Justin-Klein.com – Life of a Traveling Programmer

I stumbled on a really interesting blog last night while surfing the net for Chinese language instructional websites. Its about an American expat who took a job at a barbershop in Fuzhou, China for one month – as a regular employee, no special treatment – to gain insight into what life might be like for the average citizen. For that month he worked 11 hours a day for 27 days, barely earning 40 cents an hour. Just like each of his Chinese coworkers. I highly suggest you give it a read – starting from the beginning. It’s worth it. Continue reading »

I officially turned one quarter of a century old last Tuesday. D’oh!

Although I hadn’t made any birthday plans whatsoever, it actually turned out to be a surprisingly eventful week. Shigeru Miyamoto, the big cheese over at Nintendo wanted to take a look at our game’s progress so I figured I’d be far too busy to celebrate until at least a week or two after – but thankfully, Push Mode ended earlier than expected and some free time opened up. As a result, my week turned out thus: Continue reading »

When you live in a country that relies so heavily on bicycles for transportation, you start learning to ride pretty crazy. Weaving in and out of traffic, jumping up and down from curbs, blowing through the occasional red light…you know, the usual. It can actually be quite fun at times – like slaloming.

But sometimes I forget that I’m riding dangerously at all, until someone who’s not accustomed to the daily insanity comes to visit and points it out. “I can’t believe you’ve never been in an accident!” was my dad’s reaction when he saw how I manipulated my way through the bumper-to-bumper traffic jams on Shijo Doori in the heart of Downtown, Kyoto.

But he was right – I hadn’t. At least not with a car. Until last Friday. Continue reading »