Third day in Washington D.C.

First day, walking around National Mall.
Second day, went to Shenandoah National Park.
Third day, coming soon...

D.C. is nice, clean and beautiful. The weather is great, not hot(of course -_-), not cold(I thought it must be aweful). A lot of memorials(of famous presidents) around National Mall, but unfortunately I'm not a big fan of American history, so I was not into them that much.. but the architectures are beautiful there though.

We don't have chance to get into White House(where Bush is at) and US Capital(where Obama and Hillary were at).

Shenandoah National Park should be pretty during fall, but we went there in late Dec. when all the trees are bold.. lol. I don't know if it is because the timing is not right or Shenandoah is simply not that great, I didn't enjoy it very much, compared to Mountain Rainier(which is still my favourite ^^). But anyway, at least I saw a lot of trunks of trees with big leaves(the trees on the west coast are somewhat boring..) and I imagined all the trees with leaves on them.. -_____-

We then went to the famous "Ben's Chili Bowl" after we got back from Shenandoah. It is recommended in every traveling book of D.C., and basically it's about chili hot dog, burgers and fries. I don't like it very much, I even think Carl's Jr. is better... The chili is not tasty(not spicy at all!!).. the hot dog and burger is very normal... I don't know why it is so popular...

First time driving on highway.. lol

What did I do on Christmas day in 2008?
I was practising driving on 110&105 highway to the airport...

I was so nervous ... lol
Before this, there were just two days(less than 2 hours per day =.=) practising in neighbourhood. I even haven't got enough practising on local...

But my driving teacher, Ji, said, it's now or never.. -__-
Everyone is sleeping in Christmas morning, so it's the perfect time to get onto highway. And he said this is today's "special lesson".. -______-

And I was kind of scared but I said: "all right". Yeah, let's get onto the highway..

Anyway, I was exhausted after we got to airport and we changed the driver immediately -____-. But I kind of feel excited now...... And I want to go onto highway tomorrow......

Great thanks to Ji~ and thanks to the teaching assistant Lei, you guys are really funny and nice. And I had a perfect Christmas day~ ^^

China's Charter 08

Chinese Version
English Version

不要被仇恨所束缚-冉云飞

click here

We were raised up with education full of hates(Japan, Guo Ming Dang, US...)
I'm wondering how many countries are teaching their children that you should love all the people whoever they, wherever they come from, and how many countries are teaching their children that the strong ones ultimately get all, never be the weak ones, unless you want to be miserable.

Are people fundamentally selfish? What will happen if the natural resources are finally used up some day? Will all well-educational people turn into ugly animals fighting for food?

Big Mac (巨无霸) - making PPP theory more digestible

Robert Cumby in the Macroeconomics book said:
China's currency, Yuan, should appreciate to 2.80 instead of 6.88(now) because
the price of Big Mac in China is $1.45(￥10) and the price in US is $3.57

According to the Purchasing Power Parity(PPP) theory saying that the exchange rate between two countries should reflect the price level difference.

Thus, the Yuan is 1-$1.45/$3.57=59.4% below its Big Mac parity.
And the exchange rate of Yuan/Dollar should be ￥10/$3.57 = 2.80.

And they claimed they have studied this in 14 countries over 10 years, and the difference between the current exchange rate and the Big Mac exchange rate disappeared in 1 year.

See Big Mac Index on wiki for more info.

Coordination failure

To my understanding, it's what we called bad circulation.

companies cut jobs => workers' income decrease
workers' income decrease => people(workers) spend less
people(workers) spend less => companies sell less
companies sell less => companies cut jobs

The coordination between American consumers and Investors fails as well.
Americans save more in fear of bad economy(which probably is a good thing for the long run =.=), however, investors cannot get the money from banks or just don't want to invest because of the decreasing GDP.
As a result, saving goes up, investment goes down. Coordination failed.

The circulating products in the economics vessel shrink, just like the throughput in the network link shrink. Now everyone's situation gets worse and is unhappy.

有些人就像烟，明明知道对自己没好处，还是戒不掉

我现在就像在戒烟一样，使劲啊使劲的想忘掉烟的感觉。
好不容易，几个礼拜不碰烟，以为自己差不多胜利了。
结果烟一摆到自己面前，又忍不住犯贱的手去抓起来。
真是可悲的低下的意志力。