Thoughts and Wills

Practising with my D90

2009-01-09T09:38:00.003Z

Hello people. Happy New Year! Hope you all have a nice year of 2009, the year of Ox/Bull/Cow.

Since I bought the D90, I've been trying to bring it to different occasions, to practise with it, get used to it, before we go to Melbourne and Tasmania in the end of this month.

Here are some highlights of what I've taken so far.

Boxing day

2008-12-26T17:30:00.005Z

Belated Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope you all enjoyed your holidays.

Spent today at one of the four famous gardens of Guangdong with bobo and my family.

I wanted to get myself some presents for Boxing Day, but due to various reasons, it got delayed by a few days. Fortunately that it's still on time. Thank you my friend for your help on this.

When we finally got all the contents out, I was a little bit confused with what I bought for several thousands HKD. Can you tell?

Expect the unexpected

2008-12-22T09:31:00.003Z

How can you expect the unexpected? A 5-day work trip to Tokyo was unexpectedly extended to 10 days (double!!!), Bobo unexpectedly flew over for the weekend, unplanned trip to Enoshima, unexpected view:

pretty toys
Enoshima Electric Railway
Oh my god! It's Mount Fuji, finally! And it's gorgious!

This month, I've spent 15 days in Tokyo. It really sucks.

Imagine...

2008-11-24T07:56:00.004Z

On Sunday, we were shopping in Causeway Bay looking for various easy-to-do, DIY and cheap kinda ways to make our home better. When we were walking through Delay No Mall, we came across 3 weird looking chairs, behind a receptionist lady. We asked her what the chairs are, who look like space capsules, sitting comfortable in the middle of a small pond. She replied, "Resting chairs". Informative enough. We noticed that there are leaflets in her counter, saying by any purchase within the mall, customer will be entitled to 20 minutes of "rest" in the chairs. Being adventurous as we are, we went straight to hunt for goods.

We got these two books in the end.
(will share images later)

They are not the point though. With the two receipts we have, we are now entitled for 20 minutes of rest on the "rest chairs" for free! Here we go, took off our slippers, change to their slippers, jumped on, head phones on, lid closed, zzzzzzzz...

Ooops, I had a coffee at home in the morning before we went out. Cannot fall asleep, while I am sure my bobo is already deep in her dreams. However, the chair, being a "rest chair", is not only good for a nap. It's got reflection of water flowing (that's why they put the chairs in the middle of a pond, to get the water reflection to be projected on the chair lid) and calming musics, to keep you relaxed. As a result, while I was inside it (or on it), I was able to focus so much on thoughts.

Half way between total consciousness (when you are totally aware of everything around you, hence kept being distracted) and dreaming (when you are not really controlling what you think), I rode on my thoughts:

Music -> No words -> Jazz -> reading a book just before we came to these chairs saying why there are no long surviving jazz bars/restaurants in Hong Kong -> opening one -> where is the best -> Happy Valley -> capital? -> have to find investments from music lovers -> in the meantime bobo always wants to have a restaurant/cafe for her own -> ..........

Actually there IS a restaurant like that (I would think there are more than one, just that I don't know them), see here.

Keeping on riding on my thoughts:

My old imagination of a flat, light-weight photos and movies player with the size of a photo frame, accepting memory sticks, CDs, USB, now they are everywhere -> next generation? -> 3-D display! Not displaying 3-D images on 2-D panels, but really 3-D display! -> I should do some research, apply for scholarship and do a PhD on this -> Using tinnie winnie LEDs lining up in a cube like structure, each having its own coordinates, showing colours each to form 3-D images -> how can you make the "black" ones look transparent? -> but such device will be immensely useful for demonstrations of e.g. art pieces, design, architecture, bikinis!

A quick blackle search today, there is already such thing, and done in an elegant way! See here for details.

You may say, I am a dreamer.
But I am not the only one.

Life

2008-11-21T17:37:00.003Z

Two photos to share my life this week :-)

While stocks last

Smiling Cappuccino at Mandarin Oriental

Some pics.. can you guess where they were taken?

2008-11-03T16:38:00.003Z

Picture A - hint - it's an island

Picture B - hint - it's in New Territories

Don't need to guess this one, it's our new 4 seater sofa

My understanding of current economy #3

2008-10-31T10:30:00.003Z

Credit crunch

So what happened in summer last year? House prices began to fall, the collaterals which support the MBS depreciated, sub-prime mortgage payers struggled to make the payments (Reason? May be because they didn’t have a job?), values of MBS dropped dramatically (because they are leveraged products).

How US house prices dropped

So we saw the first tide of “write-downs”. What it means is: Bank B had $3 trillion worth of assets, or at least thought they had. The value is calculated using latest trading prices. But suddenly the trading prices dropped, and some of them even disappeared (depending on individual product, some MBS may cease to exist when many of the mortgage payer defaults), Bank B’s assets suddenly dropped in value. They had to fill the hole in the balance sheets (accounting regulations), they had to report losses to shareholders, they had to announce: I need to move $30 million to fill the hole left by sub-prime MBS which disappeared.

Biggest recession since great depression?

Since the credit crunch started last summer, when lots of well-known banks have multi-million dollars write-downs, a lot more have happened. It’s because in a free market, everything flows together. In a chain of implications, it looks like:
- banks have multi-million dollars write-down
- some banks realise the problem and sell all mortgage-related assets (e.g. JP Morgan)
- prices go down further
- more write-downs
- people lose confidence on economy, house prices, creditability, government, basically everything
- job losses
- more defaults because people cannot afford mortgage interests, forced to foreclosure
- more write-downs
- banks have no assets, no cash, cannot run business as usual by lending money to other banks and ordinary people; businesses don’t have operating cash, one falls after another
- etc..

In between, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost so much that the US government had to tell the world – “don’t worry about the MBS in your portfolio sold by these two guys, we’ll back them up”. And there is no more major independent Wall Street investment bank:
- Bear Sterns went broke and bought by JP Morgan
- Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America
- In the same weekend, the 158 year-old Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. You should remember how its share prices dropped by 80% each trading day before its doomsday.
- Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs transited from investment banks to bank holding companies

Why people say that this recession would last longer than the ones before, and can be compared to great depression in the 1930s? I don’t know why they say that obviously, but I will guess.

From the beginning of my long entry, you can see that I deliberately started with investment banks. One of the reasons for the crisis we have today is little regulations in the world of financial product trading, and individual’s greed can be fulfilled in this world. The greed has previously built up the property bubbles, equity bubbles, FX bubbles and among others, and it has finally bitten back – the banks lost. But of course similar to previous bubble bursts, ordinary people lost more.

So the lesson to all governments is: you have to control your financial market tighter, in one way or another. Nationalisation of banks (e.g. Northern Rock, Fortis, all the big ones in Iceland, and so on) is not a good and final solution, but it was the only thing that those governments had to do and could do. The way that Chinese and Russian governments control their banks may also be too extreme. So another model needs to be found, different from all capitalism, socialism and communism.

During the transition stage from traditional banking to the next model, perhaps everyone will suffer a little – recession and slow growth. Simply because most businesses rely on banks nowadays. As of today, there doesn’t seem to be a solution to end the credit crisis which sees very little and strict lending from banks.

How does it affect you?

Since the problem began, many people has lost their jobs and savings. If you live in the UK, you must know about ICE Save. Iceland has done tremendously well as a country with fewer than 300,000 people (that’s about the same as population in Tin Shui Wai, see here) in the past few years. They had good business models, and attracted a lot of European countries to put their people’s savings in Iceland. At some point they were taking over Premier League football clubs in England e.g. West Ham.

Now, we all know that they made their money by spending UK residents’ savings on fancy financial products. When the stock market and other things go the other way (in fact, when everything like equity prices and property prices is shooting up, no body really thinks they’d ever go down), they lost all the money. They were on the brink of going bankrupt, as a country.

If you live in Hong Kong, you must have heard about Lehman Brother mini bonds. The fact is, Lehman Brothers had a lot of products in the market e.g. warrants, structured products, Credit Default Swaps, and others. So when they go bankrupt, many of these products became junk.

Just imagine that you’ve paid HKD $5,000 to a fruit shop owner, and in a contract that you both signed it says the owner will provide you fruits every day for 3 years (good deal, eh? Just under $5 a day). Now the fruit shop has disappeared. You won’t get your money back. You can file complaints to the party who made you sign the contract. But it could be your wife who convinced you, or your greed in your mind.

When will the story end?

I don’t know. As I said before, the world now needs to come up with a new and better model for banks to operate properly. No more business as usual, because it will be different.

I’d say, as a risk management consultant as Thomson Reuters, banks need to look at their risks PROPERLY. Not just spend some money on software and have fancy reports, but really look into it to analyse what risks they are exposed to, and take actions to hedge them, not hide them.

What can we do now?

Observe and learn. Similar to all lectures, there will be costs e.g. the money you lose when participating in the market. But this could be once in a life time event.

Some ripples in the financial world, high unemployment won’t kill the world. Nuclear war and/or global warming will. You still live, so enjoy it.

My understanding of current economy #2

2008-10-30T08:09:00.003Z

1. What happened?

Investment banks (or the so-called Wall Street banks, but actually it should include the I-Bank departments of universal banks too) have been taking care of people's money for years (about 150), that include different corporations, rich men, pension funds, and so on. By looking after their wealth and make good returns for people, they've gradually earned good reputations.

- Top graduates want to join I-Banks, because it's "cool" and more importantly they pay handsomely;

- they have been the biggest buyers of financial services and technology, and many other things (like cars, real estate, etc..);

- people in general pay more respects to bankers, compare to other professionals.

Fast forward to the 21st century, banks and investors rely on a lot of these investment banks to trade with and invest on. For example, when an investor want to invest on high return securities, a bond issued by Lehman Brothers would be a save and good option.

Inside the banks, traders would look for all possible ways to increase their rate of return with the massive capital they have, which in turns of course will give them higher bonuses.

I got this from a CNN article:

“Wall Street is a most unforgiving place to do business. Blood in the water will attract sharks, competitors will quickly build up trades against a debilitated foe, and a panic can accelerate a downward spiral. That's why institutions like E.F. Hutton, Barings, and Long-Term Capital--names that once conveyed soundness and permanence--vanished almost overnight.” (source: see here)

Different innovative financial products then started to appear in the market, and many of them are complicated derivatives and structured products which I can tell you, only a small group of people on the planet really know what they are, how they behave and most importantly what risks are involved. Still, every trading day billions of dollars are involved in trading of those.

Sub-prime mortgage and MBS

One of these structured products is called MBS, Mortgage Backed Securities. It’s still a general term for different varieties of MBS. But in short, mortgage companies (like building societies) and banks who lend mortgages, sell their mortgages to Bank A. Then Bank A put different mortgages together (structure and package) and sell them in the same way as a normal security (for example, the description would say it gives you quarterly coupons of 13%). It offers higher return than risk free products, and attracts a lot of buyers.

The arranger can bring the MBS that they package, to a credit rating agency e.g. Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, pay them service fee and ask them to give their products a rating. The agencies are independent firms, so they won’t deliberately give good ratings. But they don’t actually have a good model to see the risks of these products. So many of these MBS have good ratings, even though the actual risks (which you only see after you are hurt by them) are high.

In the past few years, the house prices in the US have been rising dramatically, in the same time interest rates have been low. With very little control on mortgage application (unlike Hong Kong, where any mortgage more than 70% would need special application and addition insurance cost, thanks to 1997 local housing bubble), mortgage companies lend money to jobless homeowners to buy houses, sometimes even with cash backs. (Can you imagine that?! You walk into a mortgage company branch, 30 minutes after you walk away with a 3000 sq. feet house and cash to spend!) Because they see the house prices would rise and not afraid of the borrower failure to pay. That resulted in a massive amount of so-called “Sub-prime mortgage”.

Combine with many more reasons, such as the general spending habits of US people (last year, the total expenditure was about 6% more than US total GDP, where did they get the money from? Look at the trillions of US bonds and notes owned by Chinese and Japanese government), the price of these MBS and other similar products then rose and rose.

Big bubble -> big trouble

People seem to have forgotten one thing: these products offer higher return rate because they are risky. The most obvious risks are:

- Credit risk - underneath the security is a group of mortgages, with home owners who have to pay the mortgage company every month. If they default (go bankrupt, or fail to pay), it affects the coupon payments of the MBS, and hence the value of the MBS should go down.

- Interest rate risk - Interest rate may go up, which means the gap between risk free products and these MBS would become smaller, and therefore the value of the MBS should reduce.

- Counterparty risk – What if the bank who arranges the MBS go bankrupt itself? No one will pay any coupon anymore for these outstanding contracts.
Of course there are many more risks to these products, similar to any other investments.

The now-nationalised mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were active players in the MBS market (see here). Originally they were not. They saw a lot of investment banks making profits from trading these products. But as market participants, they knew the risks. But in a Bull market, how can you justify to your management and shareholders of making such less profit compare to others?

So they were "forced" to play the game as well, even in their risk management system, everything is in red alert because of the high risk exposure. "Never mind, you make the money and you walk away with the bonus." Sounds like Homer, duh!

You can in fact buy or implement the best risk management software available, but if the management chooses to ignore it, due to human judgements, greeds, etc.., the results we see today are inevitable.

More to come...

It's our day today

2008-10-29T09:53:00.001Z

Today marks a special day. Manyee and I have so far travelled together 9 years of our lives. There is still a long way to go, but looking back my path it has certainly been much brighter and better because of you. Thank you bobo.

Candle lit dinner at the best restaurant in Hong Kong

My understanding of current economy #1

2008-10-29T09:49:00.004Z

While a lot of people may be suffering from the recent events in the financial markets and economies, people should still have some fun.

(thanks Gigi for forwarding these fantastic British humour to me)

Q: What's the difference between Investment Bankers and London Pigeons?
A: The Pigeons are still capable of making deposits on new BMWs.

Q: What's the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza?
A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.

I had a cheque returned by the bank recently.
It was marked 'Insufficient Funds'
Mine or the banks?

For Geography students Only:
Q: What's the capital of Iceland?
A: Three Pounds Fifty...

Latest news,
the Isle of Dogs Building Society has collapsed.
They've called in the retrievers.

Quote of the day (from a trader):
'This is worse than a divorce.
I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife.'

I talked to my bank manager the other day and he said he was going to concentrate on the big issues from now on.
He sold me one outside Boots yesterday!

Q: How do you define optimism?
A: A banker who irons 5 shirts on a Sunday.

An elderly lady receives an e-mail from the son of a deceased (but wealthy) African general, asking whether he could transfer millions of pounds into her bank account in return for a 20% cut. All the son needs is the sort code and account number.
Not realising she is the victim of a Nigerian 419 fraud, she e-mails back the details.
A couple of minutes later she receives an e-mail back from the general's son: 'Icesave?!' What is this, some sort of scam?'

But still, because of burst of bubbles, many people have lost their jobs and life savings. Has it affected you? If so, do you really know what happened and what affected you?

Last week in Tokyo, we had a long discussion on what happened and what changes we can expect in the system. It lasted until 2am in the morning, so some of the contents may not really make sense. But I still think during the course of explanations and discussions, we are pretty sure with what went happened, what went wrong, how it affected us and how it could be solved.

Some pictures taken during our discussion of the credit crisis.

Is that a big bottle of JD, or I have lost some weight?
JD maniacs

Some thoughts

2008-07-29T11:05:00.003Z

I have so many thoughts and wills that I want to share, but am just too lazy or too bad at time management to put them here.

Sorry for posting this blog in Chinese. Tell me if you can't read, I'll translate. I haven't done so because I doubt any more non-Chinese readers are reading my blog :p

兒時不懂的道理

1. 好朋友和伴侶，是世上最清淅的鏡子
2. 金錢不是萬能，但無錢就頭痕
3. 很多時候過程比結果重要
4. 足球不是一個人踢的
5. ...

甚麼是烏托邦？

大約八年前，我曾認為金錢是世上萬惡的根源，全部戰爭都是因不同的黨派，因利益衝突而引起。例如資源、市場、權力等。因此，我以為共產主義是可以實現理想世界的。

後來，人生經驗多了(一點點)，發覺其實醜惡的人性才是所有問題之所在。

最近在讀來生不做中國人 - 鍾祖康，這本Controversial的書，用不同的角度去分析中國、或中國人，為何會變成現在這樣。它講述共產黨有他們對近年中國的影響，但中華民族歷代數千年之文化、集俗，對中國人負面的影響更深、更遠。

當然我不完全認同書內很多較偏激的論點，例如中華民族早該滅亡、台灣因受當年日本殖民統治影響而比其他華人社會進步等。但無可否認，此書能讓中國人覺醒，看清楚有甚麼需要改進，從而令我們下一代有更優厚的條件，和其他國家在經濟和文化水平均能爭一日之長短。

My Q1 2008

2008-03-30T15:29:00.008Z

Hi everybody, how are you? I haven't blogged in 2008, even though a lot have already happened. Just wanna share some lovely photos with you all to show some key events happened in Q1 2008.

This year, the annual sales conference of where I work was held in Malta, the Meditteranean (just south of Isle of Sicily, Italy). Similar to 2007 conference, I wasn't going to waste the chance to go to London with the company's ticket. Since Bobo's last time in London was in 2006, it was about time to visit this special city again together, before Malta.

Breakfast at Dulwich Village, London, 26th Jan 2008

We stayed in the UK for a total of 10 days, stayed in my Aunt Maria's, Howard's and Arnaud's place in turn. We also went to a 4-day trip to Scotland, my first time in there!

Bobo and me freezing in the Queen's View, Glen Coe hills/Loch Tummel

Westin resort in Malta, view from my double-double bedroom's balcony

Almost a year after my first apartment, my "change every year" bug is haunting us again, and we've started selling it and looking for another one recently. We have already looked at at least 20 apartments in the past 3 weeks, and made our current one really tidy and beautiful so impress any buyer. Fingers crossed for us, selling successfully and moving to a better one soon.

Our new flowers in our flatroof, with help from mum

Excerpts from Time's Person of the Year 2007

2007-12-20T07:45:00.000Z

Still remember "You" were chosen as the Person(s) of the Year 2006?

Vladimir Putin is the Person of the Year 2007. Time has recognised his influence (remember, according to the criteria, the influence can be good or bad, as long as it's big) by moving Russia (the largest country in the world) forward and keeping it stable.

Runner Ups are Al Gore (Nobel Peace Price winner), Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, our great chairman Hu and US Army General in Iraq David Petraeus.

Al Gore has been fighting for a greener world. I don't care what the real motivation is lying behind. What he is doing will ultimately save the world, of course, if he succeeds. In the article about him, there is a very nice paragraph:

"Over the past year, "mild green" (me) and "khaki green" (him) have talked about how the fight against extreme poverty in the developing world and the struggle against climate change can reinforce each other. The poorest will be hit first and hardest by climate change. We can help them adapt, but they can help us, too. Vulnerable as the poor are, they can be powerful allies in stopping the cycle of environmental damage and extreme poverty. With the poor as partners we can slow overpopulation — as we must, because more population means more pollution. And we can help developing countries rev up their economies in a cleaner way than we did during the Industrial Revolution. The choices of the poor affect us, just as ours affect them; we are all part of one world, one moral universe, sharing one oxygen tank."

Please, act together.

Christmas is just round the corner!

2007-12-17T01:31:00.000Z

In case I don't blog before the day, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

First time that I need to spend two full weeks in Tokyo, obviously for work. Thanks Bobo for coming over (with a fully redeemed ticket using my mileage :-)) and gave me a very eventful and lovely weekend. Now it's back to Earth, or work.

Just read this - an Ukraine man has died of age 116 (claimed by family documents). When he was born:
- Average life expectancy in Europe was less than 50
- Adolf Hitler was not even two years old
- Lviv was known as Lemberg and part of the Austrian Empire
- Sarah Bernhardt and Tchaikovksy were both preparing to tour the USA

Interesting, huh?

Special 2nd Dec 2007

2007-12-04T12:06:00.000Z

A few things happened on the 2nd of December 2007:

1. Hong Kong Island By-Election of Legco
Ma Lik died in a very unexpected manner because of illness in September this year. The vacancy resulted led to a massive battle between the pro-democracy parties and the pro-mainland parties. Spectacularly, both candidates representing them are not belonging to any party themselves. They are Mrs Chan and Mrs Yip, and both are former senior Hong Kong government officials.
There are also 6 more runners for this vacancy, however are all overshadowed by this battle.
Result, as you may know, Mrs Chan, who represents the pro-democracy side, won. She used to be the second biggest in the government, worked for both the UK-led HK government and SAR government. Let's see what impact she will have on the Legco.

2. MTR and KCR merged
Historical moment for the history of Hong Kong railway system. KCR has been serving Hong Kong for almost 100 years, opening an easy access to mainland China, and then to the West of New Territories and Ma On Shan on the East recently. MTR, started in 1979, has shown to the world what a proper underground train system should look like - efficient, accurate, clean, move with the world.
Now, they have merged and created this:
MTR Routemap

3. I completed my first 10km run!
Running for Unicef in Disneyland, what a nice idea by elder ML. I wanted to do the Standard and Chartered 10km run earlier this year, but didn't. Now after all those football, I felt I was up for it. Getting up 5:40am, after a long week in Tokyo, we were there, in Hong Kong Disneyland. Definitely not at my best form (never at my best form since 1999). But what an achievement! We both completed, and my time was within 1 hour (between 58 and 59 minutes)! That was actually way better than my expectation, because I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it :p

4. Second group stage match for Corporate football
Playing for Reuters, against PCCW. We had to win to give us good chance of qualifying. We got our goal in mid 2nd half, and conceded soon after again. Even though I just ran for 10km, I had to get myself in for the last 5 minutes to give a change in our attack. Then, worst thing happen to my football career so far, somebody tricked me when I was at my full speed, and sent me flying. Result, my worst injury ever from football - hurt my heel, wrist and elbow. And, it wasn't even a foul?!?! Guess I will be out at least for 2 weeks. I know many of you have hurt your ligament, tendon and shit before, but for me this is the worst.
For our final group stage game, we have to win by at least 2 goals and hope the other two teams draw. Quoting from a colleague, "So, we know what we have to do, and it would be criminal to be handed the lifeline and not to take it (think Michael Owen said something very much like that before England failed to qualify for Euro 2008, hope its not a bad omen)..."

Good weekend, wasn't it? How was yours?

Update

2007-11-27T10:13:00.000Z

Such a long time since I last blogged. During the last few weeks, my old boss came over and spend a month in China, someone has come and fixed the toilet (almost), brother has come back, deal is signed. Quite positive it sounds. But football is not going so well recently!! Haven't won a game for quite some time. We almost had one on Sunday, playing
for Reuters. The opponents got an equalizer in the last kick of the game - heartbreaking stuff.

Spent 9 hours on travelling yesterday, from Tai Koo to Hotel Okura in Tokyo. And now just finished a 5 hour meeting with clients, 2 more to come this week. Hectic!

Have to keep it up the spirit, enjoy the last month of the year 2007 and look forward to England trip with Bobo in Jan!

A beautiful city

2007-09-25T06:23:00.000Z

Although my boss' boss was not happy about it, I still had to come to Sydney for business.

That means, I will not be home on mid-Autumn festival. Fortunately, Sydney is a beautiful city that I don't mind coming. It has the European atmosphere (well, it's almost as far to Germany) but with unique culture - mix of Asian and old European. Please correct me if you have other comments on this.

And it's cleaner, with better weather. One Aussie just asked me if I could see the harbour in Hong Kong anymore. So sad. This is the international image of HK now.

Football

Played a lot of football recently, with different groups. Reuters have just formed a team to join the football part of corporate tournament organized by LCSD. Started practicing now. Then referred by an English colleague, I've joined a 11-a-side team with mostly foreigners. Then together with the existing ones, I have played 6 games last week! Enjoyable, but also feel the fatigue. Wish me (or us) luck in those tournaments.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival everyone. Enjoy good time with your family and/or friends.

Purchases

2007-08-30T15:22:00.000Z

Even though account figures are running low, the recent unhappiness has forced me the make the following purchases:

Orange: 何韻絲 - What really matters
Blue: Amy Winehouse - Back to black
White: 張敬軒 - 酷愛
Pink: Elvis Presley - The King (the best of)
Green (Manyee's pick): 楊千嬅 - Meridian

I bought all those 4 (not Miriam's) simply because of their reputations, at least in my heart. Particularly Elvis, which I personally don't know the names of any of his songs. It's been thirty years since he died, but he's still a household name throughout societies influenced by the western world, and still the best selling soloist in the US history.

"Before Elvis there was nothing" said John Lennon. (quoted from BBC - Music Profiles - Elvis Presley)

Thank you for coming!!!

2007-08-27T15:58:00.000Z

Thank you all who came to Heaven at Seven. Again, very similar to last year, sorry for lying down so early. I really want to play with each of you, but I was just stupid to mix different drinks. Sigh... Though it was nice seeing all of you having fun.

Finally the Australia sales team has arranged a trip to Sydney for me. Then I can travel to somewhere other than Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul. It gets kinda boring when you go to each in cycles. Hopefully it can also generate some deals too, just to give me a nice record.

Btw, no Andy Lau this time in Taipei.

東京遊記

2007-08-22T15:09:00.000Z

Seems that people have given up reading my blog.

漫長的一個工作天，十一小時內，拜訪了三個客戶、四個內部會議，終於下班。先跟酒店bell　captain預定明天八時二十分到機場的車票，好奇問他健身室關門時間，他說："二十分鐘後。"我唯有報以無奈的微笑，他竟認真地說："它明天早上六時就開門了。"更無奈。那早餐甚麼時候開餐，他回應："六時半。"我揶揄他："那我六時游早水，再吃早餐，剛好趕及大巴！"唔…可以考慮一下…才怪。

回到房間換過便服，進行網上預辦登機，電視正播放著日本對越南足球比賽(under 17 or 21)，但為了趕及大部份餐廳關門前用膳，唯有捨棄刺激賽事。

到了附近的Mori　Building，找到之前同事曾介紹的拉麵店。但店裏沒有任何英語或漢語之菜單，怎辦呢？唯有硬著頭皮問女店員："Do you have an English menu?" 她回應："(國語)你是中國人嗎？" Oh my god. Thank you! 點了味噌拉麵、大島餃子(五件)、生啤。不算一流，但滿足。

PARTY TIME!
You are invited to join the party on the 24th August, at Heaven@7 on the 7th floor of Bartlock Centre, 3 Yiu Wah Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Expect alcohol, karaoke and shut chung.

Best Pictures of the past 30 days

2007-08-19T16:43:00.001Z

Taken during our Tokyo trip in 21st July. Stayed in 2 ryokans during the 3-day trip. This picture was taken in the second one. Small break on the tatami.

Never saw Lau Dak Wah before, in real. Then it's like London buses, they are always late. But when they come, they come in two. First saw him in Times Square in beginning of August during a mobile phone launch function. Took the pictures in rather long distance, just like one of those in the crowd.

Then, when I went to Taipei for business, he was there again! He asked me to take this photo with him. Well, being a nice person, of course I said yes :p

Moving forward

2007-08-10T13:10:00.000Z

Mmm.. Just another diary.

Work has been quite busy recently. I hope it will be all worth it. Have been thinking more about studying or moving forward to another area/job. I don't have a lot of courage for what I am doing, and can't see a good career path here. Nonetheless, there are still jobs to finish and learn. For example, I had my first interviews this week, as an interviewer. That's kinda new. The psychology is totally different on the two sides of the table.

Typhoon Pak Po has visited Hong Kong again, after an U-turn, actually it's more than 180 degrees. First signal 8 since 2004, also first one since I work in HK. Everyone left fairly quickly after the announcement. But I was left until almost 6pm :-(

Liza Simpson watches David Beckham debut for LA Galaxy

2007-07-23T13:00:00.001Z

As said in title

Pictures from our Tokyo weekend will follow. It was lovely :-)

The Simpsons Movie

2007-07-17T04:34:00.000Z

The Simpsons......

I regard it as the best cartoon ever. Hilarious, sarcastic, disgusting, unique, stupid. It has everything that I like.

Firstly, the cartoon series has reached 400th episode. Congratulations to the creators. Then there is a movie (first ever) coming this year. For publicity, they've asked 16 different Springfields in the US to compete, to host the US premiere. The two Springfields in Scotland may join too (see here).

What's more - see here.

Glimpse of the studio

2007-07-10T17:44:00.000Z

Some pictures of my new flat.

Inside
Outside

No pictures during house warming, because everyone was sort of, er, drunk.

North Point is quite special. It's relatively old, with lots of shops having been here for years. Also you can tell there are many "lo kai fong". You can find virtually anything you want in a tiny area. I guess it must be a very busy town when North Point Estate was still here.

We've definitely learnt some lessons through this apartment. Just to name a few:
1. don't think you're clever or you've met the dream house, until you invite some experienced people to look at it with you.
2. check the pipes. In HK, it means taps, toilet and how quick the water leaves the flat! And I mean how quick A LOT OF water leaves the flat.
3. check the deco carefully. There are too many made-in-china quickies.
4. don't buy 1st to 5th floor, unless it's a short building or a house.
5. bargain with your agent for commissions.

Sigh.

Thank you guys!

2007-06-11T17:15:00.000Z

A big thank you for those of you who came on Saturday. You've warmed our little apartment, and ourselves. All your gifts are wonderful, and I am sure all of them will be useful sooner or later :p

And, I will make sure the next time you come, you won't need to go to the public toilet.. sorry.........

News of the day (9 May)

2007-05-09T05:09:00.001Z

News #1:
Number of companies I've worked for attract takeover interests: 100%
See here.

News #2:
Coconut oil being used to power cars in Papua New Guinea.
See here.

News #3:
From tomorrow, I officially become a property owner and have my first step on the so-called property ladder. My commute time will reduce from 1hr 30mins (at least) to 15mins (to be confirmed). My monthly disposal income will also reduce vastly. Oh well, what the heck!

News of the day

2007-05-04T03:33:00.000Z

A 737 has been left in the middle of the road in Mumbai, see more here.

Taipei
First time to Taiwan, 3 days of holidays with parents followed by 3 days of business. It's cleaner and tidier than I expected, and food is nice. Lots of cheap but clean and nice food all over the city. And, most importantly, I've found another fantastic holel - Les Suites Taipei (here). It's simply elegant ie. simple and excellent. Stylish design, clean, nice service, thoughtful equipments in room, etc...

But during this time in Taipei, you just don't want to watch the local TV channels. It's simply messy, the politics, the Taiwanese (福建話) reporting, blablabla, not nice.

News of the day

2007-04-16T09:00:00.000Z

Chocolate 'gives a bigger buzz than kissing our partners' - click here

Another interesting article, everyday you learn something new - here.

Seoul tomorrow, back on Friday.

Japan and North Point

2007-04-12T04:25:00.000Z

Oooh. Haven't blogged for so long, how's everybody?

The last few weeks have made this year (so far) more eventful. Still remember that in the beginning of the year, I had my first trip to India, first business visit to London, first conference in a foreign country, first business, and first trip to Australia. To add to this list, I had my first trip to Japan (of course for business), and first apartment! Yes, with some help from family and bobo, I am going to have my first property under my name!

So, do you want to know more about it? :p

Tokyo
My first trip to Japan was awesome! Eric, a fellow IC graduate, who also captained ICCSFT (Imperial College Chinese Society Football Team), who works in Tokyo every other week, brought me to some really nice restaurants after work. Also managed to have dinner with Vincent, another fellow IC graduate and former captain of ICCSFT (:o, yes, 3 captains in Tokyo having a beer and nice barbecue). I thought that was something.

Indeed, the food gave me the best impression during the Tokyo trip. Also it is very clean and tidy, and sakura!

Oh, work was ok.

Apartment
Have been thinking of moving out, mainly because of the hectic commuting. Started flat hunting for a few weeks, then Bobo took over while I was in Tokyo. She almost went to every single apartment that is available and we can afford, in Wan Chai, Causeway Bay, Tin Hau, Fortress Hill, North Point. Finally she reckons North Point is the best for my budget. So she arranged some appointments on the day after I landed. And we got it. A studio (larger than London Bridge studio, of course, and the original version was a one bedroom), looking straight to North Point Pier. So it has a little bit of sea view, just blocked by the Eastern Highway.

The mainly reasons why we chose that were:
1. it has a huge flat roof (similar to a balcony), which is just as big as the studion itself.
2. it is fully furnished with not-bad style.
3. the sellers need to move because the baby is due in 2 weeks!

So, once we've finished all the document and transactions, I'll show you some pictures.

Seoul
Second trip to Seoul for work, straight after Tokyo. Last time I stayed in Westin, which I said it was the best hotel I've ever stayed in. This time I stayed in Lotte Hotel. It was much smaller and older :-( Food is also great though. Just a
little bit too spicy. No live octopus this time :p

And here I am, in Tokyo, on the Airport Limosine (actually it's a bus) to the hotel, again. Second visit to Tokyo
is less than 2 weeks time, it doesn't excite me anymore.

written on 9th April

H to H

2007-03-26T15:13:00.000Z

I may be putting it too harshly, but I guess many of you will agree.

Hell to Heaven

Famous beach in Mumbai - taken last week

Toilet that cleans my ass in Hotel Okura Tokyo - taken 1 hour ago

Seems like I'll be flying for at least a few weeks.

Oh, not again!

2007-03-19T20:04:00.000Z

Mumbai, vis Singapore this time.

Pro: better timing (don't need to catch 5:30am flight back)
Con: 3 hours transit wait

One of 2 new books bought in Changyi Airport, and a bad glass of Carlsberg, weird taste
Jazz band playing in the sport bar in T2 Changyi Airport

Second time feeling: intoxicating

Protégé 門徒

2007-03-07T15:55:00.000Z

我還是不能承受戲中之震撼。

看著女主角受海洛英之折磨，尤其她死前那一幕，迫真和壓力讓我完全透不過氣來（我沒有讓Bobo看，怕她發惡夢）。

一齣完全關於毒品的電影，由拆家、買家、用戶、用戶家屬、輯毒組、批發商、管倉的、管混合的、種鴉片的、出口商… 希望它帶出的信息會令吸毒者反省。

Bobo 說，劉德華當該片之主角除了因他演技出眾（完全同意）和或有份投資外，更可能是因為他的號召力會令更多觀眾入場，看這齣充滿教育意義的電影，從而更有效地令更多人認識毒品的禍害。

有誠意、有意思、有社會責任的作品，誠意推薦。發惡夢可不要怪我。

News

2007-03-05T16:33:00.000Z

Had a discussion with a colleague afterwork today. She did journalism/communication for university. We talked a little bit about news.

I don't remember how we started. She was saying Reuters isn't non-biased as she thought, because it's a business in the end ie. profit oriented. But state-owned media agents are not that great too. In an imperfect world, Reuters may be doing very well.

Then we moved on to how everyone should receive news. Today, I happened to have a Metro newspaper in my hand. She said many people now rely on these free newspaper as their only sources of news. If one only read one paper, then he/she may only get what that paper says. This is not only the point of view of a particular story, it could be that this paper does not tell him/her some news at all, simply because this paper does not include/cover them.

It is the case if you only read the UK version of BBC News. You'll find out how much you miss by reading the international version. It's because the UK version puts a lot of UK-related news first. Or, if you only read Apple Daily in HK, you will (very likely) miss a lot of key stories, because they don't "attract" readers.

I watched a TV program on the flight from Sydney last week. It argued what would happen if Google grows further, and become a monopoly in information. If it's biased (which is really hard to judge, mmm~~~), then people will never get what they are really looking for. One simple example, try searching "truth about holocaust" in google.com (or here). Amazingly, the first result is a website which doubts the generally recognised facts about Holocaust. Officials in google of course tried to say how everything is done by algorithms, but on the other side of the argument, algorithms are designed and written by individuals, who are biased in some level.

Indeed, monopoly or a sole provider of anything can't be a good thing.

The point is, in order to read "news", one should read from as many sources as he/she is allowed to (physically-wise, time-wise). Read more than one piece of newspaper, watch TV news roundup by more than one channel. Ironically, that was exactly why Google News was born. It was designed to put together many news articles about the same topic and present them nicely and quickly to users, to allow them to read the different views and let them to find the truth. Of course you can argue that google controls which ones to present to you afterall.

Tell me what you think.

February

2007-03-05T16:30:00.000Z

What an eventful month. Started in London, ended in Cairns, Australia, with bloody Chinese New Year night market in between. Looking forward to a normal March.

Trip to Australia was better than expected. Fantastic 3 bedrooms apartment in both Sydney and Cairns, clean and tidy streets, well-treated wildlife, snorkeling, hot-air ballooning, driving, clean and fresh seafood...

Sydney Bridge and the Opera House

Happy Chinese New Year

2007-02-18T18:34:00.000Z

It hasn't started really well. Let's hope the rest of the year will be good.

14 Feb 2007

2007-02-14T06:21:00.000Z

Bobo, I am sorry. Happy Valentine's Day.

Beginning of busy Feb

2007-02-04T15:43:00.000Z

Yes I am (was) back to London! I used to dream about going back to London for business. Though I didn't stay in a 5 star hotel, I had a great time during the 6 days thanks to SL, HY and brother's hospitality. Lovely to catchup with friends in this strange city.

Did the same old (but yet enjoyable) things: full English breakfast, Top Gear, Tapas, beer, kebab, snooker, Winning (:p), live premiership games, lager, white beer, ale, white wine, pizza, Haggen-daz, tube, crowded Oxford Street, Match of the day, blablabla.

Sirocco Sports bar in Shaftsbury Avenue - Middlesborough 1 - 1 Arsenal
Central line tube
"Fly with everything you buy" - never know it could be a selling point

I am now in Athens, in the Westin Astir Palace resort, apparently 40mins away from the city. First timer for this kind of conference. Really not sure what to expect apart from networking. But the room is just niiiice. Different from the Westin in Seoul, which was city style. This one has sea view and a balcony. Must be very nice in the summer. Damn it's 12C now.

Reuters in hotel lift

Seems like we've got the whole resort to ourselves, seeing Reuters logo at the main drive way, then everywhere in the lobby and lifts. Didn't know we were that big :o

A Mo Liu entry

2007-01-23T06:59:00.000Z

If you have time to spend on google + wikipedia, you will be able to learn something new everyday.

去死去死團 + Darwin's Awards

Have you heard of the organization called 去死去死團 before? I certainly haven't, before I accidentally saw it on Yahoo! bidding.

Recently I've started looking at Yahoo! bidding HK, where most online trading in Hong Kong are done. Last week, out of curiosity, I was looking for second hand cars on the site. I saw a bid on a Panda car, which the seller said it was used in 去死去死團. So I googled this organization, and found:
1. wikipedia definition
2. linking capitalism, communism and 去死去死團

Interesting eh? Fortunately it's nothing to do with commit suicides. But it's sooooooo strange.

Then linking from the wikipedia definition for KUSO, it brought me to the Darwin's Award.

See here.

If you have time, please read the examples. Probably because I am a geek, I found those very funny. Sorry, no offense to the deads.

講故事 - 爆鈕

話說，有一天，一位青年駕著汔車，於大概深夜接載家人歸家。在高速公路上，正當夜欄人靜之時，突然而來"啪"的一聲，把正入睡中的弟弟吵醒。雖仍半醒，弟弟驚恐地問兄長：「發生甚麽事？汔車有問題嗎？」哥哥冷靜地、面露無奈地說：「頂！爆鈕呀！」

註：本故事純屬虛構，如與真實生活有任何相似，全屬巧合。唔好咁多心啦…

神秘物體攻佔香港!

2007-01-22T17:46:00.000Z

特別消息：

近日發現有大量形跡可疑物體，企圖由廣州潛往本港，雖本港海關及警方已增派人手前往各關卡巡邏，當局懷疑已有大量成功湧入。由於情況罕見，政府已促請市民向有關部門提供資料，以便廣大民眾能及時趕往觀賞及購買。

據可靠消息透露，該批物體極有可能會在農曆新年期間出没，市民應於年廿五後到市區如銅鑼灣維多利亞公園搜尋。

如本報有任何該批物體之照片，將會盡快刊登。

2006 review

2007-01-16T10:05:00.000Z

Last year has been a really eventful year, very eventful. Today of last year, I was working in London as a consultant for a client. Today, I am working for Reuters in Hong Kong, with quite a different job role. I remember that it was sometime in January last year that I decided to move. So far, that decision has proven to be a decent one.

Because of the move, I wanted to travel more before I leave Europe. Perhaps the trip to Prague just before the end of 2005 doesn't count. Also after the move, chances came for me to visit places in Asia.

In Easter we had our first road trip to Bath and Cardiff, 2 days;
In May, I visited the States for the first time, Boston and NYC, 5 days;
In June-July, my parents and I travelled to the Iberia Peninsula - Sevilla, Madrid and Lisbon, 1 week in total;
In mid-July, I came HOME!
In August just before I started my new job, bobo and I went to Phuket for 5 days.
Job started in August, for training and business, I went to Singapore, Beijing, Seoul (in the beginning of 2007 I went to Mumbai :s

The list is not too bad is it?

Going home

2007-01-06T16:27:00.000Z

Today is the last night of this Mumbai trip. Minor stomachaches happened, but not too serious fortunately. Bear in mind that I've already tried my best to avoid drinking suspicious water, use alcohol wipes to clear utensils before eating, but still...

A few more things that I have noted during this trip:
1. As in rumour, Indians really shake their head for yes. It's really confusing sometimes.

PS.: right at this minute that I am typing, 3 things happened (sorry about all the point forms):
1. somebody played fireworks just outside the hotel! quite pretty and shocking;
2. Charlon is chasing Nottingham Forest in FA Cup by 2-0;
3. my Alfredo Penne has just arrived.

(carry on with previous list)
2. Apparently, according to locals, Mumbai is already the most structured and disciplined place to drive in India. I can't imagine what it's like to other cities.
3. Even the office of the bank we visited (the largest in India), it's dirty!
4. They seem to see China as a big rival in terms of development and economy.

More to follow. Let me have a dinner first.

First Impression

2007-01-03T16:36:00.000Z

I believe most of you haven't been to India, and also for my own record, I am going to drop down what I've found during my 4 days stay in Mumbai.

Mumbai is the richest city in India. Its estimated population is in the range of 14 to 15 million. Since I arrived at the airport, and during the 50mins airport pickup journey, I couldn't find a single sign of richness, until I arrive at the hotel (ITC Grand Central Sheraton). It's very sensible to compare this country with China, both developing with great speed and have massive populations.

But compare to Beijing, this city doesn't show the development that I've heard. The international airport is a plain dull white building, and the staircase for passengers to leave the plane was even shaky! In the busy road, I even saw a white ox pulling a cart, which I only expect to see in sub-urban or rural area.

The highlight was, when the taxi was stuck in traffic, two little girls spotted me and came to ask for money. One girl was knocking on my door, and I was looking into her eyes just through the glass. That glass window separated her and me, and the two worlds. I am sorry but I have to say, I ignored her, because I know once I got my wallet out, there'll be tens of them. Pleaes forgive me.

There are similarities between Mumbai and Beijing though:
1. the roads are full of cars and motor bikes and pedestrians and tricycle and taxis.
2. all drivers are incredibly good. They can drive next to each other with 1 inch gap comfortably.
3. men like wearing shirts and trousers and leather shoes, whatever they do.

Another interesting sight:
I was in the taxi, on a bridge, clearly a highway ie. 3 lanes with cars driving at 80kph. On the opposite direction, there was a bike at the shoulder, stopped. It wasn't broken down. In fact, the driver and the passenger were peeing! In the middle of the highway!

India is also another stupid country (or region) which drives on the left. The others are UK, Hong Kong and Australia.

Off to India

2007-01-02T16:20:00.000Z

Mumbai
It's real now, flying tomorrow afternoon to Mumbai. It's the first time I apply for a Visa from a consulate general, it's the first time I worry about Malaria, it's the first time I need to bring 4.5L of water with me in the suitcase.

Furthermore, here are extracts of warnings given by various sources:
1. Don't drink their water, don't even use it to rinse the mouth. Must boil it before rinsing mouth.
2. Don't eat anything. (em.. is it possible?)
3. Only eat cup noodles brought from HK. (em.. ..)
4. Only eat at hotel restaurants. (this is ok)
5. Don't eat at office canteen, and anything in office. (CRAP!)
6. Don't eat if clients invite me to some restaurant. (em.. risking the deal?)
7. Only catch taxi from hotel. (I'm ok as long as company pays)
8. Don't wander around in unfamiliar area. (I'll stick to this)

There are of course more warnings/advices, and thank you all for your care. I'll be careful of every drop of water I drink, every piece of food that I eat, and every step that I walk.

It's weird that India has built such a good reputation for outsourcing, in particular I.T. and call centre (related to currently reading - The World is Flat), but has such a bad reputation for hygiene. Infrastructure is very important in any developing country, in order to attract foreign investments and foreign talents.

Currently reading

Traffic ticket
First time ever, a policeman says to my face:" You are being charged with ......" (我而家告你 ......).

I drove into De Voeux Road (in front of HSBC building) on 30th Dec. Well, now I know it's prohibited. First every ticket, such a bad way to end 2006.

Driving in prohibited zone - $450

Merry Christmas and have a good year 2007

2006-12-28T17:29:00.000Z

The message is of course to everyone, everyone in the world.

This long holiday, my first long holiday in this job, is quite good so far. Has been a spending holiday, also a relatively relaxing one. Got drunk twice already, drove around, also brought some senior family members to Macau for a one-day tour.

Some gifts for myself: Dream Theatre Score DVD, LiteOn DVD RW, picture taken by a Nikon D70 (lended by a relative)

PS: sorry, forgot to rotate the pic first :p

Another nice Christmas gift is Eason's autographed album. As some of you may have read from my blog, I've already bought his album not long ago. But thanks to CY for getting me this!!! This is gonna stay on my shelf (at least the cover with autograph, the CD to bobo).

2 more parties to come, before returning to work. This year, work is starting with a trip to Mumbai! I am not sure whether it's a good thing yet, as bobo is quite worried about my health. But these chances don't come round that often for sure.

Working in the weekend

2006-12-16T13:59:00.000Z

Working in the weekend is probably the worst thing that could happen to working lives. I know many of you may need to work in the weekends quite frequently, but it's for sure something new to me.

This is already the second full weekend that I have to work, in Beijing, both times are for the same client. And for worse, we've been working from 9am to 12am. Fortunately, I can enjoy the luxurious hotel room tonight.

Waiting for my In-Room dining while watching Charlton Athletics vs Liverpool now, I'll write again when I have something not about work to say.

Misc

2006-12-11T16:00:00.000Z

Another blog with a bit of everything...

ITU World
Took a day off last Thursday to go to the exhibition by International Telecommunication Union, in AsiaExpo, near HK Airport. The ticket cost me CHF50 (HKD330), but I think it was still worth it (though a lot of hk people got free tickets from somewhere, or student ticket costing HKD90 like CF had). Even though a lot of booths did not aim at people like us (they aim at mobile network providers who need GSM antennas or optical cables laying underground :-|, corporates who can afford tens of thousands on wireless LAN), some of the booths were just amazing to look at.

Samsung
Samsung 2
Shanghai something
Alcatel VIP room
China Hong Kong, reportedly cost $5m, so imagine how much Samsung's cost

Saw some amazing technology with CF.

3-D LCD: just the size of an LCD you find in a mobile, but able to display a 3-D image that you see from Disney 3D theatre! By Mitsubishi Electronics.

Quantom Cryptography: using photons to carry important data, based on quantom physics theories. Also by Mitsubishi Electronics.

Iris and face recognition using mobile phones: with 1M pixel camera (found on many mobile phones now), the software can recognise unique Iris features, another software reads face. Both are very quick and real-life demo was impressive! By OKI

Guangzhou
CL, TY, bobo and I all went to Guangzhou on Sunday, to look for goods in YiDe Lu for our Chinese new year market stall. Very interesting trip with purpose. Hopefully we will be able to find something unique and interesting to sell :-)

2 Albums
Bought 2 Canton-pop albums recently:
Eason Chan - What's going on ...?
Hacken Lee - "Yin Tsau Teng 2"

Very different style, and definitely I love Eason's so much more. 2 or 3 pop songs, but altogether give a quite good mix of music. Favourite so far: 黑擇明

誰也在暢讀死亡的筆記　不如來推推理
要求存似電玩遊戲　操練著戰機
死也未怕又怕甚麼苦戲　不如重溫好戲
死亡遲早都找你　切勿憑自己

Another recent favourite:
Kiss Goodbye - 王力宏

Baby 不要再哭泣這一幕多麼熟悉
緊握著你的手彼此都捨不得分離
每一次想開口但不如保持安靜
給我一分鐘專心好好欣賞妳的美

幸福搭配悲傷痛是在我心交叉
挫折的眼淚不能測試愛的重量
付出的愛收不回還欠你的我不能給
別把我心也帶走去跟隨

每一次和你分開
深深的被妳打敗
每一次放棄妳的溫柔痛苦難以釋懷
每一次和妳分開
每一次kiss you Goodbye
愛情的滋味此刻我終於最明白

Business Trips

2006-11-29T16:01:00.000Z

I always want to share the good things in life with my friends and family. So I don't usually talk about my work, because it's not something really cheerful. This time I want to share my recent business trips with you, not because work was cheerful, but I encountered some nice things!

1st Beijing trip:

In this trip, we were invited to stay at a hot spring resort that the client chose. It was in North East Beijing, closer to the airport than the city centre. I landed at noon on 17 Nov, headed to our office in Chaoyang and worked until dinner. A Japanese eat-as-much-as you can dinner! For sure, we'd never have this if I went with bobo.

Since that evening when we got to the resort by taxi, we stayed there until 19 Nov when I flew home. The resort has lots of bungalows, each with a living room, twin bedroom, bath room and a hotspring in the backyard!

It sounds amazing doesn't it? But of course, though features are good, the deco is mainland quality. It was not clean, sofa cover was broker, and the whole bungalow smelled.

Meetings with clients were all done in a Conference Centre inside the resort. Also 3 meals a day were all in the same restaurant.

2nd Beijing Trip:

This time we stayed in a hotel - Presidential Plaza. It's the only corporate hotel with rooms available near our office in West District. Unlike the Inter-Continental and Westin, it's more for local Chinese people. But we got free upgrade to executive rooms (they said they ran out of rooms), and it was a great room! Mine is a large room with a bed 3 times as wide as the one I have at home!

The unexpectedly nice room

Reuters office in West District, Financial Street

The real Peking duck

The real 炸漿麵 - before

The real 炸漿麵 - after

Dinner with bosses at Inter-Continental buffet - they even have chocolate fondue!

Seoul trip:

This is the best out of the 3. Not because it was Seoul, just simply because we had real fun.

After landing at 8pm, I avoided the KRW80,000 (about HKD700) taxi and got on a KRW13,000 bus to Westin Chosun. Even before I got on, there was a lady from Westin greeting me and helped me to check-in in advance. So when I arrived at this state-of-the-art hotel an hour later, a ball-boy was already there, calling me Mr. Wong, took my luggage and straight to the room.

And the room is truly stunning. It wasn't big, but it was clean, modern, luxurious but not classy. It has a DESKTOP with free internet connection in addition to a LAN cable for my laptop, and it has a nice curvy sofa. A mobile phone linked with the hotel room phone, so that when you go out, you can divert all calls from your room number to the mobile! How handy!

But food is unbelievably expensive. My colleague and I tried to find something to eat, and all we could have was a KRW41,000 (about HKD350) Smoked Salmon, Shrimps with Green Salad, though it was enough for 2. Thank my colleague for the "dinner". Unfortunately I had to pay for the KRW33,000 breakfast for my self in the next morning.

Worked whole day and I don't want to talk about it. Then after work a colleague (non-local, but he comes every month) brought us to a nice cosy Korean barbecue restaurant for dinner. Food was really nice, nice beef for barbecue and good side dishes. And guess what, we drank a lot. Korean wine (similar to Sake) and beer was enough to take us down. But of course, to warm down, we have 1 more when we got back to hotel :p

Lovely dinner

At lunch on the last day, we had something special - lively chopped octopus. The little tentacles were still moving in my plate! I just watched in on National Geographic the other night in Beijing hotel, and now I am having it! Truly good experience in a business trip.

Reuters office in Seoul

Trips are not always good

2006-11-19T16:51:00.000Z

CF was totally right, you say business trips are good only if you're not the traveller. At least, mine are not going to be so enjoyable.

17 - 19 Nov: Beijing
Staying in a Hot Spring resort, but the quality, em........

22 - 24 Nov: Beijing (yes, again)
Going to stay in Sheraton this time :-)

26 - 28 Nov: Seoul
Never been there before.

As you can see, individually they may be good trip. But within 11 days?!?!?!

Though, it gives me a lot of experience and exposure to clients. It'll prove themselves priceless as I grow.

NEWS: Our business has started.

The start of our 8th year!

2006-11-01T14:57:00.001Z

Had another wonderful weekend, a long one with Chung Yeung public holiday. Inn Side Out and beer + karaoke on Friday night. Went to see dentist and a GP on Saturday morning (about my dodgy knees), before going to watch The Woman in Black with ML, GL and QM in the afternoon.

Sunday was the 7th anniversary since my Bobo and I got together! We went to the Peak on Sunday to celebrate it. Had lunch there, went to Mount Austin Park and walked from the Peak all the way to Admiralty. It isn't bad at all to start our 8th year! People says 7-year itch. Now we've already gone through 7 years, let's forget the "itch"! >o<

Tried to get up early to "dung go" (go somewhere high) on Monday morning. As I said "tried", so we didn't. Ended up going to Fanling "Fung Ying Sin Kwun" and little bit of driving around inside Fanling, got as far as Lau Sui Heung and Hok Tau village. But the car failed to start in the next morning :-(

Very interesting Tuesday evening. I had to do a presentation + demo to an Australian client at 7am Hong Kong time on Wednesday morning. So I was trying to find a place to stay for Tuesday night. Fortunately, a colleague who is renting a service apartment was going to Singapore, so I could stay in his apartment in Mid-Level for the night (may be more). So bobo came and cooked a lovely dinner, and I could get some sleep before heading to the office at 6am.

Just realised that I didn't mention our hiking last weekend. CL, Bobo and I met up in Sau Kei Wan, took a minibus to To Tei Wan, and started our hike on the "Dragon's Back". It was such a lovely trail, with the view of both Stanley, Tai O on the west, as well as Shek O, Big Wave Bay on the east! This particular route is of high level of difficulty, and is also a mountain biking track. We didn't finish the whole thing though, got out after 2/3 way through. Nice enough.

I really want to share picture with you when I have time.

News of the day! Invisible cloak!

2006-10-20T02:57:00.000Z

Check this out! A US-UK team (involving Imperial College!) has successfully made an invisible cloak! Although it's only invisible in microwaves, it's definitely a nice proof-of-concept.

More to come.

Singapore!

2006-10-16T13:22:00.000Z

Many of you may not know that I've been asked to go to Singapore for training for 1 week. I've just checked into Meritus Mandarin in Orchard Road. Not the best hotel, and instead of having a king-size bed, I have 2 twin beds. What's the point of having 2 beds by myself?!

Anyhow, I'm glad to have my first "business trip", to a city that I've never been, and to learn something that I've been longing to learn. Though being away from bobo (again) isn't easy for us both :-(

Sun set in South Horizons
Lunch at UCC, Uny, Tai Koo
Satay + Beer at Lau Pa Sat in Singapore
Singapore MRT vending machines

Two pieces of news, not about me

2006-10-10T15:58:00.000Z

The first one is from yesterday. It has detailed how easy a computer can be infected by virus, malicious programs and also being used as an attacker. It's interesting to see how BBC monitors all the attacks using a honeypot.

See here.

The second one is also about technology. Google has announced a US$1.6bn buyout of video-sharing website YouTube. See here for a detailed analysis of this acquisition.

I had a short discussion with TY about this. We think that, it could be another technology bubble, just bigger and harder to burst. Or is that website really worth HKD$10,000,000,000? Without a doubt, the site generates a lot of advert revenues, and may soon receive income from broadcasting clips with copyrights. Also the technology behind this simple idea is also a valuable asset. Only time will tell if it's a good buy for Google.

Start of a new business

2006-10-06T14:15:00.000Z

The book I'm currently reading - Rich Dad, Poor Dad - has given me a lot of new thoughts. It's truely a good book, no matter it can bring you wealth or not.

Even though the main purpose of the book is how to make money, the theories can apply to daily life as well. Here is one I read today:

"Winning means being unafraid to lose"

It then goes on with a few metaphores:
- everyone learns how to walk by falling down
- everyone learns how to bike by getting scars
- no top golfer has never lost a golf ball

I then understood why I can't swim (yet), simply because I'm afraid to get drowned.
I then understood why I am working at Reuters, because I was afraid to live without salary and afraid to look for another job (I'm not saying my job is bad though).

I am learning. I want to start. Now. Each day I read a bit of the book, and it really takes time to digest what it says. Today, I've decided to move my savings (though little) in UK to HK, not waiting for the exchange rate to rise again, I need to be active, not passive. The book also says that if one wants to be rich, he needs his own business in addition to his profession. I am going to start my own business.

One day, this blog may become the first page of my success story.

One day.

From a TV series 匯通天下 tonight:
富貴不肯從寬，必招橫禍；聰明不肯從厚，必夭天年。

Mid Autumn Festival

2006-10-06T03:32:00.000Z

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. Enjoy your mooncakes.

In the lastest World University ranking compiled by Times (UK), Imperial is ranked 13th. It's slightly higher than before I think, which I remember it was 17th two years ago.

But in Metro HK (MTR version), it says Imperial is ranked 9th, also by Times. Strange. But good news for HKU, which is ranked 33rd, best ranking ever.

A team of 10, including bobo and me, are going to do a charity walk. It's not an ordinary one, it's a night walk, for Orbis (see here). It's gonna be hard, fun and worthwhile. If you'd like to sponsor me, please leave a comment and email address. Thank you in advance, on behalf of all those children with bad vision.

Flash version

Long weekend

2006-10-01T09:22:00.000Z

This week we had two lunches in a restaurant in "Lei King Wan", 15mins walk from office. We went to the same restaurant both times, as a coincident. They do modern Chinese food, trying to create new taste with traditional ingredients. The environment is friendly and price is reasonable.
Logo of the restaurant
Desserts to select, $8 for an extra piece

Spent the first day of the long weekend on watching a movie (BB Plan, actually not too sure about the English name, a Jackie Chan film) and going to the Halloween special in Ocean Park. Both the movie and Ocean Park was good. The ghosts in Ocean Park were very professional, and they scared off bobo soo much :p

Bobo and I at Ocean Park entrance

After going to the gym for a few times, many people said my tummy is BIGGER! Possibly because we ate straight after gym, but last Friday bobo and I agreed not to eat within 2 hours after gym. Hopefully if we keep that going, it'll soon reduce in size.

A small exhibition in Times Square

Some photos

2006-09-21T16:44:00.000Z

So busy recently, not only due to work, but also gathering, socialising, traveling (between home and anywhere else is hk) etc. etc... Had farewell with SL and JS.. Do I miss the life in London? Not really.. But I definitely miss the friends, relatives and colleagues there..

I don't wanna say too much of what I've done in the last few weeks.. In all I've got a new mobile and got some snaps..

View from Citiplaza III office
View from Gloucester Tower office
From Happy Valley football ground No. 7
Lovely birthday cake from bobo, eaten on 25/8

Life

2006-09-07T15:38:00.000Z

Towards the end of 4th week at the new job, things are getting better. Since the arrival of my laptop (IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60), finally I can do something in proper ways.

There are so much else I want to do though. I want to start going to gym, start studying CFA, start saving, start looking for properties, get some jabs in case I need to go to China for work, and etc etc etc...

Also I am trying to start playing football regularly again. I don't want just football, it has to be a team that I am happy to play with week in week out. In the end of the day, there are not many IC, Nam Fung and Old Street.

Seeing SL tomorrow evening. Let's have some fun after a week of work.

PS: Sony Ericsson W810i in WHITE! Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow safely. And new bed + pillow = good sleep!

happy birthday...

2006-08-23T17:01:00.000Z

to me!

Still remember I spent my last year's birthday with JS, SL and HY in Angel, London. This year I dinnered at home with bobo and the seafood she brought. Absolutely lovely meal, thank you mum, dad, grandma and bobo!

Some photos from Phuket:

First week of new job

2006-08-17T16:22:00.000Z

As many of you may know, the first week of a new job is usually boring. Spending the first 2 days completing admin and HR things, getting to know some colleagues, getting to know what my job involves etc etc. There are a lot of things that I need to learn e.g. selling skills, presenting skills, and even names of the banks in North Asia.

I will post some pictures of phuket once I've got time, and once my food poisoning gets better. Sigh...... But don't worry, give me energy!

Another trip it is!!!

2006-08-07T08:16:00.000Z

Just booked a special promotion package to Phuket (Thailand), leaving tomorrow afternoon and coming back on Saturday night. Quite a good deal as we're too late to book anything else. So excited and looking forward to having a good 5-day with bobo!

Some pics from soft-hard long-time-no-see concert last Friday.

McDonald's in Hung Hom KCR station. Long queue for food, but super-efficient serving speed. Fries were bad though.

Jan Lam on stage.

another trip?

2006-08-01T17:50:00.000Z

The start date got pushed back to 14 Aug. This means I'll have 2 more weeks, and may be able to go to a short trip with bobo. That'll be great!

Eventually bought a pair of shoes for work. This is my first pair of proper black leather formal shoes. Also the most expensive pair of shoes I've ever purchased. Hopefully they'll last for long.

I've always wanted to say something about the war between Israel and Hezbollah. But I really don't know what's right or wrong. If we just look at the most recent conflict, it was started when an Israeli soldier got kidnapped. But as someone said in BBC forum, "One Israeli soldier got kidnapped, Israel has kidnapped the whole Lebanon".

Israel has a rich history of fighting. From my understanding, it started with religious reasons, then more political reasons and about oil, and of course because of the USA policies. With the new government forming (after Ariel Sharon fell into a coma), I thought things would at least get better. But reality only shows how childish and unhelpfully selfish I am.

Peace.

The next step

2006-07-30T16:34:00.000Z

Haven't blogged for more than 10 days. Reason? Have been busy for a presentation, shopping and having fun. Though after all the effort to shop, still can't buy a pair of formal shoes and a nice belt. Will try again tomorrow.

Then, back to the title of this entry. I've got a job offer from Reuters Asia and am starting next Tuesday!!! This is my second step of my career path, and in my circumstance it cannot get any better. I can keep using what I've learnt during the last 2 years, and also start from there to learn a lot of new things about this field. And I also have a fancy job title - Product Specialist.

I'm not going to explain what my job is about, because I am not sure yet. Neither I want to talk technical here.

Still no picture. Sorry if you've been waiting.

New life

2006-07-19T16:06:00.000Z

The 14 hours journey was hectic, as expected. We couldn't check in all the suitcase, I had to send a 34kg suitcase using the excess baggage service. The cost was about the same as shipping 7 boxes! Fortunately I've collected the suitcase today and hopefully no more moving in the near future. Don't mind short trips though!

Have been very busy for the last few days. Already had 2 interviews with Reuters Asia, waiting for their decision now. I should start looking for alternatives, but tidying up my room has higher priority.

Also gathered with friends, karaoke, drinks, boat trip, dinner tomorrow. And of course, it's so nice to see my bobo again. I didn't want to go home yesterday even though I was totally knackered.

Still a lot to do to settle down, a job offer will definitely heat things up!

Life

2006-07-05T21:18:00.000Z

Life has highs and lows. I don't know if I am on a high now, but I am definitely not on a low.

Life is good
I bought a tee while I was in Boston from a shop called "Life is good". They have a website at here. I bought the "Camp Fire Guitar" in green for myself in this page.

A few thoughts
Never think that you are clever. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Always listen to others and never stop learning.

When you think you're climbing keep climbing, until you're tired and can't get further. Now get your head up and you may realise you're on top of a mountain. But remember, there is always another higher mountain.

This week I've realised why people say that, always prepare yourself, so that when the chance comes, you can take it with no problem. Now the chance has come to me, I certainly would take it with both hands, but am I strong enough to hold it?

Wish me luck.

13 days left

2006-07-01T12:24:00.000Z

Back from Lisbon last night. What a trip. Hectic as I needed to take care of my parents, make sure everything was smooth and fine. Though exciting to see different parts of the Iberian Peninsular, different culture and people, new and old.

This is not the first trip that I organize. If I haven't got it wrong, I organized the trip to Cornwall (Penzance, Land's End 天涯海角, Newquay) with bobo in 2001, and the trip to the Lake District with family in the same summer. The trip to the US was simple as friends took care of me. Then other trips I had my bobo organizing them all.

But this is the first time going abroad, where not many people understand English, and internet access was very limited to us.

Anyway we've come back safe and sound, though all knackered. For the coming week I'll need to sort out my future and trip back home. So it'll take some time for the pictures to come up here I'm afraid.

Off again!

2006-06-21T23:38:00.000Z

Last 2 days
I left the office on Tuesday after working quite hard, saying "see you in 2 weeks" to people, explaining my trip, discussing our future at Reuters. Went to Waterloo straight away to watch the England Sweden game with SL, HY and CF. Can't believe England still can't beat Sweden after 40+ years. Sol Campbell is really too old for this level. Even Dawson might be able to clear that cross with ease!

Parents arrived in London this morning. Met them at relative's house and went to yum cha. We went to do something which I should've done 9 years ago: pick strawberries from a farm. The weather was quite good and we got loads of strawberries, some cabbage and spinach for dinner as well!

Iberian Peninsular
We are heading off to Spain and Portugal tomorrow morning. The flight to Seville takes off at 6:15am, which means we'll have to leave home at 4am. Hopefully we'll still be fit enough to play for a day.

It's my second trip in a month. But this time I don't have tour guide, will have to find places of interest by myself and figure out the transport. Fingers crossed!

New company

2006-06-20T16:28:00.000Z

Haven't blogged for 5 days, mainly due to tight schedule of World Cup matches, and abnormally high consumption of alcohol. Have been drinking almost everyday since the World Cup started, and spending a lot.. Oh man!

Job
Last Friday, all of us went to Reuters London head office in Canary Wharf for a presentation and welcome drinks. Their office is very impressive, and it was good experience to have a tour in their News Room, one of the largest in Europe. After a few hours in their office, I would love to work with them.

Yesterday I arranged a meeting with an HR consultant talking about my situation. She also offered me the new contract (she is going to do it with everyone anyway). Ha, it's a laugh. It's good for me because I don't have a dilemma to worry about. I will be happy to come home. Though of course it will still be wonderful if they can find me a job in HK! Have to wait a bit longer for that.

Friend + football
Another total football weekend. Watched almost all 6 matches in full. The best one so far is definitely the Brazil Australia match. CF has come to London and we went to a bar in Holborn to watch it. It was filled up by people in Brazilian shirts, and they could sing the Brazilian anthem! They were proper Brazilian fans, and the atmosphere made the otherwise plain match extraordinary.

Then for yesterday Spain match, we (CF + SL + me) went to an African bar in Covent Garden, where there was a group of Spanish fans occupying the basement. They warmly invited us to join them and their reaction to the equaliser and subsequent goals again made the match 30 times better.

Hopefully we will get something even better for tonight's England match!

Well done Beckham

2006-06-15T23:47:00.000Z

England 2 - 0 Trinadad and Tobago
We missed the first 20 minutes of the match today because people in the office were trying to set up a TV tuner for a laptop, but couldn't find the channel. So only went down to a pub nearby half way through the 1st half.

The match is quite exciting, because everyone was supporting England and we shouted for every chance / half chance. They deservedly won it, but with a bit of luck I think. T &T did well enough to give them a draw, only on another day.

For me Beckham really showed his hunger for the World Cup, and he played reasonably well. Of course others like Gerrard and Terry performed really good as well.

First week after acquisition
Nothing much has changed yet, still in casual wear, still have company sponsored football, still working as before. Tomorrow we're all going to Reuters London head office in Canary Wharf for a tour and introduction. Excited about it. And of course, finger crossed that they are going to relocate me to Asia!

Snooker
I can feel myself more confident on pots compared to few months ago. Though still 6-8 behind to KC. Need to practice more with side spins.

News of the year!

2006-06-12T08:59:00.000Z

See Reuters buys risk software firm for $41 mln

From today (12 June 2006), Application Networks Inc. ceases to exist and I am an employee of Reuters Group Plc..

Welcome pack, including a mouse pad, a T-shirt and a photo album!
Things

England kick off!

2006-06-10T14:12:00.000Z

World Cup starts today for England. So far so good, 1-0 up against Paraguay. But come on guys, keep the possession please! You're not gonna win the World Cup like this!

Updated the photos in Boston. Please revisit the entry before last.

News of the day - World Cup!!!

2006-06-09T14:32:00.000Z

What's bigger than the World Cup??!??!?! Kicking off at 1700 BST today with host Germany playing Costa Rica. From my office's sweepstake, I've got Trinidad and Tobago, and France. But I'll still support England in Group B!

Another piece of interesting news: here

More news to come!

Rest of the US Trip

2006-06-07T16:47:00.000Z

Have been very busy to detail the rest of the trip, which was more relaxing than the parts I've posted pictures. So am justing giving the itinerary if anybody is interested (at all).

Day 4
Woke up quite late around 11am. Checked out the room and went to a town in Queens called Flushing for brunch. It's a newer China Town (the old one is in Canal St, Manhattan) with lots and lots of Chinese shops and restaurants. We went to a restaurant called "Nam Buk Wo", meaning something like "South and North meet". The food was excellent, with beef roll, fried dumpling etc.

Then Jay and I headed to MET to fulfill our unfinished business. It's a huge museum with a lot of Art and historical exhibits. Unfortunately the history of Musical instruments was closed for unknown reason, Jay was deeply disappointed by that.

We then spent about an hour in the middle of Manhattan where there are a couple of big guitar shops. Generally things are half price in NYC compared to London, damn!

China Town in Flushing (Queens), 3 pictures inside the MET and smoke from the Subway

After buying a incredibly nice and cheap "Cha Ngap Fan", we caught our coach back to Boston.

Day 5
A nice day out in Boston city. We started with lunch at Quincy Markets. Then we walked to the famous Boston Harbour (made its name with the Boston Tea Party, which triggered the American Revolution, see here). Got on a ferry tour around both of the inner and outer harbour.

After the 90 mins trip, we ported and walked all the way through State Street, Boston Common, had a break at a Starbuck's (the only Starbuck's break throughout the whole trip!), and did some shopping too. Finished the night with some homemade (made by Jay the man) tuna mayo sandwiches.

Glass towers near Government Center, Quincy Markets, Boston Harbor, Boston skyline from ferry, planes, Dick's (where we lunched)

Boston Common, The New England, Nike Town, ducks in a pond

Inside a shop in Neal's St., Starbuck's, evening near Prudential tower, inside Puma shop

Jack Daniel's barbecue sauce in Shaw's, homemade tune-mayo sandwiches, Jay's synthesizer, the man on double-bass, his electric bass collection

Day 6
Caught the T (equivalent to MTR, Tube or Subway) to Harvard. I chose this instead of MIT. It's not as normal/ugly as I expected from people's comments about it. The area is quite nice for studying. We wanted to have lunch nearby but Jay the man led us to the opposite direction, and reached the wrong T station after a long walk. So decided to take a bus back to centre for lunch. Had a chowder in bread bowl with homemade lemonade, NICE!

Highlight of the day was definitely the lobster dinner. Even though we waited for about 40 mins for our table, it was in the end very much worth it. The lobster was served in whole and steamed, excellent in terms of both texture and taste, and it was a treat from the man.

Tried to do some music at Jay's place, but really tired to do much.

(left to right, top down)Harvard, Harvard, lobster, Harvard, lawn mower that drifts in Harvard, Harvard Police, Boston, Oxford St in Harvard, Heathrow, vocal recording in Jay's

Day 7
Last day of this trip. Spent 4 hours on the song (I hardly did anything actually, Jay was way too good to let me do anything), before going to the airport. Don't know when Jay and I will see each other again after this trip. Hopefully we'll meet again somewhere in Asia soon.

Couldn't sleep throughout the whole flight, but read a lot. Arrived home at about 9:30am the next day. Slept until 6pm, which resulted in terrible jet-lag.

That's the end of the US Trip 2006. Look forward to the next one - Spain + Portugal in 2 weeks time!

PS: will publish photos if can be bothered.

Trip to the States - Day 3

2006-06-04T00:07:00.000Z

The excellent weather carried on on my third day in the USA.

10:30 United Nations, New York
The first thing after we woke up on our 2nd day in New York, was to go to the United Nations head quarter on the 1st Avenue. We had the guided tour, which brought us into many conference rooms inside the building, and gave some history of UN and its role in the current world. There was also a photo exhibition in its lobby, in which you can find some astonishing pictures about natural disasters, wars, poverty etc.

From top left, clockwise: the UN main building behind bars, a picture donated by the Guggenheim inside, a piece of pottery melted by the nuclear bomb dropped on Japan in 1945, two sculptures found in the UN.

15:00 Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn is one of the 4 main districts of New York (as far as I know, others are Manhattan, Queens and Bronx). It's a very nice residential area. WJ brought us there by subway. We bought some sandwiches and sat by the river side to enjoy the view of Manhattan skyline across the river.

Manhattan skyline, walkway by the river, a boy, first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty

17:00 Wall Street, New York
We went back to Manhattan after lunch. First stop was Wall Street, the financial centre. There we saw some influential buildings. After we took the Staten Island Ferry (free) to Staten Island. Well, the point was not Staten Island. On the way to the island, this ferry goes by the Statue of Liberty, so that we could get a closer look to this landmark, as well as enjoying a nice ferry trip. Therefore, we only stayed on the island for about 2 mins, as we took the same boat back!

New York Stock Exchange (with a enormous flag), Statue of Liberty, people rushing to the ferry, Manhattan skyline

We visited the site where the World Trade centres (Twin Towers) used to be. It was sad, of course. I couldn't imagine that the streets near there were full of bodies, officers, people screaming, dust from the collapsed building...

After, I insisted to take a yellow cabbie to Central Park to meet Jay's friends. We met up at the Apple store. Its entrance is a glass house outside a skyscraper. As WJ quoted, how can you make it classy but cheap?

We met up and go to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. They do excellent grill. The dinner was really nice, with beer, nice chats and good food. We finished our evening at a very famous Jazz club called Blue Note. It was definitely the best live Jazz performance I've ever seen, even though I was asleep for a bit becuase of jet-lag.

The famous bull near Wall Street, closed American Stock Exchange, me in the Blue Note Jazz club, Apple store, World Trade Centre site.

Trip to the States - Day 2

2006-05-31T04:42:00.000Z

Just got back to Jay's place from a 3-day NYC trip. Sorry to say but will need some time to organize photos and publish them. And also because of jet-lag and loads of walking, am bloody tired now so only writing out part of the trip.

08:30 South Station, Boston
Got on a bus to New York. This is a Chinese bus company, and is probably the cheapest way to get to NYC from Boston. According to various sources, the train Amtrak to NYC costs about $60, and takes 3 hours. This bus costs $15 one-way and takes about 4 hours. Think this is definitely a sensible choice.

12:30 Canal Street (China Town), New York City
Arrived at Manhattan after a 4-hour hectic journey, with one break at McDonald's on the way. I was shocked by the scale of the China Town. There are a lot of signs only in Chinese, and even the sales are only shouting in Chinese. For a second or so, I thought I was in a market in Yuen Long!

Spent a full-hour looking for the way to Penn Station (at 31 St and 7th Ave) to meet WJ. He is a very close colleague of mine, who happened to be working as a consultant in New York this month. He was our guide for the first 2 days of our NYC trip.

Really tired now, to be continued.

Continued (written on 3 June)
Let's start with a little picture.

From top left, clockwise:
Me with the coach, little Italy in NYC, first taste of the New York subway,
seeing WJ in NYC!

After meeting up with WJ, he started touring us around in central Manhattan. We started with Reuters office, Times Square, lunch at a small Spanish canteen, Rockefeller Plaza, JP Morgan Chase buildings, the Grand Central train terminal, and United Nations head quarter. Unfornately by the time we arrived, the UN head quarter has already closed.

From top left, clockwise:
WJ and me under Reuters office, Times Square, No. 2 & 3 United Nations Plaza, Grand Central Terminal, a market on one of the avenues.

We then took the subway to the east side of Central Park and hope to visit either Guggenheim or the Metropolitan Museum. Unfortunately (again), Guggenheim had scarfolding all over it, and the Met was closing early because of Memorial Day Sunday. Damn!

So, to make ourselves happy, we went into Central Park to enjoy the lovely sun!

Jay taking a nap and the rest with the cones.

I think this one is a nice picture. It was shot when we came out from a subway. I was hoping to take the yelloe sunset, but this lady just appeared at the exit when I pressed the button.

We then headed to Chelsea and West Village area. It was beautiful, with the little houses, amazing sunset. We finished our evening with a dinner at a restaurant playing live Jazz.

European style (or is it?) house at Chelsea, the river side, the beautiful sunset, the restaurant where we ate.

After saying goodnight to WJ, Jay and I took the subway to the Queens area, which is where our hostel is. It's a small 2/3 storeys house, with 20+ rooms, operated by Hong Kong people (I think). It's not the best, but it's damn cheap!

Trip to the States - Day 1

2006-05-28T04:59:00.000Z

11:00 Streatham, London
Got up and started packing. Made breakfast and a little bit of Winning before leaving home.

14:51 Streatham Hill
With the help of Journey planner on Transport for London website, worked out that the best route from Streatham to Heathrow should be:
Streatham Hill -> Clapham Junction -> Feltham by train, then Feltham -> Heathrow by bus.

Inside a Southern train to Clapham Junction

The suitcase is all wet because of the pissing rain. See you in a week time, rainy London.

Wandsworth Common in rain.

Feltham Station, an official connection point to Heathrow (apparently).

The bus indicator for Heathrow. You don't see that very often.

16:05 Heathrow Airport
Arrived at the airport surprisingly early. Was thinking to have a drink before boarding. Then had a dilemma between all those cafes at the waiting lounge. Well, as I'm heading to the US, I thought I shouldn't go to Starbucks. So went for Cafe Italia, had a Pain Au Chocolat and a Hot Chocolate. Then boarded the American Airline AA 155 to Boston.

From bus stop to terminal.

In front of this gate at Terminal 3, I had to see my bobo flying home and leaving me staying in London. This time I'm leaving and no one is crying.

The transcalator to Gate 22.

18:05 Take off
The flight is quite full. I was sitting at an aisle seat at the second last row of the flight. This is a shit seat because it's right next to the toilet, and the cabin crew (a bunch of women) were chatting behind all the way. Perhaps that's why I was sitting there, and no one was sitting next to me.

Snack Box. This came after the dinner. The dinner was a total nightmare - beef with hashbrown, coleslaw, chocolate cake, a cold lump of bread.

Contents in the snack box.

21:00 Outside Boston Logan Airport
Got asked a few question at the immigration desk, as expected. He even asked who I know in Boston, and where I knew him from.

Jay picked me up from the airport, and then caught a shuttle to the subway station - Airport. The subway system is surprisingly old and messy. A brief search says it was built in 1895!! Well, at least the oldest lines I suppose.

Outside the airport

Looking at the subway tracks from the bridge.

The subway train. Look at how "unattractive" it is.

The track, which you may notice it's almost level to the platform.

22:00 Dropped off luggage and headed for dinner
Went to drop my luggage at Jay's place before going to dinner at a Thai place. Ordered a fried flat noodle with pork, super spicy. And Jay told me that in here everyone who looks younger than 40 needs to show ID when buying alcohol. Luckily they accepted my UK driving licence.

Jay, his food and my beer.

Jay's studio.

Few pictures

2006-05-26T16:22:00.000Z

Found the following while searching for useful information about my trip.

Weather forecast of Boston. Please note the descriptions: T-Storms, Shower, A Beauty, Hot Stuff, & No. Shore. Excellent.

Map showing Boston and New York, the two cities I'm going to. Note Springfield in between (the home town of the Simpsons family), and New London.

Laughter

2006-05-26T11:45:00.000Z

A friend of mine appeared on the TimeOut London magazine, for a leisure group that he went to last month. It's called "Laughter Yoga". Please see here for the article.

I always think that laughter is suspicious. There're a lot of research about this subject, and many suggest that laughters can improve health. In the above article, it mentioned an event - Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic (wikipedia description). I wonder what joke they had in the boarding school to make people laugh for half a year! Anyway, if it's real, then it means laughters can be disastrous in the extreme cases.

Went out yesterday with the CIBC team. As expected, it was a great evening, with nice drinks, nice chats, and fantastic food. The place is called Ladbroke Arms, near Notting Hill and Holland Park stations. I was a bit drunk after 2 pints of ale, glass of white wine and 2 glasses of red, and it was late (~23:30) so didn't want to go all the way to Streatham on my own. AW and LL kindly invited me to stay at their place in west London. So I had the chance to meet their cat Parker and their apartment. I wish I could afford to have my own property.

Snooker

2006-05-24T00:12:00.000Z

Played snooker tonight.. Not a good evening in terms of snooker performance. Missed a lot of easy pots and left KC a lot of chances. Finally lost 2-4 tonight. In addition to last week 2-3 defeat, aggregate is so far 4-7, in spite of all previous matches between us.

As I was such a bad loser, I didn't take the 22:06 train home, nor the 22:36. Ended up on the 23:06 train. It travelled to Elephant and Castle, then had some problems with the train ahead of us. Waited for at least 20 mins, the train eventually needed to go back to Blackfriars (yes, it went backward!), went on another track before heading south again. Finally it arrived at Streatham at 00:07, and I arrived at the bus stop at 00:12. SHIT, MISSED THE LAST BUS!!!

Being a small Chinese, new to Streatham region, I did not feel comfortable enough to walk home from the station at all. Was heading for a brighter street, but saw some youngster on the same street, wandering, clearly had nothing to do and quite obviously looking for targets. So I took a black cab, and the journey took about 2 minutes.

Sad, ain't I?

Another day, another week

2006-05-22T22:19:00.000Z

Another week without comments. I know I haven't put as much effort as before on writing my blog, but still, you can leave some bulls**t.

What I've learnt today:
1. My fried rice isn't too bad.
2. Don't speak just for the sake of speaking.
3. Monday trains are less crowded, possibly because people are more reluctant to go to work

News of the day:
1. 3 out of a family of 5 were dead, a 3-year-old girl will never be able to move her arms and legs again, after an Israeli's airstrike against Gaza City: here

2. Woman being prosecuted for putting rubbish into recycling bins: here

3. Montenegro has announced independence after referendum: here. But Serbia & Montegnegro are playing in the World Cup in less than a month time, mm...

Picture of the day:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday

The "Ray Wong"s

2006-05-20T19:05:00.000Z

I've found a lot of "Ray Wong"s in google. The ones appear on the first page are quite cool, as one of them have been making short films, winning awards with BBC. Another one who is also registered at blogger.com has recently finished a novel and you can buy it from Amazon.com.

There's also a magician based in Vancouver, "Ray started magic at the age of eleven by working in a magic shop after school. He worked for the McDonald's Restaurant Corporation for five years performing eight shows a week for their parties."

And you can only find me easily in google with "tummywong".

Transitional Period

2006-05-18T21:02:00.000Z

I look at the coming two months as a transitional period.

From life in UK to life in HK.

I moved on last Saturday, with the help from my brother, to his place. Don't mind sleeping in the living room at all, as long as his flat mates are ok with it. Also shipped a lot of stuff to HK on Saturday. Hope they will all arrive safely as it contains a lot of worthy stuff + memories.

I used to "commute" for 3 mins (or 40mins to Edgware Rd office), whereas now at least at hour. 20 mins on foot, 20 mins on train, 20 mins on bus. But, amazingly, I've been arriving at the office much earlier than before. This week so far I wake up at 8:15 every morning, which is quite good in my standard.

In addition to this, I've been working hard at work. No more procrastination Ray, real work! Otherwise you won't succeed, in anything.

Also now home feels more like home because there are people, and it's much larger. A rough estimate is this flat is 15 times larger than the studio I lived in last week.

Many happened this week around the World. One thing to note is that this month marks the 40th anniversary of the start of China's cultural revolution under Chairman Mao. It's something that shouldn't have happened, and should never happen again. This page from BBC has some interesting view on it - see here. My favourite remark is about foundamental hatred between human beings.

Also this week I've finished the book about Chinese history (the book is very brief). Unfortunately, as it was published in mainland China, it's biased towards the Communist Party. The last sixth of the book is about history in the last 80 years, about how Communist Party rose from nothing, and eventually took over KuoMinDang to establish the central government of PRC. One thing the book mentioned was Communists used the reason "not allowing one party to rule the government" to kick out KuoMinDang. But it looks like the case for themselves in all the years after the civil war.

Enough for now, and sorry about the bad English and poor explanation. Very tired now and don't want to spend hours to refine it.

Good things about working at the office

2006-05-12T16:05:00.000Z

Having been a consultant for almost a year, it's nice to back to the office to work with real colleagues. Here is a shortlist of good things I can think of now:

1. Indoor 5 or 6 a-side football, sponsored by company, once a week.
2. No one hates me. Or no one asks why I am here.
3. The office below us used to be Jazz FM (now changed their name to Smooth FM). They had shit loads of Jazz CDs to get rid of, and asked us to grab the ones we like. My colleagues got about 50 for himself and me.
4. Lunch at Hyde Park, under sunshine, discussing interesting topics, watching girls with bikini sunbathing.
5. Got chance to walk between station and office, wheereas before I only needed to walk for 1 min to get to the client's office.

Bad side:
1. Hot. There's no air-conditioning.
2. Far from home, but I am moving tomorrow anyway.

Moving

2006-05-10T21:08:00.000Z

Have been very busy this week, packing, packing, packing, and packing. Also needs to arrange transport + change address etc etc.

Booked ticket to Boston (return!) for end of May. Look forward to seeing an old friend over there. Also the first time to go to the US. I don't like their government, particularly their foreign policy, but I'm sure there will be a lot to see.

Bobo, I miss you, and I love you.

News of the day + 成長之Pre-大學篇

2006-05-06T22:44:00.000Z

News of the day: Here
Can't believe I had never heard about this, and missed it.

成長之Pre-大學篇

九年前我是一個白痴，很慶幸我現在不是。

當初決定赴英，一半出於逃避，另一半想找一個轉變，這決定對我成長的影響是當時意料之外的。

剛到?時，因中三有外籍?師授課，對自己的英語會話能力充滿信心。結果發現，根本不是那麼一回事，除了聽得懂一小部分外，會說的只有"Yes"、"No"、"Thank you"、"Sorry"，和需要如?時問的問題。

在英第一年，住的是寄宿學校裡的"Dormitory"（Yahoo! 字典譯作"團體寢室"），大房子裡二十多間小睡房只用矮木板隔開，高個子可以輕易看到隔鄰的傢伙在幹甚?。睡房沒有門，只有類似窗簾的東西保障有限的私隱。就在這樣的環境下，我開始學習怎樣和不同性格、國籍、年齡、文化、背境的人相處，學習韜晦、忍讓、結他、和怎樣才不會被打。

兩年後結識了寶寶，才知道我在別人眼中很惡、不討好。她讓我學會了怎樣去愛人和被愛，亦令我看清楚了自己。

A-Level 的兩年亦是我開始尋找目標的時期，開始為考入著名大學而努力，給混混愕愕的少年時代劃上句號。

單程票

2006-05-03T23:02:00.000Z

This entry (apart from this sentence) is in Chinese, well, quite obviously. Tough if you can't read.

過去九年寒暑，無數的喜樂和哀愁、歡笑和憤怒、成功和失敗、痛苦、艱辛、愚昧、無知，被人輕視、忽略，到被人尊重、以至仰慕，從偏遠小村到煩囂都市，由一個普通學生，到普通員工，是時候了。

家
從前總是拿一張雙程機票飛到這邊，假期用回程的那一半返家。隨著每年留英的時間漸長、擁有的東西漸多，歸屬感也增加了。家的定義開始變得含糊，父母、祖母和其他親人仍在港，但同樣這裡也有我喜愛的人和留戀的物。

記得初中的時候，哥每次回港放假，他會說：「要買那樣那樣返過去。」我曾想為何他會用「返」去形容到英國呢？難度那邊已變成他的家了嗎？

直到我在異地生活了好幾年，發現原來需要建立歸屬感才會活得開心，不然每天看香港雜誌、到唐人食店進餐，永遠融入不了主流社會，只會每天倒數甚麼時候回港渡假。

如是這，終於在兩年前第一次用單程票飛來這個從來也不屬於我的地方，其後在這邊買雙程票回港。方向變了，原因不是我不會離開，亦不是這裡已變成我家，而是不知下次回家會是何時。

有一天跟媽媽通電，提到我要拿某東西回家，她問為甚麼要帶那東西回港。明顯地我倆當時對「家」的定義各有不同，當我更正時，她說：「你不是把你現在住的那裡當作家吧？」

我不排除有很多人因在異地居住久了，漸漸地把「家」移離本來出生或長大的地方，但我沒有。大約三個月前，我知道，是時候回家了。

昨日我買了另一張單程票。

成長
九年前我是一個白痴，很慶幸我現在不是。(待續)

Rooney

2006-05-03T13:16:00.000Z

I won't even try to hide my admiration of this guy. He's a genius, he's quick, he's strong, he's good with the ball, he can strike, he can hold, he can dribble, he's aggressive, he's only 20 year-old, but he's injured. Having lived in England for many years, I've been infected by the passion of football. Since China haven't qualified for this year's World Cup finals, so I am going to be an England supporter. But, this guy got injured last Saturday, which I think England will have very little change to win it now.

The reason I say that is not because England do not have good players. But I think these established players do not have the "fearless" that you find in Rooney. I said when England played Uruguay in the last friendly, I saw Joe Cole doing tricks to the Uruguayan. Apart from that, the others were only trying to pass it as safely as they can, no tricks, no aggressive passes. Even Joe Cole's tricks weren't that agressive. Is that a result of the massive pressure they get from English people? I don't think that's the whole reason.

But the fact is, Rooney is injured, and he's very likely to be ready for the finals. It's a blow to the team, to this country, and to him as well. Yes he's still young, but David Beckham, Lampard will be too old to play 4 years later, even Gerrard and Owen will be 30 year-old by then.

Let's face the reality and start planning the alternatives. Personally I don't like Peter Crouch at all. He'll be completely useless when playing against other national teams in the World Cup, people will break his leg in the first match. I think Defoe, James Beattie, or even Dean Ashton will be possible candidates. Darren Bent has only shone for one year and not enough experience on big occasions (well, same for Ashton actually). Vassell and Andy Johnson can be considered too. Or push Joe Cole forward, then bring in Aaron Lennon (even more inexperienced, but that's alright, he only needs to run).

Enough bullshit, let's see what Eriksson will say on 8th May.

4/5, 1:41am BST
Watched Matrix: Revolution tonight. Never watched it before, only heard the story line or the concept from someone else. But, oh my god, the computer graphics were so so good. The robots, flying ships, evil machines, agent Smith x 1000000, all look so real. Now I know why it's a great movie / series.

Also watched a short documentary called "Fans United". It was about how businesses have forced football fans to betray the clubs that they love with full hearts, and go away to set up their own clubs. Few years ago, the company that owned Wimbledon FC decided to re-locate the club to Milton Keynes, 70 miles, which they think they can generate more revenue. The local Wimbledon fans were gutted, and went on to set up the new AFC Wimbledon football club, run by fans. It's been proven a success as it kept being promoted and having a sizeable fan base week in and week out.

Another example is FC United of Manchester. It is set up by fans of Manchester United, which were taken-over by the American Glazer family last summer. The new owner had to borrowed most of the 700milliion pounds that it spent, and now transferring the cost by putting up the price of season tickets by more than 12%. Fans who felt hard done by set up this small club FC United, and now playing in a league which is 10 below the Premiership (it's called North West Counties League Second Division, see here).

What amazing is, Barcelona FC is another club that is owned by fans!!! Fans have the right to vote for club decisions, including which manager to hire. Hope the two clubs mentioned above can someday achieve what Barcelona FC has done, and beat their original clubs.

Some pictures

2006-05-02T21:25:00.000Z

Sigh, it was not the final browsing day...

Pictures from trip to the west:

Using the digital camera

A statue in Bath, and visitors
The church next to the Roman bath, the angels are climbing up to the top
The two of them in front of the pump room. The sun was great!

Using a traditional SLR with films:
Inside Cardiff castle, looking at the Millenium Stadium
A male peacock looking for food/partner
A male peacock met photographers/partner

Final browsing day

2006-05-02T10:32:00.000Z

BBC make very good documentaries. Previously I mentioned about the one that talks about faith, comparing science to different religions. Tonight, BBC is showing "When Lineker met Maradona".

A brief introduction to these two people if you are not a football fan.

Lineker is one of the best strikers England has produced in the past 20 years. He started at Leicester City, then Everton, Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspurs and finished his career in Japan with Nagoya Grampus Eight. He retired from international football with 80 caps and 48 goals, one fewer than Bobby Charlton's England record (although Charlton took 26 more caps to score his one extra goal). He also earned the nickname "Mr. Nice Guy" with his record of not having got cautioned (not a single yellow card, let alone red card) for a single time throughout his long player career.
Maradona is regarded by many people as the best footballer in the world ever. The most famous achievement is probably how he won the World Cup in 1986 for Argentina single-handedly, which in the quarter final against England (which Lineker played in), he scored his famous goal using the "Hand of God".

20 years after that quarter final, the two men meet again. After their playing era, one man has become a successful TV pundit and sports broadcaster, and the other has been struggling with his cocaine problems and also had two heart-attacks that nearly killed him. In the run-up to tonight's program, this is a little warm up - here.

All information comes from wikipedia, see Lineker and Maradona.

May day monday

2006-05-01T22:34:00.000Z

This year's May Day comes in the perfect time for me to rest. Well actually any bank holiday would be good.

I went to tea with relatives, before going to snooker with SL, AW and H. A very satisfying performance for myself. Then went to Kilburn for Sizhuan food. Bobo, I would love to bring you there. But it's certainly not the best, because of the environment. Lots of people smoked in nearby tables, and it's quite hot (in terms of temperature) to eat spicy food. Well done to SL, FL and myself for eating the chillis.

Just read the news about Iran sending a letter to the UN, critisising the US of refusing to rule out missile attacks on Iran nuclear plans. Personally I do not know what Iran's nuclear development's purpose is, but how can the US threaten even to use nuclear attacks on other countrie's nuclear plan without confirming its purpose? They did once against Iraq when they claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but where were the weapons in the end? What they did was kicking Saddam out, getting controls of the oil fields, and then left the country in the current state - suicide bombing everyday, and on the edge of civil war. Even before the war against Iraq, people were saying that the next target for US would be Iran, which is another country with huge resource of oil.

US citizens, we can't vote for or against who become your president. But this man/woman has a lot of influence on the world given the economic power of the US. People get killed because of his/her decision on e.g. fair trading, global warming, and war. Please vote the person who will make us all good, not only you.

I know some of you tried - see SORRY EVERYBODY.

Do you wanna be 008?

2006-04-28T09:06:00.000Z

A friend forwarded this to me
Consider a career change...

Jamie Cullum is having his first concert in Asia in Hong Kong in June. Happy to see famous-but-not-quite-pop artist choosing Hong Kong to start. Despite of "unique" general culture, how Hong Kong people see musics definitely needs to change.

15:18 BST (British Summer Time, GMT +1, daylight saving)
Wikipedia is sooo wicked (I know I've said it before, but it really is!!!). I started looking at "Internet", then found some term that I wanted to look at, then another one in that page, and keep following links from pages to pages. Today I ended up with this which explains a particular episode of The Simpsons. I've watched this episode before, but then this entry also explains many trivial features in the cartoon e.g. the Utah teapot that appears, a lot of equations popped up to Homer's mind, etc...

Then this page contains the word "belch", which I didn't know what it meant. I googled it, and found this!!! A site containing tonnes of digital recordings of BURPS!!! Saying I'm strange, weird, disgusting?!?! I'm by far less strange than whoever created this site!!!

Buuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppp, oops.

Talking about in-jokes, if you've watched Monster Inc's and the making of it (including in VCD's or DVD version), it has explained a lot of pictures that appeared within the movie. I reckon there are reasons behind many many subtle things you see in cartoons. I think the reason is that when the artists draw the pictures, they have time to think about the details of each pictures. Rather in films, producers would just want the setup to look good, doesn't care too much what story is behind a painting in a room.

If you look at the equations that appeared in the episode of The Simpson I mentioned, you can see that every equation has a history. Particularly this:

1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922^12.
* Although a false statement, it appears to be true when evaluated on a typical calculator with 10 digits of precision. If it were true, it would disprove Fermat's Last Theorem, which had just been proved when this show first aired. Cohen generated this "Fermat near-miss" with a computer program.
* That the formula is false is apparent by inspection: the left side is the sum of odd and even numbers, which produces an odd result, but the right side is even.
* Using exact arithmetic, the left side equals 2,541,210,258,614,589,176,288,669,958,142,428,526,657 and the right side equals 2,541,210,259,314,801,410,819,278,649,643,651,567,616.

Fermat's Last Theorem

There are no non-zero integers x, y, and z such that x^n + y^n = z^n where n is an integer greater than 2.

(Note: a^b read "a to the power of b")

Andrew Wiles proved the Fermat's Last Theorem about 10 years ago. But many believe that there exist a much simpler proof to this theorem, because from notes by Fermat, he simply said "I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." See here to learn more.

Another day

2006-04-27T11:30:00.000Z

Will he become the next England football manager? Is he the man? Will he do the job better than an English man?

Give your say.

15:17
Marco Fu has fought his way through to the semi final of World Snooker Championship, taking place at the Crucible in Sheffield. Congratulations to him, and also sports in Hong Kong, although I'm not sure how much Hong Kong is really involved about his progress. His coach is Terry Griffiths. And, he's won the first game against Peter Ebdon in the semi-final just now.

Found this on BBC News international version. The technology is quite interesting. And bear in mind that one of the options to dispose of nuclear waste is to shoot them to the Sun!

Many of you may already know that I've reading a book about Chinese history. It's a colourful book, full of pictures, outlining the history of China since the civilisation started. This week, I've reached the late Qing dynasty, when many western countries and Japan were trying to convert China into a colony shared between them. It hurts when I read what they did to us, the Qing government (led by "Chi Hei Tai Hau") was so weak that they signed every contract put in front of them, even when some great fighters were winning wars against the foreigners. People with such power, every decision they make could have enormous consequences.

During that time (~1900 - ~1912), a scholar translated a book about Evolution into Chinese and published it. It mentioned about weak spices being isolated and extinct because of other strong spices. It created a lot of influences on the whole Chinese nation at that time, which eventually the "Tung Mung Wui" led by "Sun Chun Shan, or Sun Yat Sin" successfully kicked out the Qing dynasty and started a whole new phase in Chinese history.

More about the history to come when I read more.

15:54
Another interesting site, in here.

A joke

2006-04-26T09:41:00.000Z

Got forwarded a couple of jokes today, and would like to share with you:

1. Ireland's worst air disaster occurred early this morning when a small two-seater Cessna plane crashed into a cemetery.
Irish search and rescue workers have recovered 1826 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night'

2. You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today.
They left a little note on the windscreen.
It said, 'Parking Fine.'
So that was nice.

3. Two fat blokes in a pub, one says to the other your round.
The other one says So are you, you fat bast**d!

4. A man takes his Rotteweiller to the vet.
My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him? Well, says the vet,let's have a look at him, So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth.
Finally, he says,I'm going to have to put him down. What?
Because he's cross-eyed? No, because he's really heavy

5. A man came round in hospital after a serious accident.
He shouted, Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!
The doctor replied, I know you can't, I've cut your arms off.

Have a nice day.

22:32
After a reasonably nice day, watched a very exciting match between two best teams in the world. It was a real shame that Shevchenko's goal was disallowed, where the defender was clearly slipped. Otherwise it could be even more exciting. Both teams were attacking (compared to the defensive Arsenal from yesterday) and with great quality players, even one of them is not a human being, or he wasn't born on Earth.

No title

2006-04-25T21:38:00.000Z

Time is getting shorter for me staying in this little hole. Wonder what's round the corner.

The weekend was full of football and music. Watched two matches on Saturday, and played on Sunday. All the other time we were doing this song. It's taking us forever to finish it, sigh.

With a lot of help from AF and LN (both my bosses), I'm becoming a consultant again for a couple of days. But that also means I had to do as much as possible to finish my task at the office. Unfortunately even I stayed til 9pm (yes I know bo, it's normal for you, my poor darling :-(), on an evening with Champions League semi-final, I couldn't get it done. Let SD to finish it for me :-)

Procrastination

2006-04-20T12:32:00.000Z

A friend introduced this word in her blog. I think it's a perfect word to explain the typical behaviour of a lot of us, especially when we were students. A related article that she found is also very interesting, see here.

Also, from the links I've found this site. It has a lot of recipes for good Cantonese style food, and I think I know her through my friend too. It's amazing to learn the other sides of people that you think you already know, such as him. He always says his Chinese is crap.

Time for me to stop procrastinating, back to work.

Easter weekend and after it

2006-04-18T21:24:00.000Z

Had a very nice Easter weekend with my friends and brother. Spent the first two days of it on a road trip to the west of London. SL and I drove to Bath, Cardiff and the Stonehenge then back to London, with KC being our navigator, and HY the quiet passenger. Thank SL and HY for booking everything and KC for reading the map throughout the whole trip.

This is also the first time I really enjoy driving an automatic, even though the car (a Kia Mangentis) was quite crap. It was the first time I drive in countryside, on A roads where two lanes with both way traffic, I once got to more than 80mph. Quite fast for a beginner like me.

On Sunday we went for "yum cha", and Premiership match. Snooker with KC after, we both used "stick" from the club and he beat me (3-1) even though I got 71 points from the 3rd frame.

Watched another match with my brother on Monday noon, a much more exciting match (sorry to say that SL). Then had a walk in reasonably good weather. Spent the afternoon and evening staying with KC doing some musics. Good job man!!!

Today is the first day back to the office for work, after 11 months of consulting. It was definitely good experience and it was a shame having not finished the project in the proper way. Well, what can a small potato like me do?

Need to make sure my presence is worthwhile in everywhere.

Some photos

2006-04-12T23:20:00.000Z

Went to dinner and snooker with KC and PF tonight. PF is a really good story teller, and he has a lot of stories + jokes to tell, and he remembers them all quite well. He also promised me to send me a 詞 that he wrote a few years ago. So cool~~

Beat them both at snooker, though with some fluke.

Some photos as promised.

Sainsbury's building in Holborn

Little Fish playing in Water Rats in King's X

Self explanatory. Quit now please!

Outside and Inside Southwark Cathedral near my flat

Big delicious chicken doner meat and chips + mayonnaise near Old Street

View outside my friends' new place

Just one more day left at this bank

Waterloo under sunshine

Easter's coming!!!

2006-04-11T10:40:00.000Z

Easter holidays
I have never been looking forward to Easter, apart from when I was in the first two years of boarding school. By then, life was so boring that I couldn't wait to go to somewhere else. Then in uni time, Easter always meant that I had to revise full time. This year, SL, HY, KC and I are going on a 2-day road trip towards Wales, and that's why I am so looking forward.

Last blog and atheism
Can't believe none of you said anything about my last entry. Wasn't it interesting? If nobody can prove that there's no teapot between the Earth and Mars, you can't deny that there's one!

Last Friday my aunt gave me an article about Intelligent Design, and how it could fit into modern Science. It talks about a concept of multi-timeframe (I'm not sure I've translated it correctly). It argues that theories in modern physics, chemistry and biology can still be valid even God used 6 days to create the Universe. Here is the outline of it:

Imagine that God is the ultimate, perfect item, who control absolutely everything, and know everything. He spends six days to create everything in the Universe (from nothing), and put it in front of the first human being (Adam and Eve) a few thousands years ago, such that when these human beings (created by God) investigate how the Universe was formed, it looked like it's been some billion years ago. Or in other words, during that 6 days that he spent in his timeframe, it was some billion years in our timeframe. This, in some sense, fits the Big Band theory. The God started the bang.

The article went on to explain why evolution is not possible, which I think is less convincing and therefore not putting it here. Because of the education system that I went through, I firmly believe that monkeys, gorillas are our relatives.

Back to the manual gear box
I rang my driving tutor and arranged an advanced driving lesson with him last night. I first spent a little bit of time driving near Old Street, to get used to manual gear box again, and also his new car (Honda Jazz Sport, 1.4L). Then we went eastward to Limehouse tunnel, A13, M25 (south), Deptford Crossing (a big bridge that cost £1), Orprington, Bromley, Deptford, Surrey Quay (dinner at a Vietnamese restauray, super nice!!!), and then finally back to London Bridge. This car is so much better than the one that I took my driving test with (his old Nissan Micra 1.0L). It's much more sensitive, the steering, brake, gas, gear box, everything. And it was just a pleasure to drive. And it's not expensive at all (something around £12,000)!!!

Photos
I've taken some photos but have been very lazy to upload them. Will do so soon.

Bertrand Russell

2006-04-05T15:31:00.000Z

He is one of the most influential mathematicians, philosphers and politicians in the 20th century. I first heard about him when Jay and I were preparing for our interviews for Cambridge in Autumn 2000. His notable academic contributions include Logical Atomism and his famous publication Principia Mathematica (described as "an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic", truths such as 1 + 1 = 2).

I spent part of this afternoon reading the article about him in Wikipedia (see here). As well as a superstar in his academic fields, he was also an outspoken politician, and famously opposed the war against Vietnam by the Americans.

Another interesting part of him can be found in his Russell's teapot. The fact that no one can disprove the existent of a China teapot between the Earth and Mars, it doesn't mean that it's there. This as a consequence tell the difference between agnostic and atheist.

Related articles:
G?del's incompleteness theorems
Google search result on "Atheist"

I am looking forward to the match tonight. Without a doubt, Arsenal were the better team last week when they beat Juventus by 2-0 at Highbury. But everyone says it's very different at Turin. We'll see.

Town for sale!!!

2006-04-04T16:17:00.000Z

Saw this news on BBC.

Click here

ebay advert:
Here

Sorry for not being talkative.