When a phone rings (mainly land lines with the standard phone ‘ring’) Chinese people won’t pick it up until it’s rung ‘fully’ at least once. They’ll even ‘hover’ their hand over the receiver until the second ring, so it’s not a distance thing.

I know it’s a really tiny thing, but it really gets to me. I have, on the odd occasion, picked the phone up in the middle of the first ring and answered it, just because I know they won’t. When I ask people why they do this, I get a variety of unsatisfactory answers. I don’t think they even know. The missus (who’s Chinese) denies all knowledge of it.

Strange.

Adgitize continues to bring in lots of visitors, and pays for doing it too! If you buy a month ad with them, post once a day and click on 50 adverts (on different) blogs (you can use my droplist if you like!) then it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll make more than your USD14 back. This month I made 55cents a day, so earned USD17, a profit of USD3. Okay, you’re not going to get rich on it, but it’s something, right?

Another ad system I’m not getting rich with is Project Wonderful. I know summer is slow, but my revenue this month has been about four dollars, though admittedly you don’t have to click or drop or anything with them. Still, not fantastic. If I could only find another advertiser that doesn’t pay by check (come on, really? Check??!!) then I’d switch.

Not an ad system, but a group that’s worth checking out is the First Blogger’s Club. With established bloggers such as Windy and Eli running the group, you know it has some good backing. Click on my image above the Entrecard widget to visit the FBC site.

My Entrecard dropping has been less this month too, but I’ve still had plenty of EC friends drop by. Here’s the top ten, as counted by the dashboard, which isn’t totally accurate. Thanks to these, and everyone else for dropping by!

Rate T-shirts 31
Winesworld The Amateurs Wine Guide 31
Guitarbench.com 31
One World Realty 31
T-Shirt Reviews 31
Art Shout! 31
Urban Art Blog 31
Slightly Sarcastic 31 – Sorry SS, China’s been blocking you lately too.
The Ad Master 31
Singapore Playground 31 – Sorry SP, China is still blocking Blogspot blogs, but I’ll drop by when I’m using my VPN!

Special mention to One World Realty for the most clicks on ads I’ve placed. (108!)
Runners up here are Stuff and Nonsense (53 clicks) and Don’t Pay Credit Cards.com with 44 clicks. (Sorry DPCC, China blocks you too. Sigh.)

Actually the main reason to go was the lady wanted to feed the fish in the large central lake there. Unfortunately they were doing some work, and had blocked off the best bit of the lakefront. (Why they couldn’t do the work out of the main season I don’t know.)

Anyway, we’ve been to this park a few times now, and still haven’t come close to exploring it all. They won’t allow bikes inside, so it’s a lot of walking to cover it all.

Even though it was a nice Saturday, the park didn’t seem that busy, though that could have been because it’s so big. There were certainly enough people picnicking under the shade of the many treed areas.

So, the main plan of feeding the large Koi (sp?) carp thwarted, we traversed the lake and generally wandered about admiring the greenery. Living in large Chinese cities you miss plants, and most parks you aren’t allowed to walk on the grass, so the Olympic park is a nice change.

Still, in the end it was a bit hot, so we decided to take our leave.

To get to the Olympic Park, or the Birds Nest, you can take the subway, of which Beijing has a lot of these days (they’re still building more lines like mad too).

Simply take line 10 to the Olympic line, which is line 8. Line 8 only has four stops, and the Olympic Park is the more northerly one. It has a nice subway station too, and the trains aren’t as crowded as the other lines. In fact the one on the way back was about as empty as I’ve ever seen a subway train in Beijing!

(Click for larger image)

A shocking report on vegetable abuse on my other blog tomorrow. See you back here in a few days.

I rather like this one, for no particular reason…

For those of you who remember MC Hammer…

That said, I think we’re over the hump now, so (hopefully) I’ll be having some more time to do the things that I enjoy!

If you’re out of touch with this sort of thing, as I am, then finding online gambling sites is a task you need guidance with. I did find one site that provides a service to find the best online casinos though.

It has links to various online sites, as well as reviews of them, so it’s not a bad choice if you want to do a search. Check it out!

However, as is often the case here, they often don’t quite get the whole concept of ‘cool’. For example, many times, and I mean about 50% of the time, if you look inside these ‘cool’ black cars you’ll see ‘frilly’ seat covers and various other accessories. Hello Kitty ones are popular. Now, this I could understand, to some degree, if the car drivers/owners were young women, but more often than not men are the drivers here!

I don’t care how much my missus nags me, there’s no way on earth you’d find me putting a ‘Hello Kitty’ seat cover in my car, not unless I wanted to be ridiculed to death by my friends/colleagues anyway!

Here’s just one example…

(click for bigger image).

Normal service will resume asap!

Chinaren.

Chinamissus wanted to go to the Shanghai expo, but hearing both first hand and other reports of four hour queues (in the baking heat), I decided that wasn’t going to be me.

That said, I’ve encountered these long waits on occasion, though luckily I’ve managed to bypass them for the most part.

Today I was riding along the third ringroad, here in Beijing, and I noticed one such queue. This was at about 9.15am on a Sunday. Not sure what they were queuing for. It could have been to get into the Belltower, but on the other hand someone could have been offering cheap rice. You can never tell here.

Today’s queue:

A queue from several years ago:

Click images for larger pic.