Photo of our home dog Boi Boi in my room

In case you are following the "poster saga" ...

Well, after a serious consideration, I went for the option of doing the following: upon my arrival to the office this morning, I wrote a line on the poster while it was still hanging on the wall. The boss had not been arrived the office yet, so she didn't see what I had done. Surprisingly, 2 users (from the client) was frequently went to our room walked by, and was amused by the poster. And all happened within 10 seconds after I finished writing on the poster.

I was intended to take down the poster, but I didn't expect some audiences arriving so soon. So I took down the poster, and laid it open on the desk of my boss.

Well, the two female users who amused by the poster must had told some other users, because within a few minutes, couple of the users walked in and expressed great interest while examining the poster lying on my boss' desk.

By now I realized that I should had that poster rolled up. And so I did. My boss still hasn't arrived yet. So I left room to do work for another client.

When I came back an hour ago, the boss already came back, and she was trying to say something. That rolled up poster was still on her desk. Suddenly there's an rage right inside of me. So I ignored her, grabbed the stuff I needed to use to perform my work, and walked away.

Another hour later, I went back to the room. Now the rollup poster is gone from her desk, and she's gone from the room.

2:02 pm. That's the story so far.

It's 4:48 pm. The drama seems to be ended. Both my boss and I pretended like nothing was ever happened. My boss even put a few chocolate on my desk. Guess it's for the Christmas celebration thing.

uploading photos to Blogger

I didn't realize that there's a new "Service Term" checkbox at the bottom of the stupid Blogger image upload page. No wonder I had problem uploading photos to my blog again and again.

DeathNote animated series

I wonder what my life will be like if I don't have my PDA which allows me to watch tons of TV show and movies while I am on commute.

I watched the DeathNote animated series up to episode 8, and so far I was pretty pleased by the show even when I already know the story darn well from the comics. The director seems to know how to use visual to enhance the storyline.

I also watched a Japanese show called "Music Station" (2006.10.20). I am not too much into the music, but I enjoyed the commercial very much.

And then I watched Jackass number 2. While a few of the gigs were pretty funny, most of the gigs were actually pretty gross and sick. I have to say that I was not really enjoying it. BUt then, it's nice to know that the US market can tolerant all sort of crazy stuff.

Yes, I had a very commute today, and everyday.

Photos taken at Ocean Park

Freebie at Jockey Club?

Probably because my life was a bit too smooth these days, plus I sleep over 8 hours these days due to the cold weather, I had some pretty strange dream last night. I was once again a bunch and bits and piece scenes left in my brand, like I pissed off someone at Jockey Club terminal (and why was I there in the first place?) until I started to say something like "come on, ignore me and focus on winning" shit like that to get rid of the person I pissed off. And then I starts to look around for freebies at Jockey Club, like free headphone (!...?) and stuff like that.

More interestingly, the Jockey Club was actually in the middle of a forest.

Strange.

First time going to Ocean Park

I didn't thought of going to Ocean Park (a theme park in Hong Kong) on a rainy daily, but that's what I did yesterday, and it was overall an exciting experience. I also enjoy the fellowship with my band-mate at church. I am pretty sure that we learned a lot bit more about each other after yesterday.

It was the first time I went to Ocean Park, so I had pretty much no idea about what to visit. Luckily some of the folks in the team had pretty good idea about where to visit. As the result, I pretty much played most of the attraction.

This was also the first time I tried out RollaCosta and free falling game, and boy it was such an experience. I wouldn't say I was particularly enjoying. In fact, I found that somehow a slightly painful experience. On the other hand, I had a voice in my mind that sort of trying to challenge myself, "hey, since you always say that you want to end your life at 40s, why don't you take this free-falling game as a warm up exercise, freeing what it would be like when jumping off a building?" Yeah I know, my brain is such a crazy thing.

It was a bit cold yesterday too, and I was a bit worry that I might got cold later yesterday. I was feeling great this morning, though, after a great Japanese dinner with all the same folks last night, and then a great sleep (8+ hours this morning). It's all good.

Eating in the bus

For some strange, there were couple of people having food in the bus that I rided to work. Could it be just a coincidence, or because of the cold weather? I have no idea.

No matter how many year I tried, the grafitti on Pocket PC just doesn't feel the same and doesn't work as great as the one on Palm. I will really miss Palm OS when it eventually goes away.

Dream about disc burning?

CD (disc) burning much be something that bugged me so much, because I was even dreaming about it. In the dream I was sort of in a a disc burning factory or such and some sort of manual work flow of in place to check whether a disc is ready to burn, or else an error will be reported. I know it sounds vague, because that's all I can still remember now.

Control freak

My dreams got stranger and stranger these days.

Last night, I dreamed about me see the world from third person perspective. In fact, I was sort like or video game player, manipulating people on the earth. But then I wasn't remember exactly what I did to manipulate them.

Dreaming Pet Shop Boys

Man, I really sleep a lot these days. Seven hours, eight hours, it was just amazing. And I was indeed enjoying it. In fact I think I am addicted to sleep.

I, of course, had a dream last night. In that dream, Pet shop Boys had released a new album, and I thought of going to some torrent site (....). And then .... strange, I forgot pretty much most of the dream. I guess the dream not any particular dramatic that my brain didn't dear to remember it.

Me joining homework assistant school?

Last night I had a dream of me following a elder brother to join a homework assistant school. But then when I started asking question about the school, the course and such, the seemingly-the-principal walked by and told me that I need to pay a whole year tuition, while my brother only paid tuition up to next January. I was not too happy, and at the same time I have a strange sense of awareness that after March next year I might not be even in Hong Kong. So I started to explain stuff, and gradually I woke up.

Maybe during the explanation process, I started to aware that I was in the dream, and thus the waking up.

Contact Lens

Strange. I went to sleep very early these days, and then dreamed a lot.

Last night I dreamed about being some sort of agent having some mission to accomplish. However, the mood of the dream was definitely not a action movie flick. But then ... I couldn't remember too much about detail.

I wasted last night ballet dance class because the contact lens on my right eye slided into the far edge of my eyeball. It was not until the end of the class that I had the lens removed from my eye. Terrible.

Very strange dream

I had a very strange dream last night. The characters in the dream was kind of in Japanese animation style, and the story background was like a Sci-Fi animated series.

It was sort of like the world after World War Three, and my ... daughter(!?) had a mail-ordered pet dog that needs to send back to the factory for special kind of cleaning because of the nuclear mutation thing (!?). But it seems like everytime when they sent us back, it was actually a different dog. And then the recently one they sent us was even a ghost (anime style, like the ghost in some Capcom fighting game). The scenes were full of gross body part decay and such.

I wonder what caused me to have that kind of dream, but I was ... in deep slept very deeply (because of all the brain power I used at work in programming). Strange.

Negative Thinking

I tend to preceive new events happening to me in a negative way. It happened at work while a slience-for-too-long client called me, or at home when my mom stopped me at the door telling me about some 2 months job oppotunity that my sister suggested. Usually after the reality sinked in, I would start to see some positive implication of those events. But it's the first impress that always started with as a negative. On the bright side, if things started very negative, it can only getting better as time goes by.

So you see, the same negative to positive cycle is happening here even while I am writing this blog.

Dream and then my over-sensitivity

It's breezing this morning. Finally the weather was realizing that it's about time to show some sign of being in winter.

I woke up this morning with a headache. It was probably because of the dream I had. But then even when I felt like my head was full of it, I couldn't recall anything from the dream. It's almost as if the brain was trying to protect me from recalling the dream in order to avoiding form having even more headache.

I found it kind of sad to see a 80s punk rock pop icon Bill Idol releasing a Christmas album. I was not sure what was the real motive behind such a project, but I guess "making a living" is probably one of it. Guess fame doesn't always necessary comes with fortunate.

Something was bugging me in the last 48 hours. I sensed that a friend was starting to distance oneself from me. Maybe this is just my over-sensitivity playing a game against myself. Maybe it's just a bunch of pure coincidence. Maybe that person was simply being too busy these days. But somehow it hurt and triggered even angry inside me beside of the frustration, feeling out of control and anxious about the uncertainty of the situation. Wait a second, maybe it was my ill temper that drove that person away from me :-E .

I had to spend a lot of effort to learn the Java stuff that I am dealing with at work these days, but at the same time I was thankful of having the opportunity of branching out my skill set. Something things that are good for me always inflict some pain in me one way or the other.

I feel like I am getting very easy to get tired these days. Getting old, I guess. Getting old indeed.

My strange dream last night

Let's see:

- I narrowly escaped form a train with tons of Communist referenced horrible poster on walls and heading to a poison gas chamber.
- I was in a room full of political comics book
- I was in a room which my pal Alex Wong showcased his U2 posters and stuff
- I was walking around deciding what to decorate my living room
- I was sort of in a action movie flick, jumping around roof top and floor while following stranger with action drama kind of dialog.

Yep. Guess that's pretty much I remembered about my dream.

Broken headphone

I knew this would happened eventually, and it happened yesterday: I broke the AudioTechnica inner ear headphone ... sort of. It was the extension chord that was broken due to a strong stretch while I was chasing a bus with a part of the extension chord caught by the a narrow gap next to a fence on the road. When I touch the end near the headphone jack, I can actually feel that the inner wires had been torn away. So this extension cable is a gonna. Luckily, I have a spare extension chord that looks exactly the same but in black color. That does annoy me at all as I don't care much about color matching or any sort of fashion statement. Once you sunk so low, you cannot sink any lower.

This white headphone is also a living prove that I should not have anything frequently used gadget in Pearl White color. A white gadget like this pearl white headphone eventually turned into a light gray thing that really repels people when they walk closer to me and seeing all the dirts on the able. I really should stick with my kind of color: silver, gray, or even black.

Lyrics without melody (2)

不是首先
也不是最後一個
我的痛楚
數千個也在同和

怎樣解釋
結果亦一樣經過
我只需要
脫下我身上珈瑣

放聲哭
放心哭
淚水可替我消毒

在半空
在幽谷
感覺沒有了拘束

我知我仍有感覺
眼淚過後有幸福
孤單
但不再孤獨

Lyrics without melody (1)

那是甚麼樣的感覺


是忠誠
是忠貞
還是沒有膽再任性

未盡情
未任性
就當成長階段完成

身份繼續確定
四方八面公認
旁人都為你高興
未察覺你眼角的淚影


未有做
還是
做不到
光天化日裡愛得驕傲

讓美夢
隨年日消耗
就安穩荀且見步行步

從理智再次入手
容玻璃包進傷口
讓每個觀眾
看不出有多荒謬

不再問誰在撲空
到那日回頭望揭盅
分不清苦楚還是個美夢

Immigration Interview

I got my immigration interview today, and basically it went thru OK, but I still have some documents missing. The another lady who did pre-interview with me even told me that I don't need to present some financial documents like Tax return and stuff, and instead only need to present my latest bank statement with HK$400,000 or above, and the last 6 months band statement. Later I found out that they are not needed.

I am so glad that I kept all my old password, SSN card and such. Or otherwise I may need to check US Department of Homeland Security (previous called USINS,or US Department ... Immigration .. blah blah)

The interviewer told me that once they got my F1 and H1B, I should get my Visa after a week. I will come in form of a paper envelope. Inside the envelop there will be a plastic bag. Inside the plastic bag (......) there will be my passport, some info and a brown envelope. I was told more than 3 times today that DO NOT COPY THAT ENVELOPE, and it has to be in my hand carry luggage. The X-ray can be left in my hand carry luggage, and I should keep it for a year. After one year, if no official request me to turn it in, I can destroy it. (..... k, whatever)

I was also told that I should double check my name and info on the US Passport that I am about to receive.

Nice drumming

I went to Hong Kong Cultural Center to see a dance performance by Hong Kong Dance Company this afternoon. It was OK. But what really took my heart today was actually the pop jazz performance by some Philippians musicians outside the Cultural Center. I spent some time watching the drummer playing, and he was really good.

I really need more musician (not necessary famous ones) playing real instrument live in Hong Kong. We have too many done-by-sequencer-and-sampler kind of music product in Hong Kong, thus makes appreciate whoever plays live with real instrument.

Wake up from a dream, but ...

I woke up from a dream, but somehow I didn't remember the detail. I just remember that it has something to do with watching movie.
oh well ...

A dream journal

I woke up this morning with a dream about work! This rarely happens but then it just did. In the dream I was with my ex-coworker Wilson. I must be dating it back to the old days, cause he's still my helper in my dream. Our client was discussing with us about the changes regarding to the work. Something like that.

And after spending so much time to prepare for my immigration interview, I still found myself missing some minor stuff like photocopy of my HK ID Card and such. I got to go to the workplace tomorrow morning to get some of those works done.

A Dream

I woke up this morning from a strange dream (well I rarely have normal dream anyway): in the dream, I was sort of in America. I didn't have a car and I walked through parking lot after parking lot just trying to get back to my new apartment, When I got there, my old roommate Jospeh Lai and his wife Simon was there visiting my room. I was very tired, while they were looking around in my apartment, making comments about the scene from the apartment. There was some neighborhood having party right next to my apartment, and we could see them from my apartment's window.

And basically that's it. There were some other minor stuff here and there but this is basically the dream.

To think of it, this sounds like a pretty normal dream, isn't it?

Nightmare

I woke up from some nightmare this morning, and found that it was about 5:45 am.

The dream was about taking some examination in some hall at University, which greatly reassembled the Business School building of the University I attend when I was young. IN the dream, I was so worry about missing tons of questions in my exam, and was discussing answers with my friends. The interesting thing is that I can't remember the face of my "Friends" in the dream. They were all blurry now that I looked back.

And then the dream turned into some movie shots with Steven Chow, and it was some random scenes about chasing and such,

And I woke up after that.

I was quite sure that I had that nightmare because I pretty much forgot every steps in the dance exercise, and I pretty much went through the class in fear. One positive result from the fear was that now I started to remember those steps a little bit here and a little bit there, thus there should be a better chance for me to finish them properly next Sunday. I still better ask someone to clarify those steps before next Sunday night though.

It wasn't any better during the drum set playing Sunday morning at Sunday service, neither. There were a few moments which my brain blanked out, and I suddenly had no idea what I need to play. I didn't know why, but it feels like I suddenly lose confidence or so. My mind always play that sort of strange tricks on me.

I was not quite able to answer my friend's question yesterday during lunch at Chinese restaurant. He asked me why I continues learning dancing, and I couldn't pull out the answer right away. The most horrible part was that I still couldn't come up a convincing answer even if you ask me now. Somehow it's as if it's a habit, or trying to make a closure on something. I have an intention of trying to fix something I broke before, or stubbornly spending effort on things that I started and haven't really quite finished. I hate leave something half baked. To me, dance is like a half baked cake now.

But then, should I cutting the lost and start invest my time on something that I really good at? Here comes the embarrassing part: I couldn't think of anything that I am particularly good at. And being a lazy person, I rationalize with myself that maybe I should start reshuffling my life when I finally found something that I am really good at.

Eventually, it would be some external force that changes my life habit, like a change of job, relocation, or the combination. Ironically, this can happen to me more frequent that other people since I am a contractor and I need to constantly finding new job everything half or one year. I am also in the process of immigration, so there will be an major relocation for me in the coming one to two years, if everything goes as planned (unfortunately, it wasn't).

It's kind of sad though when I think about it, that my life was driven by all these external force. All these thoughts really depressed me, and when I depress I sleep.

Let me sleep a bit more now. It's 6:27pm.

------

Woke up, and it's 6:57 pm. I started to remember more pieces of the Sunday night dance practice exercises, and they were all so fragmented. Well, something is better than my clear-like-snow state of memory last Sunday night.

I am not feeling as much pain when breathing now. Yet when I cough I can still feel the chase pain. And when I sneeze it hurts a lot. All these was because of me slamming the butt of my dance partner to my chest oh so many times. It's all my fault, so I am not complain, but merely stating the fact just for the record.

After today's dance performance

Just pull out a bunch of staple nail from the collar of my dance costume. I had quite a lot of them that I nailed there this morning, and I don't want to left them there which may potentially hurt my mom. Yet I had to do that this morning as a quick fix for my costume. Sure I did some quick fix here and there this morning, all for the performance.

I learned something about myself today, and I think I need to set some goal to improve those areas. All in all: another show, another set of things to learn.

I learned a bit more about my classmates in dance class. Let's just say that just like any human being, not all of their character trace are loveable. But then, so am I. Being together, have a chance to play, work and learn together, is a errrr ... I don't want to say Kama or fate or destination or shit like that .... I think what I want to say is that I try to treasure every single person I deal with.

Guess I am trying to sound Political correct :-P.

Children are funny, and so is childhood. I heard some stories about putting pencil underneath the neck and say "don't push me or I'll commit suicide, or passing thru a toilet seat just for fun. Collecting all up and, Va la, a sitcom ready made.

People around me don't care about Jesus Camp

I told my Christian friends about the movie Jesus Camp. And a bit to my surprise, they didn't care about that movie. So after I short moment I changed my subject to something else.

Maybe people simple got numb about all media franzy related to religion. Or that the friends I was with were too tired to think about controversial after a whole day of work. And I was glad that the email I tried to the group was bounced back because of certain rights. Otherwise I maybe crowd as freak anyway.

Silence is a power language

Yesterday was I was mad about someone. Not is a ferious way, but enough to keep me away from concentrating on the things I need to do. The person I mad at probably didn't know it, for I didn't say anything particular. In fact, that's what I do when I am mad that someone: I avoid talking to that person, no even an eye contact.

Now that I looked back (and man it was just 12 hours ago), it was pretty childish. I mean, such that person was pretty self-centered, constant saying unconsiderate things, and was already unpopular among the others anyway. But still, I was not happy about the fact that I didn't embrace the person the way how the Lord embrace other unplesant person.

And that reminded me something about last night. I was always find it irritating that with all the politeness I shown, like saying "hi", "morning" whenever I can, the *** always gives me silence treatment whenever she felt like it. Granted, she did the same to the others anyway, and she's not particularly a happy person from my observation, based on a lot of things that I found too personal to write them down here. And then, there's certain things called minimum politeness, and she didn't have it most of the time. She seemed hope that the world can evolve around her, and have things her way. And that others should adjust their lifes so that she can feel more comfortable. And the fact the she likes to slam the door of her room without saying a thing is just irrating.

Last night she shutted the door when I walked in my room. Since she shutted to door, I decided to open the door to let some fresh air flow. But while I was watching "Bill Mahar in Real Time" on my PC, I found that someone closed my door. Seems like it's her.

Well, maybe I should be thankful that she didn't slamed my door.


I know deep inside I am still mad at her. But then in most case I'll still try to be polite, make eye contact to her and say "Hello" and "Morning". But when she just laid on the couch without responding, that really ticks me.

How did Jesus find the power to love all we jackass?

Looking forward to the movie Jesus Camp for a different reason

My heart couldn't settle after watching to the trailer of the movie "Jesus Camp" http://www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/jesuscamp/trailer/ . I also visited the movie's web site (http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com/) and read the interview at Christian Today web site ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/jesuscamp.html ). If you think Davinci Code is a challenging movie for Christian, wait until you see Jesus Camp.

I haven't seen the movie itself yet, so I don't want to make too much judgement. However, the most ironic thing about this movie is that it didn't seen trying paint Christian black. The movie just document a radical summer camp with preachers preaching emotional message about taking a firm stand in today's society, and along the way cross over some Replication political agenda with religious faith. That, of course, was enough to start up fire in the liberal media.

This independent documentary probably won't stirr up as much controversy in Hong Kong than in US. Most teenagers in HK don't care much about HK politics at all, let alone understanding the difference between Democrat and Republican in United State. However, be prepared if someone ask you whether it is "too radical" and "brainwashing" to ask children to join the army of Christ, or take a clean cut distinction between their Christian and non-Christian friends. And most importantly: do you have a stand on issue like this? And where's the foundation of that stand point came from?

Looking forward to see the movie. It's just like you have to at least hear one teenage pop singer's song before comment on teenage pop singer.

My commute

There are times when I wake up ultra early, and thought of going to work right away just to get that feeling or productive as an early bird. Well I found out on Monday that it wasn't really paying off.

I left home at 7:45 am to go to the bus station, only to see a very long line. One fully crowd bus passed by, and then I got on the second one. It was 8:15 am by the time. I arrived at the office on 9:00 am sharp. Not too bad, but it's actually more "cost effective" if I arrive at bus station at 8:30 am, and then arrive office at sometime EARLY than 9:30 am.

I wonder, though, what happen if I at bus station on 7:15 am.

Logo

I think all clients are the same, including my younger brother.

He asked me to draw his salon logo design using ADobe Illustrator based on his sketch. BUt after I finished it, he said the design was not good, and ask me to design another one. I mean, that WAS HIS design. I was just an illustrator!

Stupid moron smiling at a Pocket PC

I was caught smiling at my Pocket PC (DELL Axim x50v) at the MTR Platform at Lai Chi Kok after Sunday service when I was sitting on a chair watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (a HBO comedy show). Two sister in church saw me at that sort of state, and was amused for minutes.

And since I started the habit of watching all sort of US comedy TV show on Pocket PC during my commute, so it’s very likely that looks of people saw me as an idiot starring at the tiny screen smiling like pervert.

My reponse, “So be it”, or using the Frank Sinatra song, “… I’ll do it … MY …… WAY… “ >:-}

Enjoying Curb Your Enthusiasm

I was starting to watch the HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and I totally loved it.

The show starring Seinfeld’s writer and co-creator Larry David and was basically following the tradition of Seinfeld as a reality look-alike comedy show about .. nothing. The major character Larry (played by Larry himself) was such an asshole most of the time, and yet I found myself sharing so much common with the character: we are both self-centered asshole, we are both bolding and bolding (激光[頭]中), we both worried about a lot of small things, and we both suffer from our bad deed we did at the end. Larry helped my lot commute becomes much shorter than it used to be.

A bad start for a day

Somehow I felt like I would start my day on a down note when I woke up seeing rain drops spread around the edge of bed near the opened window with rain pouring in.

Then when my walked our of my home while plug-in my inner ear headphone, I realized that the right channel of my headphone was not working, so instead of proceeding walking to the bus stop, I turned back to my home and grabbed my spare white inner-ear headphone. I did all these while I was still tangling with the long extension cord of my headphone. After I got all settled, I was standing in front of the traffic light in red while seeing the bus I needed to take to walk getting reading to zoom away. Of course, I was not stupid enough to rush into to traffic just so that I can catch the bus. So eventually I saw this bus ran away, and later found out that the bus was the last bus for today (the bus only serves everyday from early morning till 9:20 pm). Yeah all these are mainly my fault. At the end I arrived office at 10:35 am. Boss was not in the office. All was well :-P.

Oh, and regarding to the headphone, the right channel was indeed broken, probably caused by pulling the end of the cord too hard sometime yesterday (even though I didn’t really remember that). It’s good that I have a spare one though.

I was giving the monthly household expense money to my mom, and since I got gratuity at the end of my last contract, I cut a partition from it and gave mom additional $1000. Mom didn’t say a thing about it, and it for some strange reason bothered me. Don’t get me wrong. I was not looking forward to words of appreciation like “oh thank you” and stuff like that. In fact, I was a bit worry that maybe it’s the exact opposite. Maybe she actually thought that I didn’t give enough to pay off the household expense. I thought of that because last night while I was having my haircut at my younger brother’s salon, he told me that my younger sister, my mom’s important source of income besides me, was not doing too well financially and sort of in semi-unemployment stage. So maybe my mom was really tight at finance, but didn’t want to tell me that. Or that I was so busy of doing my own shit all the time that gave her an impression that I was not ready to talk to her at all.

Anyway, I think I should chat with her tonight or something like that.

psychic power

A strange day that I had today. In fact, I might just discovered that I have psychic power.

It all happened this afternoon. I was practice for a dance competition 2 weeks later, and I was pretty sure that I got enough warm up before. However, just when I started practicing a little bit on the dance routine, my left elbow suddenly felt break pain within the tendon. Seems like I accidentally hurt my tendon by waving my left arm too hard during a move in the dance. It was actually all my fault for putting too much force on the arm, and this problem actually happened before. Nevertheless it was painful like hell, and it almost rendered my left to dysfunction. I had to continue the practice since my teacher insisted us to finish the practice.

After the practice in the afternoon, there was supposed to be class at night. But my left elbow was so painful that I had to skip today's class. And then I suddenly had an idea of having a haircut (knowing that if I didn't do it today I might not do it for the coming several weeks!) As the result, I had a pretty nice hair cut, and my head doesn't look like a lawn being left alone for a year.

And then later that night, my dance classmate told me that the night dance class was not going too well.

So, I was wondering if my body, with some strange animal instinct sensing something terrible happened at night intentionally HURT ITSELF to keep me from going to the night class.

..... Just a strange thought :-P.

Two events happened which potentially check my life (well, so does all others)

I experienced two things which may potentially change my life forever. Of course, based on idea of Butterfly Effect, almost every single that happened in this world can potentially change my life forever. But at least two events are interesting.

First, I figured out that I can somehow lead a practice session for a dance piece which I DID NOT KNOW how to dance. It happened during a performance practice for a Catholic Youth event later this month. I was agreed to help out during the event, even though I had completely no idea what role I was going to play.

At the second scene of the performance there was sort of a group a-go-go dance. Since someone was missing at the practice, this director asked me to fill the gap. I was like "what the ***k" but followed the instruction anyway.

After the rehearsal for that session ended, we though were dismissed. But instead the director asked me to PRACTICE the dance with them. And I was like "MAJOR WHAT THE ***K" because I still couldn't remember most of the steps. Being such passive aggressive person, I once again accepted the task. So thought our the coming 30 minutes, I acted like I knew stuff, asking some students to do a little bit demonstration, and then simply based on that demonstration to practice. Luckily, these secondary school student were kind enough to not majorly challenge me (but then I will let the one who challenge me to take over the practice session anyway).

But do you know what was the best part? During the end of the practice today, we had a final rehearsal. Being acted like an instruction for more than 30 minutes, I STILL COULDN'T dance that piece correctly at the final rehearsal.

Ironic isn't it?

The second thing that made an impact on my life today (it actually happened more like a physical comedy punch): I learned that if a can of Coke dropped from 6 feet above to the floor, the splash it generated could spread over an area as big as 64 square feet (that's the size of my room).

I made that happened after I got home form the dance practice, then tried to move several cans of Coke from the closet of my room to the refrigerator. A can of Coke silted out of the the fragile paper box. The next thing I know, my room was spilt with sticky Coke.

I took me 15 minutes to clean them up. Not too bad, but .... Still anonying, considered that I was soaked with my own sweat after a whole afternoon dance practice.

That's it for now. More fun stuff later.

The CASIO keyboard was broken, thanks to my nephew

I don't know who actually broke the CASIO LK-50 keyboard I borrowed from my friend several years ago (and funny how she never meant to ask me to return it). Based on the way how my nephew constantly slamming on the keyboard almost daily, I am be pretty sured that he contributed to much of the broken down of that keyboard.

Basically 5 white key and 3 black key at the same section was totally dysfunctioanl. They all located at the left side of the keyboard. So if I ignored them, and transpose an octave. I still have 4 full octave out of this 5 octave keyboard. Not the end of the world in certain way.

This is yet another reason why not to have a kid, since I will not giving up buying expansive computer and musical gear.

And hot damn it the 4 year old hyperactive kid keeps yelling and yepping and running around in my room.

Problem child in the making

I still remembered that last year I was talking about how my nephew was able to take advantage of both his mom and my mom being too easy on him. Well, in the last several month, I saw something gradually happening among my brother's family. These days, I actually felt sorry to my nephew.

Usually I don't want to get involved into the marriage my elder brother, but something I just couldn't help but over heard what they argue about. Basically there was a tension between my brother and his wife, sometime about money (who spend on what using who's money), sometimes about time management (like you spend too much time on what with whom) and then sometimes about something that I don't know.

And things got ugly when the kid, my nephew, was involved in between.

Like today, after a verbal argument with my elder brother about spending, my tired and grumble sister-in-law wanted to grab the kid and went to sleep. Too bad the kid was still hyperactive, and running around happily. The kid's happiness ended when his mom yelled at him, calling him crazy, and then slapped at him. He cried, and ran to his grandma for revenge. "Punish mom" he asked my mom. Of course my mom wouldn't, and couldn't, do a thing.

So here we go. A kid being slapped (on the butt I guess) for no good reason. Honestly, if I were the kid, I would be confused too. I got punished when I shouldn't be, and I didn't get penalized when I should have been.

Sigh. If you haven't had a marriage, think twice. If you are already married, be a good couple before getting a baby. And if you already got a kid and you have some serious trouble with your spouse, get some counseling.

An annoying person

There are certain people in this world who tried to be funny, or pretend to be funny in order to hide their self-centered giant ego from being obviously exposed. I know of such a person who was once a developer in my team but now a contractor in a government office who happens to be working in the same building as I work at.

I found him irritating ever since the last time we met at a reunion gathering dinner. He consistently talked with the tone of I-am-above-you or I-am-managing-you kind of attitude. Maybe he got such an attitude from spent too much time managing outside vendor, and got used to using such an attitude to boss around in order to get his work done. That doesn't mean, though, he has right to use the same bad ass attitude to deal with other people, including those who are supposed to be his friend.

Imagine meeting an old friend, and his first word is " what kind of sickness do you have these days." That's the attitude of this person. I met him a few times at the building lobby, and the only word he could came out of his butt was "Hey, how can you are still around here. When could you leave here?" And then he farted again with words like "do you have nothing to do at work?"

It's kind of sad to see someone I know turned into such a inconsiderate person. But then, I don't know what kind of abuse he suffered from his boss (more of his consumer of his service as he's just a independent contractor there, thank goddness) .

Dream and Madam Choi

Somehow I still feeling pain throughout the body, it would be a lie if I told you that it has nothing to do with the Sunday class.

I also managed to wake up on time at 7:30, but the muscle pain kept my movement in semi-slowmotion style, and eventually I left home at 8:25am. Darn it, just couldn't arrive shape to workplace at 9:00 am as I did yesterday.

I had a dream last night about me dancing for a event for my teacher madam Choi, but suddenly realized that there's another event (some sort of acting I guess) right before the dance performance (and it vaguely remember that I was going to dance to a bunch of kids, or something like that). So I needed to rush to different rehearsals and juggle between the two events, and eventually I woke up in the middle of the process. Another prime example of real life stress reflected in a dream.

Personal photo call at work

As a supervisor, I found it annoying seeing my staff member keep listening to personal phone call, and found it even more annoying when personal photo call stands in it's way during a business conversation or even a formal meeting. If I have a big crew of people to manage, I will tell that in the very beginning that I prohibit such a anti-productivity behavior.

That's a different story, though, if my people doesn't have work on hand, or finished his/her work within the timeline I defined for them.

Erasure's Union Street and my tired soul

"Help me to fold this origami
for only you can turn this paper beauty.
To work along was never easy
unless you hand can hold me
and set me free."
(Written by me)


I thought it was just a one song gimmick when I started listening to Erasure's new album "Union Street". A acoustic song, I thought, was never something that I expected some the 80's pop electronic dance music group. But one song after another, Erasure continuously using their melodic song writing skill trying to prove that they can do more than some repetitive loop sequence. Weather you appreciate it or not, you just have to admit that it takes a lot of guts for a pop group to do something completely different from their well-known style. And frankly the result is pretty nice. Even though no single song particularly stand out or stuck in my memory, the album as a whole is a whole gentle and song backdrop music for you to enjoy while you are driving home bringing you tiresome body and a defeated soul from the battlefield at work.

And coincidently, I was in such a state of deeply tiresome status, both spiritually and physically.
Yes, for those who know about me, you know it's the dance class.

Well, on the bright side, my almost-shunted-down brain was recovered while I was in the minibus heading back home after the class. I don't know if it was the the two bottle of Ion Supply Drink (Pocaro Sweat), or simply the rest that helped me to recover. But, heck, what worked works.


(Nope, those two cans were not looking like that when I brought them.)

And then, unlike the previous classes which my brain was so tired because of lack of sleeping and a morning of intense drum set playing, my brain seems to able to remember of steps that the teacher commented. That's a huge improvement considered that my brain was as clean as a piece of white paper after the dance class every time I attended it while I was lack of sleeping.

And an ultra important rule: unless I quit dancing, otherwise I have to sleep like a puppy for at least 8 hours on Saturday night.

But that only solved part of my problem. I still need to figure out why I was so out of strength on Sunday night, and weather there's a solution to it.


11:06 pm. I better unpack my stuff, take a shower, have dinner, spend 20 minutes to complete the 3D animation exercise I started yesterday and pack my stuff for work tomorrow.

I just love how my busy lifestyle keep myself my depression.





"Try to keep my stream of bitter
from flooding my soul.
So much hatred that can never resolve
as far as I know.
It's just a little step
to make me stronger.
Sure, I do think so.
When I look back
it's gonna be so utterly
beautiful.
So beautiful."
(Written by me)

Little brat nephew is in hospital

My little brat nephew went to hospital 2 days ago because of high fever for quite a while. My mom attribute his slighly over the top nasty attitude of the last two week to the week (while I still believe that's just his regular little brat attitude). So now my mom and my sister-in-law needs to take turn to stay in the hospital to take of this little thing.

Yeah, parenting is a lot of work. So think twice before you have sex next time.

My dream with someone at work. No, not Brokeback.

This is freaky, but for the first time (err .... well, at least first time this year), I had a user (of my contracting service at work) showing up in my dream!

The dream was about me in Canada (I felt like it's Canada). I was in some apartment, and I felt like it was about the latter time of Chinese New Year period. My user Mr. MF Mok was visiting me and we were chit-chatting when another family (that I never knew of now that I thought about it) showed up to visit. Again the unknown-family (with no kids, just most aunts and such) with Mr. Mok and me continue chatting something no quite important.

And that's basically what the dream was about.

Yeah, pretty not cool. No action or explosion of any major drama.

On the related notes, I was more or less being a dick at work yesterday. My apology.

Short distance

The Distance of my inspiration and lack of patient is so short that any tiny obstacle along my journey of capturing my creativity can ruin any idea I came up. And like a coal soaked with rain, it's hard to start another fire once it was put off. That's why I always have my MIDI keyboard hooked up instead I need to play and record something on my PC. And that's why, it turned out, that it was such a bad idea to it yanked the 1Gb SD memory card out in order to carry more movie files for playing on my Pocket PC. There was a moment today that I wanted to use my camera to capture some beautiful color and texture mix on some common daily life objects. I yanked out the photograph and only found out that the memory card was not there. By the time I found the memory card, I already lost my excitement on capturing the moment.

This is yet another note-to-self: my next camera HAS TO BEEN FAST in response time in order to keep up with my quick impulsive mindset. Any thing less is unacceptable.

Bart kid, giving-in grandma

This just in. My mom was so fustrated and driven to a point that she literally cried.

I think mom really put too much pressure on herself. Usually she's a very efficient person, and she could do a lot of things at short amount of time. And she was trying to rush me a lunch since I told her that I was leaving at home at 1:00 pm and she was always crazy about having us having lunch at home.

There's one huge obstacle: my sick (yes, literally, which flu I guess) 4 year old nephew. Kid.

You see, even without sickness, he's such a rotten kid being a little king at home as my mom always try to REASON with him when he was totally a jerk. That's reasoning with a 4 years old doesn't work at all. So he always had his way.

So a while ago he was bitching some shit, and then my mom was ultra busy about making lunch. Oh, did I told you that my mom, just like me, has pretty low EQ sometimes?

As a result, my mom was driven to the climax. The result? My mom blastered out crying. Well it lasted about 30 seconds and thn my elder brother, the father of that little brat, finally walked out and give little brat some dicipline (just yelling though, no beat-the-living-crap-out-of-it kind of good stuff).

So my mom is clam down now. She's just like me (proabably in the genes or something), loves big emotioanl outburst and then back to normal, like nothing happened.

The moral: don't have a kid. And if you do, move to Singapore. Canning is great for kids.

Trail of my Life

Sometime I just put stuff in my blog so that they can be serachable on my Google Mail. This is my way of putting a reminder to myself, and to a certain extend it's like a memory trail of my life.

So here's on of these. Don't know me what they are. It's not meant to be understandable :-D

Wincy
Lunch
One Disc
Storm codec
Brokeback Mountain
Good.Night.And.Good.Luck
London
Rent
You Got Served
林海峰是但發花癲

That is all. Now go see more Despearte Housewives.

Obsessed with dreaming

One of the reason why I am so obsessed with sleeping is because I love dreaming a lot.

Dreaming is like spying on what your subconscious is thinking. It's like watching an interactive movie about topics and issues that you care about.

Like this dream I had a dream about me as a father trying to teacher my son to be a responsible person. The scene started with me and my son walking toward a container truck (maybe influenced by some Hong Kong news I read?) arguing something. And then I was driving this huge monster and kept worrying about my car hitting something (....), but when I arrived the port of unloading the containing, my subjective view can all the way zoom out and see myself driving the container truck from the side view. So you see it's really like I am directing a movie.

A few days ago, I had another dream which my not-so-close-but-know-him-for-a-long-time TSU Chinese ex-classmate (also church member) Ben Ngan was organizing a evangelical night with me for the church, but something was not right when I talked to some committee member can he was not so sure about whether he was a born-again Christian. So I kept helping him to figure out whether he was a Christian because his parents are Christian. And then some minor branches.

In another dream I was with my old CSK classmate Hansel Sin, and this time it was something more unorganic. We shopped and then .... a big blur ...

I can surely dream hundreds of days and I still won't get tired of it.

Taking a sick day off today

I am taking a sick day off today to rest at home. Feeling better now.

It always take something like a flu to force me to do all the right things like eating more fruit, drinking more water and get enough sleeping. But heck, at least I give in to the force of nature instead of taking tons of medicines and continue going to work.

Sleeping is the best treatment

After a night and a whole of sleeping, sleeping, messing with PC and then sleeping, I was feeling better now. With Strepsils drops, Vitamin C pills, 北京銀翹解毒片 and a lot of water, my flu seems to be in control. But I still have to stay to home all day today (Sunday). I will miss tonight's dance class :-I .

Woke up from a strange nightmare

I am sick today with some sort of flu I think. And when I get sick I have strange dreams. I fell into sleep this morning after I took some medicine and then I had a strange dream:

I woke up in a big hotel room which was supposed to be my new room, but instead of having a room by myself like what I have now, I was told that I would share my room with some new stranger. That made me very mad. And then my mom walked by and accused me something that I promised but didn't do. Again, it tickled my nerve. I continued walking around, being challenged by my dance teacher Mr. Chow, and then by my father, and even my sister. Just when my bustard's rose through the top of my head, I woke up.

Could be that I had too much pressure these days? I don't know.

Oh, my sore throat seems to be slightly better now. But far from completely cured.

Need shirts and pants ...

I brought several shirts in size medium (M-15 3/4) and pants (30 for waist, 40 for length) from Balano no because I particular like their product, but because I was running out of shirts and pants.

I left part of my brain at home today

I just realized, when I was about to arrive office, that I left my removable harddisk at home. That's mean I will have live a day without my harddisk. Halfday passed, and I was still doing OK. Thanks to the Internet and the OSX running on my desktop. Sweet.

That's how I spent my birthday

I love the fact that my portable MP3 player contains thousands of various styles of song in it, allowing me to select the right kind of music to match whatever mood I am at anytime, anywhere. Right now my mood is slightly blue and sorrow, and I picked some George Winston piano music. It matched my feeling pretty well, and slightly eased my pain.

I started my day this morning by wearing too much clothing as I found the temperature sort of on the breezing side. It turned out that I was being tricked by mother nature. So I ended up had to carry a bunch of clothes around, from church to Institution of education, and then to the dance studio at Wan Chi. Not only it was inconvenient, it also hurt my shoulder, which partially contributed to the bad thing happened later today.

The drumset I played this morning for the three Sunday services was kind of a mess up. Somehow the grove was not that, I could heard the mistake I made loud and clear from my the recording I made with my portable mp3 player (which comes with recording function). So much as I wanted to convince myself that I shouldn't care, it was indeed started my day with a down note.

And then I was practicing my solo dance this afternoon. Not too good in progress it was. I knew I was slow at learning steps, but somehow I was getting like VERY slow today. I kept watching the same segment of video, mimicked the steps, and then again and again. After about 2 hours, I still haven't got the first two minute completely nailed down. It said that it was fustrating to me a complete downplay of what I actually felt.

The close my miserable day, my brain was kind of dead during the night dance class. I had to be completely honest to myself that the suddenly tendon pain on my shoulder I had starting from the beginning of the second hour of the class was NOT really the reason that performed badly today. I was just suck as the whole dance thing. Period. And I took a LOT of my concentration to dance everything right. Clearly I was in my top condition of concentration today. So I filled the class with mistake after mistake and mistake. And then, my dear friend shoulder tendon pain came to visit me. It happened last Sunday, and also on last Wednesday's class. It attacked me once again today. This time I tried my best to swallow the pain. I kept trying to ease and relax my shoulder. "Use my stomach muscle, use my stomach muscle" I kept reminded myself, and surprisingly, I was able to shake it off a bit even thought I still felt the pain, and slightly distracted my concentration.

But it was at the last ten minutes that my left arm was rendered to dysfunctional. I couldn't raise my arm. I was very fustrated, and a lot of thinking flew by my head, maybe it's my body telling me that it's time to call a quit on this dancing thing. It was like my body was talking to me:

"A weak pencil neck like you shouldn't think about dancing. Go play your Adobe Illustrator, mess with your Visual Studio .Net, and get crazy with dance loop with your digital music. But no, not this dancing thing you little day dreaming punk. Me as your body was sick of you torturing me for all these year, and I am giving you this tendon pain to hold you hostage. That's right. Fight me, and you will continue suffer. Come test my limit, punk!"

So I wasted my last 10 minutes of the class doing something that even I couldn't remember. Either my memory was really lousy, or the internal struggle and pain was so great that the memory of my brain shuted down to prevent me from killing myself.


That's pretty much my day. And, oh yeah, today is my birthday.

春茗

離開了春茗的場地（中環），我在皇后像廣場和匯豐大樓的附近乘968號巴士到元朗弟弟的髮廊理髮。乘著等待弟弟有空檔的時間，我看看背裏裡從春茗拿到的東西。記得春茗時同檯有人說今年的開工利是少得多，送的禮物又少，令人失望。我卻由於從來沒有在香港赴過春茗的宴會，倒覺得十分興奮和新鮮，所以整個過程都十方高調，叫叫嚷嚷的，就當是娛人娛己吧！我是個簡單的人，有和小電筒，有件少掛飾物，已經覺得不過不失。總好過像往年般甚麼也沒有。冷不防在宴會的中後斷，拿了個＄888元的抽獎獎金。看來請同事們吃飯或吃下午茶該是少不了免了。

想起來，我好像很少寫中文的，也難怪，我的中文輸入一直沒有多大進步過，該找些時間好好的練習。

I love reorganizing my stuff

The fact is that I love reorganizing myself very once in a while. It serves multiple purpose which has more implication than just having a tidy room.

- It helps me to realize how much stuff I have, and inspires me to rethink about the priorities of my life.
- It lowers my incentive to by more stuff. The more stuff I have, the more I need to organize.
- It brings back some sweet old memory.

The hardest part is to figure out what to throw away.

LEQF

I recently found out that there's a common trace of behavior in our family members, or at least within us bothers: we don't have patient, very stubborn, kind of bad tempter.

I found out this today because I was kind of impatient when I explained a computer problem with my brother, and he kept asking for absolute answer for a relative problem. And then when I walked to the living I saw my younger brother being equally impatient when he tried to explain his dog breeding business mess.

I will start to call our family LEQF (Low EQ Family).

I see a storm waiting to happen in my family

Something is not right with my family recently. I observed some trail of conflict and tension building up among people here, and it seems like this was not going to be pretty.

I started sensing that something was wrong a week ago when my sister-in-law and my nephew started going to bed pretty early, sometime around 10:00 p.m. . At first I thought this was just an act of trying to make sure that my nephew woke up on time to school.

But a day later, when I went home at about 10:30 pm, turned on the light of my room and started a bit online radio, I heard a loud door slamming sound. The door of my sister-in-law's room, which was opened a few seconds ago, was shunted. I asked my mom what was going on, and my mom explained it with a murmuring voice, “... well, guess your sister-in-law was a bit unconscious with her sleepy head, and tried to close to door without thinking too much ...”

I didn't buy that explanation, and very conscious about making sure that my door light wouldn't turn on until I shunted the door.

I also sensed something strange: my nephew was not as bouncy and joyful as he used to be since a week ago. When I left home last Sunday morning, I saw my nephew starring at the television, so I said Hi to him. Usually he would greet back enthusiastically. Well, he didn't this time. He saw of looked at me and then looked at the television again, as if something was bothering him.

Keep in mind that my nephew is just a 3 years 8 months old kid.

And then today I went home at 9:30 pm. The sister-in-law's room was closed, which I assumed that she went to sleep, and I saw my nephew laid next to mother. I heard him vaguely murmuring something like “... I don't want grandma cries, and I don't want mom cries ...”. When I saw my nephew, I asked “hey, still not sleep yet”. And again, he looked at me, with a face of mindful of stuff, didn't say a word, and walked away, went back to his mom, my sister-in-law's room.

But the most worrisome thing occurred after my nephew walked away. My mom slowly walked next to me, and said with a whispering voice, “Your sister-in-law got really moody. I kept trying to accommodate but ....”. So that confirm something I suspected a while ago.

To be fair, my sister-in-law doesn't seem to have much friend in Hong Kong (my brother married her a few years ago in mainland China), and it seems like my brother and was too close her ever since she arrived Hong Kong 3 years old. I was a bit worry about their relationship since the beginning as I didn't see much communication between them.

And people within our family don't communicate much with each other, which I think should be the biggest problem.

Plus I have to admit that I may probably be part of the problem since I got moody myself very once in a while, which I usually take a passive solution by closing the door and mind my own business. I also don't stay home too often, which worsen the lack of communication problem.

So here's the mess of my family as of now.

My friends photo exhitbition

I went to my friend's photo exhitbition. Cool stuff.

What my schedule in 2006

Many of my friends asked what is my immigration situation, with some said "why the hell you are still in Hong Kong." I guess I am answer this question here once in for all ... at least for the time being until the situation changes ago.

I will stay in Hong Kong at least until sometime Spet this year 2006. My immigration process got another set back for the reason the have completely no control and have nothing to me at all. Basically so law passed in America that gives other minority groups the privilege to have their immigration application processed in higher priority. That pushed my application further backward even when I already had my body checked and result committed. It was estimated that there will be a 6 month set back.

So I went ahead a sign another 6 month work contract up to mid-June 2006.

Yes, I am still working in a government project. Seeing people making a lot of money without doing stuff besides breathing is just an amazing experience. Makes my tax money worth while.

And yeah I still taking dance class.

everything same old.

There you have it.

Dinner with friends who worked together back in 2003

Me like old dude.

more old and sadness.





OK, we are tired of you. Go away.

My old work colleague in sadist PVC suit

I was having a reunion dinner with my old work colleague yesterday. The dining place was OK, and my colleague were mostly fine, but I found that one of the colleague became an irritated person. I was not sure if he was an irritated person in the first and that I just didn't realized it, or the job turned him into a big time asshole. If it's the later reason, then it's very sad.

He is now making good money being a direct contractor of a government IT department with job duty mainly handling development of government project. I started to feel pissed when I mentioned that my project is pretty well managed that I can leave office at about 7:30 pm most of the time (which from IT industry standard means good), and he said, "well, in that case I think I would cut people from your team if I were your supervisor."

So instantly I realized that:

(1)His had his mindset thinking from a nasty supervisor point of view.
(2)He probably used the same technique to manage his subordinate and the contract developer in charged of, which is ironic consider he was a contract developer a year or so ago.
(3)He kept mentioned that his boss would slap on me if I did this or so that, as if his boss was his slave owner. (I can't help imagining him wearing some sadist PVC suit walking around in his office.)

To put a long story short, he became the evil persons who once managed him. I know, this is common, as history always repeats itself. Still I found it sad when I saw it.

So once again, for us lower middle class workers, the rule is always like this: the more money we earn, the more humanity we give up. It's like in the animation Full Metal Alchemist, alchemist use equal amount of particles to transfer one object to another. In real life, people use humanity to transform into money and job security.

But then, to remain question to me is: how much do I willing to give up to contain moving upward. Do I remain happy for my current situation which I remain my dignity and freedom and happiness but taking a low salary, or taking the road by kissing ass, torturing other people for the gain my supervisor?

I've seen the Jim Carry movie "Fun with Dick and Jane", which is about a family loss everything one night (job, house and self-esteem) because some rich people makes money by scam. Think Enron. The movie is not that good, but a fine psychology revenge for regular working folks who were screwed by the big corporate. The movie also presented the little dark side of little guys who envy how the others have bigger car and better life than him. Sigh. How fragile a man's heart is with little envy here and little envy there.

Bad HK Disneyland photo

Well, I am not photographer, and, well, the following batch is particularly terrible. I took them at the entrance of Hong Kong Disney Land.

More terrible Disney Land photos

My only batch of Christmas photo

You know how much I hate the crowd. Thus I didn't take much photo during this Christmas. The following is one of the very few.






A scene on the street. Nothing special at all.







A friend, the one who took the first photo for me.