Browsing the iTunes App Store, I was really surprised to see how many apps there are that are solely dedicated to finding the nearest cup of Tim Horton’s coffee in Canada. Out of curiosity, I downloaded one free app, TimmyMe, and got the above results. I clicked on the first one expecting a long – but walkable! – 7697 km, but it turns out it was actually twice as long as first reported!

Here are the directions to the closest Tim Hortons from Shanghai’s Luwan district. Which for some reason happens to be in Whitehorse… :

Almost 16,000 km and 37 days driving, a lot of which is underwater! Also, I’m not the best with directions… but from China, I would’ve gone east instead of west.

I’m not too confident about that ’shortcut’ west of BC either! Let’s hope and assume this app works better in Canada…

“…. and don’t get me started on fire extinguishers!”

Not 小广告, but close.

This blast from the past is “Don Lapre”, a money making genius who hosted a late-night infomercial in the early 90s.

In “Making Money Secrets”, he went on and on about how he became rich by putting tiny classified ads in newspapers. According to Don, the secret was that if you could put one tiny classified ad in one newspaper, and that ad made only $30 – $40 profit in a week… and THEN you put that same tiny classified ad in newspapers all over the country… you would make a LOT of money!! Don himself claims to have made $50,000 dollars a week out of his one bedroom apartment.

Of course, Don never mentioned what these tiny classified ads that would magically generate $30 – $40 a week worth of revenue out of nothing would be… that you would find out by buying his “Making Money” package for only $39.95! But who cares! With just one tiny classified ad, you’d make that back in a week!

I always wondered why he felt the need to repeat tiny classified ads every minute or so. Just imagine the money you could make with LARGE classified ads…

You can’t make this stuff up. According to the Wall Street Journal and Xinhua, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIRC) is offering rewards of up to 10,000 RMB (or almost $1500 USD) to people who stumble across pornography on the Internet and report it to the police.

Are you kidding me? 10,000 RMB for finding and reporting a porn site? For that price, I’ll turn chungkingmansions.com into a porn site and report myself!

How I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this concept was being brainstormed:

Boss: Alright gentlemen, Contra is really popular, so let’s come up with a two-player game with two gun-toting Contra-like guys.

Executive 1: PERFECT! And Satan… no, wait… a satanic goat… is the last boss!

It’s no secret that Obama is pretty popular in China. So popular in fact, that several t-shirt vendors and shops in Beijing have been selling what has to be one of the most bizarre souvenirs to catch on in a while: “Oba Mao” t-shirts, bags, etc. which display President Obama’s likeness dressed in a Red Guard uniform, staring in a Chairman Mao-like pose.

I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean exactly, but apparently they’ve been selling like crazy.

Not while Obama visits China later this month though. Beijing Municipal Government officials have warned shops to stop selling the merchandise while Obama visits (although they can resume after he’s left.)

Who says China is not taking a hard stance on smoking? By 2012, if you’re in a hospital in Sichuan, you’ll have to smoke outside.

If there is one thing that is ubiquitous to Shanghai, it’s people walking around in their pajamas. At any time of day or night, it’s not uncommon to see people out and about grocery shopping, walking their dog, playing mahjong, or just sitting around and gossiping while in their pajamas.

Nobody seems really sure how this pajama fad started in Shanghai, but one theory is that it started back in the 1930s or so when having an extra set of clothes to use as sleepwear meant that you were wealthy. The next logical step was to parade around in these PJs to let all your neighbours know that you could afford the good life.

Another theory is that being in your pajamas all day suggests that you’re so well off that you don’t need to work and can afford to live a life of leisure. You know, like Hugh Hefner.

I’ve also heard some other more practical reasons:

• Pajamas are cooler and more comfortable during Shanghai’s extreme heat (I don’t buy it – I see people in pajamas all year.)
• A lot of older Shanghai residential buildings have/had communal toilets, so people became used to seeing their neighbours in pajamas. Eventually the acceptable PJ-comfort zone just extended to the rest of the city. (Maybe, but I don’t buy it. Shanghainese are very class conscious. Wearing pajamas out in they city like this would be like wearing a sign that says you are not rich.)
• Shanghainese (and Asians in general) don’t use dryers. On laundry day, people just stay in their pajamas because they’re waiting for their clothes to dry (If so, why is this pajama phenomenon limited to Shanghai?)

Whatever the origin, Shanghainese people have been happily walking around their neighbourhoods in their pajamas for decades whenever they feel like it.

That is, unless Haibo and some Shanghai World Expo 2010 fascists have anything to say about it. Some people seem to think that having a bunch of citizens walking around in their pajamas is uncivilized, makes the city look bad, and may give foreign visitors a bad impression.

What the hell? Let people wear whatever the hell they want. To quote one Shanghainese man’s response to the anti-pajama crowd:

‘My pajamas were bought abroad and they are much better and more expensive than your clothes’.”

I’m not sure what the deal is, but lately I’ve been noticing this fad in China (and Japan too) of western fast food chains offering burgers with multiple patties. Since a lot of Asians don’t particular like hamburgers all that much, consider western fast food as more of a trendy snack item than a meal, and generally prefer small, cutesy things, I’m wondering why massive hamburgers would be big sellers here.

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I think they meant Mango, but I love dried mango so much that I forgive them.