depthq - ccm|mac

With the recent financial crisis, I have been paying more attention to the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan, the US Dollar, Euros and the Malaysian Ringgit (RM). I have been fond of graphing stuff so that I can see a better picture of things. I found some historical data at oanda.com and tried my hand at visualising the data.

For anyone who's interested, you can download the OpenOffice Spreadsheet document that I used to generate the graph.

Looking at the data, it seems the exchange rate of the USD hasn't drop as much as the Euro and the Ringgit. Darn it, US products (Apple hardware, hint hint) ain't that cheap yet!

I initially used my freshly download OpenOffice 3 for the Mac OSX and it was pretty easy to use and very quickly I got the results that I wanted. But it was hard to compare the rates between CNY-Euro, CNY-RM and CNY-USD. So I tried to normalise the changes over the average exchange rate in that period and it looked slightly better and easier to understand.

I also tried it with Google Docs, but I used only the normalized data and I very quickly got something that I could share and publish, but the disadvantage of Google Docs is that it has very limited capabilities (e.g. can't change the minimum value for the Y scale). The one thing that I like is that I can share the Google Docs spreadsheet easily and quickly.

Finally I tried Numbers and it was dog slow. I couldn't do much with it and I gave up pretty quickly. It even crashed on me once!

Its just 3 columns of 291 rows each: How hard is it to handle that? In comparison to video editing, this should be peanuts!!

I think Numbers will need to go a long way, in terms of optimizing its performance, to fight with M$ Excel or even OpenOffice Spreadsheet. Maybe I am using a pathetic version, who knows. Numbers' graphs do look much nicer in general but if its too slow then I can't even get to it in the first place. Actually it doesn't look as nice is there are lots of data points, maybe I need to configure it somewhere, if I can get to it in the first place... its hanging, not sure what its doing... sigh...

I waited for more than 2 years for this trip and there is certainly some excitement around it. I missed the one back in 2006 because I wasn't feeling too well. So last weekend, about 40 of us headed to Hongjiushanzhuang for a weekend of games and fun.

The setting for the trip is just right: great company, bright blue skies, cooling weather and the websites we're maintaining aren't in a busy period .

I realised a very interesting thing: in good weather with good sunlight, almost all the pictures I take are beautiful, its like almost effortless. I need more of this in Beijing so that I can seem as though I am an accomplished photographer .

We were broken up into 10-person teams and each team is assigned a villa, 别墅, to stay for the weekend. First thing I noticed is there are lots of insects around this area. Spiders, bees and butterflies were among us. I have to say this is a rare treat in the concrete forest of Beijing. We were 1 hour and 30 minutes away from the city but still technically Beijing I guess, or I can be wrong. There is also another insect but I am not sure of its name, its black and pretty smelly.

There were lots of fat cats in the area as well. I guess a tourist area fits them as they are lazy and because they look cute, people will go and feed them. What a win-win situation!

After we arrived we had some rest and we played some games (golf, basketball, tennis, badminton) during the day and in the night we played Texas Hold'em.

The next day, we climbed the Great wall at Simatai. There is a story between me and this part of the Great wall. I was here about 2 years ago and I failed to go past the 12th tower because it was closed, due to it being very dangerous. We almost managed to get the guard to let us through the last time but failed in the end.

And here I am 2 years later, and there is another chance. In about 40-50 minutes we managed to reached the 12th tower and it was still closed again. We tried to talk to the guard and he didn't budge at all. He advised us that if we really wanted, we could stay over at the resort at the Great wall and then wake up very early the next morning and there wouldn't be anyone.

2 Years, 2 Simatai Trips, 2 Disappointments!!!

We were back at the resort at lunch time, had lunch, went for a horse ride, shower, massage, sauna, rest, video games and by then its time for dinner. There was a bonfire, barbecued food, beer, red wine, fire water, silly singing and lots of drunk people .

Overall it was a good trip. Many thanks to the admin team for making it happen! And also many thanks to those that came along to make it a real blast! I leave you with a video of the final competition between the Red and Yellow team to win the final prize (Jingkelong cash card!).

UPDATE: I initially embedded a video on this blog post but it seems RSS readers don't pick up on it.

After being here for a bit more than 2 years, I've seen my English competence drop like the current Wall Street stock market. Same goes for my Cantonese and Malay. I don't care much for my Malay at the moment, as long as I still remember how to say "nasi lemak", "mee goreng", "teh tarik", "sup kambing", "roti canai" and other delicious Malaysian 小吃 (xiao3chi1 @ snacks).

Note to self: I need to watch more Cantonese shows on tudou.com and read more English books.

I find that its much harder to find the right words and I definitely can't write as well as last time. The problem is because I am not using English as much and I realised that, I think, I am beginning to think in Mandarin.

Actually this is not surprising, since I speak Mandarin at work. Most e-mails are in English and do I chat in IRC and IM in English, but when you speak in Mandarin and everyone around you speaks Mandarin you somehow get warped in this other language world and your brain starts to get lazy. And I listen to more Mandarin songs than English ones nowadays.

There are lots of feelings and situations that I can express better in Mandarin and hard to replicate in English, which I find very troublesome.

The worst part about this is that I still can't write or read much in Mandarin. Sigh.
Okay, end of self rant.

Last September really felt like it went by like a roller coaster. I didn't blog much (or at all) and its mostly because I didn't have time to slow down and reflect on things that had happened, kinda like August (just got back from Tallinn then and I went crazy with a bit more outdoor activities).

So what do I have to write about? My mind is almost blank.

My thoughts these days are a lot about the future. As I take each step, I wonder where it will take me. As I feel each emotion, I wonder what feelings will develop in the end. As I type each line of code, I wonder what freedom it will bring me. As I enter slumberland, I wonder what dreams I will get, that whispers the unconscious to me.