Twitter

Somewhere on this page, you will find I have a Twitter gadget or applet. After getting an email saying someone was following me on Twitter, and seeing that Reason Magazine was on Twitter, I decided to play with the application. I had registered with Twitter a long time ago but hadn't bothered to use it till yesterday. Looking for followers and contacts, I went through my address book on Gmail. I took the lazy man's way and decided to sent an email about Twitter to everyone in my address book including Alan Sullivan of Seablogger. Check the link and you will see he made a blog entry about it. It was inadvertent of course but I did inspire an entry on my favorite blog. Here is my Twitter profile if you are interested.

You are well within your rights to not have anything to do with Facebook and Twitter. I find them useful but not addictive. I have been able to re-establish contact with people who I knew twenty and twenty-five years back. I do find Facebook's infinite number of applications to be annoying. On the Internet, I prefer simple. That is why, I am addicted to blogging and blogs. So much more to be garnered from reading a well-written blog than taking a "what kind of vegetable are you in bed?" quiz on Facebook.


I bought Yankee Doodle Dandy on DVD at the bin, I am always raving about, in the Nanchang Market. I had hesitated buying it before because I don't care for James Cagney. But a rave review on the Internet about the film finally prompted me to buy it. I also bought the Good Earth, Stage Door with Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn, John Huston's Beat the Devil, and a Shirley Temple movie (maybe Tony will like it).


The reaction among the students to Obama's election has generally been favourable. They find my poo-pooing of him curious. I have warned the students about his connection with Unions who believe cheap Chinese labour is stealing American jobs. I also told a student today about a provision in the Stimulus package bill to keep only American workers stimulated. I have the students wondering now if it is a good idea for their government to continue to purchase American bonds - why finance a recovery that wants to shut Chinese workers out?


On a crowded Chinese buses, I often see people sneak onto the bus using the back door where the driver can't see them or can't be bothered to stop them. This morning, I saw three people try to get on the bus this way. The problem for them was that the back door closed so that their arms were caught. The driver had to open the door to let one person in but then quickly closed the door so that the second person of the three had his arm locked in the door. And so the driver had to open the door again. The bus engine then shut off. I couldn't understand what was spoken but the three men did have to push their way to the front of the bus to pay their fare unlike the many I have seen who don't.