Displeased with Smart Bro

I have been noticing that Smart Bro wireless speeds in my neighborhood have dropped significantly over the past few weeks. Local speed still seems to be up to par (I just clocked about 22KB/sec downloading a huge file from PLDT Play) but trans-Pacific speed is little better than a dialup modem, sometimes dropping to the 55kbps level.

This is what I got to Seattle today (17:24, 31 March):



This area of Taguig is part of PLDT's Next Generation Network (where PLDT will provide you with a copper DSL connection and a land line number via Voice over IP). I have a suspicion they've been provisioning a lot of NGN lines here and it's eating bandwidth.

Smart apparently has this promo where, if you've been on the PHP 988 plan for more than a year (as I have), and you shift to the PHP 999 plan, they will upgrade you to 512kbps for free. With an additional 1-year contract period.

While I would say I was tempted by this, PLDT's scheme will provide us with a land line phone number for the same price. That's valuable because even with all the mobile phones we have, there are still some things for which a POTS phone (in this case not so plain and not so old) is better.

Besides, if the internet performance is going to be like this, I don't feel like being locked in for another year.

Lens Envy

Equipment envy never ceases! after firing 2000 shots through my Rebel XT and it's giveaway 18-55mm EF-S kit lens, I have decided that this is the lens that I must (eventually) have:



The Canon 17-40mm f4 L USM zoom.

It's the second-cheapest L lens (after the 70-200mm f4 L, which used to be my droolworthy lens five or six years ago) and it doesn't have the cachet of being white. But it is an L lens nonetheless, and with my sensor-cropped Digital Rebel XT, I simply need that wide end.

17mm isn't too wide, this lens covers much the same range as the kit lens. But it's an L lens. And with the f4 aperture at the long end, it makes a half-decent portrait lens as well.

Thing is, this darn thing costs as much as my digital SLR. Which, aside from flying to China and taking pictures of the Great Wall, hasn't done anything for the betterment of humankind. If it wasn't for China, I'd still be regretting buying such an expensive, non-performing asset, but three days there and I don't want to use a point-and-shoot anymore. The speed of the DSLR really frees me up to take photos and not think about settings and what-not. Now I need more 1GB Compact Flash cards. I never thought I'd need that much before.

Java Envy

The company I work for has recently announced that it is purchasing Tangosol, a leading provider of data grid solutions for Java and .NET Framework.

There are a lot of interesting things going on in Java-land. Much of this is old hat to Java coders, but I've only recently started getting exposed to things like Spring, Hibernate, and yes, Tangosol Coherence.

And here I am still stuck compiling Java applications with the command-line compiler and editing Java source files with vi or nano.

Part of my brain wants to start learning all this new stuff. It would incidentally allow me to better do my job. But my job isn't Java programming. I just need to know enough about these new frameworks so that I can interface with clients and propose ways for them to leverage TimesTen.

I don't need to know how to write complete Spring applications in order to do that. It sure would be nice, though.

China Images

In addition to our holiday photos, I also tried to go for the "National Geographic style" of photos, which I think every amateur, frustrated photographer dreams of pulling off.

From Scenes of China - Beijing

This is the Temple of the Moon Toad on South Lake Island, with the Temple of Buddhist Incense in the distance across Kunming Lake.

From Scenes of China - Beijing

And above is an image of the Forbidden City, with one of the towers of the Meridian Gate at the right.

While Lalai and I didn't have much time to go around the Forbidden City, it was quite an experience (more so than the tourist-choked Great Wall). We can never watch Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor ever again without turning to each other and saying, we were there!

Google Takes Over the World!

I uploaded some of our photos from Picasa to Picasa Web. Picasa makes album uploads extremely easy, and your friendly GMail account also lets you use Picasa Web.

Not to mention Blogger is also a Google property, and I log onto this also with my GMail account..

Should I be concerned that Google is taking over my web? or should I be thankful that they make everything so easy? one thing I know for sure.. even though Google gets most of their revenue right now from advertising, I'm pretty sure they'll be around for a long, long time. Nobody has made all these disparate tasks (mail, photo management, web photo albums, blogging) so seamless and easy to use.

Beijing Holiday Photos

After my Oracle training in Beijing, Lalai flew there and I extended my stay by two days. We were able to visit most of the popular tourist spots: the Summer Palace imperial gardens; the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tomb of Emperor Zhu Di; Wangfujing Street which is a popular shopping district with creepy crawly food stalls nearby; and the Forbidden City.

From China Photos

All in all, a pretty good extra two days.

Cost of Living

According to some statistics, for Beijing's twelve million inhabitants, there are four million cars. And it certainly seems so, from the traffic levels.

I was surprised to learn that this city has a lower population than the Greater Manila Area, and over a much wider area. No wonder they have such spacious expressways in the middle of the city. Also, it would be accurate to state that the most prosperous of the Chinese live here. With 25% of the population having a car, that's a no brainer.

Also, I haven't seen any slums. But then I haven't been around.

Apparently the minimum legislated wage for semi-skilled workers is about 16,000 yuan per year (about 100,000 pesos or 8,500 pesos a month, much the same as the Philippine legislated minimum wage). According to Wikipedia (which is banned at the hotel), the 2005 GDP per capita of Beijing is about 45,000 yuan, or 288,000 pesos annually or 24,000 a month. This is a pretty high figure, comparatively.

It seems that for white-collar professionals, Beijing is marginally better than Manila. But my former boss could have told me as much, seven years ago when he and I met some software development VC's from Beijing.

Don't get me started on the articulated buses with flat-panel TV's (two of them, one at the front and one in the middle). They have a very efficient mass-transport system, in the areas I've seen. And every one in five of the people on the street could be in one of those early evening melodramas so beloved by Filipinos. Heck even the girl who cleans the ashtrays here at Crowne Plaza wouldn't look out of place in a Koreanovela.

I saw a Yoshinoya fast-food outlet at the nearby Beijing North Star Shopping Center. The large beef gyudon bowl which I always order at Park Square 1 costs 140 pesos. A tiny bit more expensive.

A Big Mac is about the same amount. Also a tiny bit more expensive.

Can't get over the cheapness of those prawns though. But maybe they aren't that fresh. I have no idea how to tell the freshness of prawns.

The Peking duck dish at Quanjude, Wikipedia entry here, not viewable from behind the Great Firewall (established 1864, they proudly state, and with over 1.15 million ducks sold) goes for RMB 168, which is a bit more than 1,000 pesos. Considering that it's a whole duck, good for four people, and this restaurant chain is literally world-famous, not a bad deal, compared to say the 500-peso pasta at Italianni's back home.

Didn't have a chance to do much today, TimesTen 7.0 training proper. Just a few photos, of the OARDC cafeteria. It's quite a cafeteria, the local Oracle employees call it a "pantry," but the washrooms are dirtier than back home or even the McDonald's near our hotel:



and Larry's ubiquitous logo:

I don't think Oracle wants it's Chinese employees to forget how "lucky" they are to be working at such a first-tier employer. Turns out that Oracle is only a second- or third-tier employer back in Silicon Valley, because people there would rather work at a small startup for the chance to be a millionaire, than have a job being paid a salary by a billionaire.

Mini Shopping Spree

Sam Drake from Oracle HQ (TimesTen Employee #6), Danny Lau from Oracle in Seattle (our trainer for TimesTen 7.0, TimesTen Employee #10) and me took a short walk to the corner mall today. This was after we'd finished work stuff for the day, and before going to dinner at the Lake House facsimile. How I ended up with the VIP's in our group wasn't because I'm one of the I's, but because we all don't speak Mandarin. So we can't converse with the other Oracle folks, and we'd get lost in the Big City.

Back to the mall, which is Beijing North Star Shopping Center. The medium-large prawns were RMB 21.80 per 500 grams. That comes out to about PHP 280 per kilogram, which is almost half the price back home.

I bought a 2-liter PET bottle of green tea and a 2-liter bottle of bottled water, in order to sidestep the amazingly onerously-priced RMB 42 Evian mineral water in the hotel fridge. Total price, RMB 9 or about PHP 60. The green tea was RMB 6 (forty pesos) and the bottled water was RMB 3 (twenty pesos). Danny was amazed that his total purchases were just over a dollar. I was amazed that my purchases were just over a dollar!

I seem to recall that 2 liters of bottled water back home in Manila costs about PHP 45, so again, half the price. I can't remember how much C2 costs though. It would seem that, even by Philippine standards, the cost of simple items in Beijing are low.

Let's all move to China!

On a more serious note, I observed that our average taxi fare was around RMB 30, which comes out to PHP 200. This basically means that with one fare, the average taxi driver can buy a kilogram of prawns. Well, that's a gross oversimplification.

The thing about this place is, it's familiar enough to me (although quite foreign to Sam and Danny) because, although everything is in alien Chinese writing, the people look familiar enough and the streets are still a bit familiar. It's dirty and smoggy just like Manila. There's a yawning gulf between the rich and the poor, never more obvious as when you see a snazzy Audi A6 overtake a rusty three-wheeler pedal-powered contraption with an ancient Chinese woman perched on top. But nobody looks pitiful. Of course I've only been in the rich district. But everyone has a purposeful look about them.

There is so much construction going on here, this country is really going places. You can feel it in the air, in the cheesy Engrish billboards advertising "Noble Villa for Top of Life." In the ten-lane expressways that cut through the center of the city. In the uncountable flyovers. In the Gehry-like "bird's nest" Olympic Stadium going up a few blocks from my hotel. I could go on and on.

As Sam pointed out, the balance of trade between China and the US is grossly weighted towards China. I'm sure that's true of the Philippines, too. All this construction, all this money pouring into the ground of this ancient country, this money came from the US. And the Philippines. From your pocket and my pocket.

I used to tell my friends that I would ensure that my future children (if any) would learn Mandarin when they are still young and can pick up languages easily. After only two days here, I'm seriously thinking about getting some audio language training stuff off the internet and learning the language myself.

Dinner

Our host from Beijing Oracle took us to dinner at this place called Le Quai Restaurant and Lounge, whose claim to fame (other than fusion cuisine) is that the entire restaurant is made of ancient wood, transported piece by piece from the south of China, and does not have a single nail in its construction. I saw lots of bolts though.

Le Quai is beside a small lake and beside the Beijing Workers Stadium, which is a 72,000-seat capacity multipurpose stadium, although probably mostly used for football/soccer (in case a visitor would miss it, there are two twenty-foot high footballs at the entrance). Even the cab driver understood the word "football" when we were conversing about it in English.

Some photos I took inside of Le Quai:







There was a very interesting bit of mecha-like modern sculpture inside the restaurant.



I also took a picture of some floodlit structure outside, across the small lake. The water was almost unreal, mirror-smooth in the early evening.

Another win for Canon! gotta love that low-light performance. I didn't have a tripod, so I just propped the IXUS 700 on the railing (and hoped it wouldn't drop into the lake below) and squeezed off the shot. Seems to have worked pretty well.

Beijing Day II

We started our training at the Beijing Oracle Advanced Research and Development Center (OARDC) today. Oracle has two offices in Beijing, one in the central business district, and one in Beijing's "Silicon Valley" or special IT zone. According to my boss, the Beijing city government either gave away the land, or sold it at a giveaway price, in order to lure in the IT companies.

Lenovo's huge corporate headquarters are in the IT zone, as well as PeopleSoft (they also have a huge compound) and the rather unprepossessing office of OARDC.

There are some other rather amazing-looking structures in the Zepp IT park, such as this building which looks very much like a glass Mon Calamari Star Cruiser. Or perhaps a space caterpillar, as Sam Drake described it:

And this structure, which looks like a giant flying saucer with a hole in the middle.

There is one other building in the IT park which caught my attention though:

That's the National Application Software Testing Labs and the Beijing Software Testing and QA Center.

The Philippine government could take some tips from these guys..

And finally, a poster I saw in the lobby of the OARDC. I think it was something about car safety. But I found it funny because of the label on the car on the picture: "Chery QQ EURONCAP." I had no idea Chery actually took the trouble to have their contraption tested. It didn't seem to fare too well, judging from the photo on the poster:

Somehow I found this poster hilarious.

On another note, Sam Drake actually had a brilliant theory as to why the Chinese don't really buy Toyota or Honda cars. I'd always thought it was because VW has been here for twenty years. But his idea is interesting and makes more sense:

The Chinese hate the Japanese.

I have a minor "improvement" to that theory - the Chinese like the Germans, because the Germans were the ones who assisted them in improving their military in the wake of the wars between the Chinese and the French in the late 1880's.

Or maybe Toyota and Honda aren't too strong here. I saw a number of Nissan Versa's driving around. Although they weren't called Versa. A bunch of Teana's, one or two Fit's. What I found noteworthy is that the Chinese love the Mazda6. It's probably the second most popular midsized car after the Volkswagen Passat.

Also saw a Premacy and a Chevrolet Aveo sedan. But this one had a sunroof.

BMW Clever Concept

Totally off topic for this blog, but I needed to host this photo somewhere. It's the BMW Clever Concept, a three-wheeled personal mobility vehicle.

Google Earth and Me

I decided to download Google Earth so I could have some idea of the distances in getting around Beijing. The first time I downloaded it, the EXE got cut off around 8MB; actually I didn't realize the download was corrupted until I ran it a few times and nothing happened. It turned out the file was truncated.

Second download was fine.

Actually I've noticed that there is a Great Firewall of China. Many (cough) anatomically correct sites are silently blocked. But not all. Perhaps 30% actually get through in my brief and none-too-comprehensive test (I don't want Big Brother to come after me).

I had a suspicion that Google Earth got cut off because Big Brother doesn't like the patriotic masses to be peeking at sensitive areas like nuclear reactors or something. But the second time, I managed to download it successfully. Either Big Brother can't watch everyone all the time, or it was just a network glitch.

But you're not paranoid if they're really after you.

Here's the route from the airport to the hotel: according to Google Earth it's 22 kilometers.

Look at the size of those roads! the Chinese have really done amazing feats of civil engineering. Even from 20,000 feet you can see these long ruler-straight highways and canals cutting across the steppe.

And the route from the hotel to the Forbidden City (which I thought was walking distance but it's actually 8 kilometers):

And finally, a close-up view of the Crowne Plaza Park View (circled in yellow in the lower-middle of the image) with the Olympic Stadium at the upper-right:

Here's a photo of the large cloverleaf at 7 o'clock from the Crowne Plaza, from my hotel window:

The view is to the southwest, or towards 7 o'clock in the last Google Earth image.

The Great Eat Forward

The PAL flight arrived at a little after 12:00 noon, and with the travel time from the airport, unpacking my stuff, and so forth I neglected to have lunch.

Around 4:00 p.m. I decided to venture downstairs to look for a meal, visions of dumplings dancing in my head. Unfortunately, the "Cafe Asia" buffet starts at 5:30 p.m. and I was already quite hungry, so I decided to opt for the ala carte menu.

Interesting to note that, just like back in Manila, the people here all talk to me in Chinese and stare blankly when I reply in English. But, at least here inside the hotel, everyone understands even a bit of English. It's not quite Manila-level, but it's getting there. Filipinos should get off their complacent asses if they think they can maintain their call-center edge in the English language just sitting around.

Anyway, to my immense surprise, there were no dumplings on the ala carte menu. There was no dimsum cart either; I asked the server if there was a dimsum cart, but I think her English wasn't that good so I gave up on it. Instead I decided to order the fettucini pasta. Mistake #1: I didn't read the fine print. I should've specified alfredo sauce. But since I did not, they gave me this bowl of a monstrosity with a thin drizzling of pesto and olive oil.

I say monstrosity because their fettucini was almost an inch wide. When I was a small kid there was this noodle called "miki" which was almost an inch wide and served with lots of soup and a tiny bit of chicken. Remove soup and chicken, replace with olive oil and pesto, voila. Fettucini pasta ala Crowne Plaza Park View.

RMB 68 at that, which is PHP 435 which is a decent price, considering this hotel is swankier than Shangri-La Makati back in Manila (look at all the A6's parked outside!)

Luckily I did well with the chowder soup which had bits of salmon, mussels, and squid.

The can of Pepsi (no Coke products) was a dyspeptic RMB 32 which is outrageous.

Unsatisfied with the four-hundred peso "miki," I decided to order another dish, which was some spicy beef noodle dish. Also RMB 68. When it arrived, my initial thought was, this is a good deal! the bowl was monstrous, the meal was probably good for two or even three. Unfortunately, it tasted quite forgettable. North Park's NS9 and even Luk Yuen's N45 are both better for a third the price. So I busied myself consuming all the beef.

The server had originally been concerned because I didn't like the fettucini, and now became even more concerned when she saw I wasn't eating the noodles. In fact she twice went to my table to ask me if anything was wrong and if she could help. This was the same person whom I'd given up on describing the dimsum cart, so with my limited communication capabilities, I said that there was nothing wrong, got my bill, and escaped.

One thing I can say, my RMB 236 (total, with service charge) adventure left me with a full stomach. I guess that will have to do.

One theory I have is that most of the food which we Filipinos consider as "Chinese food" actually comes from the south of China, and specifically the coastal cities. Things like lumpiang Shanghai and pancit Canton and lechon Macau all come from southern, coastal cities, which have lots in common with the Philippines like lots of seafood, balmy weather, Chinese people.. the inhabitants of Beijing, with their cold winters, probably don't have quite the same tastes as their southern brethren.

It's funny but from the plane, the surrounding terrain is so flat, with ruler-straight highways all across it. You can almost imagine Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes thundering across this flat plain and throwing out the Ming emperors.

I took some pictures of the weird fettucine and the monster bowl of beef, but not with my camera because the nouveau riche all around me might have taken exception, so I used my Samsung camera phone. Problem is, I just discovered that this Toshiba notebook doesn't have Bluetooth. So no pictures.

Beijing

I just arrived here at Crowne Plaza Park View Wuzhou in Beijing. The internet access is expensive! RMB 3 per minute (that's about 20 pesos per minute) or RMB 120 for an entire day. And I thought it was free.

The hotel's web site is a bit misleading, it mentioned that there is wireless connectivity in all public areas. Again, I thought, free. Turns out you have to buy a prepaid card. Very much like Airborne Access. I don't know how much it costs though.

The picture here is the view out of my 11th-floor window. It is a bit jarring to see that smokestack right next to those apartment towers. I saw a power plant from the plane, in the outskirts of the city. The terrain is very flat, the kind that Genghis Khan would love, and the government has put power plants all over the place.

There's so much Engrish to amuse oneself with. One I particularly liked (from Schneider Electric): "we transform electricity into innovative energy." Or something like that.

On a positive note, the (expensive) Internet access is blazingly fast:



The airport is large, sprawling, and not shiny. On arrival the weather was sunny, 5 degrees Centigrade which I thought was tolerable. It's not, my fingers nearly froze off . I need to buy some gloves, somewhere.

More funny Engrish: there is a health declaration form to fill out, mostly biased toward weeding out those who admit to having Bird Flu. Here's part of that form:

Note item #3, where you are supposed to check off your Bird Flu-like symptoms. I was really amused by item "Snivel." It's the first time I've seen the word used in this context, but a quick check with Dictionary.com confirms it: what we call "uhugin" in Filipino, is what sniveling is.

There are a ton of ATM's at the airport but not many of them take American Express cash cards. Citibank is all over the place though. You won't have any trouble getting money if you're with Citibank. The ATM's only want to dispense RMB 100 bills (roughly 640 pesos each, comparable to a "Ninoy!")

The airport personnel can speak a few words of English, but as for the taxi drivers, no luck there. Good thing I painstakingly wrote down the address of the hotel (in Chinese characters). I should've printed it out, but I was at Smart till late Friday and didn't get a chance to get at a printer.

I just copied the address off a JPEG on the web. I wonder if the taxi driver was thinking "wow, kindergarten script!" or something.

I saw a lot of smoke-belching Chery QQ's. Almost all the taxis are Hyundai Elantras. Hyundai seems to have cornered the taxi business although there are a few decrepit Citroens.

The taxi ride cost RMB 63 on the meter, and I got exactly RMB 27 back as change for my "Ninoy" alike. I understand that the toll on the airport expressway is RMB 10 so it's just right.

I was thinking of giving the poor taxi driver a modest gratuity since as I understand it, although Beijing is more prosperous than Manila and the average IT professional here earns more than one back in Manila, the working class still are getting by on less than $1 a day. Translation, minimum wage here is worse than Manila.

Problem is there were people swarming all over the taxi when it stopped in front of the hotel and I didn't want to look suspicious. Call it paranoia, but there are literally soldiers everywhere. In front of Crowne Plaza Park View alone I counted half a dozen Peoples' Liberation Army soldiers in their bright-red ribbon-covered uniforms.

On the one hand it is confidence-inspiring (am sure it takes a huge bite out of crime) but on the other hand the soldiers' presence discourages even remotely odd behavior, like taking pictures outside. Not to mention the Congress of the Peoples' Deputies is currently ongoing (till the 17th of March). I don't speak the language and it would not be fun to get into trouble because of miscommunication.

The private car market seems to have been cornered by Volkswagen. There are a ton of Boras and Passats. Also a lot of Audi A6's, vastly outnumbering the Volvos and BMW's. Honda and Toyota are not the dominant presence they are in the Philippines. I only saw a handful of Camrys, one Vios, and a Honda City.

The Philippines Chevy Lumina is sold here as a sort of Buick. Ditto for the Chevy Optra wagon.

The Peugeot and Ford dealerships are literally side by side. I saw one Focus hatch with twin exhausts. And a Daihatsu Terios although it wasn't labeled Daihatsu. And an excessively blinged Hyundai Sante Fe.

More TimesTen/JDBC Comparisons

After a whole week's testing at our telco client, we've managed to squeeze 30,000 transactions per second out of the four-way, SMT-enabled 1.6GHz POWER5+ machine. This is with six (6) threads running.

Maximum single-thread performance is about 11,000 transactions per second, as I've already reported.

I've been able to run some new tests on FC6 on my Tecra M6, which is a dual-core machine. Same code, I am getting around 16,000 transactions per second with a single thread. With two threads, 18,000 to 19,000 only, and with three, performance already is degraded. It seems that the memory subsystem of the Centrino is simply overwhelmed even with a single 1.83GHz core, because with two threads the CPU utilization is only 80% or so.

Now if only I had access to a four-way 2.8GHz Opteron like those HP DL585's we were using the other week.. now that would be an interesting comparison.

Fun and Profit with the Intel IPW-3945ABG

Tried configuring the wireless interface on my Toshiba Tecra M6. First had to get the Intel Pro Wireless drivers from Intel's web site, by way of the SourceForge link.

Discovered that Fedora Core 6 already has NetworkManager and the WPA Supplicant.

Build the kernel module, manually install it and the regulatory daemon; discover that ATRPM and Livna both have RPM's for all this gimcrackery, but too late for that.

Configure the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf with WPA and the appropriate passphrase. NetworkManager doesn't show anything on-screen, I have no idea what it's doing. So I decide to run the WPA supplicant manually:

[root@tifa log]# /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
Trying to associate with 00:0f:66:bf:d2:31 (SSID='linksys' freq=0 MHz)
CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
Authentication with 00:00:00:00:00:00 timed out.
Trying to associate with 00:0f:66:bf:d2:31 (SSID='linksys' freq=0 MHz)
Associated with 00:0f:66:bf:d2:31
WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:0f:66:bf:d2:31 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 00:0f:66:bf:d2:31 completed (auth)

Unfortunately, it does not work. The wireless link comes up, but when I disable the wired Ethernet (to shift the default route to the wireless link) everything becomes unreachable. So much for Linux.

If a Red Hat Certified Engineer (ID number 808002301806938, admittedly no longer current) cannot get Intel Wireless working in an hour on a Red Hat distribution, then something is terribly wrong.

To be perfectly honest, I've been using Windows XP a lot these past three months. Comes with the job, really. Most of my employer's tools are poorly-supported on Linux. My only reason for having Linux on my notebook is so that I can run or demo my employer's products. But for sheer convenience, Windows XP is pretty comfortable, and the drivers for wireless work without any trouble.

And that, I guess, is what's going wrong with Linux on the desktop. I mean, I already am the proverbial rocket scientist, not the clueless granny, and yet configuring wireless is such a pain.