Matts blog

I thought I had to write something about Google, I’m now using 3 of their software apps, Google Desktop, Earth and Talk, and they all rock.

But what rocks more is google’s suggestion for my gmail account username - willcockenator - how cool is that???

So, I’m using Google Desktop with sidebar which has replaced www.theregister.co.uk alerting sytem, and is monitoring a whole bunch of other UK and chinese RSS feeds, all without me having to tell it to do so, very cool, the sidebar also makes a pretty cool todo list and news ticker, and if I could convince it to show Beijing weather forecasts, I could get rid of weatherpulse. The ability to search email, documents and MP3’s is fantastic, I’ve got several 100 Mb of files on my laptop and they are now all indexed, very handy.

Google Earth is fantastic if I need to workout what bit of China I’m visiting next, but also to revist some of my favorite places in the World, Retford, Docklands, the Lake District, New Zealand (Wanganui!!!!), Central Europe, you name it, its on there and in fantastic detail.

Google talk is the much hiped instant messenger from google, and the Voice of IP quality is meant to be fanstatic, but I’ve not been able to try that out yet, but first impressions are that it is a very well finished program just like the rest of the Google software should proove to be invaluable.

I wonder whats next!!!

After a 2 week delay we’ve finally got broadband internet in the apartment thanks to Beijing telecoms PPPoE service in the building. I’ve been and purchased a linksys WRT54G wireless router from the local computer market and its working great.

I’m getting 150-200 Kbytes/s which is great for catching up on the UK TV that I’ve missed.

I was going to write something about Beijing, but this came along a stopped that! Thus made an overe to takeover Energis, but due to a few UK finance legal ‘things’ it turns out its a reverse takeover, and so the shares are suspended. But according to this article, its not looking so good for the offer, we’ll find out at 5pm GMT today….

I’m waiting for my broadband to be installed, and the CDMA network has stopped working so I’m using dialup internet access, its provided by the phone provider, its reasonably priced, and you don’t need an account:

Phone number: 16900
Login: 169
Password: 169

or

Phone number: 16300
Login: 163
Password: 163

Very handy and should work anywhere in China as far as I’m aware.

Well, we’ve spent most of the weekend unpacking and setting up the apartment including a trip to virtually every supermarket and electical store in the area, but at last we’ve purchased everything we wanted. On Friday we just got the essentials - pillows and a new duvet, and found a lovely silk filled duvet for 10 pounds, which was good, the apartment looks fantastic, maybe not furnished quite how we would choose, but its nice enough.

Saturday started with a trip to Ikea in the north of Beijing on the 3rd ring road, about 30 minutes from our house, or 2 quid in a taxi, unsuprisingly it was packed with people, but no ore so than a Ikea in London. What was interesting though was the the prices were around 20-30% cheaper than the UK

We also bought a cheap DVD player with DIVX support so we no longer ave to watch all films and avi’s on my laptop, which is pretty cool. There was one mistake though, we went food shopping at Carrefour down the road on a sunday evening and it was PACKED and the range is not as good as the Lotus in Pudong, which is a shame. The staff also seem to be particulry rude and unhelpful

We’ve also discovered that our building will not have its gass supply turned on untill it is 70% full, so we have a gas tank and tempory stove in the kitchen, I’m just hoping people move in quickly.

So this afternoon if all goes to plan, we should get the keys to our new home, I dont think I’ll actually believe it until I’m in the apartment and the door is closed with only us inside though!

We’ll have the weekend to put our new lives together again and unpack the 3 boxes of stuff we have collected in the last 7 months in Shanghai, I think we may be taking a trip to Ikea and B&Q to buy a few things…. Obviously Essential items only

I’m also going to to visit out new office for the first time today, which will be interesting.

So after a lot of uncertainty we moved to Beijing yesterday, but our apartment isn’t ready until Friday, so we are currently living in the Kempinski Hotel within the Lufthansa Center in Beijing. I can safely say I didn’t think I’d be having a brithday in China, and certainly not in a hotel in Beijing, but I’m very happy to be here doing this

Can’t wait to move in to the apartment, we are about to meet the landlord to discuss furniture shortly…