December 31, 2005

got new stuff

finally i've got money to buy The Corrs - All The Way Home / The Story Of The Corrs from one of the local stores with a lovely price. but i don't have time to watch it yet on this new year eve.



but how can i get money? i've got a temp job for 2 months. and more plans to come...

December 26, 2005

first local? blogger's book

who is the author? antm's first season runner-up elyse sewell. she's currently working as a model in hk (featured on chow sang sang and motorola recently). and her book (Beauty and the Biz: The International Adventures of America's Third-to-Next Top Model) filled with her blog content (filtered) will be on the shelf of local book stores on Jan 19 and cost you HK$143 from SCMP publishing (博益).

December 21, 2005

one less hard drive brand alives

seagate buys maxtor...

most hong kong ITers knows slang of seagate, and we have less chance to get good hard disks in the future.

small x'mas gift to polyu from nasa?

do you remember beagle 2? it is the lander of european space agency's mars express which was supposed to find life evidence in mars like rival rovers which are still operating after a martian year from nasa but no signals came back after it landed on 2003 christmas day. and it contains a tool for rock-sampling which was made by a hong kong dentist and the polytechnic university of hong kong.

news from reuters said (in english, in chinese) said nasa's mars global surveyor has found the track of beagle 2 on the ground of mars. details please check the reuters' articles btu at least beagle 2 had not been burnt during the entry of mars' atmosphere so that hong kong has landed mars (better than polar lander from nasa) and there's a chance to check it when people going to mars in the future. (for what i have known, the states will be probably the first to send people to mars like what they did for the moon. russia is a bit untrustful because of budget - even they don't have money to build new military ships. i don't count china for this moment because the skills they have are still lag from others even they are chasing quite fast but it's not sure for the future of china)

December 19, 2005

down down wto?

the sixth wto ministerial conference is finally gone. there are still discussions even our bishop zen arguing whether hong kong is a good place to hold the conference. i've expressed my view before and i wanna say something else.

i think wto is too powerful and controlled by only 150 ministers. their decision can affect the whole country faith. but without that power, how can the organization work? and seems that that is the only perform for developing countries to deal with developed even though their power is still much less.

subsidies can keep country the competition but i think it's a bad thing. taxes are wasted to support a small proportion of people for their wealth and they will not work for incrasing their quality or other good ways to fight against international competitors.

for those developing countries, first of all they need to improve the government quality in many ways. democracy is a good way but it cannot stop every bad things. it can expose weaknesses more easily so that people can have a good perform to kick out bad things and people. and the governments should help their citizens especially farmers to find their future but please don't order/push farmers doing the way just like planned. otherwise few years later any problem rises and they will be deep in trouble (like mainland farmers in inner provinces to grow flowers with the push of local officials but infrastructure and other things are not prepared). farmers are needed to face the truth that some of them will stay away farming to increase efficiency in the future anyway, at that moment government support for both sides is essential for this transformation.

links for the conference
official: wto, hk gov
blogs: from google blogsearch, from technorati
pixs: from flickr

constitutional development 5.01

after the pressure of the protest on dec 4, our government finally responses the constitutional development. there are two key points in the amendment, first is still allowing appointed district councils members to elect new legislative council members and next chief executive. the other is to reduce one-third of appointed district councils members in the next term and need further discussion for the future reduction.

the amendment is so small and the effect is nearly none to the situation. actually in the legislative council most of the time the bills must be passed by both functional constituencies and directly elected by universal suffrage. this is a bit like the states-general in france before french revolution which functional constituencies represents the first and second class (mixed with some democrats now) and directly elected are the third class (with businessmen and local communists but over half are democrats).

but hong kong people are mostly migrated from mainland and the root is not so deep to the land. in these days they will only do the protest but not revolt (which central government is afraid of). so universal suffrage is still has a hope if the development still loses at the vote at legislative council.

December 15, 2005

two-day temporary job

i'd applied a job of programmer at an agent company but it gave me a temporary job lasted for two days. the job is a technician for supporting it department in a catering company. and i needed to check the returned equipment repairable or not. besides, i needed to go to not yet opened new restaurant to set up computer. more often when computers in restaurants and cake shops are in trouble, i needed to replace them. those shops located in tsim sha tsui (closed to the department), mongkok, lai chi kok, and kwai hing. in total i checked few touch screen pos, few computers, and bill printers. and also i set up a computer and connected the modem into a phone socket. and also i replaced two leased bill printers and extended a power cord, replaced a usb to ps2 plug, plus a touch screen pos.

even the job is easy and should not need to overtime, i was still lack of luck. after the end of first day, i needed to cross the harbour to go to the agent to photocopy my bank book. when going home, so many people were waiting mtr to go and made me back home late around an hour. even worse was on the next day, the task is to replace the pos but the errors messages shown after the replacement. i needed to travel between the shop and the department and waited the software team to remote fixing the machine by uploading old data from old harddisk and setting in the new harddisk. so i went back home as late as the first day.

however some things are found. the floor layout of the company is not so good that two lifts have doors at the middle of the company and every departments have their own lock at the door. and the department i worked likes a garbage, i.e. the returned equipment are placed over the floor and people actually work at only one fourth of working space. they need to handle all tasks for hong kong and macau, shenzhen and guangzhou but with only 13 people while one is manager, two senior, three for telephone support. sometimes they have luck for not late handling tasks for more than seven days. people at the shops and restaurants love to find us to save them from computer failure, but they are worried whether any replacement is needed to be counted on their balance sheet.

btw on the first day when i was pulling sets of computers to not opened restaurant and waited my parnter to find out where it is, a foreigner was asking me any nearby museums. after telling him art and space museums and the location of them. he asked me a museum with the name i didn't know and i cannot find it in the list at lcsd site.

and when i was waiting for the replacement of pos, i needed to help the sales to handle customers request! i found a pair of young japanese couples buying cakes, the male looked like densha otoko (he held a japanese book and his hair cut is lmao) while the girl was dressed in style (could they be the real densha otoko couples?). and the sales were quite boring and asking me how to fix her home computer which is full of virus and they themselves used a bit of spare time to tell each other their im information.

the head of my working team told me that his teacher had told him if you cannot raise to management level in four years, you will be outdated as an electronic engineering graduate.

p.s. blogger spam engine thought here is a spam blog. now is free from it.

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yahoo hk blog

i accidentally pressed a button for trying the service but didn't fill in any information to use it. now i cannot view any yahoo blog when i logged in my yahoo account and it keeps showing me the application form. damn it!

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personal complain

i wanna complain a company for its poor administration. yesterday i got a phone call to have an interview today. but this morning another phone call from another person of the same company told me to interview tomorrow for another post which i haven't applied. then i told him the truth and he cancelled today appointment and i'm not free tomorrow afternoon. so i should lose the chance to get interviewed. what the fuck is that company administration doing?

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chinese version 2 of google desktop

the final release is out now (introduction at google desktop blog). i've installed it but i did a stupid move to encrypt the database and that took all my resources. but i've reinstalled it with brand new database.

but before reinstallation i need to reset my bios! and my computer is still keep hang when the desktop is working to index its database...

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December 14, 2005

world after outbreak of bird flu?

bird flu is now one of the centres of the news. this time the bird flu was discovered from my home town, hong kong, same as 1967 flu. it's pretty hard to think whether i can survive after the outbreak. but i want to predict the world after the outbreak.


  1. information freedom
    last time the outbreak of sars is due to the block of information by our mainland china government and this time they do the same for bird flu. before november, there were only deads of birds by the flu but no people died. but in nearby countries, there are also people deaths. and the hygiene of mainland chinese is not very good. it's not impossible to have no people deaths due to bird flu in china.

    to prevent this happening again, chinese communists will be overthrown since they cannot handle so many problems in china and hopefully the new government can stop the blocking of information so that the world can be free from any disease outbreak.
  2. war
    united states may not have enough power to be the only superpower and the failure of united nations, wto floats. many people died and productivity has fallen. the market collapses as people are afraid to work and shop. in order to lift up the people spirit after the decline of economy and getting more resources, militarism may come back by this opportunity, especailly japan. and even al-qaeda can use this chance to expand and affect the world balance.
  3. globalization/oursourcing
    globalization and outsourcing help the spread of flu because virus can travel from one continent to another by human travel. but the flu can only slow down the development for a moment. this is because outsourcing and globalization can maintain enterprise productivity as people are not limited resources if they can build factories or use people to provide services from other places. the limitation is only cost to set up factories or services, transportation.
  4. human contact
    if the situation becomes worst, there will be no more shopping to reduce human contact for preventing flu and property developers in hong kong are in deep trouble (they earn a lot from renting shops at shopping malls). people will all stay at home to use phone, computer or itv for shopping. in order to strengthen the body and for leisure, sports are needed but people need to wear masks to prevent flu. and equipped people are needed to deliver products bought from remote shopping.
  5. ways to prevent flu
    newer ways are needed to develop besides vaccines because vaccines is a too passive way to prevent flu. people may also need to change their mind so that they don't keep their children too clean in order to build their own self defense. even worse genetic moderized human will be born to prevent any flu to further damage human species.
  6. animals
    better studies are needed for relations between humans and animals to prevent any more virus transfer from animals to humans (like hiv, bird flu), or expose any unknown human/animals viruses so that we can better handle them earlier. and we need to track migration of birds more tightly to understand how they become virus carrier and the way how they got virus from poultry.

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new hsbc visa card

from the advertisement on the last page of headline daily, hsbc is releasing new visa card. the old one fits with a world map while new one fits with a butterfly drawing and new visa logo (information for new visa logo). personally i think the new one is uglier than the old one. they should find a better drawing (maybe from the note) instead of butterfly.

btw i cannot see the card is built with a chip (EMV) which should be required in the coming years.

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wto ministerial conference

wto ministerial conference may be a good thing for hong kong society:

  1. people can live a bit easier from tight business atmoshpere due to the prevention of protests of the conference (flexible working hours, or even off);
  2. good practice moments for the police force to handle big events (hong kong is too peaceful). metal shields are put on the police cars (requested for some time). and they need to take care of their shields being taken by protesters;
  3. well organised protests which hong kong organisers are lack of handling;
  4. and this is a good chance to show how polite we face the protesters and vice versa (return of shields)

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December 10, 2005

wto really affecting my life

this week, i've got many interviews from every types of job. but i think not the same will happen in the coming week due to wto hong kong ministerial conference. the protests making seattle in riot when the conference held few years ago were emphasized and worries from the actions by korean farmers were become deeper and deeper in our heart. it seems that next week many other activities will be slowed down or halted, so we have to finish them this week or after the conference, including interviews, and i had chances to reach the offices of two tallest buildings here. maybe next week is a good chance for a cheaper holiday with a strong x'mas sense around the world. so you can see it may be not good for hong kong to hold controversial conferences. but will wto become another league of nations and war will be started because it fails to stop disputes over trading issues?

one of the interviewers had made a suggestion for my future. she talked to me that my score for ielts test can apply a master degree in warrick. but i don't have enough money and for this moment don't have a good proposal for me to apply. and the only one i know from warrick sets me back, that is my pure maths teacher. he should be the exceptional case from the university, from his english level, his manner, his teaching passion... so damn many.

p.s. agatha christie is the feature writer in causeway bay pageone

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December 09, 2005

pork stock farms in hong kong

local pork stock farms in hong kong, which are located in new territories and source of our food everyday, may be disappeared in the coming future and replaced by mainland's completely with our "clever" government officials.

just the past tuesday, a tvb jade program has shown forseen troubles for our farmers from our government. the officials said hong kong is a small and high crowded place, even 40% of our land are country parks and three fourth are not developed.

besides hong kong is one of the places having japanese encephalitis disease. the japanese encephalitis is a type of virus which is caused by mosquitos carrying with the virus while pigs and wild birds are carriers of the virus. and hong kong is a hot spot of wild birds to take a mid-way stop.

one of the requirements which may be applyed to the farmers is no insects in the farms. but how can this happen in the environment with humans and stocks? the penalty is not small when insects are found and made people whose lives are dedicated to the farms frustated.

in the future, no more stock farms will be found here, and hong kong will only be a financial and logistics centre, after kicking industrial and agricultural work. the only thing we can change our future is we need to choose our government by our own hand, but not central government.

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December 05, 2005

a good person in the govenment

yesterday we expressed our request for democracy. now we need to wait the approval from the central government. but our ex-owner, uk, please deliver more pressure to the current one for this issue like the states. otherwise there is no room for the pride of uk.

however our government still have good people, at least one of them is the head of hong kong observatory. yesterday he said employees should not be parts in their employers mind wich is even worse than slaves. so he does encourage them to not work overtime. work should provide reasonable salary to raise family; and increase the efficiency should be more output from less input, but not extending the working hours. besides he suggested people should live in simple to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide for nature balance.

P.S. something cool in latest podcast by paul lin. hope you take some time to listen.

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December 03, 2005

3 things

  1. Apple Comp Inc has issued latest ipod updater. this one only fixes bugs in Shuffle. but i need to reset my shuffle after the update. it craps my ipod...
  2. from Blogger Buzz, they talked about Blogpoly, which is made by a blogger littlesolo who is on the blogcast! list in hkbloggers.com. that means it's a pride of chinese.
  3. another news from blogger buzz, they said they updated spam control on recently updates list. many blogger users should miss the list before taken away from blogger front page. so put down the link in your favourites/bookmarks.

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December 02, 2005

fundamental of the day after tomorrow

the theory behind the movie the day after tomorrow, the flow of the atlantic conveyor is slowing down. if it stops, 6ºC drop is expected.

so we will have winter earlier and summer later. petrol will be earlier used out as people used more electricity and petrol directly for warming themselves. and any development near arctic circle (exploring new ship route, resources due to global warming) will be halted. at that time we need more clothes and food but relatively fewer animals and farms we can use.

the tense of reserving resources will be increasing. i'm afraid this will increase the chance for another world war. and another explode of global disease may become truth. or will there be cycles for few decades warming, and few decades cooling to make the conveyor on and off status continuously?

ref: yahoo hk news from reuters

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another tomato pasta sauce

after the pale sauce from unilever, i've tried another one from italy. it added basils and i can find few inside the sauce. the taste is richer and i can feel the natural sour taste from tomatos. but the label said it can serve four people but i have used hlaf for my lunch...

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