Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Feb 28 2010

The true cost of your iPhone

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal

This isn’t surprising, but still sad. When you buy your next cheap gadget, think about this.
It turns out that Apple’s ‘overseas’ suppliers are cutting corners ab it. 54% of these factories have failed to meet Apple’s maximum-hour work week. And this is a 60-hours (!) work week we’re talking about – over half of these [...]

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Jan 21 2010

Being creative

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal

Lately Michal is praising creativity all the time.  It turns out that being creative is good – not just because you invent startups and become rich – it’s also a great way to channel your energy, to overcome emotional and physical problems. In short – it’s really important to be creative. You don’t have to [...]

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Jan 11 2010

Chinglish

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal, Travel

Everybody who traveled in Asia (and other places, of course) have seen those funny mistakes these guys make in English. It appears everywhere:  official places (we saw a “polace” sign in a police station), parks, places of business and on products (Michal bought a small notebook, which proudly stated “We only do well”). Here’s some [...]

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Dec 27 2009

Chengdu book list

Published by Ron Mertens under Books

Avid readers of my blog (hey mom!) know that I usually blog on books I read. The good ones, anyway. Here’s the ones I read in Chengdu. I read all of them in Hebrew, by the way.

Long Lost, Harlan Coben. OK, it’s a Harlan Coben book, which is pretty lame. But it was a OK [...]

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Dec 23 2009

Random thoughts about Chengdu

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal, Travel

VPN for youtube and facebook
Clouds and mists
Chang-Fu Xin Xan
Starbucks
Xian-Nan-Lu
Sichaun pepper (yuck!)
Our ‘home’ restaurant, the yellow/sterile one, the green one, the one across the street
Dodo’s cafe
The Metro
The secrets of Free Mori
Tandoor
Endless amount of high rise buildings
The Bookworm
Kabalth-Shabbath at Meirav’s
Abigail starting to walk in the museum
Tai-Chi
Spitting
Blue Massage
Bao-Tze
Shi-Er-Qiao Lu
The butcher-shop dogs
Table tennis at the gym
Road hierarchy: Bus, Taxi, [...]

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Dec 21 2009

One child policy

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal, Travel

As you may know, China has a ‘one-child-policy’. It basically means that you can only have one child (and if you have more, it costs a lot of money). I never realized what this law really means.
It’s not just that you don’t have brothers. Your parents do not have brothers, too. So you don’t [...]

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Dec 17 2009

India vs China

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal, Travel, Travelogues

Today we went to an Indian restaurant here in Chengdu, called Tandoor. It was really great – they were very friendly (the managers come from Delhi), and impressed with our fluent Hindi. And the food? the best we had so far in Chengdu – great Indian food! Dal Makhani, Palak Paneer, Samosas…
It got me [...]

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Dec 11 2009

Bills and a haircut

Published by Ron Mertens under Personal, Travel

I can’t believe it’s almost 2 months since we left Israel already. It seems like we’re in China for a longer period, although it’s very difficult to get used to this place. Everything is different.
Today I had 3 tasks to do after lunch – Pay our gas bill, get a hair-cut, and recharge the Chinese [...]

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Nov 13 2009

Baby photographer

Published by Ron Mertens under Photographs, Travel, Travelogues

I used to like taking photos during my travels… mostly landscape – beautiful scenes, you know what I’m talking about. I meant, pictures of Michal and friends we met on the way is nice, but it wasn’t really exciting for me.
But now I’m mostly taking photos of Abigail. Suddenly a nice lake or building just [...]

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Nov 13 2009

Sunny day!

Published by Ron Mertens under Photographs, Travel

It’s been more than two weeks here in Chengdu, and today we have the first sunny day. And I mean really sunny- blue skies and a hot ball of flames in the sky.
The weather in Chengdu is usually simply a mist – part humidity, part pollution, 100% gray and depressing. I’ve taken a lot of [...]

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