168 Japanese Food

Today we had a meeting with people of our major investing venture capital and two other partner companies. After the meeting, my boss took my colleague and me to a Japanese restaurant which is located in the first floor of the same building. He's been expecting to go there again since last night. Why? Because they have an all-you-can-eat program for just 168 RMB each, and you can order from over a hundred items on their menu. Every dish was prepared as if you ordered regularly in a Japanese restaurant, which means nothing was compromised because you chose the all-you-can-eat. Besides, drinks were also included in the program, even alcoholic drinks. We had grilled fish, beef steaks, lamb chops, sashimi, sake, and even uni and foie gras! What can you expect more for $23 dollars and no added tax or service fee?
The restaurant is called Shi Shan (Stone Mountain), located at #726 Yan An West Road, Shanghai, China.

Access Blogspot in China

I just had a new post in my blog but I could not read it, because I'm in China. Fortunately there's a web site called pkblogs.com which can redirect the contents on blogspot so that they can be viewed from China, India and Pakistan. Basically just put the name of blog (such as $NAME$.blogspot.com) behind the address of pkblogs to make it http://www.pkblogs.com/$NAME$ and you're done. So, here's my blog for China readers http://www.pkblogs.com/rwcutter. There's only one problem: I don'e have any reader in China because none of them can read this post in the first place, ha!

Arrive at Zhang Jiang, Shanghai

I'm on a business trip to Shanghai -first time with my new company and last time for the year 2007. It's been over an year since my last business trip to China. This time my destination is the Zhang Jiang Tech Park in Pudong, and I finally had a chance to take the Maglev train (or magnetically levitated train) which is kinda expensive for me unless someone else is paying. It was not as smooth as I expected, but not bumping , either. The feeling was just like on a regular train -except the top speed reached over 400 km/h in a short ride for less than 15 minutes.

Merry Christmas

First Tooth

Yesterday my son showed me his first tooth. He's been chewing his toys hard for a while, and sometimes he seems feeling some pain in the mouth. I could feel some sort of sharp edge under his gums, but nothing visible until yesterday. There is a tiny white edge in the lower gum now which is visible if looking closely. I tried to take a photo but was not very successful. Maybe later when the tooth grows bigger and more obvious, I'll be able to capture it with my camera.

Pissed Off!!

Really pissed off. Tonight Allie received a phone call about Ellen's shit again. Ellen is still nowhere to be found, and those gangsters kept harassing her families. I grabbed Allie's phone and shouted at the guy on the other end, and he got angry, too. In the end, he threatened Allie to take care of it in three days, just like what he said last time.

I'm really angry about the whole shit because there's nothing we can do about it to stop them from harassing us. We don't know how far will they go, and we can only wait and see. I wish they find Ellen soon and do whatever they want with her to teach her a lesson. Just leave us alone.

Flashback - Car Crashed

Found this old picture in my web hard disk.

It was a rainy summer night on July 14th 2005, and I was driving home on the freeway from my office. I was very tired, and the traffic jam made made it worse. The average speed was less than 5 km/h. Suddenly, I felt a severe impact that my glasses flew away from my face. I didn't realized what happened until maybe ten seconds later. I hit the car in front of me because I fell asleep. My car was completely crashed in the accident. Luckily there was an exit in 200 meters because my car could not move anymore when I got off the exit.

What made it even more dramatic was that my cell phone was out of battery. I shake it to sqeeze some power out of the battery to call for help. My cousin finally found me one hour later, and we ended up in a restaurant to recharge my phone and had free food on some kind of banquet. Anyway, it was a weird long story.

I paid around $20,000 NT for the car hit by me, and my own car was trashed because the cost to repair it (with cheapest recycled parts) was much more than the money I bought it. This picture reminds me how lucky I was. Drive safely.

44th Golden Horse Award

The 44th Golden Horse Award was like a welcome-home party for Ang Lee. Lust|Caution was the biggest winner as expected. It was quite emotional to be there to listen to what he said when Lee received the award for outstanding Taiwanese filmmaker of the year.

Despite the glamor seen on TV, the ceremony was very poorly planned or executed in many ways. Most of the staff in charge of guiding the audience were part-time students who apparently did not received clear instructions. The ticket said the seats on the 2nd floor were open for everyone and asked people to arrive early for better seats. However, it turned out that some of the seats were registered. As the ceremony was to begin and the TV live broadcasting was counting down, those who found their registered seats taken called security guys to dispel people who arrived two hours ago to get their seats back. Of course there were lots of arguments everywhere, and I think the nominees were confused why there were suddenly so many security guys inside and so many people shouting.

Not just the audience lost their way, even the guests to deliver the awards were lost on stage. Some ran to the center of the stage to find out that they were supposed to be on the left corner. Some winners went directly back to their seats after they received their award while they were supposed to go to backstage for interviews.

Despite all the flaws, it was still a great experience to participate in such event. I think it was also a great experience for Josh to be nominated and to be officially introduced to and recognized by the industry, although it would be much better if he won.

Great Movie

Last night I finally saw Temptation. I managed to left my office early and go to theater for the only public event of this film. Set aside the fact that I know the director, as a pure movie viewer, I like this film a lot.
The story itself was pretty common. Two young lovers were set apart on the way to seek their dreams, and when they met again unexpectedly, how they tried to communicate without saying each other?
Colorful scenes and creative dishes, accompanied by the music composed by award-winning musician George, the film successfully told a small story in a tempting way. It's the first time I saw Josh's work on a big screen, and it was awesome!
After the movie, there was a small event for the director and two actors to meet the audience. Josh seemed very nervous on stage. I wonder what it would be like if he stands on the stage of the Golden Horse Award this Saturday?