Saturday, July 31, 2010

青島の大作戦―第二話

Preface

This is a true story portraying how Qingdao Jiahe Dadi Technology Trade Co. Ltd. (青岛嘉和大地科贸有限公司, www.zgqdjck.com) – a faux company in China, lure and scam legitimate foreign businesses, from a perspective of a third party.

Part of the names are intentionally replaced to protect the privacy of some parties.
 

CHRONICLE II: The Departure

[The Sign]

It was Thursday, the day Nacel’s family depart to Qing Dao.

A bagpack with his netbook, electronic chargers and digital camera; a wheeled case containing clothes, toiletries and power extension panel – Nacel’s belongings were well packed a day before, probably due to his mom’s repetitive nagging.

During the day, Nacel’s Dad accidentally glided the new knife he bought across his finger. Being a very expensive Japanese-made sashimi knife – a knife that allows you to literally slice a coconut as if it’s just tofu, even a light touch to the blade causes injury – the inflicted cut is deep enough to require bandaging.

Near midnight, 3 hours before departure time, the whole family happily started their journey to the airport, with absolutely no idea what is awaiting them.

The airport at midnight was especially quiet. Most of the shops, including restaurants were closed.

It took the family a few trips to different (closing or closed) restaurants until they finally settled on one of the most famous fast-food chain around that seems like it is on eternal daytime – McDonalds.

“Seems like a great time to try out the oh-so-popular GCB,” Nacel thought.

The GCB tastes okay, but Nacel’s Sister prefers the chicken nuggets.

[The Delay]

An hour before departure time – it was time to proceed to the boarding gate.
 

The boarding inspection gate was surprisingly empty. Upon closer observations to the displays, apparently the flight, ran by China Eastern Airlines, had been delayed by an hour.

“Damn, another hour to wait,” Nacel turned on his PDA. Lucky for him, the airport has wireless Internet equipped.
Nacel’s Dad and Sister both flipped open their notebooks and started surfing the Internet.

Facebook is a great way to kill time.

[The (Other) Delay]

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and *gibberish* members on board China Easterrrrn Airrrlines flight MU 540. *gibberish*”

All of the flight attendants of China Eastern Airlines are Chinese, and they speak very fluent Manglish (Mangled English), which sounded very close to Gibberish. Unfortunately, the on-flight food is also mangled, in its own way.

“Ladies and gentlemen, *gibberish* Shanghai Pudong Interrrrrnational Airrrrprot *gibberish*”

Due to the flight delay, arrival at Shanghai was an hour later than scheduled.

The flight to Qing Dao involved a transition in Shanghai Pudong airport. However, due to the flight to Qing Dao being a different flight, the baggage had to be claimed, requiring the check-in process to be redone once more.

The family almost missed the check-in time, resulting in securing very scattered seats.

It is China Eastern Airlines once more.

“Ladies and gentlemen, *gibberish* bad weather *gibberish* Jingnan Interrrrnational Airrrprot *gibberish*,” announced 30 minutes before the plane’s supposed arrival to Qing Dao.

Due to bad weather in Qing Dao, the captain had decided to redirect the flight and land in Jingnan. The other passengers beginning to feel uneasy, some started to question the clueless flight attendants.

The plane stayed in Jingnan for an hour for refueling, with all passengers onboard, and finally took off to Qing Dao upon receiving news on the improved weather conditions in Qing Dao.

The entire journey from home to Qing Dao was a grueling 12 hours.

Friday, July 30, 2010

青島の大作戦―第一話

Preface

This is a true story portraying how Qingdao Jiahe Dadi Technology Trade Co. Ltd. (青岛嘉和大地科贸有限公司, www.zgqdjck.com) – a faux company in China, lure and scam legitimate foreign businesses, from a perspective of a third party.

Part of the names are intentionally replaced to protect the privacy of some parties.


CHRONICLE I: The Bait


[It’s Decided]

“We’re going to Qing Dao this Friday.”

“This coming Friday? But I have an test scheduled on that day,” though with feelings of excitement, Nacel suddenly recalled about the upcoming certification exam.

Coming across a chance for the family vacation is rare enough, let alone crossing the international waters.

When such a thing suddenly pops out, it usually means one thing – Dad’s going for a business trip, so he’s bringing the whole family along.

Killing two birds with one stone, brilliant.

“What time is your tests?”

The exam was from morning till noon, the whole family can catch a flight after noon. The flight time should be 5 hours nominal, reaching Qing Dao during the evening would mean wasting a whole day inside the plane.

Since Dad needs to return back before Wednesday morning, the stay in Qing Dao is effectively shortened to 3 days – Saturday, Sunday, Monday – with Tuesday being the day where the whole day is wasted on the plane.

The air ticket was expensive – 2500 bucks per person, staying there for only 3 days for the price of 2500 bucks is not a good deal.

“I can reschedule my test,” Nacel suddenly remembered the exam voucher is valid for one whole year, it’s not mandatory to sit for it this Friday.

“So it’s settled – we’ll depart Thursday night.” One extra day makes a lot of difference, everybody is happy with the decision.

 

[Uncertainty]

Let’s face it, China is a country known for the very corrupted government officials and God knows how many scammers are there.

Nacel’s Dad is invited to sign the sales contract, how can it go wrong? The sales contract is clearly favoring Dad’s company – and on top of that, it is a USD150,000 contract – upon successful agreement, the dark ages of pouring midnight oil in processing the materials, giving talks, facing stiff competition is over!

Dad did a small background check on the company Jia He (嘉和) online, and found out it is a fairly large corporation involving in a multitude of different businesses.

Furthermore, communication with the company was made by email, phone and fax – it couldn’t be wrong.

Though one of the staff – Liu Zhi Qiang (刘志强, International Affairs 国际部) made a small request – 2 units of 32GB iPhone 3GS as “gifts” to the company’s superiors.

The cost of the iPhones will be deducted from the 5% rebate from the sales, exclusively used to “smoothen the transaction”, as agreed.

Heck – 5000 bucks for a half a million deal – you can even give them the iPhones in exchange for such a deal.

Nothing can go wrong.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Audio Nirvana - Aurvana

Finally settled on the most optimum tuning of my audio gears. For anybody who are buying some of the gears mentioned below, here are some suggestions on the (IMHO) sweetest sound configuration (sound accuracy aside).

Sennheiser IE8

The IE8 has the Sennheiser slightly dark-sounding “signature house sound”. In terms of balancing, the mid-highs are just nice, the mid-lows are slightly too much, lows are nice, highs is slightly weak.

This makes the IE8 more suitable towards brighter sources. For PCs, you can tweak the equalizer – boosting the highs slightly (ramp), reducing mid-lows a bit to remove the dark signature and add a bit of sparkling to the highs.

My configuration – bass dial set to highest (I had no choice, hardware failure). iPod Touch (generally bass shy source) EQ set to Treble Booster. Satisfied with the output.

 

Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro

The TF10s, in general has a coloring in the mids and weak bass.

However, the imbalances can be corrected with equalizing without producing artifacts, this makes the TF10s suitable for sources with a fully adjustable equalizer (e.g. PCs). All you need to do is add a ramp to the lows (starting from the mid-lows). Lower the mid-highs a bit. Boost the 4kHz and 16kHz, 8kHz slightly higher than the previous two.

I paired mine with Creative X-Fi GO! with the following settings.

Westone 3

Westone 3 is the brightest-sounding earphone among the 3 shown here. The mid-highs, when paired with a wrong source, can be very tiring to the ears. The lows are a bit too tight (less body) for my taste, however it is capable of extending the lowest, at the same time the highs of the W3 are the most refined and detailed in the pack.

This makes W3 difficult to be paired with the iPod Touch (bright source with no detailed EQ settings to match) as-is – bass booster came close, but produces nasty artifacts, render it unsuitable for practical use.

Pairing W3 with a balanced source is satisfactory without any EQing. If you want the bass to have more body (like me), you can ramp the mid-low section a bit.

I paired it with a Sony home theatre amplifier my game console with the in-line attenuator directly. The Sony home theatre amplifier, when using analog source, is too bright, missing some key details (such as echo of voices), (seems like I’ve forgotten the decade-old equalizer setting still saved inside the amplifier).

Though, I’ve yet to test the amplifier with a Toslink (digital optical) source.

I have no complaints on this pair. No equalization involved. :D