Nagoya Subway

I have heard a lot about how efficient and precise Japanese Public Transportation System works. When I experienced it the first time this February, it impressed me far more than I imagined.

Found a video to share with you. Subway train comes very 1:30--2 minutes (smaller stations are 3-4 minutes) and they are almost 100% on time. I believe this video was not filmed at rush hour. At rush hour, the station can be very crowded but still in order in its own way. People are polite and follow the “rules” even when they are in a rush.

It’s a bit hard for non Japanese visitors to find out what are the “rules” from the beginning, but if you pay attention to what others are doing, you will learn quickly.

Nagoya Subway Map

Hard to Say Goodbye

Today, at 5pm, I was officially unemployed; my colleagues had a party for me. Everything turned out great. Not only everyone was so sweet to me as usual but also—I didn’t cry at the party! But when I got home reading the cards and opening gifts, tears came without invitation.

Forgot that I should open gifts at the party in this culture; in my culture, it is rude to open gifts in front of the gift giver. Hope everyone would forgive me for that. I was deeply touched by my colleagues’ kindness and deeply appreciated everything they have done for me. I’m already missing them!

I have a great adventure ahead of me; I’m sure that I will enjoy everyday, every experience from this point on, and at the same time, I’ll treasure everyone and everything in my past.

It is hard to say goodbye, but the world is so small now; my friends can visit my blog, my flickr or IM to my gmail any time they want. We are not that far apart, we are connected through our finger tips!

Cards & Gifts

Learning 2.0 is over?

I had a great time with learning 2.0 and sad when it is over. Among 27 things, there are a lot of them I’ll keep using and playing with.

My favorite exercise was Library Thing and this one I’ll use all the time. Every week’s exercises were well written and easy to follow, so I didn’t need much help. I followed instructions and learned new things each week. Everything worked out great for me.

I would love to see similar training opportunities as new library technologies emerge. To have fun and get paid for it, who wouldn’t want that? When will be the next training like this one? He, he, he…

Checkout this one, you may find somthing you like.

• Web 2.0 award winners for 2007
  

Podcasting

Podcast—according to Wikipedia, "A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. A podcast is a specific type of webcast which, like 'radio', can mean either the content itself or the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. "

I have tried podcast directories:

- Podcast.net
- Podcastalley.com
- Yahoo Podcasts

And add the RSS reed from NPR news podcast to my Bloglines account.

This is new to me; I have to learn more about it.

YouTube

I signed up for YouTube a while ago. So far I haven’t post any video on my account, but I have saved some videos under My Favorites—some funny videos; some travel videos; some cooking videos…I love it! When I have time, I’ll make some videos and share with others.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Pick a web 2.0 service that is new to you and give it a try? I’m on it!

I visited Web 2.0 Award Nominees and picked “Books” first, of course, but there are no winners in this category—“There were either not enough nominations or there was no clear leader to award winners in this category.” But I have a winner on my mind, right, you guessed—Librarything.com. Since I’ve already spent too much time on this web site, I moved on quickly to “Travel”, and guess what? There are no winners in this one too! However, I liked the Travbuddy.com from the list. The other one I liked Travelblog.org is not on the list.

“Video”--Dailymotion was the first and Youtube is the second? maybe because I’m a Youtube user…

“Start Page”—I use iGoogle for I already have a gmail account and do not want another set of user ID & password (Maybe this is what Google was counting on when I sign up for gmail account years ago.) I like it better than MyYahoo.

It was fun.

Google Lab

“Please note: These technologies are still in the beginning stages of development, so they may disappear without warning or perform erratically. If something's not working on this page, please come back and try it again later.”—Google Lab.

So, I play with some links and not really want to spend too much time here.

Google Reader—a site to read your RSS feeds. I like it better than Bloglines.
Google Trends—Why I want to “See what the world is searching for.”?
Google Mars— Detailed maps of Mars created by NASA. Cool!

OK, you got the idea about Google Lab.