Andre

I documented my trip to Malaysia by using Twitter about once a day.

• Hong Kong, 6am: have not been up this early since my last morning run in winter. Waiting for the 1st MTR train to arrive. Station still hot.
  6:02 AM Sep 20th
• This will be the 1st time (a week!) since I joined that I won’t monitor Twitter around the clock. I’ll only be tweeting & replying. Strange.
  6:05 AM Sep 20th
• For all Hong Kong arctic office environment fans, the MTR isn’t a place to be in the very early morning. Feels same like outside – humidity.
  6:08 AM Sep 20th
• Leaving the Airport Express and being greeted by a row of trolleys makes me happy each time. Efficiency and service at its best.
  6:51 AM Sep 20th
• Can I throw myself to the floor screaming “this is not human” because HKIA stil does not do boarding by seat rows? The one thing I complain.
  7:14 AM Sep 20th
• 88 2G, hello SMS.
  7:15 AM Sep 20th
• Just when I mention it, Singapore Airlines at opposite gate blares through speakers “boarding by seat rows”. It’s only my airlines’ problem?
  7:19 AM Sep 20th
• Arrived in Kota Kinabalu. Airport field: ehem. Building: oh ho. Weather: cloudy (yeah, no burning), hot and *dry* (so much better than HK).
  11:47 AM Sep 20th
• What a different, opposite to HK but also to Lux, lifestyle here is. So relaxed but friendly, feels like I’ve been here for yrs (it’s good).
  11:51 PM Sep 20th
• And on the first day of my trip, the troubled tooth has become a lot more touch sensitive again. Let’s see how that will develop (hope not).
  11:59 PM Sep 20th continue reading…

Tweets commenting the Chinese National Day parade, shown live on TV:

• Quiet outside, can stay home working until parade starts. Pearl runs CCTV9 Live all morning, too much info.. Better ATV at 9.45, seems less.
• CCTV 9 (cctv-9.com) shows live parade streaming but site barely loads from HK. With Great Firewall blocking much, shouldn’t speed be better?
• I really had hoped for the Great Firewall working once in *my* favor by focusing bandwidth on a stream I want to see coming from China. FAIL
• I almost forgot I have Now-TV where CCTV-9 is available as a free channel: now watching parade on big projector screen
• Love or hate them, but the Chinese know how to impress the masses by engaging the masses. From clean roads to clear skies, there’s no limit.
• They use the manpower of several times the Luxembourg population just to operate/secure the Beijing parade, not even including participants.
• The only signboard I saw was a huge Toshiba behind the tanks. That’s kind of ironic.
• Beijing’s blue sky is a testament to “if there is a will, there is a way”. It would be nice if they’d always want to keep things clean(er)..
• With those tanks rolling and planes coming in, Beijing’s blue sky will be gone by the time the parade is over.
• That 5sec video clip of marine boats was supposed to be what? Would have loved to see the boats as well. Overall, bad video cutting by CCTV.
• The standard Now-TV is crap: waving blue and red flags in full screen results in a pixeled image almost beyond recognition.
• 43000 participants just for the people’s part of the parade like dancers, floats… that gives you an idea of the size of this event. Costs?
• Now CCTV-9 lost the English audio feed and switched to Chinese. Sigh..
• The “One World” float was shown so briefly that by the time I realized it was about non-Chinese they switched to a long row of military ppl.
• The Hong Kong float must have been the most boring in the entire parade. Sigh.. Funny to see Donald having the biggest camera.
• A very nice parade but a crappy TV show, big FAIL. Let’s see if the show tonight is better (~6pm start).
• With over 100’000 participants in the parade (not including security and support), that is easily 280 times or more my (tiny) home village..
• The Beijing parade numbers keep climbing: now I read 8’000 soldiers and 180’000 participants. Still not including the security, support ppl.
• When a Western country runs a military parade (such as France), it’s called a festivity. When China runs one, it’s called propaganda. Hmm ..
• @Tortue End of the day it’s propaganda everywhere but also a festivity; it is a matter of point of view (if you’re a national or foreigner).