The second to last day of Ubicomp 2011 included a banquet. After the last session of presentations, we were taken in buses, comfortable coaches, to the lake by the Summer Palace. The driver was absolutely ruthless, driving fast, honking his horn and rarely steering away from bikers or pedestrians. Not even kids were safe from this beast of the road. Biggest goes first I guess. Well, no casualties at least.
It was a very beautiful afternoon with the sun hanging low and a comfortable temperature in the air when we boarded the boats for a small tour around the quite small lake. After a few rounds we disembarked at the Summer Palace and walked our way to the outdoor location for the dinner. Jordi and I were clever enough to take seats at a table close to the scene, facin it. Others were not so lucky, having to leave the table to see the shows. The hosts were very thoughtful and had reserved a table for vegetarians and vegans. Yep, they all had to sit together, and it wasn't well positioned. Det straffar sig tydligen att vara veg! ;)
The dinner was good, served on a big rotating disc that you spin to the right position for unloading to your personal little bowl. The shows were cool: there was a traditional dance, an old acrobatic theater play (depicting a humourous sword fight), a set of girls doing acrobatic stuff and a guy dancing around and unmasking himself, having perhaps 7 layers of face masks that he removed so fast you couldn't see him do it. Lastly, buses back to Tsinghua Uni (biggest in China, 40k students (but KTH claims 15k?)).
A few of us went downtown for pubbing and the first place we went to was having a live performance by two musicians (?). They were playing music (?) that resembled what you get from circuit bending (making noises like static, tweeting etc, changing the freq, pitch etc, making music (?)), only they were using a Macbook and a guitar. Would be cooler if they had had some cool hardware instead.
On to a small, quiet bar, had a few drinks (10 Y (=10kr) for a drink like rum+coke). I got to see the cool stuff a girl from MIT had found: a book (in chinese :( ) with Iphone 4 schematics and IC explanations! Awesomely cool!
Then we left and a few left for home while the others went to a club which was playing western music (mixed w some local and Korean (?) songs). Same price here for drinks. :) A chinese guy wanted to buy us some drinks and bought us a pitcher w some drinkmix in it, but it was very weak, not much alcohol at all. Then, another guy wanted us to come over to his table instead, so we joined Steven and Gary (their western names, as is common to have here, one chinese and one english). We brought our pitcher so we now had two, plus a 4.5 L bottle of Johnnie Walker black label in a cradle. These guys were very rich by Chinese standards, that was easy to tell. They were also very very friendly and welcoming so I made a new friend :) He was very upset though that one of us didn't accept his offer of a drink and wanted me to explain that. Very upset. "You and him and her are my friends, but him, he's not my friend!"
Got home way too late, slept way too little and had too little information to make an informed decision so we ended up skipping the trip to the great wall the next day. I want to go there and have many hours for exploring, not being rushed to a place I know little about, and have only an hour to explore. Next time… So I went alone to Beijing Aquarium instead. Very cool! And right next to it was Beijing Zoo. Very depressing!
Then downtown to experience the capitalist China. Home at 23 (taxi 8 km at this hour was 25Y), fell asleep and now I'm on the flight to Shenzhen (2:45, ca 1900kr)….
…landed. Easiest and cheapest way from the airport ever: 8Y subway, 28 stations! No damn taxi touts a la Egypt. No, that's not charming nor exotic, just annoying except perhaps for the very first time you experience it.
Funny… Love engrish!
