Recap of my TaoBao experience

During this Hong Kong trip, I spent some time to order some dance related items from TaoBao.  I totally ordered 3 items, and at the end I received one item successfully, one item need to cancel because of size not available, and one item canceled because I changed my mind before I committed the payment.  So basically I went through all the possible combination. 

So far I think the shopping experience was relatively OK, and I learned some tricks about how to have a successfully transaction.  I'll probably order some stuff next time before I get back to Hong Kong, so that there will be less of waiting.

When I re-acknowledge that I am not

Tomorrow is my last day of my trip to Hong Kong.  If there's one phrase that can recaps my whole trip, it will be "when I re-acknowledge that I am not."

It may sound negative, or even melancholy, but after living in this earth for so many years, I learned that it's actually healthier to be honest to your own feeling, embrace it, and move on.  In fact, I am genuinely glad that I have a lot of capable friends who are capable to express their idea and feeling through all sorts of medium: their singing, their dance, their musical talent, their drawing, their financial skill, their make-up technique, their management skill, their social skill, their time management ability and so on.  I was never envy.  It's just that, for some strange reason, I have a bit sorrow and fear of being left behind, or being someone who hinder the "progress" of the rest of the world.  Come to think of it, the reason why I love the song "姊妹" (lyrics by 林夕, sung by 楊千嬅), that's because the song capture the feeling of someone who tried so hard (in that case, in couple relationship) and yet also failed so hard, and when she saw her best friend's wedding, the mixing feeling of happiness and sorrow overwhelmed her.  And finally she told her best friend:

若我說我願意誰在乎過 你知道那答案快提示我
分半點福氣給我 不准留低我一個

 I know it's kind of odd that I can associate things in such an odd way.  And I know it's so self-center, childish and native.  In fact, that's exactly why I am so thankful that after all these year, you still accept me as I am.  You are still my good sister (好姊妹).

Dinner with mom

Just had dinner with mom at home, and then I washed all the dishes.  This is probably the simplest thing I can do to mom, but yet to her the most important thing.  In fact, I wash dishes every time I dine at home, unless mom intentionally stop me.

There's another reason I had to wash dishes today after dinner: nephew was there.  For kids, seeing what you do is 100x more influential than what you say.

Divorce

Just overheard mom, once again for the million times, explaining to my nephew why she as a grandma needs to spend so much time to take care of him because my brother's divorce.  It makes me heartbreaking and also angry.

Dogs and my room

Here's the room I am living in while I am in HK (which I am still in now). 

And then there's my working desk.  Basically this is all I need to conduct my daily life:  a chair, a desk, a computer with Internet conenction.  That's all.

And then there's my sister's little dog.   She's kind of cute and loves following people around.

There's 2 bigger dogs belong to my younger brother.  They bark loudly but other than that they are pretty friendly.

And finally there's this stairway from ground floor to the second floor (where my room is).  I slammed my head at that spot a few days ago with a little "building" on my forehead. 

Camphor Ball everywhere

Mom put a lot of camphor ball within the blanket that she put on my bed.  So when I wave it, tens of camphor ball just flied everywhere, and I was like ... errr ... ok ....

Can't distinguish awesome food and so-so food

My Taiwan trip confirmed one important thing: I have no sense of taste.  Expansive and (suppose to be) delicious food taste pretty much the same as low quality and so-so food. This once again confirms that I should stay in US where I can continue cooking so-so food for myself to eat.

Long sleeve under cold weather

Once again I was puzzled at Taipei about how people kept wearing winter clothing like long sleeve jackets, hats, boots and so on when it was obvious so hot that even a short sleeve T shirt seems too much for the weather. I have a very strong feeling that this is just a fashion thing.

Energy level

I kept feeling sorry about being tired, sleepy and almost cranky starting from 5:00 pm every day at Taipei as I have hard time keeping my energy level up after a whole day of walking and visiting places and even more walking. I was totally impressed by my tour teammate being able to have energy all the way until after midnight. Maybe people living in Hong Kong are so used to the non-stop action lifestyle, while I am totally in the camp of taking it slow.

I sort of figured out the formula, that every 1 hour of quick nap will give me 1.5 to 2 hours of energy, but then the energy level will drop to almost zero after then, much like how those rechargeable battery operates.

Girl stuff shopping at Taipei

After being in Taipei for 3 days, I realised that this is a great place to shop ... for girl stuff. Sure, you can accomplish the same thing at Kwai Fong, Mong Kok, Causeway Bay and so on in Hong Kong, and I bet the price should be pretty much the same, but you'll probably find some unique items here and there, particularly at the Night Market(s).

My experience of using iPad one month no contract data plan in Hong Kong

I was always fascinated, frustrated and irritated by the fact that, as far as I know, there is No Way to get prepaid data plan for 3G mobile device in all the countries that I care about (US, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Canada). The best thing you can get is by getting a no contract monthly data plan for iPad. Still I will stay for 2 plus weeks in Hong Kong, I decided to give it a shot and get a one month plan for this month.

So I went to Smartone store at Tai Po, stated my intend, and a staff member handled my order. There are 2 plans provided by Smartone, one is the normal $168 30 days unlimited data access (by the way there is another 250Mb caped data plan, but I hate caped data plan and I always can find all the bandwidth that provides to me so I treat the 250Mb plan as not even existed), and then there is another one that cost $199 with some Smartone video streaming value add. The staff member there tried to sell me the 199 plan, but of course I don't care about that. So I picked the $168 one. One thing you should notice about the cost is that you need to pay $12 for some sort of activation fee. So as a whole I actually paid $180, which is not bad at all consider that I pay US$30 per month in US to AT&T anyway.

The whole process took like 30 minutes, including some wait time here and there. After the process, I left the store with a MicroSIM card with some information. I put the card in my iPad And swapped out my AT&T microSIM, and sure enough the system recognise the Smartone data access. One catch, however, is that you HAVE to connect the iPad to iTune desktop application in order to updating some profile information BEFORE you can use your iPad with the new 3G plan. So I couldn't use my new 3G access the moment I left the store at TaiPo. But then I went back home that night, connect the iPad to iTune running on Windows, and after a fast simple update, my iPad started to get data from 3G, which was totally awesome.

To further test the 3G access, I used the 3G access on a bus during my commute to the airport since I had a 4 days Taiwan trip. It's pretty awesome to be able to check location using map, update status on Facebook, check email, download apps, browse the web and write blog while I was having my long ride (it took 40 minutes to get from TaiLam tunnel to airport). The data is worth evert single penny.

Strange, a lot of iPad case, but none of the iPad

I was having a great time on the first day of my Taipei trip. Since I've never been this place
before, everything seem new and exciting to me.

I also found that my iPad can pretty much provide everything I need during the trip, except that typing it is still major pain in the butt.

Speaking of iPad, I realised that we saw a lot of stores selling iPad, and yet I have yet to see a real iPad being sold in any store in any ways of forms. Strange.

First touch in iPhone, then motion sensor in Kinect: how 4 years old and grandma can both access computer at ease

A lot of computer enthusiasts share the same dream as I have, that one day computer will become so easy to use and so intuitive that even a 4 year old or a grandma can use without much learning.  The dream was starting to materialize when Xerox created graphic user interface, and then later being popularized by Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows.  Then stuck with mouse and windows for many years, without much improvement on user interface experience. 

Then 6 years ago we started to have touch interface, and once popularized by Apple's iPhone.  Suddenly, kids can learn stroking letters on iPad while grandma use the exact same iPad to play mahjong.

Today me and my relative experienced Microsoft Kinect, and I instantly realize that this is going to be another major leap in user interface and experience.  As a 1.0 technology, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but seeing how our family and relatives, with totally 9 persons from age between 4 year old to ... well, grandama, get together playing on the same game, and that anyone can just jump in the center and instantly start participating the game in progress, I can see this interface can be used to do much more than just playing virtual bowling and hip hop dancing. 

Microsoft has a track record of release their technology into API so that others can write software on.  And if Microsoft can turn Kinect technology into easy to use library like XNA or something like Microsoft Motion Framework X.X, then we will soon seeing Powerpoint presentation started by waving a hand, 3D landscape visualization interface by moving hands in the air, or choreographer collaborate on dance through Internet. 

In good old days, technology tends to flow from military and academic  use to consumer world.  Now it's the other way round.  Consumer electronic like iPhone, iPad and Kinect popularize new interface, while the enterprise or even military world tries to catch up.

I am looking forward to see how our next generation interface with computer and information.

Short Review on 3 Kinect games: Kinect Sport, Kinectanimal, Dance Central

We rented 3 Kinect games today, and here's my quick review:

Kinect Sports: If you want a good sport based party game, this is a must buy for Kinect.  The feedback and game play are reasonably smooth and responsive.  The games are easy to learn and actually fun.  I won't say any of these games can replace real exercise, but I know I sweated a lot as I keep running, jummping and waving.  Great family fun, and kids should have no problem pick up those games.

Kinectanimal:  it's like mix of Nintendog and minigames.  I think this will be a great toy for kids to spend an afternoon participating all sort of exercise and petting virtual tiger.  Other than that .....  I think it's a bit too childish for adults.

Dance Central: Haromix did it again.  Dance Central is a soild dance game.  The dance moves are authentic and you can actually learn some nice hip hop and club dance moves.  The intro animation is so hip and well done that I still enjoy it even after watched it a few times.  The songs that comes with the game are a nice mix of dance songs.  I wish they have more hiphop songs other than Snoop Doggy Dog's Drop it like it's hot, though,  But then you can buy more dance through XBox Live.  Since I love club dancing, this is my personal must buy. 

Kinect: 2 songs in free demo, cool ...

Kinect Adventure (the game that comes with Kinect) comes with 3 demo games: Driving, Dance Central, and Aerobic.  The Driving game and Aerobic game are kind of lame, but the Dance Central game definitely worth trying.  The demo version comes with the 90s dance oldie "Poison" and Lady GaGa's "Poker Face", which should be enough for some family fun.

KInect - Second Impression

Henry (my cousin) and I tried Kinect last week at downtown Montreal shopping mall, and we were both impressed.  So we were both pretty excited by today's Kinect launch.  We went to Best Buy at 8 am, and found that there were already some people buying Kinect.  We grabbed one and went back home, and took last than 15 minutes to set it up with system software update.  No internet connection is required, so for those of you who got the machine modded, you can enjoy Kinect without risking being banned by Microsoft through XBox Live.

I tried the Kinect Adventures, which is the game that comes with hardware, and it worked exactly like how it was when we tried it last week.  It does require some space in your living room, and thus makes me wonder how good the device will sell in Hong Kong.  But in North America, it should have no problem gaining fans and provide tons of family fun.

I'll probably buy Dance Central just because I want to see my niece dance Lady GaGa's Poker Face.

Music streaming from home: Yay for OrbLive, Boo for Zumocast

I set up both OrbLive and Zumocast so that I could access music stored at the my home machine during my 1 month trip.  After 1 week being away from home, I found out that Zumocast failed miserably as it has problem accessing home machine, while OrbLive continues to work (which proves that my home machine is still up and running as of now).  Now I know what should I rely on.