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I've never applied with the PSB and other relevant authorities to get an international TV card, it's never seemed worth the hassle to watch BBC Worldwide.   The Internet has changed they was I perceive news and seek to be informed and entertained.  But I still miss being able to tune into BBC2 at a set time to watch low budget sci-fi, that part of scheduled entertainment will forever be ingrained in my habits, entertainment on demand does, to an extent, strip the expectation and suspense from the enjoyment on a show.  And sometimes it's just plain annoying not to have streaming TV to potato-out to, CCTV9 and poorly dubbed Korean dramas do not cut it.

So imagine my surprise when I stuck my head into an office to see one person watching a random Japanese game show and another watching Bloomberg TV, live, on their computers.

JLC's Internet TV is a cunningly fantastic bit of software that allows anyone to watch streaming TV from a huge amount of countries, each country has a wide amount of choice (it's not exhaustive, but the big ones are all there).  The software seems very much word-of-mouth, I've seen it little reported or blogged about.

Anyone should take care on installing any new software on their computer.  Saying that, clicking around on their website (and others) revealed nothing highly malicius and I've seen nothing suggesting their motives are alterior.  In any case, use your own judgement and not mine.  Here's the download: Download.

This tiny picture is an example of the program running.

The US Olympic Track Team have been training in Dalian for the past month, training and getting sick. The 拉肚子 (la du zi) is pretty familiar for anyone new to Dalian and is highly annoying - quite different from mildly enjoyable Olympic Fever.

The proportion of the team sick is around 15%, a figure the US Olympics Committee said was typical for an international trip.

Dalian does offer a lot of culinary temptations: from some of the best seafood in China (comprehensive list) to freshly boiled dumplings to hotpot to cheap and tasty street side BBQ. But don't eat it, especially street side, assuming there's no chance it won't twist and stretch an intestine like a rubber band.

The US team are not dependent on Xinjiang chuanr and 2 kuai beers for their nutrition needs. They have a specialist chef from the Denver campus of Johnson & Wales University. In addition, long before the Beijing Games commenced, secret Olympic farms were instructed to use less/no pesticides for vegetables and raise meat in safe and sanitary conditions. The US team has probably been eating better than anyone else in Dalian for the past month.

Getting sick is normal for anyone relocating to Dalian or anywhere far from home. Even if the food is clean other factors influence sickness including:

• unfamiliar strains of common viruses and bacterias we're immune to back home,
• dirt in places we're not used to: Spit on Dalian's streets is a given and human feces not uncommon, take your shoes off when at home and wash hands whenever possible.
• Hepatitis is easily spread through unwashed glasses - drink from the bottle.

Local custom and awareness of an unfamiliar situation also helps prevent many diseases:

• tea is drunk hot therefore killing bacteria and other nasties,
• when eating a shared dish stick to the small corner or section near you - it's the height of rudeness to grab randomly from all sides of the dish,
• fruit is often served unpeeled and the skin disregarded,
• a clove of raw garlic taken during a meal is a natural protection from diarrhoea,
• and when food is served it should be thoroughly cooked, rare meat is rare here for good reason.

Most importantly, keep those hands clean.

References: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/sports/olympics/16food.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7245652.stm

Image: http://flickr.com/photos/cdharrison/2575008703/ (Creative Commons: Share, Remix, Attribution)

We have a new template, a temporary change that will in turn be replaced, but at least IE shouldn't crash so much.  We should also be moving to a new server this weekend, which will make the site a lot faster, lots lots faster.  There may be some problems with comments during the change-over, but will put a big red notice on the top of the page during that time.

While there are still some problems with the site, I guess we could say we've launched a beta and need to build on the content, which should be a lot easier.  Should have a party!

With the first snow of the year on Sunday, winter seems like it has returned. That's a good opportunity to check-out historic weather patterns from Dalian. This year has been a mild one, last winter particularly so. The winter of 2005/2006 was quite different, with a metre of snow falling overnight in early November. The weather is quite varied, but in general the summer is when it rains and the most cloud is present, the autumn sees wind come from the North, winter consists of pale blue skies, spring sees the cold Northern air get pushed back by warm breezes from the sea to the South. Below are some graphs describing Dalian's weather and seasons:  read more »