actually upload them I will but until then I just need to make sure not to lose my phone.

China, a Week in Beijing

I actually wrote this a while ago and decided to post it here.  I am in China so I decided to update my blog every day or so while I'm over here. Hope people enjoy it.

The plane flight was excruciating. The last time I flew international was on Lufthansa (sp?) airlines which had power-cables for computers, a decent screen, and some actual legroom. This flight on United Airlines, on the other hand, was tightly packed full of people like sardines in a can for 14-15 hours. I don't think I got much sleep so I've been up for pretty much 20+ hours right now haha. The nice thing about this is that because it screwed up my sleep/wake/active cycle so much I don't have to worry about the time change since somehow I'm properly adjusted (hopefully).

The food here is really different. Not only is it freshly prepared but there are several choices of food. There's a stirfry, soup, and probably some other stuff which I haven't discovered yet. The problem will be ordering since only one of us knows rudimentary Chinese while the rest of us know nothing. There are some students who speak both English and Mandarin, and they were nice enough to tour us around Beijing which was nice of them. I would have taken pictures but my phone/camera/tuner/mp3 player/metronome was used to survive the 14 hour flight, so hopefully tomorrow I'll take some pictures.

So far culture shock isn't so bad. It probably helps that us Oberlin students are sticking together especially since we're just sorta trying to figure out what we're supposed to do. We haven't seen the Dean anywhere either so we've basically been doing everything by ourselves with help from the conservatory students.

[Rant] Various stuff

It's been a while since I posted a blog. Many reason include being busy, lazy, and not just caring. However, I finally feel like writing something so here I am.

One thing that is interesting is that I saw a food TV show about an Englishman going around the highest obesity areas in the states and trying to fix schools so that they have more healthy foods.

I feel like this is a good endeavor. There are definitely problems with the consumption or at least lack of exercise in the country. However, there are some things that disturb me. How he uses people is really annoying. When he deals with teenagers and young people I feel he does the "Mr. 'cool' guy". The weird thing with 'Mr. Cool' guys is that a) They're rarely cool and b) They try and walk over people. The way he talks to teens seems to be really steamroller. He's so 'energetic' he just doesn't allow the teens and other people to really get a word in edgewise.

The scary bit is how he talks about things. It is also the reason why I don't like the health care bill. He says one of his interviews (paraphrased) that kids need to be told what to do and what is right and wrong. My problem with this is that he is purposefully removing and controlling choices of people because "he knows better".

I'm not saying what he isn't saying is the truth, I'm just saying he is going about it the wrong way, just like the health care bill. Reformatting the lunch lines for healthier food is good, as it gives kids/teens more chances to become healthier. However, the way he's doing so is going through the parent-teacher boards and schools boards and revamping things without any permission.

If I was in his position, I would push for an upgrade in money for proper training for cooks and for healthy food, but I wouldn't go through people or remove choices. Doing so doesn't really stop the problem, it just postpones it. The main problem is poor education through the teaching and through poor teaching from parents. If you don't try and reform these areas, you're just postponing what will happen, not actually fixing the problem.
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I saw a video from a the guy who developed Spore. He said something along the lines of being able to take another 6 years of development before coming out with a game he truly thought was fully fleshed out. I actually disagree with him. My example: Starcraft.

Blizzard hasn't patched Starcraft in years, yet it is the one of the biggest e-sports in the world. It has a HUGE following and community. You would think a 12 year old game wouldn't hold as well as it does, but the fact that people keep on coming up with strategies, tactics, and so on really increase the longevity of the game. The game still has ample bugs, bad ai pathing, and so on yet those bugs ended up making the game DEEPER, not shollower. The AI pathing and so on makes the game more challenging. However, many original SC fans are complaining that SC2 doesn't have these so the game is easier. I think the game is actually more challenging, but not because of the issues with the game.

Warcraft 3 doesn't need as high APM, but it requires more thinking because of how tactics and strategies are executed. A player with a good strategy but low APM can still beat a higher APM player if they're timing and strategy is better than someone who doesn't.

For example, the warcraft 3 player Space has an average of about 150-200 apm, yet he is one of the top undead players because of his ability with timing pushes and his excellent micro in battles.

A good way to compare the two games is that SC plays you against the game and the opponent, while WAR3 allows you to focus on what your opponent is doing.

This will draw a bunch of flame from SC players but whatever.