23th, 24th May 2008: The first impact with China

Hello guys,
currently I am in China (actually Kunming) for a conference in Grid and Pervasive Computing called GPC-08. Actually, my paper: "Design of a Petri Net-based Workflow Engine" has been submitted for the Workshop on Workflow Management and Applications in Grid environment (WaGe08) which is held in parallel (of course in parallel, we are talking about Grid computing doesn't it? :) ) with the GPC-08 conference.

I was very excited to visit China... this big country very different from Europe, with very amazing girls and culture, but things are not going as expected. The flight to China was not so bad... but also not so good; the plane we have used to make the 11 hours trip was an old Boeing 777, actually very big from the outside... but the seats were very strict and uncomfortable. :(


The flight landed in this city called Guangzhou (very close to Hong Kong) and when I exited from the plane I immediately started to sweat and literally to evaporate. I had also problem breathing, the air was so hot and humid... it seemed to be in a sauna.
Here u are some pictures of the Guangzhou's airport



After a couple of hours (the time to control my passport :) ) I took the flight to Kunming.

Once arrived in Kunming I started looking for my luggage... but something went wrong, my luggage was missing! :( I asked for information at the baggage claim desk... but nobody were able to speak English :( after few minutes a girl arrived, she tried to explain me that there were no information about my luggage... it could be in Paris... or in Guangzhou or still in Bologna. :( So she asked for my phone number, and she tried to assure me that my luggage should arrive the day after (but I was not so sure about that) :(

So, I tried to get information about how to reach the hotel... but no success! :( I started to look for a taxi... I saw the taxi queue and I start walking towards it but before getting there, strange people with strange uniforms started asking me: "We are u going?" So I've showed a piece of paper with the name of my hotel (written in Chinese) and this guy took his cell phone end wrote "50". So, I answered "50 what?". And he disappear... :) after 2 meters another girl started saying me: "45... 45"! Finally, I reached the taxi queue... and I took the regular taxi that asked me 23 RMB (about 2 euro) to get to the hotel.

Streets here are like a jungle... I know I said the same thing when I was in Crete... but here is very very worse. There are practically no signals... crossing the street is a kind of "mission impossible". It's crazy... there are very few traffic lights. And traffic lights have a timer! :) Never seen something like that... but you know... that's not a bad idea, it make sense. :)


So, the rest of the day I tried to stay awake, I adjusted my presentation for the workshop and I went out to buy some clothes for the day after. Clothes are very cheap here but talking about electronics, the prices are the same (if not more expensive). For example the ASUS eee pc 701 costs 2990 RMB which is about 280 euro (In Italy the eee pc costs 299 euro).

Anyway... the city is huge and full of Chinese people :) and Cell phone shops. There is a Nokia point every 10 meters... and workers outside that shops with a microphone trying to sell phones.




However, everything is not so exciting; in some points of the city, actually near the restaurants, the smell is very very bad. I was so impressed the first day I couldn't eat in the evening.

But the most important thing is that I am not able to see my blog from here :( I guess this is a kind of censure applied by the chinese governemnt!!! Fuck the chinese government!! I cannot understand why the have censured my blog... I have no idea! :( ( anyway, I am able to create new posts! :) )

Guys I have to go now, I'll provide more photos in a few days. See u soon!