Once again I have stepped over the threshold of Kuntai Royal Hotel. Somehow you get used to staying in a hotel all time. You recognize the scent, the different kind of people working in the hotel and the rooms. This is China so there are plenty of people around, each one only doing a very small and limited task. The first occasions I stayed at Kuntai we were on floor 15. This is a very interesting floor since it is almost on the top. It was one of the last floors to be built and the plumbers experienced a lack of drain traps and used straight tubes instead, thus leading to a nice smell of s**t in the bathroom. Never mind it is the executive floor … The new room on floor 12 is much better, smaller, but without the smell of s**t. Instead there is a faint smell of vomiting, you can’t have it all, can you?
While going to floor 12 I noticed a strange thing, no floor 13 and 14. The same for the rooms, 1212 and then comes 1215. But if it means unluck to live in room 1313, is it really connected to the sign on the door or is it connected to the actual physical room. I mean, the magic creature that is able to determine if one is lucky or not, can it really read the sign on the door. I think it more calculates which floor is 13 and which room is 13 on that floor and then pour unluck into it. Perhaps that explains the smell of s**t on floor 15 since it really is floor 13, unluck smells s**t. The same was on the flight here from Bangkok. No row 13. In Singapore they had taken it seriously and removed floor 13 and 14 completely (in line with my reasoning above), thus leaving a hole in the building. These guys are serious, not amateurs as at Kuntai.
Tomorrow is Sunday and I’ll try to get some relax in the Spa. They have massage, sauna, aerobics and more. Talking about massage, the last time I was here the phone rang early in the morning and a hoarse lady asked if I wanted to get massage. “Why would I like to have massage early in the morning when I’m sleeping” I thought and said no. When I woke up I realized that it was probably some other kind of “massage” she offered. I’m just a stupid naïve Swedish guy. If I just known I’d said yes of course, who can turn down such an offering ;-) At breakfast I told Per about the call and he said she called him earlier in the night. He was a bit quicker than I and asked her in Chinese if she’s ill, since the voice is so hoarse. She just hung up. Why, he was just caring …
I saw that the Eclipse group has released a communication framework for developing client applications like Y! etc. Wonder when they will release a SIP client stack and API. That would be really interesting since it allows people to really write new applications and make use of the technology without having to care so much. In the future I think it will be all about communication. A bank won’t be a bank, it will be a communication company that handles people’s money and transforms their fixed assets to cash. The same for your supermarket, it will have to communicate with all its customers and make itself part of their lives. The tricky thing is how they should do it without pissing all theirs customers off. I don’t believe in some of the visions you can see in movies where there are screens everywhere that shows personalized messages as you pass by. It is more of a situation where you get it when you want it, to simplify your life. It will be interesting times to live in when these systems has to be built and delivered.
Talking about supermarkets, I paid a visit to the local hypermarket today (don’t really know the difference between a supermarket and hypermarket, but who really cares) to see what was offered. Some of it looked exactly as home, other things were quite different. The sell living fish in aquariums for example, although some of them were swimming upside down … I don’t know if I really would call them alive, maybe warm (at least warmer than the fish on ice). The also sell pig feet, chicken feet and cow stomach. My first thought was, wow this is really disgusting (no, I don’t have a cultural controlled opinion, no way) until I realized that we use these things in sausages (especially English sausages). They also had a lot of tea and candy. The tea ranges from 1€ to 70€ per kg. The more expensive tea is very good; you can use it over and over again. Something I recommend if you come to China. Sam did the ESDK training in January and then we visited a tea shop with special rooms with chairs and tables designed for letting you taste all their different kind of teas. That was really an experience!
While discussing tea, Per and I had afternoon tea at the bar in the hotel earlier today. It was a very tasty green tea served in glass pot and glass cup. We really enjoyed the company and the place, discussing the project, life and everything in between. This was until the bill came, 12€. That is something, for two cups of tea. The dinner we had later was composed of 4 dishes, tofu, beef, mushroom with vegetables in strong chili and dumplings (the content was unidentified). At the restaurant they had living fish (in better condition than at the hypermarket) and living big frogs. It looked very cute, with big eyes. I couldn’t point at it and have on the plate. I noticed that both of the frogs survived our visit. The whole dinner including beer was around 8€. It was a bit better price performance than the tea, although the bar had a better atmosphere.
