Living and Writing in China
I’ve not done one of these for a while, and now I have a few new pics. Here’s a random selection…
This has actually happened to me!
Lol!
I know I’ve not posted much on here lately, been a bit busy with one thing and another.
Recently I went with the missus to a fairly small town up north a bit, to check on a personal project. Well, I have to say that Beijing has it’s down sides, with the pollution and the traffic and the high cost of living, but after spending four days in a small town again, I’m reminded of the better points of the big city too!
Taxi drivers don’t smoke in the car, (usually anyway) the place is clean (really, Beijing is quite clean, at least mostly) and there are lots of nice parks. There’s also decent western food if you feel in the mood for it and you only get woken by fireworks during Spring Festival.
Overall, I’m glad I’m back. A small Chinese town is an adventure to be sure, and it’s certainly cheaper to live, but I’ve been there and done that. Time to settle down in a bit of comfort I think!
I recently updated my droplist and was just checking it when… arg! My domain: ChinarensBlog.com was no longer! WTF I said! What’s going on? Then I figured out what had happened:
I usually register my domains with GoDaddy.com, which may be bad for elephants, but it about the cheapest and most convenient to use. It also sends me about a hundred reminders when a domain is going to expire. Well, Chinarensblog.com wasn’t registered with them, it was registered with my old host, which I’m no longer with. Obviously Justhost don’t care about money from domains, because they didn’t remind me at all this was expiring!
Naturally the old URL has been immediately grabbed by a cybersquatter (not the best investment for them, this isn’t exactly a high traffic site!), so I can’t just buy it again, without paying over the odds anyway. So I’ve bought Chinarensblog.net, and will set that up.
Every cloud has a silver lining of course, because another two of my domains, which I use much more than this one, are also with the old host, so now I’m transferring them to GoDaddy so I won’t lose them as well. Both would have expire in a month too, so just in time!
This blog is hosted on Tomecity anyway, so at least I didn’t lose any content etc with my domain name (which just redirects). And most people would probably have bookmarked the actual address anyway, as it’s not masked. If anyone bookmarked it at all that is.
The Beijinger is a web site about, well, Beijing stuff aimed at expats. There’s a few of them around. I don’t usually read them except for perhaps the job ads, but this article caught my eye the other day.
It’s a ‘fake’ MacDonalds, though the fake Mac part seems to be mainly the wrapping and style of the burgers etc, rather than the name or appearance of the establishment.
Apparently the place is inside Tsinghua (pron: Chingwha) university, and the food there is both cheap and cheap, if you see what I mean. The reviewer didn’t seem to think much of the stuff on sale!
You can see the full (original) article here.
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