shankar2k's Journal: Travelling through the Web

I'm sitting at my desk at MSRA in Beijing right now. I'm still figuring out my living situation and fighting jetlag, but things are slowly coming together. I don't think it have been as smooth as it has been if not for this wonderful thing called the "internets", which I hear these days is a series of tubes. I just want to fawn over some bsites that are rockin' the sh*t.

1. OneBag: http://www.onebag.com/. The philosophy of this website is, if you are an independent person (e.g. you don't have kids or are trying to provide water to Nigerians) then it is *possible* to fit everything you need in one carry-on luggage. I found this amazing bag at Ross when I was visiting Sandhya, and I managed to fit all my clothes, books, laptop, and toiletries in their without out any problems. All right, I did have to stow a few things in John's pullman that he checked in (like hairgel !@#$%), but it was less than expected. It was only a little annoying yesterday when we walked about five blocks with my bag before we caught a taxi. Surprisingly I think I packed too much. I guess I'm still a novice at this one.
2. Hospitality Club: http://www.hospitalityclub.org/. Okay, this isn't my first experience with HC. That would be back in Latvia. I wasn't yet a member of this cult, but through Perry I met all these cool people who are on Hospitality Club, that I knew I had to join myself. MSRA was going to put us up in these crappy dorms at BUAA, but I decided to pull a "Perry" and contact all the people in Beijing on HC that were willing to host. Stefanie was gracious enough to do so, and we have been having a ball of a time. She took us around and introduced us to her gaming (boardgames, not geekier stuff) group, and in exchange we provided her with tech support. I think if you are lazy and just want to be pampered, you should go to a hotel. If you are a bit more social and independent, then you can try out the hostels. But if you're really up for meeting cool people, then HC is the way to go. From what I hear, Perry hasn't used a hostel in almost two years now thanks to HC.
3. Craigslist: http://beijing.craigslist.org/. I don't know why I didn't think to look this one up in America. So we showed up at MSRA last Friday, and Yi asked us what we were going to do about housing. MSRA had a apartment renting agent that they contract to, but they told us it was hard to find an apartment for only three months. So out of desperation, I looked on craigslist, and the options just started flying in. There are a million house hunting type websites out there, but what I like about craiglist is how it is at once a very clean website, and yet you can find what you are looking for. We're right now bargaining with two different people, and I'm confident we'll have an address in a day or so.

As a technologist, I have had my reservations about how helpful it is to people. For many years, it seemed that all people did with it is look for porn or bitch at each other. But now I see the real power of it. To help people connect to each, in the *real* world.