Tiny world war on campus

When I was an university student, I heard of many stories about Uygur students fighting with Chinese students, DongBei students fighting with Teochow (Chaozhou) students, Cantonese students fighting with HuBei students…

Birds of a feather flock together.  Strongly hold people the bonds of having common memories and customs, eating similar food and speaking the same accent. 

But sometimes there are exceptions.

I met a young Chinese student, Xiao Wang, few days ago.  He studies in a Singapore private university, a university running UK and Australian degree programs.  Striving to build a regional education hub, Singapore government encourages these universities reach out to recruit students from developing countries.  Xiao Wang’s school has students from China, Vietnam, Russia, Africa and many others places.

Talking about life on campus, I asked him whether there was any fight in his school. 

He got excited in this topic.

“We have many Mongolian students. “

“Oh…?” I am a bit surprised.  A country with a vast land, small population, north to China. 

“They are big, strong and haughty. Often bully our Chinese students. ”

I’d thought he were talking about American students. 

“We were no match.  We were defeated. ”

Mongolian wrestling were flashing on my mind.

“Luckily, we have helpers. ”

Here came the bigger surprise.

“Those black African guys helped us!  They called those Mongolian students into the washroom.  After a while, out came those Mongolian, crying.  Hahaha…” He laughed, elatedly.

“African and Chinese together beat those Mongolian.  They dare not touch us now. ”

There ended this tiny world war.

“Some Chinese students mingle really well with those African.” He finally added.

Why people from thousands miles away help Chinese fight with people who are from nearby country and of the same color?

African and Chinese are brothers — at least in this incident.

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声援阿蔼

香港:全球之声编辑卯上网路审查机制

不知道是因为我看了太多的三级图片还是那些香港审查员们太少上网,我真的看不出在阿蔼的这篇檄文的图片有多么不雅。

有一点我是肯定的:这张图片对我们家现在三岁大的康康是没有什么负面的影响。相信绝大多数带过两三岁小孩的父母都会同意我的观点。不知道这点能不能帮助阿蔼打赢官司。

Salaries of China’s Top Executives

A Shanghai-based consulting firm recently published a report on the annual salary of top executives in China’s listed companies. 

According to the report, in 2006, the average annual salary of those top executives increased 18% compared with that of year 2005.

The happy man below is the top earner.

He is the chairman of Shenzhen Development Bank.  He got US$ 1.3 million for his salary last year. 

The second person in the list is the General Manager of CIMC, a container manufacturer.  He earned US$ 760,000 salary last year.  The top executive from Bank of China follows with a salary of US$ 730,000. 

These figures do not include the share value they have.

The annual salary of the least-earners maybe more interesting.  If we make a list with the least-earner of the China’s listed companies, we can have these three on top.

1. ST. TongCheng (Retailing), US$ 2,500

2. XianChengShiYe(Textile), US$2,600

3. JinHuaLuJian (Chemicals), US$ 2,610

They earn less than manager’s monthly income in Singapore. 

The consultant makes a special statement in the report, “Retain a suspicion of the integrity of these companies and the authenticity and integrity of the information disclosed.”

Maybe these executives are China’s Lee Iacocca. 

Who knows.

数字时代生存基本技能

前段时间在Ideas Factory China上讨论OLPC的时候,顺子说,

目前中国中小学的信息技术课教学内容如下:
1、信息技术基本概念。
2、Windows基本操作。
3、指法和打字。
4、Windows画图软件的使用。
5、Windows写字板的使用。
6、Office Word的使用。
7、PowerPiont的使用。
8、IE和OE的使用。

中小学的信息技术课教学大纲反映了国内对数字时代生存基本技能的理解,相信是经过教育部对中国现状和未来深思熟虑,反复论证的。

小孩应该掌握怎样的基本信息技术技能才能在现在和未来的数字时代的里生存呢?

我的看法是,

  1. 能安装、运行基本程序;
  2. 能作基本文档编辑;
  3. 能作基本图片编辑;
  4. 能在网上注册使用虚拟社区(如论坛,博客等)帐号;
  5. 能使用电邮与别人联系;
  6. 能使用搜索引擎找到信息。

第1至3点是单机使用,4至6是网络。

软件可用性的鼻祖Jakob Nielsen最近提出了他的看法

他认为,小学生学习怎样使用Excel没有什么意义,因为这些软件的功能在不断完善,大部分功能以后都会很容易使用. 学校应该教学生他们不大可能自学得到的东西.

因此,现在的小学生应该学习以下的基本信息技术技能,

  1. 搜索策略
  2. 信息可靠度的查证
  3. 信息过载的处理
  4. 网上写作能力
  5. 利用电脑的演示能力
  6. 办公人体工效学–也就是办公室安全注意事项
  7. 代码排错能力
  8. 用户可用性的基本要点

除了第8点外,我基本同意这位尼大叔的观点.