Ni Jian's journal

Shopwindows of Galeries Lafayette

On my way to hotel from Les Blog 2.0 party, passing by Galeries Lafayette. Can't stop shooting videos and photos of the shopwindows with my N90 until memory card is full. enjoy if you don't have time to visit the spot.

Night at Paris

22:15 05 December 2005 Galeries Lafayette

22:16 05 December 2005 Galeries Lafayette and Metro station

22:32 05 December 2005 Sephora in Paris

22:47 05 December 2005 Galeries Lafayette

French are really experts of using lights to decorate everything.

Word-of-mouth Marketing conference in Hamburg

Street scene in Hamburg

Nokia N-Gage case about word-of-mouth marketing

The conference (6-7 Oct 2005, Hanburg) is organized by Brand Science Institute, which attracted about 70-80 professionals worldwide.
Not surprising to me, many cases about w-o-m marketing had involved blogging or other online publishing tools. These online messages have 'infinite shelf-life' (Fergus Hampton, www.mbprecis.com) and 'know their way to go'. The mobile blogging applications in the market such as Nokia Lifeblog would enable people to express their impulsive feelings or share their thoughts easily from anywhere at any time. It will certainly become an important channel of word-of-mouth marketing.
During the evening cooktail party, I had a conversation about art, life and technology with Eric Paulos, who gave an interesting presentation about Study of Urban Atmospheres, in which they studied varias subjects from 'familiar strangers' around you to the world's most expensive garbage can (Walter Carls has a nice blog about it). I have been wondering
- Does technology bring us more happiness? Or are people nowadays much happier than their ancesters, say, people living 500 years ago? Assuming the basic living conditions are similar (e.g. food, housing, medicine, etc).
- Is technology making us more creative for art? Are we going to have many masterpieces left to our next generations besides silicon chips?
We have no clear answer to those questions. Paulos had an interesting comment that many scientific or technology topics had been studied by artiests from perhaps different angels well before by scientists or engineers.

Restaurant Yiyuan (Garden of Pleasure) in Beijing

Restaurant sign on a Chinese traditional style doorplate

Painted pirder and roofbeams

Most people prefer to sit in the courtyard in summer time.

The crayfish was so good that I almost forgot to take a photo before I finished the last one.

Though I had lived in Beijing for over 15 years before I moved to Finland the second time in 2004, it is still not an easy task for me to recommend restaurants in Beijing to friends, especially those non-Chinese first time in Beijing. The city is too big - I only know the areas where I lived or visited often; the restaurant business in Beijing is extreamly competitive - very few restaurants can keep their popularity for too long and you can't expect the same restaurants still hold their names or even in business after couple of years.

Yiyuan is one place I could recommend.  It has a lovely courtyard, very nice to sit there, enjoying live traditional Chinese music, except in the cold winter.  The food is mainly Beijing local style, with additions from Sichuan (very spicy) and other varities that are currently popular in the market.  It's a good place for a formal dinner or quick supper.  And I highly recommend their dim sum as snack.

Their price is moderate.  A typical dinner for 4 persons may cost 200-400 yuan (20-40 euros), not the cheapest on that street, which is called Guijie, or officially Dongzhimennei Dajie, a famous restaurant street with tens of restanrants on the two sides of the ~2km span from Dongzhimen Lijiaoqiao (cloverleaf junction) to west.

One plus side, they have well translated English menu with large color photos of dishes.  You won't be totally lost if no Chinese-speaking friends are with you.

Lifeblog for shopping

What are these photos for?  To ask for comments from my wife when I am abroad and need to do some shopping .  MMS mostly will not work during roaming but Lifeblog shines wherever GPRS works.

Hong Kong airport train

On the airport train to Honk Kong island, I was testing whether Finnish operator elisa users can have GPRS roaming there.  It works perfectly!  However, services available during roaming are still quite unpredictable.  The second day, I was not able to make any phone call before my departure flight inside HK airport with automatically selected network and I have to manually switch to CSL to make a call.

Landscape in Southern Jiangsu, China

It was a hazy day when I took a coach from Nanjing to Hangzhou. The landscape in southern Jiangsu, one of the rishest areas in China, looks like black and white Chinese painting flashing through the window.  I took this picture by my Nokia 6630 though I know it would be technically a lousy photo on the fast moving bus.

Sunset at Näsijärvi

22:22 17 May 2005
I still like Tampere the best among all Finnish cities, perhaps because I had lived there the longest time out of China and know very well the place.  The city size is just right for living - big enough to access all necessary services and other activities but having the 'big city syndrome' such as traffic jam, super expensive house etc.

It is always a pleasure for me to visit Tampere, to see the old friends there.  At the evening when we had our group meeting in early summer,  Näsijärvi's beauty once again touched my heart.

West Lake at night

The West Lake of Hangzhou, depicted by so many artists and poets through Chinese history since Song Dinasty, has been under large scale 'face-lifeting' in the recent 5 years.  Hope it won't get too commercial or prippery.

Nokia Nseries launch

2005/04/27 15:35

Dan Wong, VP of Nokia Multimedia in China Region, was announcing the first 3 products (N70, N90 and N91) of Nokia Nseries launch in Nokia Destination Multimedia, Hong Kong.