Shanghai Real Estate

When you talk about Shanghai these days, you cannot avoid mentioning how hot the real estate market is there. I know because that is always part of the conversation with my parents these days. Of course given the fact they currently own 4 flats (condos) in old and new complexes, they're always watching and monitoring the ups and downs. Well, it seems to be mostly up's in the recent years. I even got dragged into their latest acquisition by pitching in 1/3 of the house price with my own line if equity on my home in LA. The reasoning are two folds. 1. The real estate there is booming more than any where else in the world right now; 2. the potential untagging of RMB to USD means RMB will appreciate. So by all means, leaving your money/equity sitting in USD is not as good as transferring them to China to buy real estate.

The latest situation on new housing development in Shanghai is 10 buyers making offers to 1 unit of condo for sale. They use the lottery # drawing to pick who out of the potential buyers get to bid on the unit since the new housing from developers have fixed prices. Some of these units get resold for higher prices even before the unit has completed construction. It's as if they are a form of commodity and not for living or renting....

Music is for the lonely

Music is for the lonely, I say. Because that's when you can truly appreciate the moods the writer and singer put into it. No distraction and play in full blast so you can hear the singer's each breath. Let the rythem take you and digest the lyric as if you're singing it.
Yes, it's been a while since I have been able to do this on my own. This was an activity I knew well as a lonely teenager, before boyfriends and before kids.... and without peer pressure of what type of music it is "cool" to like and dislike. So bring on the old Chinese folk songs and I would sway to them as I did as a little girl.

Code 46

Just watched "Code 46" last night. It is perhaps the most current movie that puts the city of Shanghai on high display as its futuristic city back drop. For those of you who have not had the chance to visit Shanghai in recent years, watch this movie. Aside from the city, Tim Robbins really surprised me with his hopelessly romantic role of a character. Never saw him as the type to fall in love with. I still think of him mostly as the wrongly accused in Shawshank or the goofy hula hoop inventor. I guess I really like this new master piece of his. Even though the movie didn't get too much shelf space at the local Blockbuster's. It's got just the right mix of sci-fi and romance. The sex scenes were very intimate yet charged with electricity. But it seemed as if the director intentionally only focused in on Samantha Morton, the leading lady of the story and leaving audience to imagine Tim's part... :-
The vision of such a social cast system as the consequence of the massive abuse of in-vitro fertilization, gene splitting and cloning technologies of the human race as our future is also very refreshing and intriguing. I can't deny there is definitely cause to believe that's exactly where we're headed from the way things are today... Afterall, just only today, I was refused from donating blood because I traveled from Shanghai to Hangzhou by train rather than by plane. I was exposed to potential uncontrolled regions of China's country side. Makes you think doesn't it. Piling on the evidence, read this article from NPR's Tech Nation program host, Dr. Gunn.

DNA, the Blueprint of Human Potential

OK, I'm officially scared. If you haven't noticed, I will tell you. Recently I was curious enough to try out Google's AdSense on my blog site. If you scroll down this blog page, you'll find a typical Ad tower panel on the left of the page. This is powered by Google AdSense engine which searches for key words on my blog site and posts the relevant sponsors' ads that are of potential interest to the readers of my blog site. I, myself would be their target no doubt.
I was really just curious and want to see how good Google's search engine and matching capability can be.... Well I asked for it and now I get it.

Check out this excerpt from this link:
Our race was not only affected by genetic tampering and experimentation but was also almost totally decimated by distortions in the planetary grids. You see, the Earth is a living organism as well and brings in energy from Source just like any living organism or planetary structure. We as humans living on the Earth, can only bring into our bodies the frequencies that Earth can bring in from Source. If the Earth's grids are damaged, then every life form living on Earth will have a damaged DNA template. Planetary grid distortions of the 3470 BC "Babble-on" Massacre caused mutation in the human DNA template that shortened human life span, blocked higher sensory perception, caused loss of race memory, and scrambled our original language patterns, which are built upon DNA fire letter sequencing. Our race has been amnesiac, dying young, and "babbling on" in rhetorical conflict ever since. This historical event was recorded as the biblical "Tower of Babel" story.

Please tell me I'm not as off the grid as this site reads... Although I admit I am a fan of super hero, super human genra of movies such as X-Men, Spiderman, heck even the spells of Harry Potter intrigues me. But I feel like I would be diving off the deep end if I start to believe all this... :-[

"Conscious Evolution"

Two quotes I found in my new reading, "Conscious Evolution" by Barbara Marx Hubbard.
These are actually quotes she quoted from others in her book. But it's nice that she did her research and collected the finest from her readings.

Jonas Salk stated in Anatomy of Reality, "The most meaningful activity in which a human being can be engaged is one that is directly related to human evolution. This is true because human beings now play an active and critical role not only in the process of their own evolution but in the survival and evolution of all living beings. Awareness of this placess upon human beings a responsibility for their participation in and contribution to the process of evolution. If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of metabiological evolution consciously, as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age would be born."

In 1486 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote in Oration on the Dignity of Man, "We have made you a creature of neither heaven nor Earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in any form you prefer."

Oxymoron:

• Fresh water fish like a little bit of salt in their water.
  No matter how scratched up the piece of glass is, it will always look flawlessly prestine soaked in water. The part of my fish tank wall above the water line are always cloudy and fuzzy looking. But the submerged parts are crystal clear. We're all flawed because we're human. But we all can appear perfect if we are viewed in the right angle or if we find the most compatible medium which hides our flaws.
  
  
• I'm collecting filterred water in a tank for drinking and for my fishes, when it's pouring rain out.
  Why don't I just collect rain water? It has been raining every night for the past month. We all should just use rain ducs on our house roofs to collect them for house use... like how the solar panel work with the sun light.
  
• Our parents discipline us and punish us because they truly love us. Strangers don't care about the consequences we must face alone.
  
• Without the contrast of bitterness, one would not know how sweet sweet can be. So drink coffee with your deserts. Think of the happy times when you're sad.
  
• We must rage wars in order to keep peace.
• Wars are fought following orders. Battles are fought according to well thought out plans and strategies. But the outcome of a war is almost always destruction and death.
• Chaos rein the peaceful times. But the most ingenious inventions of human beings are often times the result of spontaneous activities or experiments that went terribly wrong.
  
• The most important, vital organs in our body are the ones we take for granted the most. Did you know the strongest muscle in human body is your heart? Do you appreciate your lungs 24x7 even when you're sleeping? So how often do you think of the most vital members of your company or organization? Do you even know their names?
  
• The more you care about someone or something, the more likely he/she will not hang around or you will miss-place it. Your intention may be to hide it so others can't steal it from you. But your good intention often work against your will. The trivial matters of your life will always cluter your thoughts and household. Purge, my friend, purge the junk. Just like "Clean Sweep" showed us on TLC.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Mark Twain

Happy New Year 2005!

I have not stopped writing blog entries. It's just I started a new blog site on Xanga.com. At least my sister in Taiwan can read the posts on that site. So if you like what you read here, visit my Xanga site for my recent blog entries at: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=pixarfan01.
I will continue to blog this one for China oriented subject matters. Occassionaly I will cross post my entries on both sites.