Cyrus's Space - Windows Live

It all went wrong on an innocent Thursday night. A couple friends came over and brought along a movie they had just picked up from Hollywood using their subscription plan. The thing about Hollywood's subscription plan is you can't get the latest movies. Just ones that are a couple months old and since you can rent as many as you want it's not hard to exhaust the selection of good movies. So in general my friends are always showing up with crappy movies.

Well this time they showed up with "She's the man!" and even though everyone in the room groaned simultaneously we decided to run the film. We all hoped it would work out since it was written by the same folks who did 10 things I hate about you and Legally Blonde which I have to admit I enjoyed. So we throw the movie in the XBox and it took the only way out it had available.

Nothing we could do would make it come back. It just outright refused to have anything to do with the movie and I was forced to admit that it was broken beyond our ability to repair. Which considering I had two members of the XBox team on hand to try and help troubleshoot and they couldn't get anywhere I knew it was game over. So the next day I picked up the phone and called my buddy over in XBox support and asked him what I was supposed to do. He told me to call 1-800-4MY-XBOX. Well after I called them it was trivial. They sent me a box to return it and a little over a week later I got my shiny new XBox.

I haven't tried playing She's the man in it yet. I think it made it's point and after watching the movie I have to say I have newfound respect for the XBox 360. It really made the right choice....

September 05

Back home! Well in Hong Kong anyway.

Well the Mongol Rally is over and I've returned to work in Hong Kong. Heading back to Seattle at the end of September. Found a cool site called the "Visited Countries" project which will generate images for everywhere you've been.

Looks like I need to spend some time touring South America, Africa and more of the Middle East. However the next vacation planned is Cancun for new years so no changes to the map anytime soon. The final route for the rally was a bit strange but I've attached it here. Theo made it all the way to Mongolia but Kazakhstan wouldn't let me back in after I entered Uzbekistan so my rally ended in Uzbekistan :(.

July 18

In Sweden now

Finland was awesome. Just got off the ferry in Sweden. We'll blog more later on http://rustbox360.blogspot.com/

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July 13

Mongol Rally is a GO

Well I'm officially on vacation for 5-6 weeks for the Mongol Rally. We have a separate blog up for it so head on over and check it out. Right now I'm the only one in Moscow but Alex and Theo will arrive in about 11 hours. Moscow is awesome. More on that later.

Man 5-6 weeks without Corpnet. I don't think I've ever gone more than a week away.

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July 11

Well thank god they cleared that up

This is the Hard Rock Cafe in Beijing. So since it say's "and" does that mean I can bring either nuclear weapons OR drugs?

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It's the end of the world as I know....

I was shocked a couple day's ago. I actually saw BLUE sky in Beijing. As I mentioned in an earlier post I've never seen it before. Actually I was talking with a co-worker and he said he's only seen 14 clear day's in the 18 months he's lived here.

Beijing isn't as bad when you can see the sky. I mean I still smelled deisel everywhere and felt uncomfortably hot but at least the view was nice.

July 03

Why Hong Kong?

I frequently get asked why I'm based out of Hong Kong instead of Shanghai/Beijing/Tokyo. Well Hong Kong has a lot going for it. But the thing I like about it the most is the lack of polution. At least sometimes.

Take this picture for instance. This is a picture of the Jin Mao tower in Shanghai (Which is really quite impressive) but in the upper right you'll almost see some blue sky. Yep that grey cloud over the building is nothing but polution and that day was about as nice as it ever gets in Shanghai. Or well at least as nice as I've seen it.

Ok so Shanghai's got some polution problems. So here's a photo of the Hero's Memorial in TianAnMen Square.

I've NEVER seen the sky in Beijing. I'm sure it comes out occasionally. I imagine by the end of Golden Week (They shut down all the factories for Golden week) that you can see some of the sky.

Here's some pictures of Hong Kong

Granted not every day is that nice. There are polution days and there are "Seattle" days

But at least there are nice day's as well

Plus there's all the obvious things it has going for it. Mass transit is excellent, Everyone speaks English.

Plus it's the "London" of Asia and as such you can fly all kinds of places cheap. For instance from Hong Kong a package deal to Malaysia or Thailand for 3 Days and 2 nights including airfare and hotel will run you around $220. Pretty much anytime. I've seen deals for as cheap as $120.

You can get any food you want delivered. One of my co-workers has the saying "In the US you can get Chinese food delivered. In China you can get any food delivered." well that's not really true everywhere in China but it's true in Hong Kong. From my apartment I had over 140 restaurants that would deliver provided I ordered around $13 worth of food.

There are NICE beaches in Hong Kong and it's got a very active water sports environment. Wakeboarding, Sailing, Scuba, etc. are all available. In short it's just a really easy and nice place to live.