User profile: blobbles

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Forums > Living in Kunming > My brand new electric scooter was stolen today

I have a fairly expensive mountain bike, but its about 5 years old. What I do is:

1. Keep it dirty - don't wash it after riding in the hills
2. Scratch up the paint a little
3. Duck tape parts of the frame to make it look like its held together with pieces of tape
4. Don't fix cosmetic problems that make it look worse but don't hurt the bikes function (e.g. I lost a part of my brake on one side which makes it look uneven and have had to rubber tube a part of the fork to stop dirt getting in!).

I figure thieves will only touch a bike they can resell. So like others have said, make it look like they won't be able to sell it and you should be OK. I have been tying my bike up to trees/lamposts all over the place for 6 months and it hasn't been touched (yet, cross fingers).

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Ship a package to Europe

Magnifico, are you speaking from experience? Did you really wrestle an elephant? Wow, you really are magnifico!

Careful that you don't ask for super fast shipping, its heinously expensive. I paid (I can't remember the exact price) about 150 RMB to ship a piece of paper to New Zealand! But I needed it there in about 3 days so it was necessary. And New Zealand is in the boondocks so no surprise.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Hutongs?

Try 桃源街 (Táoyuán jiē) along the riverside north of 人民中路 (Rénmín zhōnglù). On the Rénmín zhōnglù side they have barbecue at night and along the road heading away from the river are little alleys with bars. They are quite cool some of them, though filled with smoke and stares at lao wai!

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Forums > Living in Kunming > To the person who sent me an anonymous email

laotou's post was awesome, take not BillDan, there is a challenger to your unofficial title "King of Rants"!

But on the subject, laotou sounds he has had a lot of experience with local ayi's. I didn't realise it was that bad! I figured it would be more like HK which seems to be pretty good (though 90% of the Ayi's are Filipino... maybe a cultural thing? Or maybe a pay thing?).

Anyone else got local Ayi experience? Any good ones?

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I used to work with scientists in an Environmental Protection Agency - most of them were convinced that autism and many other birth defects are linked to pollutants in our food and environmental systems. These pollutants (everything from heavy metals to simple cleaning agents to pesticides etc) end up accumulating in top predators (humans/tuna etc) where they begin to cause birth defects once they accumulate to a certain level. I remember seeing graphs on the rate of pollutants in environments vs the rates of different birth defects - they almost all followed exactly the same trajectories, to the point that causation was directly implied.

The problem was they didn't know exactly WHICH pollutants caused which defects, which essentially gave them nothing to base banning certain chemicals on. The problem was many chemicals started being used at around the same time, making it very difficult to point fingers. Its a situation where the exact causes aren't known, therefore nothing can be blamed. Which highlights a large problem with legislative process - the precautionary principle isn't followed, what is followed is release of pollutants on a massive scale because there are no studies proving such pollutants ARE harmful (despite having no evidence that AREN'T harmful). To me that is backwards, but it is the way it works unfortunately.

There could be a link between autism and vaccination programs, but I have not seen any data that supports that. I would be more inclined to believe that China's use (and lack of banning) of many known chemicals that cause reproductive disorders is the cause. Hell, they still use DDT here a very strong endocrine disruptor, all but banned in developed countries. Just run down the list of POPs that are considered extremely dangerous... endrin, aldrin, dieldrin... all produced and used within China.

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I think you mean 1.3 billion in Capital Gain, which is a different thing than dividends. Likely dividend payout on the shares would have been something like $80million yuan (assuming ~$1.2 dividends over the past 5 years)

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Nice story!

I thought a crossbow bow drawing apparatus was called a cranequin? I remember reading this from some book about soldiers way back when... you can see Tyrion using a simple one at the end of Game Of Thrones season 4!

Reviews

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Wow, just wow. Possibly the best Chinese food I have had in Kunming. And in one of the nicest, traditional courtyard style restaurant I have been in. A woman dressed in traditional qi pao playing a gu zheng just adds to it.

We had okra, mushroom soup, dried beef and chou dofu. All top notch with the bill coming in at just over 250 kuai. But we could have fed 3 people for that so not too bad at about 80-90 kuai each. Not the cheapest but for the quality, it's damn good.

If you have people visiting and want to take them to a traditional Chinese style restaurant with Yunnan style food, or want a romantic night out with a gal, you can't go wrong here. Close to Green Lake (down a little alley) for a romantic walk... Just perfect.

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Pretty good place for getting all your documents translated and/or notarised. Note that there are a number of notaries in the building which you can find by going up the stairs (the elevators are impossible). But you have to find the stairs to do so... go in the door, head over to the right, go up the big wide stairs which head up a floor, turn right then right again into the elevator area and right again into the stairwells. Whew!

One point off for the elevators never being available and having to hike 7-9 flights of stairs (not good if you have to go 3-4 times a day like I often did!)

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This does not stop at the Jinanya hotel at Da Shang Hui as the flyers state (and is on the images tab here). They need to have another stop in the same area or else they are missing out on covering a big chunk of the city.

You can take another bus, the 919C, I believe, if you are nearby Da Shang Hui, which leaves from the bus station on HeHong Lu, nearby the Qianxing road intersection. This bus goes every hour and is white, found at the western end of the station. It is operated by a different company and takes about 1 hour 10 minutes to get to the airport due to a large number of stops especially near the airport.

Great bus though if you can catch it!

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Friendly people, even got to the talk to the vice consulate, who told me she had done a stint in Malaysia's Siberian Consulate!

English is spoken by some of the Chinese girls working at the desk who are pleasant to deal with. I assume they do Visa's as well but I wasn't here for a visa, this time!