I’ve just lost my durian virginity 🤣 I’d always been to scared to try before.
Opening the box unleashed the smell. I was given a glove to wear and then it was the point of no return!
After all that it’s OK. A bit mushy and quite sweet. Luckily you don’t notice the smell when eating it.
Waiting at the traffic lights and look what pulls up next to us.
It’s a parcel delivery vehicle. I’ve seen them driving around but never been next to one on its journey.
This chonky boy with a short tail is Chinese. The Chinese word for cat is māo which I’m told it’s pronounced like meow.
I’ve had a very different start to the day. We came to the city hospital for a TCM massage and cupping treatment.
The hospital media team heard about it and came to photograph my cupping and then video interviewed me asking how I felt about TCM.
I’m famous now!
Celebrating my birthday Chinese style. It was actually a double party - my great-niece Muchen is 16 today.
And two bottles of Maotai bought from the factory as one of my presents!
Another evening another banquet. Not sure what kind of fish it is or how they made it look like this but it’s sweet and sour and very nice. As usual plenty of maotai for toasting!
Matcha tea - Chinese style. You add, rice crispies, peanuts, floaty balls (don’t known what they are), chopped chives and sugar/salt if you prefer.
I’ve seen unmanned package delivery vehicles twice now. Once on a busy rural road and once parked outside our apartment complex. So they are happy travelling fairly fast (50km/h?) and navigating through busy city streets.
It’s weird seeing a box on wheels driving round!
Who needs a new laptop when your car has a built-in 15.6" touch screen?
Chinese BYD car. Don’t know the model because it’s in Chinese characters. It looks like at least some UK BYD models have a similar display.
I didn’t have time to see if it would boot Linux from a memory stick 🤣
I didn’t have wild swimming in a Chinese river on today’s bingo card. Luckily tropical rivers are pretty warm so it was a nice break from the incessant humid heat at this time of the year.
The views were much better but I didn’t have a waterproof case to take my phone near the river.
Anyone else got traffic light timers?
I’ve discovered that Chinese sat nav knows when traffic lights are going to change. The image shows that the light ahead will change to green in 39 seconds.
Route planning can take this into account to plot the fastest route in a city.
Welcome to the modern world!
I’ve heard people talk about matcha recently, but never had it. Then we had “Chinese coffee” which I’ve had numerous times on previous visits to China in the last 10 years.
Today I discovered that Chinese coffee is really matcha! The base is green tea powder
Where did the Teletubbies go?
After their rise to infamy 20+ years ago I didn’t see much of the Teletubbies. Or maybe my kids outgrew them and we didn’t watch those channels any longer?
Anyway, I found them again - they moved to China!
East meets West
Lays Pringles (at least that’s what I’d call them in the UK). Chinese flavour of Beef Pie but seemingly endorsed by Sir David Beckham.
Yesterday we had Lionel Messi Garlic Bread flavour.
English is the official second language in China. Which mean many products get English names. I often wonder if I could become a naming consultant over here to help them pick better names.
Today I present to you “Fly Young” tissues.
Well it’s official. China 2026 is definitely happening.
We went from “probably” this morning, to having flights booked, tickets for the trip to the airport bought, insurance bought, VPNs configured, eSim bought and appointments whilst we’re away rebooked.
The expedition starts next Monday - 20th July so we don’t have long to wait.
I’m hoping I can update this blog whilst we’re away, but I’ll have to see if the Great Firewall of China will get in the way.
Why does anyone trust AI?
I thought I’d have a play with AI today because I keep on hearing that it’s getting so much better. I asked it who Blackpool FC’s best manager was. OK, that’s subjective but it can still put the facts together and analyse them to come to a conclusion.
The AI answer - Malcolm Allison.
Now I knew the name but thought that he must have been a manager before my time so I asked “When did Malcolm Allison manage Blackpool FC?”
The AI answer - 1959-1965. He left to manage Preston North End and took Blackpool to the FA Cup Final in 1961.
A quick Google found…
Malcolm Allison never managed Blackpool, or PNE. He was still a player in 1959 and only started to manage teams from 1963. The 1961 FA Cup Final was Spurs vs Leicester.
Now I’ll agree that Ollama with the Qwen3.5 LLM probably isn’t the most bleeding edge environment to use for such questions, but it still leaves the question of why AI likes to lie so much, or perhaps to be kind - hallucinate so much? Interestingly the long screed of explanation for both questions I asked included a check for hallucinations - which clearly wasn’t good enough!
For some reason AI always insists on giving an answer, even if it’s completely wrong and made up. I think it will be a much better tool if/when it gains the ability to say “I don’t know”.
I’m trying a new approach to blogging. I’ve got 3 micro.blog’s which can cross post to Bluesky and/or Mastodon if I want. This seems a more coherent way to handle my existence on multiple platforms.
Time will tell if it’s any better than what I’ve had before.