About two month ago I met two of Dimsum’s team members, Luke and Hui, in a friend’s networking dinner. After having a little bit chat with them about what they do, I decided to sign up for their newsletter.

One month later, I attended one of their events at Asian House in Cavendish Street. With a collection of Modern Chinese Art “Beginnings”, great performance from the Eclipse String Quartet and also meeting with a bunch of interesting people, I guess all the guests had an enjoyable night as I did. I had a chat with Luke at the end of the event. I told him that they did a great job organising the event and I wondered how many people were working on it. ‘Just a couple of us’, he said. ‘If you are interested, come and joined’.

Two days later, I was in the meeting with the Dimsum team and introducing myself as a new member.

If you want to know what Dimsum is all about, read this page. To be honest, I’m still exploring the site and forum to try to know more the site and it’s ‘culture’. If you are in London, signing up for the newsletter is a good way to get yourself involved with some decent events and networking opportunities. It’s gradually taking up more of my free time, but it’s always interesting to work with interesting people on interesting things.

Got this picture a few days ago on my way back home. It’s a sticker at the back of the seat in front of me. I didn’t know what it was, but the first impression came into my mind after I saw it was a Chinese character - 粪 . You wonder what that means? Copy and check it out on Google.

I just found out it’s actually the logo of a clothes and bags brand - Crumpler . Hmmmm….two things I’m sure! 1) the logo designer is definitely not Chinese, nor can read Chinese characters. 2) they don’t have any intension to enter Chinese market. But if they do, maybe not with that logo.

Number One:

James just came back from his summer trip in China. When I asked him how long does it take from Qingdao to Beijing, he said ‘it only takes five hours’ by train’. ‘That’s quite a long way’, I replied.

Then we both realised he got used to the distance in Chinese scale, and I got used to the English one.

My train to London on Saturday is 3 hours, that’s a cross country journey!

Number Two:

We went to a restaurant called ‘No. 1′ in Newcastle China Town to have hot pot again for My friend’s birthday tonight. When I took him there a few months ago, he was like discovering a new continent and taking his friends there to try out. They love it too.

It’s funny when you walk into that restaurant. They have two sections - one for hot pot buffet and the other for the normal English Chinese buffet. Although there is no sign saying that hot pot is for Chinese customers and the other is for British, you can hardly see any British customers in the hot pot section. The same rule apply to the other one - few Chinese customers.

Tonight we sat on a table next to the counter. While a ladies was waiting for paying the bills, she looked at our table (the only one has both British and Chinese in hot pot section) and saw how we cooked our food. I didn’t hear the whole conversation between she and her friends, but I can’t help to catch one line, ‘I can’t be bother to do all these’. That remind me a scene in ‘Lost in Translation’, when they commenting a syabu-syabu (’hot pot’ in Japanese) restaurant, the guys said ‘what kind of restaurant was that, you need to cook your own food’.

The world is just so different!

My new laptop came with Windows Vista Home edition. But surprisingly it hasn’t been able to support Simplified Chinese, yet!

If you look at the “Local Language Program” in Microsoft website, Chinese (both simplified and traditional) is not in the list. Same in the language support centre, Simplified Chinese is not supportive in the LIP (Language Interface Package) yet.

I can still read and write in Chinese in Word and on the web. However some Chinese software cannot display the language properly. Hope Microsoft can update the language pack ASAP!

==== Update (16/08/2007) ====

It’s good to have some programmer friends like elfoak, my problem solved.

try the following:
Start > Control Pane > Clock, Language, and Region > Regional and Language Options > Administrative > Change system locale > Chinese(PRC)