Retro 感覺

忽然回想起從前用 Mac Quadra 610 DOS compatible 的日子，特別是自己浪費了如何多的時間去下載何其多的軟件和影音檔案。現在他們仍存在儲物房裡的一個生果箱中。也許現在重開那些軟件，會有一種親切的 retro 感覺，但更多的時候它們只會繼續存在於儲物房的一角，直到我不夠地方用，便將它們全部掉棄。

也許我應該重新審視每一張舊光碟，一天一張，有用的檔案留下，然後讓沒用的檔案跟光碟一起掉到垃圾箱中。小一件雜物，多一分自由。

Not sending Christmas card this year except 1

I didn't write any Christmas card (not even an e-Christmas card) this year except one for my ballet teacher. It's partly becayse of my laziness, and then partly because most of my friends are not into sending and receiving Christmas card. They didn't send me one, and probably don't care when I send one to them anyway. So why bother?

Yet another parody movie

Disaster movie is like an over long MadTV show. As a rental or a BT download, though, it's not way too bad.

Yes, it's about the bed again

There are people who like sleeping. And then, there are people who really really love sleeping.

After this morning's Sunday service playing percussion, and then had a heavy lunch, I felt tired and thought of going to sleep. That plus the cold cold weather, and I simply could not function when the weather is cold. So I went straight to bed. To next thing I know, it's 4:45 pm already.

You probably don't understand why I enjoy sleeping so much. That's fine. It's just like I don't understanding why you xxoo so much. See? We are even.

The only thing good was having wifi at Dave and Buster

I am now sitting at the restroom bowl waiting for a dump. Besides I did not get a seat at the so called company lunch because I was late (as I was stuck sitting at the toilet bowl suffering constipate for about 20 minute at home.

At the top of that, I was unhappy about the fact that none of the so called teammate I know dare to call me to figure out why I was not showing up for so long. The fact that I didn't have anyone's phone number didn't help too. So I glanced the table, and saw no seat, and I picked the table right next to the long long table occupied by all the team members. Remember I mentioned about how much I hate long long table? Yeah, that.

And then there's also no food left. So I tried some chickens. They were awfully dry. Since I did need some fibre to get my constipation fixed, so I grabbed a lot of veggie stuff, ducked turn all in, and waiting them to work the magic with my stomach. That's the while deal about me sitting in the restroom.

If I couldn't anything going for any 10 minuts, then I'll either just go to the new office or go home to work on my MVP presentation.

Still thankful that they have wifi here.

Better not get sick ....

I am a feeling that a may get sick (same old sore throat), so right now I am drinking cups of water after water after water and eating an apple to combat this trend. And I start to wonder, when was my last time getting sick. I forgot, but it better not now.

iPhone 中文聖經

我發現 iPhone 中文聖經中雅各書5章18節中，雨字變成了兩字。得找個方法通知有關方面去修正這個錯誤。

說起來，我對這個軟件也有點不滿。因為每次在tablet pc sync iPod touch 後，所有offline bible translation 都自動消失。不曉得是sync 的問題還是更新的問題。

My roommates' ex-roommate

I was working in my room trying to finish my blog, when suddenly my roommate's ex-roommate came in and asked me if he could use my computer for a short while.

That was like happening totally out of the blue. But then this thing happened a few times before as my roommate, which is actually the owner of this town house, trusted his friends and ex-roommates so much that some of them actually have the key of the house. He also welcomes them to come back and use his place while he's not in Houston, which is like a lot of times. So it's kind of common that someone may show up like this. It would be nice, though, to have some notification in advance.

On the bright side, that sort of woke me up and now I have some energy and incentive to finish some work.

Guilty Pleasure

I always have trouble forgiving myself for having too much fun. For instance, I spent last night pretty much doing nothing excepting playing PSP non stop. Then I start feeling bad this morning.

My theory is that I was using my brain at work too much that my brain tried to shut itself off not doing anything that involves using a lot of intellect. Playing LocoRoco 2, Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Space Invader Extreme surely doesn't use much of my brainpower, and thus I started to addicted to it.

Once again, it's good that my brain reset itself every morning. Now I am once again ready for work for the rest of the work day. And maybe tonight, because of guilt, I may continue studying one point perspective drawing. Who knows.

Economic down turn finally affected me ... no, it's not what you thought

I have a pretty long backlog of podcast to listen and watch, so I didn't realize the layout happening at Revision 3 until today when I listened to the podcast This Week In Media. It's just sad, and I hope that eventually those who was downsized by Revision 3 can find another outlet to do things they like while making a living at the same time.

:-I

My friend accidentally pressed her phone left me a super long voice mail message with nothing but noise.

喪

My Chinese dance teacher 鄒文輝老師 asked me to write an essay about him. I thought about it, and then I wrote this:

----------- Start --------------

喪


除了「喪」字，我想不到另一個更好的字或詞，更能繪形繒聲地形容鄒文輝老師。我想過用「傻」字，但是「傻」可以自顧自在一個角落去儍，「喪」卻是全攻型的，影響他人的，誓要在身處的四周製造震撼，挑戰既有制度。所以 Steve Jobs 是「喪」，「長毛」梁國雄是「喪」，鄒文輝是「喪」。

「喪」的人都有一套獨特的做人和處事手法，亦只可以接受唯一這套處事手法。曾經跟鄒老師一起製作舞蹈演出的人也知道，鄒老師的生產效率奇高，可以在極短時間內編出數個郡舞，重新編排整日節目流程，在表演當日重新設定所有燈光安排。只是，高效率流程的背後需要付出代價，而跟鄒老師一起同工的代價就是絕對的服從。他的立埸是，在演出前一小時的最後排練關頭，已經沒有空間去用一人一票的民主模式來決定在大群舞中誰人排前誰人排後，你需要就是接受指令，然後執行。假如你在這個時候還不識趣地問為甚麼這個舞從來沒有排過，你便會像承受了連環三次昇龍拳的春麗，被打到踤在地上，隱約聽到旁述的宣告：「K.O.」。

「喪」的人生存能力奇高，在逆景中他們看到轉危成機的空間，還反過來還擊，比BioHazard 4 的喪屍攻擊力還利害。不是每一個人也可以在一生中達到自己的夢想，但要達到夢想便需要非一般的鬥志。所以鄒老師自費在全港中小學介紹中國舞，玩轉一貫藝術推廣需要靠政府資助的生態環境，又利用互聯網作為宣傳平台，親自在留言站單挑各界人士，不用化名，不用鎗手，赤裸裸地用真誠打動你（或者打倒你，如果你來意不善的話）。回想當初筆者赤是在互聯網認識鄒老師的，時為二零零一年，由當時老董時代的經濟低迷，到如今煲呔時代的經濟低迷，人生的諷刺不斷循環。

從小在鬥室般的環境長大的鄒老師，不斷用自學的方法來自我提昇，亦養成了一種以批評為主導的態度。他可以指出一些其他舞蹈老師看不出的問題，就是由於他也是過來人，也一樣如此的錯過，掙扎過。你可以說他面對學生只懂批評，極少稱讚，但起碼他不會給你一個美麗而虛假的玫瑰園。

現在筆者身在美國，無法再上鄒老師的課。剛在電腦上看到明年推出的電玩 BioHazard 5中，喪屍的 A.I. 比BioHazard 4 的更強，更加打不死地往前衝。懷念之情，忽然擁至。

----------- End --------------

Exit interview

It's so strange that the HR person who did exit interview with me yesterday was also leaving the company yesterday. My colleague told me that she was let go because of cost cutting. If that's the case then it would be pretty sad, and I wish her the best of luck.

Mad at my .. younger brother

I haven't been written anything about my strange dream since I didn't even have dreams for a while. Last night, though, I had a dream about me being mad with my younger brother, and was not talking to him until the very end of the dream. This is odd because I didn't have any problem my young brother at all. My take on this is that I probably project my angry at someone on my young brother.

Still, strange.

Why, me angry?

My friend said the email I wrote to my friend (see last post) sounded pretty angry. That surprised me a bit. Frustrated and confused? Yes. But ... angry? May be I did realize how cynical I am (or in Hong Kong slang, "inch" ). So if whoever got my email, all I want to say is, no, I was not angry.

(Music fade in, "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam)

Hollywood Star

I was puzzled by my colleagues' response after I gave him a birthday gift. So I wrote this letter to him:

---------------------------- BEGIN -------------------------------

I forgot whether you will come in on this Friday or not. If you don't, by the time you read this, I should have been gone. In fact, my network account should have been inactivated or even erased. Your memory about me will also be erased, just like what happened to Jim Carrey in the movie "eternal sunshine on spotless mind", after you drink water coming out of the water cooler (don't drink water from the water cooler).

But all that doesn't matter. At least at this moment you still remember me. Catch this moment.

I hope you enjoy the birthday gift I gave you. I usually don't give birthday gift even to very close friends. Something very bad happened to me when I was young that has something to do with birthday gift. Since then I hate birthday and birthday gift, just like that girl in the movie "Gremlins" hated Christmas because her dad was found dead in the chimney on Christmas Eve dressing as Santa Claus.

But I thought giving you a birthday gift is a good idea. After all, you are the one who has the most geek credit in the office, yet I found it a bit frustrating that your geek credit didn't get you the respect you deserved. But don't worry. The rating of the show "the Big Bang Theory" is going up, and you reminds me a character in the show. That means you are going to be a TV star. Start packing up and go to Hollywood as soon as possible.

Plus I've never seen people give out birthday gift in birthday lunch in the company, as if "dude, you should be thankful enough that I come" or something like that. So I got the idea on Thursday while driving in the morning, and then rushed to BestBuy at 11 am, picked up something that was geeky and interesting: a gift card with a speaker. And I thought, dude, he might find it enjoyable.

Seems like I was wrong.

Because after you received the gift, you didn't say a thing. You didn't say a thing even after you got back to the office. You didn't say a thing even after you left and then came back again and then walked by my cubical and then saw me and then walked away once again.

So I was pretty puzzled.

I thought, maybe he hated the gift so much that the anger rendered him to speechless. Or maybe he actually hate receiving birthday gift because that reminds him something terrible, just like how I remember terrible things associate with birthday gift since my childhood. Or he thought getting a $10 gift card is so cheap that it's basically an insult. Or maybe he simply hates me, period.

Well all these things do not matter anymore, because I am already gone, and you shouldn't remember me by now.

In fact, why are you still reading this? Who are you? Are you the Nigerian prince who needs my check account number. It's 564346. I'll send you the credit card number later.

Peace, my prince (... this is what the sounds like, when doves cry ...).

DK
---------------------------- END -------------------------------

Long table problem

I've been attending more than a couple of the company lunch gathering. In most of those gathering, we usually go to restaurant, pick a long table, and people just fill up the chairs along the table.

The problem is that, because the table is so long, that usually only those who are sitting close with each other can hear and thus conduct conversation among themselves.

Things that even more awkward when the gathering is some sort of birthday celebration. So now we have those who sit close the birthday boy/girl chat among themselves, while the others are like "tell me why we are here again".

I appreciate the motive behind the idea. But the result does not seem to accomplish the objective.

I gave away my last free Newsweek

I didn't receive much mail in the office EXCEPT a few freebie magazine. So every week since 4 months ago I would walked by the mail box ....



.. check the mail box 1014 ....



... and grab the free Newsweek magazine.


I didn't know why I got that magazine in the first place. It could be some survey that I filled in. But the fact is that starting from next week I won't be able to receive this magazine. I delegated the job of collecting this magazine to my soon-to-be-ex-colleague George to take over. But I have a stronger feeling that the mailbox people will simply throw my magazine into dumpster after I left.

Candy Bowl

In the last one year, I kept pouring candies in these two plastic container. M&Ms, fruit slices, gummy bear, you name it. Rick and Jimmy were the major consumer, but others enjoyed the candies too. Interesting enough, I didn't get time to eat them in most case. It was just a friendly gesture in the very beginning, but later I even got complain about me not filling the bowls fast enough. "Where's the M&M?" they asked. And I was like "^%%#$%%^^&*(****&^%^"

All fun comes to an end tomorrow with my departure. These contains will be gone, and soon people won't even remember that they once exist. How sad .....

Strange feeling about farewell email

I have some uneasy feeling writing up the farewell email. In fact, I was originally thinking of simply sending out a message with one line saying "Bye" to everyone I know of and that's all. The way I see it, if I am real friend of you before I leave the company, I should already have you email address and/or phone number.

And if I didn't have your phone number and email address before, you probably will never email me or call me even if I put all my contact information in my email anyway.

Still, for the sake of not pissing off people unintentionally, I did the email anyway.

And then something totally unrelated: I am still support the production deploy at my second last day, which is good. The last thing you want to being force to go to workplace and have nothing to work on (but then for some people that would be heaven).

Birthday of a colleague

It's my second last day at my current workplace. It's also my colleague's birthday. I don't know him particularly well, but I wanted to do something nice before I leave, so I brought him a BestBuy giftcard with $10 credit. The best part is that the gift card itself is a tiny speaker, and I found it cute. My colleague didn't seem particularly thrilled when he received the gift during the birthday lunch. But then maybe it's because I didn't know him enough to read his emotion. Nevertheless, happy birthday!

BTW, I ordered a "Hong Kong Fried Rice" at the birthday lunch. It look like this:


It was ... errr.. OK. I won't pay $20 like I did to get a wok of fried rice, but at least it's decently done.

BTW, the spoon that came with the fried rice was pretty huge. Check it out:

Another song writing exercise

Actually it's more like an exercise to try out more feature of the song writing software Sonar 7. Again, tons of minor problems that I don't want to spend time to fix. It's like you won't spend time to correct grammar on your post it note anyway.

Here's the song: Bow Tai. Haven't rap talk for a while. This is fun.

Buying drum stick from ... Best Buy!?

I was pretty shocked this morning when I went to BestBuy and find out that they started selling musical instrument at the store. So I had sometime having fun messing with some electronic drum sets, keyboards and synthesizer. I was impressed by the amount of professional gear in the store, and even start to have desire I buy some stuff. Fortunately my self control kicked in, and as the result I only brought a pair of drumset from BestBuy.

I talked to the sales person and he told me that they just start selling musical instrument like 3 weeks ago, the time when I was still in Hong Kong. Amazing.

There were some keyboards that really impressed me, some of specifically designed for DJ in dance club. I found it so much fun to play with them. In fact, I spent always an hour there playing around. After I left the area, I started thinking, why was I so excited since a lot of these features are actually available in my home studio with Sonar 7. Then I realized the reason why it's so much fun to play at the store than at home: the sense of impulsiveness and instantaneous. When I play instruments at home I have to spend some time to set things up. But in the store I can just walk over to the gear, mess with it, and if I don't like it, I can just leave. There's no consequence, responsibility or any work associated with setting things up. You just play and that it. Man, things are always more fun if there's no consequence and responsibility >:-}

Back to my trip to Best Buy. The main reason why I went to Galleria Best Buy was because I saw from BestBuy.com, after a search, that MSI Wind is avaialble for pick up at the store. Imagine my surprise when I talked to the sales person and he told me that "no, the Eee PC is the only Netbook that we have". I told him about the BestBuy web site, and he still insisted that they don't have MSI Wind. I was like, fine. After all, I was just put myself into temptation, and try to see if the gear was avaialble at the store. I would be in much better trouble if the actually HAVE MSI Wind at the store for me to play with.

Next I went to check out speaker and boombox and see if there's any device that allows me to hook up with my other non iPod gear and still portable enough to carry around in single hand. I couldn't find any.

So at the end, I leave the store with only a pair of drum stick. Still, it was a nice visit.

Fight the temptation of doing things just because I can

Young hackers have an attitude of doing things just because they can. They exploit loop holes of systems, write bots to check whether there is new weakness on the Internet. They don't have the need to do all these except that they find satisfaction on doing so for the sake of their ego.

I found myself having the similar kind of attitude when I am deal thing things that I possess . I always have a desire to take advantage if the stuff that I already have and see if I can turn them into something cool and useful . But by doing that I distract myself from doing more important things, that I should do.

I found that one of the way to combat that kind of desire is by listing out everything I found really important to me. That way, whenever I start thinking about doing something adhoc, I will pull out that lust and remove myself what really is important.

聖經不見了

今天早上在教會祟拜，竟然發現在ipod 中的聖經譯本（英語及和合平）不翼而飛，令我今天早上沒有聖經用。我想大概是上一次ipod 聖經軟件更新的時候，更新軟件將譯本和舊軟件一拼刪掉。Sigh, thanks for nothing!

P.S. I just downloaded English and Chinese bible translation back in my iPod Touch. All is well now.

Rock N Roll Damn it

I was trying to test how good is my audio equipment put together. So I spent 3 hours recording the damn song that is playing below. I used http://www.zshare.net/ as the audio hosting because stupid Blogger doesn't supporting upload audio file yet. Unless you are tone deaf, you probably hear a lot of problem in the files, like vocal being out of sync, the whole mix is out of balance, and so on. But I don't care, because all I want to make sure is that I have an environment which allows me to impulsively crank some songs out, something shit like the one below. Yes, being impulsive is the key.

Click here to hear the damn song. I tried embedding the player, but it autostarts, which annoys even me.

遲到

每天公司的早晨會議，同事們都是「遲到飛起」，就像現在，我又再站著等運到，沒有一位同事在四週。超老土。

中文輸入

我依然覺得ipod touch 的手寫中文輸入有改善的空間。但從曰常生活中使用的角度來說，已經相當不俗。

Mind set change

I am switching from my current perm job back to contract work starting on Nov 17, and as thus my work style will have a big paradigm shift (like switch from my I-am-off-from-work-after-office-hour mentality to every-hour-counts-as-chargeable-hours mind set). For such, I'll probably not taking any side job for at least 1 to 2 months. After all, I need sometime to realign my expectation regarding to my free time and my work hours.

Talking when you sleep

I woke up this morning and found that several people tried to IM me while I was sleeping. Maybe they thought that I was awake as I left my machine up and running and thus my IM client was also running.

Pet Shop Boys - Flamboyant

I thought I watched every single Pet Shop Boys video already, but then I come across this at YouTube, and found it very funny. Enjoy.

Time to prepare my Christmas card email list

It's that kind of day again. Every year I will prepare a list for email to send my e-Christmas. Yes, I stopped sending actually Christmas card for years already, and I'll probably only send one physically Christmas card for a friend just because I don't have her email address. But I mean, come on, even my mom has an email address.

Being a bully is so last century

For some strange reason, one of my colleague at work started acting like a bully around me now that we work closer. He kept saying threatening stuff like "hey let's beat him together", "let's give him work and work him to death" or shit like that. I understand that he's trying to be friendly in a very awkward way , but acting like bully as a way of being friendly as being friend is so last century.

Still, since I am about to leave, I try to lay low and let him be. But it seems like he's just getting worse. In some way, he's kind of a confirmation that my leaving is a right decision.

Turning laundry white again: round 2

So my last experiment on making my socks white was failed. The Bleach was so strong that it turned one pair of my socks to yellow.



So this time I tried something new, called OxiClean.



After soaking my socks in OxiClean for a night ....



I got this, which is not particularly better than before, but at least it doesn't render my white socks into yellow.

Bleach not worked as I expected

I am so glad that I used some old socks to test the bleach I just brought instead of the expansive shirt I intended to use the bleach with. Somehow for all the socks I used bleach with, they all turned to some yellowish color. I read some web site and they explained that as "over bleached", which to me it sounds a bit strange because I only soaked them for a short while, and I already diluted the bleach before I put in the soaks.

Some site suggested using OxiClean to remove stink instead of using old fashion bleach, so I'll give it a try when I have time to get to Traget to get some OxiClean product.

My life on search

I realized that I spent a lot of time making sure things around me are as searchable as possible. That includes a closet that is organized, with all my disc labeled and categorized properly, with all my new bills and legal documents scanned and organized properly in my computer. That plus my whole virtual world in my computer and in the cloud (the Internet).

The older I get the more I rely on various search technology to help me find information that I need. If something is not serachable, I may better just not having it.

There's a cost for making my life search. In time and resources persepctive, a serachable lifestyle means I have to spend a lot of time to label, document and organize my physical and virtual possession. I also to discipline myself to continue the organize process, or else having partial of my life serachable while the other in a mess doesn't really do much to me as a whole.

I also need to concern about my privacy, figuring out how much I can give up on my privacy in order to make my stuff easy to serach. And on the top of that I need to implement various security infrastructure around those information that is sensitive. That includes putting passcode on my iPod Touch, making encrypted backup on my personal information and use Truecrypt on my portable harddisk.

Some may find such a lifestyle painfully complicate. Maybe it's a geek thing, But as long as I continue living alone, I still have the luxury to conduct myself in whatever way I like.

obsessive compulsive

I am feeling pretty productive now after spending an hour or so reorganizing my closet. Now every category of my clothing are grouped in it's own place. I wish, though, I can tag each category. Yes, I think I am getting obsessive compulsive, like Monk.

PSP, PSP and PSP

I spent almost half the day trying to figure out how I can utilize (or exploded, depends on your point of view) my PSP to the max. Here's my finding, in case you are also interested in it.

• Video Playback
  
  The best feature of PSP from my opinion is the screen, so I am very interest in using PSP as a video player. So I tried several different software and got various result. The ultimate goal to me is to find a way to convert video that can utilize the highest resolution of PSP, which is 480 x 272.
  
  The first software I tried was PSP Video 9. It does the job fairly well, but it failed to automatically recognize the native dimensions of the video and optimize it to fit on PSP screen with best aspect ratio. It does, though, handle DVD rip very well natively. It also takes a lot of time to do the conversion. At the end I gave it a pass.
  
  Then I tried WinAVI Video Converter, which is one of the portable software in my tool set. The application works fairly well and pretty fast. The biggest, though, is that it does NOT support the highest 480 x 272 resolution. Granted, the software hasn't been updated for years, and back then using older firmware you simply can't play video from memory stick using the 480 x 272 resolution, still it's kind of a disappointment.
  
  And then I tried sevarel other software, and it was extremely frustrating because a lot of them have spyware.
  
  Finally, I came cross MediaCoder, which is yet another portable software in my toolset. Surprisingly, the tool handles PSP native resolution very well, and yield awesome result. Here's the procedure for setting up MediaCoder to convert PSP video with optimization:
  
  - Open MediaCoder (I am using 0.6.0 Build 3905
  - Add (Or remove) files to the file list. (That way you can covert files in a batch) It supports drag and drop
  - Make sure Output Folder and Working Folder are correct. You can access them at the bottom left of the screen by selecting the tab "Output"
  - In "Picture" tab, make sure the Aspect Ratio is correct. I sometime need to readjust it a few times before I get the best result.
  - Select menu [Extension][Console][PSP], and PSP mock up scren will show up.
  - Uncheck "Transfer Files to PSP after done." I like maintaining files myself.
  - Check "Keep Transmitted Files on PC"
  - On Format drop down, select "MPEG-4 AVC (480x272)"
  - Click "Crop" button then select "Auto Crop to Fit"
  - Click "Start" button.
  
  Now just relax and see the awesome videos being created. Once done, put them in the Video folder of PSP.

• Photo
  
  PSP is a nice slideshow player on the desktop. I am photos loaded in PSP and start a slideshow. However, the slideshow feature of PSP seems very limited. It also didn't remember the configuration I set last time. In addition, there's no way to tell PSP to shuffle photos while doing slide show. It also does do any fancy transition like iPod Touch does.
  
  
• Music
  
  Music playback is OK, but it doesn't have Podcast friendly feature, namely the ability to remember bookmark or last listen spot. It's nice to have the feature, but no way can PSP replace my iPod.
  
  
• Playing PSOne games
  
  One great thing about PSP is the ability to play Playstation One game. One of my all time Playstation One favorite is Xenogear and I still hope that someday I can finish the game. PSP always me to continue my dream. However, I am still have trouble bringing in my PSOne save game. I already went thru the trouble by First converting my .psx (CheatFactoryFile) into Bleem format usng PSXGameEdit, and then converting from Bleem format to ePSXe format using the tool provided here. And then I get the correct ID for the game. But when I try to bring up CWCheat by holding SELECT button, it didn't work. I tried several times, and I finally gave up. So I guess I have to start to game all over again, which I don't think is way too bad.
  
  
  
• Play SNES emulator
  
  I was told that my modded PSP is capable to run SNES emulator. I tried, but it seems like it involves some steop of turn on/off certain firmware feature. Since I am still a little bit green on mess with PSP firmware, I am giving it a pass for now.

Cosmetic Reorganization

I usually obsess in making things tidy and organized, but I am also lazy on things that I managing things that I don't always use. So when it comes to my cosmetic collection, they weren't being treated particularly well. And as of yesterday, they looked like this:



That's right. Plastic bag within another plastic bag and then things just roll together. Well, yesterday I finally fed up with it and tried to find a solution. I went to Target.com, found a cosmetic case at reasonable price point (US$27). You can see the case here.



And when it opens up it looks like this.



So after I put everything in the right place my storage space looks like this.



So where's all my cosmetic stuff? They are inside the box.



I hope that I can have more trays to categorize items, but at least it's less messy than it used to be.

Weight

I just found out that my PSP, although much bigger than my iPod Classic 80Gb, is much lighter than the iPod Classics.

Jet lag is haunting me now

And I thought I could avoid Jet Lag. Right now I am feeling very sleepy .... One more hour, and I'll be able to leave this office .... can't .... stand ...

Loss track of spending in Hong Kong

Because of my busy schedule in Hong Kong, I didn't get time to document every single purchase I made during my HK Trip. As the result, I was sort lost track on the amount of money I spent in Hong Kong. All I knew was that I kept taking cash out of my Hong Kong bank account, kept charging my credit card and my ATM card through PPS. I guess my first job when I get back to Houston after unpacked everything is to update my HK trip financial record. Yes, I am that obsess about having my finance in control,

Next stop: Canada

I haven't been visiting my aunt and relatives at Canada for almost 10 years. The last time I stayed at their place, Lisa wasn't married yet, grandma was still alive and kicking, and Henry was still a foul mouth teenager. Now Lisa has her family with kids, grandama left us to stay with the Lord, and Henry is now more mature probably because of his sweet girl friend.

Since aunt Mei King asked about whether I would go to visit them at Canada during Grandma's memorial ceremony, I decided that it's about time to have a Canada trip. Just like how I use up all my personal day off with my Hong Kong trip, I'll probably use all my personal day off next year for the Canada trip. There will not be much shopping for the Canada trip, so I can foresee that I will have a more relaxing time comparing my Hong Kong trip. I will visit Lisa's family, checking out Peter's life of being a student major in animation, figure out how Henry's doing, and then maybe a small road trip to places in Canada that I've never been before ....

... unless aunt Mei King is interested in going to New York city, just what we did 10 years ago :-E Man, World Trade Center was still there back then.

Maybe I should try finding Chinese dance class in Houston again?

The fact that I found myself being green again on Chinese dance makes me wonder if I should look for Chinese dance class in Houston again. But I don't really see too much hope on that.

Why bother planning?

My friend thought that my trip is a perfect example of why planning doesn't necessarily lead to better vacation trip experience. He pointed out how much time I spent on planning my HK trip ever since 6 months ago using technologies like Google Calendar, IM and email. Yet I still experienced frustration, anxiety and disappointment for not achieving all I planned.

I disagree with him, though. I think that for the among of things I accomplished during this trip, I was doing a pretty good job, and they are definitely partly the result of the planning I did. Mom was pretty happy because I spent a lot of time eating at home. I got her computer up and running in a stable, secure and easy to use fashion. I got to met as many friends as I could within the 2 weeks. I participated in my friend's dance performance. I had good time having trips at places outside Hong Kong with friends. I got several beautiful costumes made, and I brought a lot of stuff that I will use in the coming one year. Without planning, I may not be able to accomplish half of them.

I guess the problem is not on the planning itself. It's just that my plan was too ambitious.

Comfortable on the flight so far

I am on the plane heading to New York when I am writing this blog. The flight was OK so far, but the on-board entertainment system is definitely not as good as the one I had when I flied from US to Hong Kong. This time I only got a few of fixed channels. No on demand ability and much less choice of program to choose from. Luckily, I prepared an array of entertainment to myself, including my laptop with episode of Simpsons, Saturday Night life and Family guys, PSP, NDS, podcasts on my iRiver mp3 player, iPod Touch and iPod Classic. There's still 5 hours to go before we land on US, yet I am pretty confident that I won't get bored.

I also don't have problem going to restroom or feeling relax because of my decision on choosing isle seat and bringing a flopper with me. Planning does help me to have a more enjoyable flight experience.

So I screwed up a performance again

Something never change in life. For instance, I can NEVER rely on my brain to remember dance steps when I am on stage, because 95% of the time my brain will automatically go blank, and then all I can do is doing everything that my muscle memory learned.

I thought this would be different, and I was wrong.

So again, I was depressed after that 1 minute 15 seconds performance. Fortunately, I have stuff to pack and work to finish before tomorrow morning, so work occupied my time and kept me about from suffering in depression.

I also found that my ability to forget things after sleeping or a nap is both blessing and curse. For instance, sleeping allows me to forget about some painful experience in relationship. It also allows me to reset my mindset and thus able to tackle the problem in a totally different perspective. But that 10 minutes nap before my performance today also help whipping out the practice I did an hour before I took the nap. I am not saying that I blame the failure of my performance on that 10 minutes nap. I am just saying that it's probably one of the factor.

And if you wonder why I am writing all these while I am so utterly sleepy, that's because I will forget all these after I sleep.

Argument with MetroPop

Something interesting at Sham Sui Po MTR STation yesterday.

It was 6:40 pm, and I arrived the station to met a friend (let's call her Ms. X) as I have a gift for her. There she was inside the gate as she needed to go somewhere else later, telling me about how someone asked her to grab a free MetroPop magazine for him and she refused. For those who are not in Hong Kong and don't have the system works, every week there is this free pop culture magazine called MetroPop handing out for free but stacking up at a location that only those who entered the gate (in order to take the subway train) can access. That person tried to grab a free magazine by asking my friend Ms.X (who's inside the gate waiting for me to come by and give her something) to get an issue for him, and she refused.

I personally think that my friend Ms.X has right to decide whether she did that favorite for that stranger.

The fun thing, though, was that after I gave a gift to Ms.X, and then tried to leave the area, someone tapped my shoulder. I didn't turn back, but someone said, "hey sir, did you know that girl you just talked to? She refused to grab me a free magazine. How Dare!" Suddenly, from my craziness instant, I yelled, "HEY, MS.X! SOMEONE SAID YOU ARE SO MEAN!"

I continued to walk away afterward cause I was really in a hurry. And then I heard that person said, "wow thanks, good job".

I was like ... what the hell ... and whatever ....

Awful noddle, awesome people

Yesterday, I have a gathering with some old pals who worked at the same place with with me several years ago. It was a blast chatting with old friends, and they managed me made me laugh so hard.

We were having dinner at a Japanese restaurant, and I have to say that the noddle I got was really lame. However, the location was great, and somehow no one kicked us out even though we spoke kind of loud most of the time.

Overall, it was an awesome night.

Time to take a lot on shopping (for both me and my friend)

Man, 4 days passed in HK and I felt like it's been 2 weeks. Everyday is so packed with activities and such. The most stressful part was hunting stuffs for me and my friends. It can be so stressful.

Shopping in Hong Kong can be painful

I don't particularly enjoy shopping, and hate it even more if I have to carry a lot things around. I can live with shopping in US because I have my car as my mobile trunk. I don't have, though, that luxury when shopping in Hong Kong. Yesterday was one of those painful moment as I need to shop for tons for stuff myself, my mom and my cousin and Shamsuipo area.

On the top of that, the jet lag started to huant me in a big way, made me feel very painful walking on the street in the middle of the day.

At the end, I sort of accomplished most of the shopping task I set aside.

Enyoyable Independent Movies

I watched several movies while I was on the plane from Houston to Hong Kong, including Indiana Jones 4, Son of Ranbow and Young @ Heart . I realized that watching and reviewing movie on the plane is such an ultimate test for the quality of the movie. The idea is that if you can actually enjoy a movie while you are being on the plane, which is quite a painful experience, then the movie must be very good.

Indiana Jones 4 failed that test. The story of the movie was pretty plain, predictable and almost boring. However the biggest problem of the movie is the way of the storytelling, particular on the dialog. In so many time, characters have long conversation just to explain the story plot in the way that is so unnatural that I rather they have a narrator at the back just tell us the plot. In a lot of times the acting feeling awkward because the dialog was so poorly written that even the best actor could not make it convincing. I really couldn't believe that this is a Steven Spielberg movie.

Watching Son of Ranbow, on the other hand, was such a pleasant experience. This British comedy has an interesting story that even though there were moments that seen too over the top, you can forgive them for the sake of the nice story. The acting was pretty nice, especially the 2 main characters in the movie. You know that these two boys is heading to a pretty fruitful career.

Just like Son of Ranbow, Young @ Heart is an independent movie, and also the one I like the most among the three. As a documentory, Young @ Heart delivers a solid story about a singing group made up of elder people heading toward a performance. The material itself is very interesting and you know that it will lead to some nice drama, but it was the nice directing the seals the deal, keeping the movie in a good pace, bringing you one after another interesting characters, and at the end, you clap, cry and laugh with the people in the movie. Highly recommend.

No need to bring so much stuff to entertain myself on the plane

I spent quite some time to prepare entertainment for my flight, and later found out that I only need a Wired magazine (or whatever magazine) with some computer study notes (like the Design Pattern except I printout) to keep myself occupied while the flight takes off and landing.

I found out that Continental Airline's in flight entertainment system is pretty awesome. All the contents are free and there's tons of movie, TV shows, HBO specials and games to choose from.

Next time I will definitely not wasting time filling my laptop with shows and Podcast and such anymore :-E

Writing on the plane

Here's what I wrote I was still on the plane:

2008-10-08 - 5:46 pm (and heck know what is the actually time while you are in the middle of the air above middle of the ocean)

I made a lot of stupid decision in my life, and also made a lot of mistakes. Case in point: this morning when I went to airline counter to check in my luggage, I realized that I didn't have my Hong Kong living address with me to write on the label for my 2 check-in luggage. So I only wrote down my email address and my phone number. Sigh.

HOWEVER, I did make some great decision while preparing for this Hong Kong trip, and one of them in the picking of seat. I really like the seat I picked because:

- It's the aisle seat, so that I can walk out to the walkway whenever I like, and go to the restroom whenever I need.
- My seat is 2 rows away from the restroom, so that I can observe when the restroom is not occupied at ease on my seat, and take advantage of moment right after someone left the restroom

This makes my 15+ hours flight relatively less painful.

I also got my dinner 15 to 20 minutes earlier than others because I marked "special dinning request" while I was booking the flight (I marked seafood by the way). The food was not particularly awesome, but it was delivered right at the moment when I was hungry.

(By the way, I was typing this after I used restroom abd got back to my seat. I am looking at people lining up near the restroom mostly because we just had dinner. The scene is painful. I am so glad that I did my number 2 while there was no one lining up.)


I enjoy the in-flight entertainment system provided by Continental airline. I can choose whatever problem I want from a respectable large set of selection. The video game play was kind of lame, but I enjoyed a lot of the HBO specials.

Speaking of this entertainment system, there was some problem with the system at the very beginning of the flight, and the system was rebooted. It's so funny to see all those Linux (yeah, I even saw the Penguin logo) flied by on the screen before the normal console of my screen got set up properly.

I am feeling sleepy now, but not sleepy enough to fall into sleep. Guess I need to watch more TV...

Later

Finally home in Hong Kong

I am now sitting at home using my Lenovo laptop to blog. I tried using iPod Touch to do so, and the process seems slow and clumsy. Though I still find the Lenovo a bit too hot, that means I still have a need to get a Netbook.

Slow down Daniel, slow down

I need to slow down when I am driving at the office parking lot. My colleague complained that I almost ran him over this morning. :-E Sorry, Joe.

More information, less gaming

I realized that ever since I got iPod Touch, I used it to entertain myself instead using Nintendo DS. Besides the freshness factor, it may also be the fact that I can use iPod Touch to both having function and being informed, instead of just having fun with DS. I am still obsess with obtaining information and learning stuff everywhere I go.

Giant Giant Roach

I just saw a giant living roach running across the handle of the dish washing machine. That scene successfullyy killed my appetite of having dinner. The problem is since it's the washing machine, I don't want to spray roach killed at it, worrying that the dishes of my roommate may get stinted with bug spray, and that would be bad...

Sigh ... I guess I just have to tell him to get more and newer Combat.

Hair cut day

I had a hair cut today.

Usually I won't take a hair cut until my head becomes so clumsy that even I can't stand it. But since I am going back to Hong Kong next week, I want to give people I love a good impression.

Or, maybe I am just more aware about how clumsy my hair these days.

My first experience with American Health Care system

It all started a few days ago when the inner part of my ear was getting a bit itchy. "Maybe I rubbed too hard trying to clean my ear during shower this morning," I thought. I kind of ignored the pain.

The pain didn't go way. In fact when I woke up yesterday, I felt like there's some fluid in my ear, even though I couldn't any wax or fluid out when I tried to clean my ear with tissue paper. Things got even worse later, and eventually I could not hear anything from my left ear. Feeling painful, I left office slightly earlier and try to do some research on finding a doctor to fix my ear.

Here I have to explain something: I haven't seen a doctor for oh so many years. That doesn't mean I didn't feel sick at all. Quite the opposite, I have flu several times each year almost constantly. But every time I felt sick, I use the same formula to fix them problem: sleep, drink water, sleep, and drink even more water. Sometime I will take some off the shelf medicine like Night Qyil or so. But most educated people know that those so called medicine does pretty much nothing except trying to put you into sleep.

The bottom line is that I didn't see doctor. Didn't find the need. And I am still alive.

In fact, if I were not about to leave US and getting back to HK next week, I would leave my ear the way it was for yet another week.

Plus, the pain caused by the tumor inside my ear was getting a tag unbearable last night.

So I spent a lot of time researching. At first I need to figure out what treatment option I have based on my medical plan. I chose PPO, which later on I was glad that I made that decision instead of choosing HMO.

I went to the web site of my medical care provider, and start searching for doctors. But wait, which kind of doctor should I choose? General Practice or Specialist? I have confidence that I know exactly what sort of problem I was having after doing some research on the Internet. Yet when I go to those Specialist web site, they seem to cater to performing surgery. No way my little tumor in my ear caused by my rubbing during shower will need a surgery procedure. I read, and got confused, and read even more, and got even more confused. Finally I decided that I would go to see a General Practice doctor, mostly because General Practice charge $20 while Specialist charge $40. By the time I made up my mind, it's 12:00 midnight already. My ear was in pain, I was exhausted, so I went to sleep.

By the time I woke up it's 8:45 am already. I logged on to company network to notify my teammate not being able to come to office today. And then I called the phone number of the General Practice doctor.

"The number you dialed no longer exist ..." I was like ... waht? So I picked another doctor. His phone number gave me fax tone. I moved to the third choice. There it said on the web site "does not take new patient". Fourth choice: NO PHONE NUMBER provided.

I was like, what the ***k was going on.

Eventaually I found one with a working phone number. The receptionist asked for my name, but before I finished my sentence, she huged up. So I tried again, this time she didn't hung up, but instead asking me to hold for 15 minutes. She came back while I was trying to take advantage of the waiting time by brush my teeth. She told me to photocopy a bunch of IDs and stuff, fax to her, and she said she'll call me back to let me know if I was "being accepted as a patient", and schedule an appointment LATER.

I hunged up the phone and thought, why bother with all these mess? Screw it. I'll just pick a near by clinic, bring all my cards and document, and cut this "fax me this and that" nonsense. So I picked a doctor, put the information in my iPod Touch, and left home. I picked that doctor because (1) it's easy to navigate since it's right on Belairre and (2) the doctor was the only female among the top 15 search result, and I felt like female doctors were more gentle in general (don't know why I ahve that strange bias) .

So I drove to the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic and went to 3rd floor as was indicated by the address, only to find out that the doctor was no longer practice at that location. However, the lady at reception reminded me, "actually, you can go to any doctor you like with PPO."

"Any doctor?" I asked, "good, then do you have any doctor that I can see right away?"

So I instantly got assigned to see Sunday Fadula Jr, M.D. . All the staff at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic that I deal with were very nice. And for some strange reason, they ALL interest in my iPod Touch. Some even thought it's an iPhone. The bottom line is that they all loved the device.

At the end, Doctor Fadula told me that I had infection in my ear, and prescribed me ear drop medicine and some pills. The whole visit cost me $20.

So I brought 2 pages of prescription to the Walgreen near my living place. It took 30 minutes for them to have my medicine ready even though there was only one costume besides me. Maybe it's because this was my first time and I had no record in the system, I thought. Luckily I have my iPod Touch to entertain me, so that 30 minutes didn't seem that long. 1 bottle of ear drop with 1 bottle of pills cost me $20.

I don't know for sure by effective the medicines are since this is my first day taking medication. Hopefully it won't take long to cure. But again, I was thankful that I chose PPO. Otherwise, I would have to get back home and find another HMO doctor just because the information on my stupid provider's web site was outdated.

Ballet terms

I really should start remembering those ballet terms so that I have less problem remembering those combinations . I spent most of my time recalling what I need to do instead of doing the combination. The instructor Grace today was definitely easier than Naomi. So I should had even less excuse to complain about the difficulty.

My question was, what was the best source to find the mekong of all these terms?

And then I got home, and I found that I have several of those book all describing ballet terms. That's when I realized that I had that need ... like ... 10 years ago. And sadly, after these 10 years, I still haven't mastered these terms.

Dream about elevator

It was some odd dreams I had last night again. This time is mainly about me moving up and down in a building using cage-like elevator (those that can easily found in industrial building). Strangely that building didn't seem like an industrial building, for there was big restaurant, shopping area and something like that. But then it also had warehouse area, and some dark gloomy floor that you may be familiar from horror movies.

Nothing terribly happened in the dream, but I was feeling very uncomfortable throughout the whole process.

Hurt my lower back in a strange way

I was slightly hurt my lower back yesterday while I was bending down drying to tide a knock on the garbage bag. After a night a sleep, it feels like I am getting better now. It's still strange to find me hurting myself with such a way.

Say no to Kraft Handi-Snacks Sugar Free Pudding

I brought some Kraft Handi-Snacks Sugar Free Pudding back in the post Hurricane Ike days. I tried, and I told myself I will never buy this product again.

First it has no FAT, which is something I want. Second, it taste plain. Like ... VERY PLAIN. Third it has low nutrition value.

So, nope, never will I buy it.

won't bow down to AT&T

I am at FortBend Community Church waiting for New Heart performance to start. While I am waiting , I used my iPod Touch to see if I could pick up any Wifi signal . To my surprise, I found two Wifi connection. One marked as Private with password protection, while the other one was named Public. I gave the public one a try and found that I could see a login page while I was outside the hall. After I walked inside, the signal was still strong, but I couldn't see the login page again.

The more I used my iPod Touch, the more I hope that I could have Wimax or 3G access. But no, I won't bow down to AT&T.

Still need all 3 of my MP3 players

用了ipod touch 一個星期，我發現這部 gadget 新成員沒法取代 my 其他兩部mp3 player. iPod Touch has huge advantage on video playback, but it doesn't have my iPod Classic's huge 80Gb capacity. On the other hand, iPod Classic touch forced me to use iTune on ONE particular machine, which makes my iRiver 140 more appealing comparatively as I can put in content in the player wherever and whenever I feel like it. As a result, I have all 3 mp3 players in my bag.

It would be a problem if I were in Hong Kong. Luckily, I live in US, which I drive everywhere I go. Thus, I can leave my stuff in my car when I find my bag to heavy to carry around. My 1997 Rav4 doesn't look sexy anymore these days, plus I never wash my car, so it doesn't good from the outside (although I keep my car very clean inside). Plus there's no fancy stereo system in my except the cassette tape. So no thieve will realize that there are so many electonic gadget in my glove compartment.

During my trip in HK, though, I'll properly just carry iPod Touch around. iPod Touch with my wallet and my Nokia 5300 mobile phone should be enough to keep me productive, inform and in touch everywhere I go.

Blogging on iPod touch

Somehow, when I use ipod Touch 寫 blog, 我傾向用中文而不用慣常用的英文來書寫，因為ipod touch 的中文手寫輸入比英文的virtual keyboard 好用得多。

Watched Saturday Night Live, live

It's really been a while since the last time I watch Saturday Night Live live on television. Partly that's because I was in Hong Kong since 2001 up until 2007, but it's also because I don't watch TV ever since. I consume content from the web, from podcast, YouTube, Hulu.com, iTune and torrent sites.

Watching live TV becomes such a strange idea to me. In fact, the TV converter box (to convert off the air digital broadcasting signal to analog signal) that I brought using the government handed out coupon was not being used for more than 3 times since I set it up. I just can't stand being forced to watch video content at a certain specific time anymore. Instead, I am used to watch content whenever I feel like it on my 24 inch computer widescreen monitor, in whatever order I feel like, and skip whatever portion I want to.

Last night, though, after I came back from seeing a ballet perfromance and getting ready to have dinner, I overheard my roommate watching Saturday Night Live. So I talked to myself, hey, maybe I'll give live TV a try. So I did.

The result is that I probably won't do it again.

It takes much longer time to watch the show. Instead of being able to skip sketch that didn't interested me, or commerical that was boring, I have to sit through that one and a half hour. When I watched a downloaded version of the show, it took me less than 30 minutes to finish it.

On the plus side, some commercials are fun.

But the bottomline is, TV networks, you guys really need to work with the web, work with sites like Hulu.com or iTune or YouTube, and get with the Internet delivery mechanism. Otherwise, the next generation will leave you behind. Don't make the mistake music industry made.

Oh, one more thing, ***k RIAA.

After Tuesday's Ballet Class ...

Remember yesterday I was late to the class because I got stuck in the traffic and thus late for class for 20 minutes? Today I left office 25 minutes earlier, but because the traffic was "back to normal", I as the result arrived classroom 30 minute earlier than I used to be.

Oh I guess I'll just do a little bit blogging (like now) and then a little bit sketching.

One thing I really need to improve with my sketching is that my beginning of a lot my strokes are too heavy. I call them "butt head". So I need to train myself to ease in when I create a stroke.

Get rid of junk mail in Outlook

I wasn't filtering my office Outlook email until today. I was totally fed up with those annoying email, and adding filter gives my sanity back.

By the way, I was doing push up, practicing guitar, converting a wma file into mp3 and set up customize pen in Manga Studio all done in the morning. Good use of time.

Some sort of nightmare again

This time I forgot pretty much most of detail about the nightmare I had last night. I knew it involved accepting helping someone doing something by meeting another one, and then it saw roaches. I guess that's enough to indicate that it's nightmare.

night

I wasn't too happy today.

All mess started when I leave office at 6 p.m. heading to a ballet class. Usually if I leave at 6 p.m. I will be able to arrive at Houston Ballet Academy at around 6:40 p.m., giving me enough time to change clothes and warm up. But due to whatever reason (tens of still broken traffic light is Houston area I guess), it took more than one hour to get to my destination. By the time I arrived the class, it's 7:20 p.m. I missed 20 minutes of the class.

Actually, I was not intended to take the Monday intermediate class. I knew I was not up to that level yet. But since there was no class last week due to Hurricane Ike, so I thought instead of wasting a class I brought, I just take the intermediate class instead.

Turns out it was a pretty bad idea.

The class was taught by a lady I've never took her class before, and while she danced very well, and I sort of understand the combination, my mind wasn't bright enough to remember all the combination, not to mention my body. As a result, it was like a mess. I guess the teacher also realized that, and didn't even dare to correct anything I did. It was a total disaster to me.

After a class I was chatting with the man who was in the same class and wonder if there's any other place to learn ballet, as I am seriously trying to find something between beginner and intermediate. He suggested me to give HopeStone and West University Dance Center. So I think I'll give them a try to see if I can find a class that fit my level.

And then I went to Alice's place to feed her cats and water her plants. The garden hose was leaking like crazy. BY the time I finished watering her plants my right arms were all wet.

Later I found out that some cats left some vomit stuff at the enter of the kitchen. So I had to clean them up before I could put cat food in bowls and clean cat toilet.

Afterthen I had to go to KCF to by dinner, and went supermarket to buy TV dinner for my lunch. By the time I got home, it's 10:45 p.m. already. And I still need to do laundry so that I have danceware to wear tomorrow.

So that's pretty much my night.

Let me suck in my KFC dinner now.

My Inking exercise

I still need to practice more inking with G pen (used in Japanese manag), so here it goes:

Lines seems to monotonic, and I should do a pencil sketch on the over all shape before inking.

Very strange nightmare

I was supposed to be just taking a nap after a full lunch, but ended by slept for 3 hours.

The dream involved several segments, and they all involved wired stuff. At first I way rushing to some place with Bill Gates because he was late, and then the scene changed to my being chased by a gang of people and I knew that I was a undercover cop or some sort. A bunch of cops were killed (or "eliminated" in movie style) by "someone or something" while I was running to the top floor. There I met a very pretty blond hair girl which I knew that she's evil ( ... how did I know?) And eventually I woke up.

Yes, it definitely feels like a B movie, like a bunch of action movie plots cramp together....

................

Let me practice playing guitar now ....

So this is "The Big Bang Theory"

I didn't realize this existence of this TV show "The Big Bang Theory" until a few days ago I watched a little bit of it, and thought "heck, this seems like a nice geek sitcom".

So now I am watching the first episode, and boy it is fun. Given it's extremely stereotypical about pretty much everything about geek and nerd, but it's an enjoyable show... at least for the first episode.

On an totally different issue: finally found a Chinatown supermarket that sells lunchbox. It's the Golden Supermarket. Awesome. Finally I am have to rely solely on instant noodle or Jack N The Box for dinning.

First issus of my Wired magazine subscription just came

When I heard the mail man dropping mails into the mail slot at the first door, I had a strange feeling that I knew the first issue of my Wired magazine subscription (a one year free subscription from the Coke Reward points I accumulated) just came. And when I went to the front and check, indeed it came.



The most interesting about this issue is that it comes with a blue-ray disc with a web movie called Coma. No way I will buy a BlueRay player just for watching this content, but with Little Big Planet coming and more and more reason to get a PS3 ... you'll never know ...

Dream, again ....

I forgot how it was started in the beginning for my dream I had last night, but so far as I remember, it started with me being in Hong Kong with my mom and elder brother. Mom seemed to be pretty worry about getting something done, while I was concerning about getting some legal documentation (something like passport and such) done.

In the meantime, my elder brother wanted to buy some electronic gadget, so he went to the store. Somehow I went to the store too just to look for him, and found that he was frustrated by the poor quality of the gadget. (I forgot if he refunded it or not.) I then headed over to the get my legal document done.

I walked and saw my friend Daniel Yeh with a foreign lady (an Indian lady properly). I asked Daniel Yeh for direction, but that Indian lady kept speaking at the back, saying something like "you probably couldn't make it for it's too hard to find" or something that.

I went ahead and expected the bus station, something like No.401, would be pretty hard to find. But it wasn't. The notice on the board at the bus station sinked my heart, though. It said "401, route changed as following". So now started to wonder if the 401 bus could to the right destination. But that this exact moment, a 401 bus came. I thought for a very short moment, and then jumped into the bus.

The bus had a lot of people, but not really overcrowded. While I was trying to find my wallet to pay bus fee, I realized that I had a lot of gadgets in my bag, and I unconciously checked whether thse items are intact. At least I remembered that I had my wallet and my iRiver MP3 player clipping at the side of my belt. I pulled out a $20 note as I remembered that the bus fee indicated at the payment box was $20. But by the time I was about the put the $20 note in, I saw that the amount changed to something like $35. I continued putting $20 in, thinking that it's probably because each sub-section of the route charges different among. The driver grabbed all the money at stuck at the top of the payment box (wait, how could he/her grabbed those notes while he/she was still driving?) and count, and finally said "thank" while shuffled all the dollar bills to the bottom of the cash box. So I assumed that he/she was OK with the amount I paid.

It seems to take a lot time to get to the destionation, and I woke up while I was still in the bus....

Nothing spectectular in my dream this time.

Gasoline, yes. Chinatown lunchbox, no.

As of Thursday night, a lot of gas station has power restored.  However, all the big Chinatown supermarket still doesn't have their power stored.  I am strongly affected because I went there to buy reasonably priced lunchbox all the time.  I haven't checked Jack N The Box or KFC though.

On the other hand, Galleria was opened and was very busy.  There were tons of people in the Apple store, and all the stores are wide open.

OK, I am getting iPod Touch 2nd generation

I went to Apple store today to try out the new iPod Nano and new iPod Touch.  After spending an hour to try out both products, I have to say that both are excellent products, and I am so ready to pay up the US$299 to get the 16Gb iPod Touch.

First, I tried iPad Nano (forgot the generation number, 4th perhaps).  It's tiny, very easy to grab.  The screen was great.  Click is responsive and easy to use.  The album flow's reponsiveness was SO MUCH BETTER than my last experience with the previous fat iPod nano.  The shake-to-shuffle feature worked great, which makes me hoping that Apple can implement it on iPod Touch (it's not implemented on Touch).  If I want an mp3 player that I can simply stuff in my wallet, I will pick nano.

But then I was eyeing on something with bigger screen and with PDA capability.  So I went ahead and tried iPod Touch 2nd gen.

Volume button worked as expected.  Build in speaker didn't sound as good as I expected, but I can live with that.  The shape is good.  Weight is just about right.  Everything I liked about iPod Touch was there.

But one thing really caught my attention: the Traditional Chinese handwriting input.  The firmware 2.1 really fixed the slugglish Chinese Handwriting input problem.  I tried using it to write some Chinese notes, and found the input very usable.  I am so glad that I can finally ditch my DELL x50v and use an iPod Touch as my PDA plus MP3 player.

The reason why I didn't buy Touch right at the Apple store that I can skip paying tax by buying iPod Touch from Amazon.com.  I also gain some points by buying stuff using Amazon credit card.  So it's win win to me.

$16 lunch/dinner from China town

I have to admit that I don't have patient. So when I was waiting at the "HK Dim Sum" store for almost 15+ minutes to have my to-go food done, I already decided not to come to this resturant ever again. Let me clearify that there's nothing particularly wrong with the resturant regarding to taking 15+ minutes to get my food done. It's just that their delivery doesn't meet my expectation. That's all.

But then I thought, hey maybe the food was good, and that maybe after I tasted it, all would be forgiven. Right? So finally my food was done. It was a box of steam siu mai, a box of steam shrimp roll, and a box of seafood fry noddle, costing me $16 over all. A bit expansive from my point of view, but I thought, heck, I only go to Chinatown resturant only 3 to 4 times per year, so, what the heck.

I finished the box of steam siu mai I was still driving. They tasted nice. After all the store is supposed to be specialize on Dim Sum. So it makes sense that they tasted OK.

And then when I get home, I tried that box of fried seafood noodle.

Not so good I have to say. It tasted like they put too much MSG In it. And by browsing around the ingredients they put in, 3 words popped up in my head: high profit margin.

Nevertheless, because I was so utterly hungry, I finished the whole box anyway.

I still haven't tried the steam shrimp roll yet. We'll see. We'll see.

So that's how it ends, "20th Century Boys"

Finally I finished "20th Century Boys" and "21st Century Boys".

With the scope so huge and so complex, it isn't be surprising that the final ending of the Japanese comics "20th Century Boys", dubbed as "21 Century Boys" wasn't very satisfactory. On the bright side, the author finally sort resolved most of the plots in the story. However, compare with another long story Harry Potter, it seems like the plot of 20th Century Boys wasn't as well planned.

But then, a complete ending is better than a lose ending.

Philip 66

今天前往老人公寓做義工，在前往的途中看到 Philip 66 的油站有人排隊，連忙在回程時加入輪候的行列。耐心的等待了大半小時，終於入滿了汽油，這未來的個多星期有著落了。

現在我正在等待送食物到老人中心的貨車來。涼風吹來，十分舒服。因為家裡有了電力，回家後可以準備一點熱的東西來吃，但是家裡的食物都是乾糧...

Power is back at my home

That's exactly why I am replying email and posting blog now :-D .

Here's what I ate for the last 3 days.

Finally a real dinner

8:59 pm. It's so nice to see my laptop got charged, so nice to see that Alice's place is fine and dandy, and so nice to have a real dinner.

I wasn't feeling well when I woke up this morning, mostly because of the breezing temperature. It's a bit too chilling to me. I stayed in bed until 10 am. Our Manager Eric sent us a manage about shooting for getting back to work on Thursday, but that still dependent of the power supply. Personally I can't wait getting back to work.

Then I had another Instant Soup as lunch. The instant Soup tasted nice when I first had it on Saturday noon, but by Monday noon, I already started feeling sick of it. Still, I forced myself to finish it, with a banana and an apple.

I continue my sketching study after lunch, and practiced guitar on and off. Somehow I didn't feel like I had enough energy. I felt like my head was a bit aching.

To ease my pain, I read Rumiko's comics "Mermaid Forest". I couldn't believe that I almost forgot the story. Plus this time I read it from a learning perspective, trying to see how she defined the layout of each scene, how she set up each character.

Then Alice called. She got electricity, and she suggested me to get to her place to charge up devices, plus she has a computer that has some problem. So I went there fixing her computer while charging my stuff. A phone call came. Emily and Roy asked for some help of distributing food at the senior center. But by the time Alice and I got there, they already finished the job, I told them that I would come to help tomorrow, and maybe the day after if I can find gas pump to fill up my car.

Alice was told my a friend that there's one Chinatown restaurant opened, so we went there to have our dinner. After have so many days of jams, banana and canned instant soap, this dinner tasted much better than delicious, no to mention that shrimp is always my favorite dish.

We ordered some dishes for to-go and brought then to Emily's place. Like us, they enjoyed some real dinner with rice and chicken. At the same time I had great time playing with their dog Penny. He's such a cute and sweet puppy, so eager for attention.

By the time I got back to Alice place it's 8:40 already. So I rushed back home because the 9 o'clock curfew started. I arrived home at 8:50 pm.

And so here I am, have my laptop fully charged. Maybe I should go to Alice's place to send some emails and charge my devices again. We'll see.

In the meantime let me play some guitar in the dark.

Gun shots

I still remember that I heard a few gun shots last night. But that's pretty much it. I was listening to Harry Potter 7 audio book and stopped at the spot when the trio finally got the final .... errr... don't want to spoil the story. All I know is that there's 3 hours to go until the end of the story. The battery in my iPod is still holding up pretty well. Based on the way I use it, I should still have 3 to 4 days of battery left. Hopefully either my home or my workplace should have power back. This is one of the rare occasion when I am eager to get back to work.

Last night was pretty painful. I have to admit that I didn't eat enough last night. It's not that I have no food at home at all, but I won't feel full unless I have some starch in my stomach with something moisture. The instant noodle I had last night was fine. But I only had one bag with wasn't enough to keep me full.

So this morning I woke up at about 9 a.m., feeling pretty fuzzy.

On the upside, the water pressure seems to be back to normal now. That means I can take a nice cold shower. I am so glad that I washed all my clothes before the hurricane came. I should enough clothes to change for the coming 1 week.

At about 10 a.m., I decided to cruse around the nearby area with my Rav 4. The temperature was pretty OK, and I heard from the radio that we will have this kind of temperature for he coming several days, which is such a blessing.

Remember I original thought of bringing my camera with me? Well, I didn't have mood to take a lot of photos so I didn't. And it was proven that there's not much dramatic scenes to take. The only worthy photo shot was the fallen down of the Ding Ho sign, which cut off the traffic of a segment on Belairre street.

I couldn't find any gas pump that has gas, which to me is not such a big deal knowing that my car still have gas allowing me to go in and out everyday for a week. Plus I will stay at home at much as possible anyway. The problem may come when I need to get back to work, but I have confident that the workplace won't reopen until gas and electricity are fully available through out the city.

Then I heard from the radio that HEB was opening. That was awesome. Besides the fact that I want to stock up some food, I also wanted to see the scene, like trying to see what the effect was around the neiborhood. So I headed towards HEB.

I cursed along highway 59 between Belairre and Beechnut. There was some flooded area on the road, but with high base and bigger wheel than regular sedan , my Rav4 could handle all of them pretty well. Once again, I enjoy my Rav4, and will probably get another once my current one broke down, which I think would take 6 to 7 years.

The only place that has hot food available was a Popeye Fired Chicken on Beechnut, and there's a long line on drive though, and I was not interest in waste my gas to wait for just a few bites of fried chicken.

I finally arrived HEB. There's a line formed as expected, but not way too bad. So got on the line, got in, and got some food and, most importantly, some water. To get some time that's slightly more tasty than biscuit, I got a few cans of instant eatable soup. It actually tasted nice. Well, any thing tasted nice when you have nothing else to eat. I also went to a Chinese town super market and get more of those instant noddle. I am good for 3 more days. And I shop for food again 2 days later anyway. By the way, the supply of food in HEB seems pretty abundant, and I am not concerning at all. I want to stock up, but I don't want to stock up way too much.

Other than that, everything seems pretty quite and peaceful. I will spend this afternoon reading some books about drawing comics. I brought those books for years and never got a chance to read them because there was way too many media for me to consume on my computer. This is a great time for me to read up those books.

OK, let me suck in more cold soup.

Instant Soup

Just finished the so called dinner. Instant Soup meal without warming doesn't taste as nice as it should be, but at least it fill my stomach. And this is my only way of getting some meat in my body. I am feeling pretty OK now. At least I am not feeling hungry. And if I do, there's a cup od puddling, a banana, and an apple on my desk waiting for me to consume.

Breezing wind is blowing into my room. The temperature is just right, and I am looking forward to have a very comfortable sleeping tonight. So far I was pretty productive today. I cleaned up the refrigerator so that nothing is left besides stuff that can withhold under room temperature. I practiced some drum set with my electronic drum set without the power. I read the book about drawing manga and practiced while I was reading. I also practice some guitar, learning about acoustic fingering on playing melody. And most importantly, I went to supermarket to get food and get a feel about the surrounding.

These last two days without energy is such an unique experience. It felt like several weeks has been passed. And the fact that I continue finding important things to do, to learn and to be entertained proving that there more than computer, video game, and Internet in this life. I wouldn't say I am willing to give up my cyberspace in order to have a more "simply life", but at least I don't rely on it. I can control myself, I have ability to continue a fruitful, creative and enjoying life without computer. I know I am not an addict.

I still don't know if I need to go to work tomorrow. Personally, I want to, for it would be nice to be able to charge my mobile phone so that I can communicate, charge my iRiver so that I have a radio, charge my NDS so that I have entertainment, and charge my laptop so that I can document this whole process.

Battery indicates with I have 70 percent battery life left, but at the same time it says 5:49 hour. Amazing. This laptop really holding up much longer than I expected. But then , how much battery can Notepad2 consume anyway.

Let me get back to Harry Potter 7. 2 hours left, and I am looking forward to finish to book tonight. I am very excited.

No Sunday service tomorrow

I heard someone playing flute in the nearby neighborhood. This is pretty awesome. When people don't have TV to watch, video games to play, and Internet to surf, they go back to the very basic kind of entertainment: playing acoustic musical instrument. Maybe this Hurricane Ike is not a total bad idea after all.

I used a cup of water to moisten a bag a instant noodle, and just ate it. It wasn't too bad. When you have nothing better to eat, instant noddle doesn't taste as terrible as you may thought.

I need to conserve the energy of my iRiver player (act as my radio) my phone and my laptop because no one knows how long it will take to get back the electricity. At least I have to perserve enough to get though tomorrow (Sunday). If business buildings have energy recovered, at least I have food and water in the office. And I am charge everything in the office. So honestly, I am more concern about whether we have a normal work day on Monday or not.

Personally, I won't hold my breathe on that.

Battery of my NDS finally died after playing it for totally 3 to 4 hours. Now I have the Gameboy advance battery in my DS now. Gotta save them for tomorrow though, for there's a long day tomorrow that I have to pass.

Tomorrow's Sunday service will be canceled, which is something I expected. After all, without water and electricity, people will come to church with stinking smell, which no one will enjoy.

So looks like I only have my guitar and my iPod to entertain me tonight. Harry Potter 7 here we go again.

Stopped at 6:00:06

3:18 pm on Saturday now. I spent the last 2 hours listening to Harry Potter 7 audio book. Actually I was just re-catching up to the place I stopped when I arrived Houston from Dallas after AnimeFest. I lost the bookmark point, plus I wanted to re-listen in order to catch the detail again.

I will probably listen to it again later today to reach later chapters. After all, there's nothing else better for me to do anyway. Without electricity, there's not much stuff I can do. Water is also at extremely limit supply, and no one knows when the electricity and water supply can be back. In fact, I don't even know if there's any shortage of gas too. Thus, going places could also be a challenge. At least, though, I am safe.

Let me listen to the FM radio again and see if there's any new report on the situation.

Very minor flood near my home

MYST

12:24 pm. Noon. Water starts to running low at our place, and I just found out that the damn sink wasn't able to hold any water at all. Stupid, for I should have brought a few buckets to hold water for cleaning hands. Nevertheless, I grabbed a waste basket in my sleeping room and use it to hold water in case I don't have any water to wash my hands.

I spent about 2 hours playing MYST on my Nintendo DS. The experience was kind of lame partly because MYST's user interface is pretty outdated judged by today's standard. In addition, the user interface on the DS is kind of confusing, and then tiny screen didn't help much neither. I, however, was enjoying reading the stories written in the room in one of the room. I think these stories are very critical to during the exploration process. Unfortunately the exploring itself was pretty lame.

During the process I also realize how lame the battery life my classic Nintendo DS console is. When I started playing the console still shows green on the battery indicator light. After 2 hours, I saw red. I'll try keep pushing and see how much battery juice I can squeeze after red. And then I'll try doing exactly the same thing with the Gameboy Advance battery.

Time to eat some try food. Gee, I wonder when they will fixed the electricity.