I went to the Fund raising event today, organised by GetActive and several other organisations (see post in Dimsum).

Me and a few other members from Dimsum joined the volunteering team and took actions to help raising funds for the Sichuan Earthquake. Only in about an hour and half, five of us raised about £150. People were very active and most of them were Chinatown residents and Chinese students. One old man brought his cheque book and wanted to donate £70 on behalf of his family. I was moved but felt very happy to see people’s active responds.

A concert-like event was held in the middle of China. Singers and committees from Chinatown were gathering together to encourage people to donate for the earthquake. They were singing in Cantonese and give speeches to audiences and people passing by. But to those who don’t know what’s going on and can’t understand Cantonese, eg. tourists, it might be a bit like a party.

While we were walking toward Leicester Square with our donation box, we saw a Buddhist group were holding a celebration for Buddha’s Birthday, which was the same day when the earthquake happened. I talked to one of the staffs there, she told me they also encouraged their community and audiences to give donation. In China, they even sent their own team to Sichuan with donated funds and human resources to help.

I think there will be candle memorial gathering today at 8PM in Chinatown. I couldn’t make it there but if there are anything worth to share, I will put them here.

Some of the photos I took today are uploaded to my Flickr, you can have a look there.

A lot of things happened this week. I was so busy that didn’t have time to sit down and write something. Shower is the first thing I did after got back home every day, and the next thing is going to bed. Finally it’s Friday, I can quietly sit down and blog now.

The Earthquake

Monday morning I started at 7am. As soon as I logged in, a friend sent me an IB (Bloomberg Instant Message) saying that there was an earthquake in Sichuan, magnitude 7.8! I was shocked immediately and quickly pulled up top news in Bloomberg. It’s there! Then I went to Sina and saw a brief news headline - Magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Sichuan province at 2:28PM, with a very brief content. That’s about 30 minutes after the earthquake occurred. Approximately 10 minutes later, a special report page was up in Sina, with photos and more detailed reports on what’s happening there. I called my mum immediately. She was at home safely, but didn’t know what happened until I told her. She turned on TV straight away but nothing was up yet.

After about an hour, news saying that Premier Wen Jiabao is flying to Sichuan show up. I can start to feel how serious the situation could be. Then 15 minutes later, he made a speech on the plane to the disaster zone and broadcasted in national TV. This is the probably the first time in China to have such immediate news, and a timely direct speech from the premier.

Hours after the news broke out, I was able to get more information as more news reporters reached there. But sadly, the number of death started to increase as time goes by.

It’s a challenging year for China

From the worst snow storm in past 50 years that hit the country at the beginning of this lunar new year, to the protest in Tibet and Olympics Torch relay, I feel China has been facing challenges one after another. But this one, the price is just too high!

However, one thing makes me feel encouraging is the quick reaction from the Chinese government. It seems that they are giving a clear signal to the Chinese and international citizen that they are changing. Compare to what happen in 2003 with the SARS outbreak, I can know more information about what’s happening there now. Many blogs and sites that were blocked before the earthquake are now unblocked. I’m not sure if this is temporary, but at least we can see the difference.

I was contacted by the BBC yesterday for a short interview on how I got updates on the earthquake from the Internet, you can see it here. It’s a hot topics in blogsphere that twitter became the first source to ‘report’ the earthquake. Although I didn’t get it from twitter’s updates, the Internet is still my main source of getting first hand information of what’s going in China, and the world. It might be easy to take it as granted that information on the Internet is freely available after living in the UK for several years. However every time I went back home in China, the frequent disconnection of my daily visited sites still reminded me there is a wall out there.

Things are changing in China now, good or bad, it’s changing, dramatically.

Help the victims

I sincerely feel very sorry for the victims who died or lost their families in the earthquake. I do hope the rescue team can reduce the number of death to minimum. Meanwhile, I urge whoever would like to help the victims can contribute to the China Appeal. Your contribution will make a difference! There will be fund raising event in Chinatown this Sunday (18th May), following a candle mourning which is still being organising on some Internet forum.

Thanks to my friends who contacted me after knowing the earthquake. My families and relatives are all safe in Southern China, where isn’t affected by the earthquake. But let’s pray for the victims and hope the survivals will be rescued soon!

Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province, a city that I don’t like to go unless I really had to because its overwhelmed population and simply just too big for me. Well, I’ve found some photos of what it looks like when the Olympics Torch relay arrived.

(via bemike)

It’s scary in a way, but also reflecting how enthusiastic that people are welcoming the torch even though most of them can hardly see it that day.

For more people, click here or view the slideshow.

There aren’t many business in the UK provide good customer support, not to mention to an excellent level. But there is one that is worth writing a blog post to give some compliments - Serenata Flower.

My first purchase was a few months ago, which was also my first time to buy flowers online. I called up their customer support number on a late Sunday afternoon, that’s a normal technique I would use before purchase anything from a website. A guy answered my call straight away, without any ‘press 1, press 2…’. After I confirmed what I want, order placed. The next morning flower was sent. I also received updates to my mobile all the way through the delivery process. It was amazing!

Last week I made my second purchase, a bunch of Rose to cheer Jenn up from the revision pressure. Again, they didn’t disappoint me. What impressed me again was when I made a mistake on my message card and contact them via email for correction, I got a reply within 4 minutes! That, was just amazing! Thumb up to them!

After more 6 months working in a customer support department and engaging with client on daily basis, I realised how important a great customer support is to any business. It’s all about credibility. What you promised your customers, what you gave, and how far you can exceed their expectation.

BT and Orange, learn from Serenata Flower!