Hello Ember
So sorry to hear about your good friend leaving
Hope your next phase in Beijing all goes well
and you make many more good friends like Sarah in Beijing

Hello Ember, I have to say that over the pass few weeks, I have consistently been impressed by your series of travel blogs. Usually, I can't be bothered to post, but your series has made me take the effort to do so! I am very glad to see you enjoy yourself! You give me a really good insight into China, a country which I would not have been interested had it not been for your blog!

A few random questions, I am a very keen weather person, and I regular check forecasts over the world, over the past month or two, whenever I check Beijing 5 day forecasts, its always 5 days of sunshine, however, I also hear about smog quite often making a sunny day grey. From your pictures, the sky always seems blue, how bad does the smog get in the center of beijing? Thanks

Or you could be Orthodox and celebrate on Jan 6th

GMT is the observed mean time at the royal observatory in London, but the country obseverves time an hour ahead during the summer months so that we get time to go out after work. The time in greenwich is an hour ahead of GMT! Not very patriotic but hey, it makes us happier. In fact, people are petitioning the government to go an hour ahead of greenwich all year round so we get light during the winter. How do the japanese live with such early sunsets?

Ryan Block, wheres Hong Kong/ China time? nearly a quarter of the worlds population live in that time zone!

Xyzzy, the pricing structure hasn't changed. As a british teenager, I am only able to afford few CDs, Dvds and less things on the whole. In comparison to my american cousin, he has lots of cds, dvds and everything.

Talking about HDTV in england, HDTV is being advertised a lot more now, but transmissions are still so rare. Blu-ray and HD-DVD is unheard of unless you're a geek. While a lot of you complain of your hd-dvd players and blu-ray players being expensive, spare a thought for us who are using old-fashioned dvds!

Thats what the UMPC should look like!

#3 - you're wrong
HDV max is 1440-1080i, does not allow for 1920 x 1080 unlike AVCHD - Canon is being sneaky here.

Also about low light - Canon states 5 lux (JPN) but thats at a slower shutter speed, whereas at normal shutter speed, it is the same as Sony - very sneaky.

Matchbook style is poor for handling. With all those gross pixels, it must mean small pixel size which is not good for low light, and sensor is very slightly larger, we're talking about mm here.

Be careful about canons marketing

#19
Have you thought of possible applications for this robot such as housework?

I think that all of you have been slightly misguided on the price. Europeans always get screwed when it comes to pricing. I think $499-$599 is a better conversion of the european price stated.