Last day in North Bay and it’s been a long and cold 8 weeks. Heading to Toronto tomorrow on the train and then off to London on Sunday.

The Japanese thumb sucking monkey doll Monchhichi is very popular in Asia. There are a few shops on Changle Road 长乐路 in Shanghai that have tons of them dressed in everything from military garb to Asian folklore and pop-culture. We picked up this lucky money cat one in a shop at Cloud 9 across from Zhongshan Park 中山公园.

On that note, I always thought money or “beckoning” cats came from China, but it turns out they are Japanese in origin. They are supposed to be placed in your ‘wealth area’ (e.g. next to cash register or entrance of your shop) and they wave their arms in a ‘come here’ gesture (that is often mistaken in the West for a ‘goodbye’ or ‘shoo’ gesture). There are two versions: the one with the cat waving its left paw is supposed to attract customers while the one waving its right is supposed to attract wealth.

The money cat is cute and all, but I think if you want real cash you’re better off going with Chan Chu 蟾蜍 the three-legged lucky money toad!

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I’m not sure if it was caused by the not so bad -16°C weather, but a blackout today caused much of North Bay’s downtown area to be without electricity for a couple of hours.

Not here though! Who needs Ontario Hydro when you have the power of a late ’90s sedan, a DC to AC converter, and an extension cord through your window? While it wasn’t enough to power the furnace without cutting out, it worked fine for everything else. Power is back on now, but unfortunately the internet is still down. Luckily my neighbours linksys and default aren’t having this problem.

Someone has received a crash course in Arnie. She reluctantly watched classics such as Commando, Total Recall, Terminator (first one), Running Man, and Predator. Of minor note is Kindergarten Cop which was abandoned at the halfway mark because it really is that bad.

Best one liners:

After killing bad guy with a drill:
“Screw you!”

After impaling villain with hot water pipe with air blowing out:
“Let off some steam, Bennett!”

After killing man sitting next to him on plane:
“Don’t disturb my friend, he’s dead tired.”

And my personal favourite:

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Some pics from Moganshan, a mountain about 200 km from Shanghai. Moganshan the village was built in the late 1800s as a summer retreat for the foreigner elite who lived in Shanghai and Hangzhou at the time. After the Communists booted the imperialist dogs out in 1949, it was handed over to local work units. Today, it’s again used as a retreat from city life and the foreign-built villas have been converted to inns.

Driving up the mountain to the village was insane. The roads going up have only a single narrow lane, and the taxi we were in was speeding like crazy and the driver constant honked his horn as a warning to potential oncoming traffic. I guess this is business as usual, but it scared the hell out of me!

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In June we visited Qingdao – home of Tsingtao beer – on China’s eastern coast in Shandong province. Qingdao is very different from anywhere else I’ve been in China. It’s a seaside city that – despite having a population of 7.5 million people – is so clean, relaxing, and quiet I almost forgot I was in China. The food is cheap, the people are very friendly, and the city has a very visible beer culture that is everywhere! Beer is sold in plastic bags on the street, people seem to be drinking beer at every meal, and where in other cities you’d see people drinking tea in little shops, in Qingdao it’s beer. We drank at least a couple of pitchers with every meal from breakfast to dinner during our time there and it was great. 干杯 !

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Some pics from Shanghai.

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Pics from last year’s trip to Thailand.

Instructions are simple. Arrow keys left and right to move your tetronimo left and right. Up and Space to rotate your tetronimo. Down to move the tetronimo down. As I said, simple.

The catch, though, is that the game looks at your playing field and determines which piece you will probably want most and then …. denies it to you.

If you’ve ever played Mega Man 2 on the original NES, this should make you say WTF. This guy uses a hacked ROM to beat all of the level bosses simultaneously. Even more impressive is that he didn’t use emulator save states, slowdown, or a single energy tank. qzecwx, the 12-year old in me salutes you.