For those of you interested… Wednesday, August 23 - Late evening flight to Lombok, via Singapore Monday, August 28 - Fly back to Singapore Wednesday, August 30 - Evening flight back to Beijing Thursday, August 31 - Early Morning arrive in Beijing Sunday, September 3 - Morning flight to Detroit, via Narita and LAX Wednesday, September 13 - Early flight to Austin, TX Wednesday, September 20 - Morning flight to Portland, OR Saturday, September 23 - Afternoon flight back to Beijing, via Narita I’ll try to post during my trips.

I don’t know if I told many people, but you know I bought a new camera in April of this year. Well, took it on holiday first week of May. Then in Beijing, dropped the dang thing in a restaurant, the LCD screen hit the corder of the table leg! So, I (FINALLY) attempted to bring it to the Canon Repair shop today, at the Kerry Centre office tower. Much to my surprise, they MOVED!

Here is the video I took. Sound really sucks.

Melanie and I went to the Black Eyed Peas concert last night. It was held in the Beijing Exhibition Theater, way the f on the west side of the city. The venue only holds between 2 and 3 thousand people, so I am not sure how thye made money on it. The show lasted about 1.5 hours, which is a bit short, but decent. More pictures are here.

I started using Amazon S3 for my laptop backup purposes. I decided on using JungleDisk as they didn’t have any additional fees (i sign up directly with Amazon and pay Amazon directly). So far, I have only uploaded some of my personal files (no media), financial stuff, etc. Speeds from China seem o.k. I definitely like how Amazon has everything encrypted. Hopes for JungleDisk I would like to see a Web interface to my files.

Lombok?! Where’s that? Lombok is an island due East of Bali, in Indonesia. It is considered the “un-spoiled Bali” due to its similar attributes to Bali, yet considerably a lower level of tourists. Melanie and I have booked airfare on Singapore Airlines, and their regional carrier Silk Air. (See Silk Air’s info on Lombok). We are now looking into options for lodging. Will leave Beijing late evening, Wednesday, August 23, and return to Beijing early monring, Thursday, August 31.