Last night, a friend of Sayaka who is currently working in China as an English teacher, complained the Chinese working visa process for foreigner is bloody cumbersome, and even getting a tourist visa is expensive.
I joshed a bit, “Getting a Japanese passport! They don’t need visa to go to China”. Then her jaw dropped! “Seriously? Are you kidding!”
I know I am not kidding. Oddly enough, the Chinese government opened up its gate to the tourist from the following countries without any inspections.
After sifting through dozens of YouTube videos online about how to froth the milk with the default three-holes tip steam wand of La Pavoni, I gave up using the pre-installed steam tip and purchased a one hole tip from eBay as some people suggested on the home barista forum.
voilà , with this new one hole tip, I finally be able to steam the milk with the desired microfoam result, which is nicely float on top of the coffee (see picture below), and which is essential to make latte art. With the original three-holes tip, steam came out with three different directions, and it was very difficult to get the milk swirling. Next step is to how to make a rich microfoam.
China is the only land on the planet that the Google Empire has not yet conquered and take control of its burgeoning hundreds of millions of internet users. The map service Google provided has been popular around the world over decades, however, it is simpler just not as good as the Baidu in China. here is the comparison of the maps around the airport in Shanghai.
Google Maps:
Baidu Map
In early January, I took the plunge and purchased the espresso machine “La Pavoni”. It is the biggest investment I have ever made for a coffee machine. However, I hope one day she could understand its worth the money ($800) for a serious manual espresso machine.
According to the internet, the learning curve of this machine can be quite steep and it would take a good while before I can pull a good shot. Unsurprisingly,  the shots I pulled so far are quite bad, and it is still a long way to even just to match the taste of Starbucks’ coffee.
I will post updates when I get the hang of it with better shots. Please stay tuned.
It is a great honour to be invited to have lunch with our senior in Nomura, Sasaki-san, whose father is Taiwanese and mother is Japanese. He has been organising various events amongst the oversea Chinese community in Tokyo, devoting his time to improving the relationship and understandings between young Chinese and Japanese. He is now working in Okura hotel after retiring from Nomura. Thanks to his position, we have a discount in this Chinese restaurant in Okura.
Today, I discovered a great tool called “casperjs”, which allows you to test your website with Headless WebKit. Having just tried a few minutes, I instantly fall in love with this tool. You can use it to simulate almost any browser behavior.
Installing it on ubunutu is quite straightforward.
#clone the repository from the master branch git clone git://github.com/n1k0/casperjs.git #Symlink the relevant file into your bin or /usr/local/bin ln -sf ~/repositories/casperjs/bin/casperjs /bin/casperj ln -sf ~/repositories/casperjs/bin/casperjs /usr/bin/casperj
Many people probably know the famous Buddhist temple – Lingyin Temple (çµéšå¯º).  But not many know that there is an hidden village next to it. It is renewed and opened to public by Amanresorts, a hotel group founded by a Indonesia business man Adrian Zecha. The village is an incredible tranquil Buddhist valley – Amafanyun (阿曼法云) in Hangzhou, compared to the bustling world in China. Approximately one hour drive from my home, Jiaxing, it is a fantastic place for meditation during your weekend.
This place is magic, making you feel like time-traveling to ancient China hundreds of years ago.
The food was fresh and, I must say “elegantâ€, particularly at the Buddhist vegetarian restaurant (æ–‹èœé¦†).
As a consequence of the increased awareness to the havoc that smoking can do to people’s health, there is an increasing number of countries that have imposed a ban on smoke in public spaces. Â This trend around the world is a positive development, which would provide ammunition to the implementation of smoke-free public areas globally.
Firstly, imposing laws that prohibit people from smoking in public can greatly increase public health, which in turn helps governments to maintain long-lasting economic growth. Smoking in public is the main cause of involuntary secondhand smoking, which does far more harm to people’s health. These negative impacts are particularly harmful to minors and those with respiratory problems, hampering economic growth. Thus, the way to reduce these health risks is for the authorities to restrict areas where smoking is allowed.
Another benefit of keeping smoking private is the discouragement of smoking in society. Such bans can reduce the visibility of cigarettes to the public. If no one was to smoke openly, there would be fewer people aware of cigarettes and, thus fewer people would start smoking. Moreover, banning it in public sends a message that smoking is not socially acceptable.
With these two main benefits of clamping down on public smoking, I strongly believe that we can create a non-smoking society, which can lead to a healthy and prosperous future for humankind.
A wrong answer from my IELTS practice today enticed me, a layman of art to wade through the scientific papers about the idealism and realism in art. Here is my findings:
Idealism artists believe that there is a limitation of what can be seen naturally, therefore, they perfect and embellish what they behold. One good example is the Distant View of Niagara Falls in 1830. The image represents  little of actual landscape near the falls at the time, which was marked by factories and hotels.
On the other hand, Realism in art usually means copying or imitation of objects and scenes. For instance, Portrait of an Old Woman, by a German artist of the 18th century Balthasar Denner, pays special attentions to the details of the face. He aimed to copy every wrinkle on the face as if it was photographed.
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The popularity of this American culture has explored in Japan recently, and this perfectly matches the costume culture in Japan. I was invited to one of Sayaka’s friend’s Halloween party
Some handy emacs command you may want to know for improving your speed of coding.
backward-kill-sexp, this command Kill the balanced expression preceding point. Â It is bound to ESC <C-backspace>. For example,
if (n > 0) {
transfer(n - 1, pegs, use, to, from);
}
To remove the whole block of the code in the if condition, place your cursor at the end of the closing bracket and run the command backward-kill-sexp, The whole block of code will be deleted.
if (n > 0)
backward-up-list, this command ‘Move backward out of one level of parentheses.’
Set mark and pop mark. This combination of commands allows you to navigate code easily by setting a mark. <C-SPC> which sets the mark and then  <C-u C-SPC> which jumps to the last one.