December 31, 2006

ocean spring

my friends got a two-day trip organised by hong thai (yeah again) on x'mas day. total 43 were in this tour (nine were us - seven wests & two girls from a west). and one of west's colleague also joined the trip with her family.

first was to a jewellery factory called italia to visit & a try to make jewellery. but as far as i know, no one is interested and we wasted an hour there. we took lunch in a restaurant (worse than those in guilin) and we went to a small playground. we played kart, fishing, & archery there.

we headed to the spring directly and got the rooms. first played snooker and we took the dinner (this one was ok). after the dinner we played table tennis & badminton for a moment. some then went to spring while others were back to rooms. before sleeping, we shared local-made chicken which was ordered during dinner.

we took our buffet breakfast next morning (not bad) and we played snooker again. we had a brief guide about the spring before we took a bus to ferry terminal. we were cheated by our guide that there are lots of restaurants nearby and we nearly missed the ship. and i finished one, two, buckle my shoe in these two days



back to hk, we seven were still together and had karaoke buffet before back home.

travel agency: 3/5 - price a bit too expensive

ship: 3.5/5 - a bit slower

tour guide: 3.5/5 - a bit cheating us on last meal

hotel: 3.5/5 - some parts are fixing while some i cannot play...

coach: 3.5/5 - nothing special

food: 3/5 - a bit worse but the chicken order for supper is good

view: 4/5 - a bit smoky, the hotel view is ok, the laser shown at the night was seen when i was in sky

weather: 5/5 - fine

December 30, 2006

qe stadium vs hk coliseum

on x'mas eve there was a concert in qe stadium which the performers had sung in hk coliseum too. it's a good chance to compare both

convenient: qe is a bit better. at least located closed to hot spots
traffic: coliseum locates just next to train station
other design: qe has a lobby to allow them to sell stuff!
theatre: qe is smaller but has better sound system & less restrictions to performers to contact audiences

December 27, 2006

hsbc atm dead

luckily that's not happened to me & took my card. that lady is poor and she phoned the hotline in atm centre but her card cannot be back until next week...

what i saw is already after the machine was stuck in the machine. the screen last active is requesting pin. and the machine didn't respond after entering pin and 6 asterisks were on lower right hand corner.

after she had left, the machine started to reboot. first showing is machine was down. shut down window of windows xp pro was shown then. and what a surprise cpu of atm is P3 850MHz. after the reboot, the machine was still showing down. maybe card was stuck inside.

p.s. windows xp was installed to replace aged os/2 just within few weeks

December 13, 2006

flickr updating

obviously more and more cameras with higher pixels mean pix size is larger and larger. and flickr is adjusting their limits for all users. pro user can get unlimited uploads while free can get 100mb. but for free users other limits are not changed so that increasing upload limit makes your old pix disappearing faster and pushes you to upgrade account (earn more from flickr to help it's parent, yahoo!).

how to upgrade account easily, they modify a bit so that you can send and use gift accounts easier! even you can make a card for the this.

December 11, 2006

o... service change

just talked about joining stocks monthly investment plan, it says the change in service.
  1. not supporting payment thru credit card. this is one of selling points of the plan, but obviously the cost is too high: bad debt; card service fee; rewards points.
  2. eligible stock list up to 88 securities. many are h stocks. some are ok but i don't have extra money to get more...

December 10, 2006

nan lian garden

the garden is built in tang dynasty style and maintained by chi lin nunnery.

it is a bit different from other parks owned by government. 1st it's not maintained by government itself and full of guards there. you cannot either smoke, eat or drink (except water)inside. and it has a bridge to connect to nunnery.

but the garden should be put aside for years before opening to public. for this kind of gardens, our feeling should be a bit aging, but it is too fresh for everything, from stones, trees, structures... & with too much concrete without plants covering.

and hong kong is contaminated so that there are so many guides and clumsy narrations from speakers breaking the silence...

some pix are here

iTunes Music Store @ New Zealand

how come only a country having 3 million people can have iTunes Music Store but not in HK? learnt from macgrass, apple opens music store & online shop together.

but hk has lots of advantage compared to nz in online market area. 1st is population. 7 million vs 3 million, more people means more chances to have business. many hkers are owing ipods and using apple products.
2nd is cost for internet, hk is smaller, more choices to get online. in nz, land is too big compared to population size which means setting up online is not so efficient. besides only 2 monopolies (xtra, telstra clear) provide online service there compared at least 4 here (monopoly had been gone in hk in early '90s).
for those saying trouble putting local categories into the store, japan's store can kick their ass from everywhere. From technical supporting asian characters, getting local music industry support...

hk already has online shop, why don't we deserve a music store?

December 06, 2006

x'mas pick

another x'mas pick is out and that one is still shining among the others. this one and that one have talked what most stock owners thought.

i also thought that before, like i bought karrie international at a quite high value within a month after webb had picked it in 2004. and now i'm losing and the company management said the business needs to consolidate and expand so that the dividend policy has been changed after the profit and turnover were fallen. btw my friend who was staff said it becomes a property company but its annual report denied. so if thing's going worse, i need to get rid of it.

i also bought another pick few months before as i think kingmaker is much below the value after the big hit of timberland stopping the cooperation with it because of EU tax. the company is making effort to compensate and there is a future.

but this year his x'mas pick article is a bit different from previous years',
  1. "Stocks can go down as well as up. One day, one of our picks will blow up in our face", which stocks he means, 1170, 1050, 684?
  2. only talked last year's pick but not more as what he did in past years. 1050 has past the peak; he had blamed management of 684; 1170 is also blown... but i think 927, his last year pick will still go strong for one or two years only as xbox 360 will complete its cycle before the end of this decade. then fujikon needs to choose to be still OEM or go to high-end more.
  3. he used a part for market overview and said new accounting standards misleading market's P/E, making the market bear all around.
except buying those picks, in order to increase my fortune, i subscribe to stocks monthly investment plan and choose hong kong electric. and with this decision, the bank upgrades my account (i need to get consent from my employer!) and gives me a financial plan. and i know i need to do more in this area!

December 05, 2006

something before day 6

check 24's HQ and you can see latest from 24.
  1. show off toyota's new car
  2. chinese are still so cheap in the eyes of americans
  3. jack is cheated!

December 02, 2006

dirk müller goy kicked?

bmw have signed augusto farfus as their new driver for wtcc and said that "Within the ranks of the BMW drivers, Farfus is going to replace Dirk Müller, who was a BMW works driver from 2002 to 2006...." in their site.

it seems a bit odd to write that on the site, i've never seen that kind of words in manufacturers' statements. so dirk needs to find a new job.