Gerry's 2nd birthday

I'm very happy - Gerry liked the brownie. You have no idea how gratifying that is - the warm and fuzzy feeling you get. I'm starting to understand a little better why some people like cooking so much. You get a much better feeling of satisfaction relative to just buying a cake from a store.

Or maybe thats just because I don't cook very often...
:)


Anyway, here is Gerry wondering what all the fuss is about as we sing Happy Birthday.


And this is Gerry tucking in with his spoon.


His first bite - and he is still smiling!!


Nothing but crumbs, although he was a very good boy and gave some to daddy and mommy.

My Xmas Brownie

Wow - what a Christmas. Looking back, I can't believe how much food I ate over the last week. So much for my diet! :)

Today is boxing day. More importantly, tomorrow is Gerry's 2nd birthday (so look forward to a slew of pictures of Gerry soon!). In preparation for his birthday tomorrow, I decided to bake a brownie. Naturally, seeing as Gerry can't eat too much birthday brownie, the missus and I will have to help him out!


This is a picture of the finished brownie. It may not look like much in the picture but that monster is approx 10" by 8".


This is 1 serving of said brownie. What can I say, I believe in big portions! :D


Of course, simply having a brownie for dessert isn't good enough. This is the finished article. A large slice of chocolate and cherry brownie with Rocky Road ice cream and freshly brewed tea. Delish!!


The missus tucking in. Just in case there was any doubt, she enjoyed the brownie immensely. In fact, she liked it so much, she had another serving!


Proof that she liked it - an empty plate!
:)

Don't worry - we left some for Gerry. It is after all, his birthday brownie!

Happy Holidays!

Wishing all of my loyal blog readers a joyous holiday season. At times, its hard to believe that I managed to keep this going all the way to Xmas!

Have fun, drinks lots of wine and remember - you can diet in the new year!!


We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin,
Good tiding for Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Oh, bring us a figgy pudding,
Oh, bring us a figgy pudding,
Oh, bring us a figgy pudding and a cup of good cheer.

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin,
Good tiding for Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We won't go until we get some,
We won't go until we get some,
We won't go until we get some, so bring some out here.

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin,
Good tiding for Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We wish you a Merry Christmas!
We wish you a Merry Christmas!
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Bad consumers

Long time readers of this blog know that I occasionally post articles talking about how consumers are being ripped off by corporates (most of these coming from the consumerist).

For a change, here's a link to a blog by a guy in tech support for a broadband company. Its a general blog but every once in a while (actually, quite regularly!), he will post a transcript of one of his tech support calls. Good for a laugh if nothing else.

Now obviously, I have no idea if these are accurate transcripts. However, considering the absolute idiocy of people in general, the issues which come up seem genuine enough. :)

The power of positive reinforcement

When it comes to raising children, pretty much everyone agrees that positive reinforcement is a good thing. If you have children in the modern age, you probably already know what positive reinforcement is - but if you don't then you may be sitting there wondering what I'm talking about.

Positive reinforcement is basically encouraging the child whenever he does something right. So for example, whenever Gerry points at a cup and says the word "cup", then the missus and I will both say "Yes, thats right - well done Gerry!". This praise lets him know that he did something right. He feels good for getting praise and therefore, he remembers. Furthermore, he is encouraged to continue doing things right. Hence the term - positive reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement obviously applies to actions as well as objects. For example, we will ask Gerry to put away his toys after playing with them. If he does this, then again, we give him praise and say "Well done". Again, this encourages the correct behaviour in your child.

So, as I said above, everyone pretty much agrees that positive reinforcement is a good thing when it comes to raising kids. Unfortunately, noone ever warned me about the dangers of positive reinforcement. Dangers? "What could possibly go wrong" I hear you cry!

Well, remember how I mentioned that everytime Gerry names something correctly, we say "Yes, thats right - well done Gerry!". Well, it appears that Gerry really likes positive reinforcement. In fact, he likes it so much that he now does it himself instead of waiting for us to do it!

How do you positively reinforce yourself? Simple. Nowadays, Gerry will point at a cup and say "Cup, yeah!"...

Sony Rootkit Disaster

For those of you who used to purchase Sony BMG CDs, you probably know all about the Rootkit disaster. This was the incident where Sony BMG decided it was a good idea to illegally install spyware and rootkit software on your PC via their music CDs. And yes, I am justified in calling it a disaster in view of the subsequent legal tussle which Sony BMG got involved in.

Anyway, if you are interested in this case, you might want to check out this PDF link which goes into a bit more detail about the whole incident. Its a very long article and I'm still reading it myself. However, its quite good in that its not written in legalese.


For the avoidance of doubt, I think Sony BMG are frigging idiots to pull something like this and I hope that the people responsible burn badly for it. The music industry is already suffering badly from dropping CD sales. Stunts like this simply discourage people from buying CDs which makes the problem even worse.

Quite frankly, considering all the various shit that the music industry in the US is doing (I'm looking at you - RIAA), I hope that the entire industry in the US crashes and burns. Hopefully, at that stage, we can get something decent to replace it...

Neil Gaiman is cool

This is just too sweet.

In brief, a guy in the Philippines wants to propose to his girlfriend. He finds out that Neil Gaiman (the famous author) is going to be in Philippines for a book signing and, knowing that his girlfriend is a Neil Gaiman fan, asks Neil (via the authors blog) if he can help him to propose. And Neil agrees!

Working together with the book signing venue etc, they set things up so that when the guy's girlfriend goes to get a book signed, Neil writes the marriage proposal on the inside cover of the book. How cool is that!

Really not much more I can add to this except to say - "Neil Gaiman, you rock!!"


PS You can find some more photos and a video of the event on the girlfriends blog here.

Ruth's Chris redux

As regular readers know, Ruth's Chris Steak House is my favourite steak house in HK.

One of the reasons for this is that, in my opinion, US steak is the best in the world (and yes, I have had wagyu beef from Japan - but more on that in a moment). The reason for this is that the beef flavour seems to be stronger with US beef than with beef from other countries. As I mentioned above, I have had wagyu beef once when I was in Japan. The texture was superb but, in my opinion, the beef flavour wasn't as strong as the beef flavour I got from US steaks.

Being such a fan of US steaks, you can imagine that I was very annoyed during the ban on US steaks in HK not that long ago. During this period Ruth's Chris used Australian beef instead of US beef and we stopped going to Ruth's Chris for a while as the flavour wasn't good enough in our opinion - we kept getting hung up on the fact that we were paying full price for what seemed like 2nd grade beef. Of course, it wasn't second grade beef - it just felt like it because it didn't taste as good as US beef.

Anyway, after the ban on US beef got lifted (again, a while ago now), Sarah and I rejoiced by going back to Ruth's Chris. However, despite the fact that US beef was back on the menu, when we ordered the New York Strip - the beef flavour that we remembered from US beef of old wasn't as strong. I have no idea why. Possibly its because US beef is now chilled before being imported (this is a guess - I have no idea if this is true or not).

Either way, it was very disappointing to me that US beef seemed to have lost its strong beef flavour. So you can imagine my delight to discover that US beef seems to finally be back!

Last night, on a whim, Sarah and I went back to Ruth's Chris. We hadn't had a steak in months and felt that it was okay to splash out seeing as it was Xmas. We went to the PP branch rather than our usual TST branch as it was closer to our office and we didn't want to travel all the way to TST East.

And the steak was fantastic.

We ordered one 16oz New York Strip to share between us and the beef flavour was very intense - very much back to the flavours that we used to enjoy so much when we ordered US beef in the past. I have to admit to a pang of regret that I didn't order 12oz for myself and was stuck with just my half of the steak amounting to a measly 8oz.

The problem I now have is - was last night a one off lucky occurrence or is US beef really back to its best? Also, how long can I resist before going back to find out for sure?

Gerry in Glasgow

I mentioned recently that we went to the UK, more specifically Glasgow (or Glesga), and took Gerry with us. A couple of pictures to share with you of our time there.


This is a picture of us at the local supermarket while still in the carpark. You can tell from the heavy jackets that it was quite a cold day - in particular cos it was very windy that day. Gerry even wore his cute little gloves (which go "squeak squeak" when you hit them together!) although he didn't wear them for very long.


To my eternal shame and regret, we didn't get any decent pictures of Gerry and my dad together. Although grandpa got to hold him lots of times, for some reason, we never actually took a photo of any of them. :(


Lunchtime! As you can see, Gerry is already waiting for his portion of dim sum! And yes, they were home cooked by my dad (home cooked not homemade!).


Gerry playing with one of our friends who popped by to visit. This is actually a very lucky picture as most of the time, Gerry was too shy to play with people.


Gerry - all pooped out!

Back home in HK again!

Back home in HK again - hoozah!

So as I mentioned in my last post, I was out for dinner with one of my friends last night. He took me to a local restaurant near our office for which I can't remember the name. My friend described it as a "mom & pop" store so I was completely unprepared for the crowd of waiters and guests waiting for seats when we got there!

The restaurant itself is famous for claypot rice and aluminium wrapped chicken wings. Considering how cold it was in BJ, we decided that claypot rice was definitely called for and ordered some spare ribs claypot rice, chicken wings and some veg.

The claypot rice was quite nice. In some ways, its very similar to the claypot rice that you can get in HK with the exception that the claypot up here is a lot bigger - basically, portion sizes being for 2 as a minimum.

The chicken wings were very good. They were individually wrapped in aluminium foil so the juice had been very well preserved. The sauce used to cook the chicken was also really tasty but for some reason, I can't escape the feeling that I've had that flavour of chicken wing before. Or if not before, then a very similar flavour. A little bit like soy sauce but mixed with something else.

All in all, it was a good night out (decent food, cheap price!) and a chance to catch up with my buddy.



And now - quiz time! I have in front of me right now a product with the following warning sign on it - "It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling."

I'll give a brownie to anyone who can guess what that product is!

Off to BJ

You would think, after my previous post wherein I came to terms with the fact that HK is now my home, that I would actually spend some time there. Instead, I find myself gallivanting off to Beijing again for another business trip despite the fact that it is freezing cold in BJ at the moment. Luckily for me, its also dry so it doesn't feel as cold as it does in say, HK.

I guess I should also be thankful that I can at least access my blog here (its not always the case - sometimes my blog is blocked in China).

Unfortunately for me, my friend in BJ (the one who took me to all the nice restaurants I blogged about before) is currently in HK. Nice timing right! The typical Jokemeister luck holding true to form!

Luckily for me though, I have more than 1 friend (my, aren't I popular!). The guy is currently in BJ on a 3 month secondment to learn to read/write Chinese and I'm going to meet him for dinner tomorrow night. He's been here for a couple of months already so he is going to suggest a venue for dinner.

I can't wait to see where we are going to go and see what new dishes I will get to chomp on.

Mate - if you are reading this, I just want to say that there is no pressure regarding the venue. Having said that, the other restaurants in BJ that my other friend took me to were VERY nice.
:)

Back home in HK

Well, I'm back in HK and updating this blog again. In fact, as I write this, I am sitting in my office at work (just in case my boss is reading this - I want to say that this is done during my lunchbreak!!) surrounded by the remnants of my lunchbox and numerous tissues for wiping my nose with.

Thats right folks! The Amazing Bulk has managed to fall sick again!

Anyway, despite the fact that I feel like shit (jet lag plus sneezing/runny nose plus cough), I have decided to brave the cold waters of the internet and keep you, my loyal readers, entertained with more meaningless drivel. Ha - little do you know that today's post isn't as meaningless as normal but will actually contain some insight into my psyche!

But before we get to the good stuff - a little Jokemeister history. As you may or may not know (or even care!), I have now been in HK for 11 years. Although born in HK, all of my edumacation was in the UK. This has meant that I considered my home to be the UK. In fact, in the past, I used to travel back to the UK to visit friends and family every 2 years (although I haven't been back in 5 years now - not counting my recent visit of course).

On this trip to the UK, things started off as normal. I got to Heathrow airport only to discover that the plane upto Glasgow had been delayed by several hours. Yup - just like normal. :)

Then we got to Glasgow and the cold hit me like a sledgehammer. Having not been back in so many years, I really wasn't ready for how cold Glasgow can get (particularly at the airport). Luckily, my dad was there to pick me up otherwise we would have needed to get a very expensive taxi.

Then we got to my dads house. The first thing I do is throw off my shoes and head upstairs to check out my old room. This is always the first thing I do when I get to my dads house as going to my old room makes me feel like I have come home.

My old table was still there. The table where my old 486 PC used to sit (although its now been replaced by a newer Hewlett Packard). I used to spend hours sitting at that table playing computer games or doing homework on my PC (primarily computer games though!).

My old bookcase was still there. Still filled with some old books and comics that I didn't take back to HK with me. Some of my favourite hours spent as a kid still sit on that bookshelf. Lots of Judge Dredd and Spider-Man graphic novels - man, I used to spend a fortune on those things. Good thing I had a job even back then!

My old chest of drawers was still there. The old HP Deskjet sitting on the top gathering dust. I understand the thing still works although it was currently out of ink - which is a testament to how well built HP printers are!

My old posters and other bric a brac is still stuck on the wall (although someone took the USD100 that I had stuck up there - don't ask me why there was USD100 stuck on my wall!). In particular, there were two handdrawn posters of a TIE fighter and an X-Wing. Handdrawn by yours truly I might add (in a rare feat of artistic genius!).

All of my old stuff was still there - my dad had basically preserved the room the way I had left it all those years ago. Enough to bring a tear to anyones eye right?

Except that it wasn't. Although things looked the same, they felt different. It looked like my room, it had all of the stuff that used to be mine. But it didn't feel like my room anymore.

In the past, everytime I have gone into that house, I have felt like I had come home (after all, this was the place where I spent a good portion of my life, including my Secondary school and University years). However, as I wandered around the house, and my old room in particular, everything looked familiar and yet not familiar.

I eventually realised that at some point during the last 5 years, I have come to consider HK my home (instead of Glasgow). I'm not sure the exact reason. Perhaps its the fact that I'm now married (5 years and counting!) to a HK girl. Perhaps its the fact that I have now bought my own flat in HK. Or perhaps its the fact that I now have a baby boy to look after in HK.

Either way, the title for this post says it all - I am now back home in HK.

Off to Blighty!

Just to let you all know that I'm off to the UK for a week! I haven't been back to the UK in a good 5 years now so it will be fun to head back and say hi to some family and friends.

I'm not sure if I'll have time to post next week (I'm taking Gerry with me - oh the stress of a 13 hour flight with a 23 month old baby!!!) so you guys can take a break from my pointless rambling.

See ya in December.

I'm a competitive jerkwad

Did you know that I'm a competitive jerkwad? Also, can you believe that I didn't realise this until only recently (I would be interested in comment on this - does anyone else think that I'm very competitive?).

This revelation was a real surprise to me as I always believed, or rather thought that I believed, that it was more important to participate and have fun and that whether you won or not was not important. The reason I found out is because I have a profile in Facebook. Now some of my friends have huge profiles where they have so many applications installed that it takes over 5 minutes just to load the profile page! This seems to me to defeat the purpose so I deliberately keep my profile page relatively clean and indicative of my interests.

This means that I deliberately ignore most of the application requests I receive (such as werewolves, vampires, petrolhead, hot potato etc etc etc etc etc). However, recently I received a movie quiz challenge!

Now, in my head, I know that the movie quiz challenge works just like every other application in Facebook. Someone played around with the movie quiz and invited me to take part as well. However, the way that it was worded really got to me.

"Friend X challenged your movie knowledge on a quiz called Movie Poster Quiz. Friend X's score was xx%. Can you beat Friend X score?"

This is a great message. I wasn't just invited to take part in the fun. I was challenged to beat his score! At that moment, the competitive jerkwad in me rose up and threw aside all rationality. I had to take that quiz! I had to answer that challenge! And I had to WIN!!

And I did! mwuhahahah.

And now, I've just been challenged to a movie knowledge quiz on the original Star Wars. Can you believe that someone challenged me (no less than a jedi knight on the Jedi vs Sith application) to a knowledge quiz on Star Wars? mwuhahahaha- I shall crush the fool!

I am lion - hear me roar!!

Update: The Star Wars movie knowledge quiz is crap. The pictures don't load. This is especially frustrating for the last question which asks you to identify a character based on the picture - except that the bloody picture doesn't load!! Guess I'll just have to guess it!

Update 2: Crap - I guessed wrong. Very frustrating as that was the only question I got wrong!

The nightmare before Christmas

I mentioned last Friday that I was rushing to see a movie.

The movie I was rushing to see was The nightmare before Christmas. By now, some of you may be asking "What? That movie came out years ago!!?". If so, then you clearly didn't know that the movie was recently rereleased in a 3D format (and our company gave us free tickets to go watch it - yay!). At this point, I should mention that I have never seen the movie before so I have no idea what they changed in order to get the movie into 3D.

The movie itself was very entertaining. Its basically a musical telling the story of Jack Skellington, who is basically the pride and joy of Halloween town due to his ability to scare the living daylights out of anyone. Despite his status, Jack feels bored and listless and decides to take over Chrimble so that he can give out presents and spread good will. And yes, nothing goes according to plan.

The 3D effect is done very well and really shows how 3D tech has advanced from since when I was a kid. When I was young (admittedly, many moons ago now), 3D was basically getting a crazy set of red and green tinted glasses. Putting them on would make you feel dizzy until you actually started to watch something in 3D. Basically, it was hard to watch any kind of show as the glasses made you dizzy - however, the thing worked well for 3D pictures.

However, the most recent tech is pretty incredible. When we went into the theatre, we were given a set of what looked like black plastic shades. When you put them on, things kinda look off kilter slightly but the effect isn't particularly significant (ie you can wear them without feeling dizzy).

If you get a chance, check out the movie in 3D and the awesome new tech they use for 3D as well!


Oh ... and its a good movie.
:)

Streamlining the blog

Don't have much time today as I have to rush to see a movie.

All I wanted to do today is let you know that I streamlined the blog a bit by rationalising the categories. Before, the categories were a bit haphazard and probably didn't make much sense. When I first started this blog, I didn't have any clear idea about what I was going to post about. All I wanted to do was get a better idea of this whole web 2.0 phenom. Now that I've been blogging for a while, I realised that the categories I had were starting to get a little non-sensical.

What I've done is to rethink the structure of my blog. I've then gone through all of my posts since I started this blog and recategorised them. Many of the old categories are still there - however some of them are gone and some of them reworded so that it makes a bit more sense.

Most of you won't be affected by this. The main benefit is for people to more easily find past posts that I've written about (ie me).

Singapore - wouldn't wanna live there

Singapore is, in many ways, a great country. I've been there several times and I've always enjoyed my visits. The place is clean. The food is nice (not as nice as HK though :p) and the people are friendly.

Which meant that I was extremely surprised to find out that the Singapore government is homophobic.

Basically, there is a game coming out on the Xbox 360 called Mass Effect. The game is a role playing game being billed as a space opera. In the greatest traditions of Captain Kirk, one of the things that you can do in the game is romance a blue skinned female alien - even if you are a girl. This then results in a lesbian love scene in the game - which has now resulted in Singapore banning the game. Pardon my language but - wtf?? (full disclosure dept - I am a huge BioWare fan and am eagerly anticipating this game).

Unfortunately, the "steamy" lesbian love scene video seems to have been taken down and is no longer available. The video in the link above is a less steamy version (although you can see a screenshot from the steamy version here). However, even after having seen the "uncut" version, the whole scene was very mild and, imho, very tastefully done. For starters, its not like you really get to see any real pornography (to help put this in perspective - based on the ratings board, throughout the entire game, you only get to see a breast profile - this is considered partial nudity and was part of the reason this game was rated mature).

I actually first read about this a couple of days ago. However, at the time, I didn't give it much credence as it was on a source which I didn't frequent and hence I didn't know if it was reliable. However, this piece of news has now been reported on several mainstream news sites and was also apparently in the Straits Times (a SG newspaper).

And I have to admit my reaction is one of incredulity. As I said, the love scene itself is very tame (you get a lot worse from many mainstream Hollywood movies) and the only reason I can think of for this game to be banned is because the love scene is lesbian in nature.

I had no idea the Singaporeans were so homophobic and I really pity the gay community living in Singapore. If there is something I'm missing or don't understand about the ban, then I really wish someone would explain. As things stand right now, I'm starting to form a really poor opinion of Singapore.

What can change the nature of a company?

Today's topic is an (extremely) brief exploration of the question - what can change the nature of a company?

Admittedly, this was brought on by the recent acquisition of Bioware by EA (you can read my thoughts on it here). Rather than bashing on EA, I'm going to use this post to consider the question of the "nature" of a corporation. Also, bear in mind that this is a HUGE question - one on which many books have been written. In that regard, don't expect too much from this tiny blog post!

Obviously, the first question which arises is - Can a company have a nature?

Basically, a company is simply comprised of the individuals within the company. In this sense, it seems to me that the company just takes on the nature of whatever people are working there. Note that I specifically talk about the people who work there and not just the management of a company.

Take the case of EA. Either rightly or wrongly, EA is hated by the hardcore gaming community (As I said, this post isn't to EA bash and I won't examine any of the reasons for the hatred - all you need to know is that it exists). EA are well aware of their reputation in the hardcore gaming community and seem to be taking steps to try and remove the stigma which exists against them. For example, the new CEO, John Riccitello, seems to be someone who is very much trying to build bridges to the hardcore gaming community.

If you buy into the concept that a company takes on the nature of its management, then does the new CEO at EA already mean that the nature of the company has changed? Clearly, the issue isn't that simple. Even though the company has a new CEO, I think that John Riccitello still has to report to Larry Probst who has remained as Chairman. If the "evil" nature of EA was caused by Larry, the fact that he is still there and in charge would still impact EAs culture.

Even if John has free reign, how many people are going to be directly liaising with the CEO? Very likely, the staff in EA have a culture very similar to the pre-John Riccitello culture in EA. As such, people who interact with EA on a daily basis may not feel any change in the nature of EA until John has some time to effect a change in culture in EA. This is assuming that John can effect any change at all (I work in Knowledge Management - I know exactly how hard it can be to change corporate culture).

Second question - can a company's nature change?

Given that a corporation does have its own nature, can that nature change? The answer to this question is clearly yes. For you to believe otherwise would mean that a company is static and that seems incredible when you consider the constant staff turnover in many companies (assuming you agree that the nature of a company is equivalent to the nature of the staff working there).

Third question - what can change the nature of a company?

This is the big one. If the nature of a company depends on its staff, then simply firing all staff and hiring new staff with the "right" nature would in itself change the nature of the company. However, in practice, this isn't possible.

So what can you do? Well, you could change the management of the company. Then make sure the new management has the "right" culture and that they then try to impose this culture on the rest of the workforce. In this case, management can give employees a chance to change to match the new culture (and possibly remove those who can't change). Over time, the staff of the company would either all believe in and adopt the new culture - or at the very least, pretend to buy-in so that they can keep their jobs.

At this point in time, the nature of the company has effectively changed. Which interestingly enough, is exactly what EA are doing. Given that EA have changed the CEO and the new CEO seems to be making the right noises viz a viz connecting with the hardcore gaming community, it would appear that EA are trying to change their corporate nature.

However, is this a genuine shift or is it just a PR ploy by the new CEO?. Can EA change from being an "evil" corporation to one being loved by community? I have no idea - only time can answer this question as we look at future actions taken by the company. One thing is for certain - considering the amount of hatred in the hardcore gaming community, EA have their work cut out for them!

PS If you can guess the inspiration for the title, then you are probably a hardcore gamer!

Halo 3 comic update

After several posts about Gerry, I figure its time to go back to my usual incoherent rambling! Anyway, you may recall that I am writing a comic. Although I haven't finished yet, I thought that I would give you an update on my progress.

First off, I want to say that writing a comic is a lot harder than it looks!!

Before I even started, one of the first issues I encountered was that I had no idea about how to even start creating a comic. To get around this, I dug up some old comics to read so that I could get an idea on how to storyboard the comic itself. In particular, how to decide the frames, use speech, thought bubbles etc etc. During this process, I also managed to discover that Marvel actually allow you to read some of their old comics online. Very nice!

I also went to a couple of bookstores in my spare time to see if there were any books for prospective graphic artists. To my surprise, there is actually quite a large section of different books giving different advice. Anyway, I spent a short time just browsing some of these books - again to get an idea on how to structure my comic.

The second step in the process was for me to actually start storyboarding my comic. This is actually quite a difficult step. Although I had some ideas for how certain frames would look, I soon realised that I was very constricted by the fact that all the graphics had to come from screenshots. In the end, I went back into Halo 3 and replayed the video of my game several times while playing around with the camera so that I had an idea of the kind of pictures that I would be able to get for the comic.

After I had a rough storyboard of what I wanted, I came across another hurdle. I didn't have any good software to create the comic with! The problem is that I don't have Photoshop or an equivalently powerful photo editing software. The photo editor I use is just a free one which I downloaded off the internet. It was good enough for simple photo editing - but it was nowhere near good enough to create a comic with!

Now Photoshop is incredibly expensive and there was no way I was going to spring the money to buy it. So what were my options? Back to the old internet search!

Actually, I managed to find some really interesting tools used by professional artists. The most impressive one is probably the Wacom tablet - this is basically a giant screen which artists draw directly on and which then results in your drawing appearing on screen. Its a great idea as it means that artists can draw using a pen equivalent rather than trying to draw using a mouse (the tablet is also touch sensitive). Of course, these things are also expensive so not really suitable for me either.

The most realistic option I found was actually a little piece of software called Comic Book Creator. This looked to be perfect to my needs actually. It was a normal priced piece of software which was specially designed to help you create comics from photos! Its like they read my mind! I very eagerly downloaded the demo - or rather tried to. The problem is that I guess the company is a very small company and only has limited bandwidth. It took me 20 hours to download the demo and after all that, when I tried to install, I got an error message saying that the file was corrupted.
:(

Suffice to say, this didn't give me a whole lot of confidence in their product. Also, upon further reflection, I wasn't really sure whether I was going to continue making comics on an ongoing basis so decided that it probably wasn't that good an idea to buy a software solution.

Which dumped me back to square one - how was I going to actually create my comic?

In the end, I put all the screenshots I had onto a flash drive and took them into work so that I could use Powerpoint on my work PC. Thats right! I'm creating a comic using Powerpoint using my work PC during my spare time (lunchtime and evenings before I go home). Now you know why progress is so slow!

Of course, another problem showed up as soon as I started creating the actual comic. The problem was that some of my screenshots didn't fit within the storyboard that I initially created. This resulted in me either amending the storyboard or going back into Halo 3 to retake some of the pictures.

Wow - long post! Don't worry - almost done now!

Anyway, I have now finally finished the storyboard portion of the comic and will move onto text (which incidentally brings up another issue of which font to use!). At this point, I thought I would share a couple of pages from my upcoming comic with you. Enjoy the preview!

Canon vs Casio

As promised last post, here are some pictures taken from my friends Canon during his visit in October.

Obviously, you can make your own conclusions as to which camera is better. In my opinion, the Canon seems to be slightly better. I'm saying this based on my opinion that the colours seem slightly better in the Canon pictures - they seem a little more natural.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the pictures on the Casio are bad. In fact, I think they are quite good. Its just that I think the Canon pictures are slightly better.

A friend comes to visit

As you know, I travel to BJ occasionally and I've mentioned before that I have a friend up there who takes me to nice restaurants and massages while I'm up there. Anyway, during the (semi)recent October holiday in China, he popped down to HK and took the opportunity to visit Gerry.

Below, you can see some pictures taken from my camera. In the first couple of pictures, you can see my friend showing his new camera to Gerry. And yes, he did take my advice not to buy a Casio - he ended up buying a Canon. Good choice imo.

Anyway, next post, I'll show you some pictures which he took on his new Canon.

Gerry's new Trike

Looking back at my recent blog posts, I realised that, with the exception of him learning to drive, I haven't posted much about Gerry. I guess my dad must be bored stiff by now as the only reason he checks this blog is for the latest pics of Gerry!

Anyway, to make it up to my dad, I have decided to inundate this blog with Gerry! Enjoy!


We recently decided it was time to buy Gerry a tricycle and took him to Toys R Us so that he could choose which one he likes best. For some reason though, he much preferred cars to bikes!


Nevertheless, we persevered until we finally found one he liked. A Buzz Lightyear trike - To infinity and beyond!!

These are just pictures of us wandering around the TST mall so that he could show off his new trike.


And here I am taking a rest while Gerry rides on his own. Hey, give me a break - bending over all the time is really tiring!


As usual, the obligatory closeup of Gerry to show how cute he is.
:)

Gerry likes going fast

Its been a long time since I blogged about Gerry so I figure its time to give you an update on what he is doing now. Anyway, he is a big boy now, so I figured it was time to give him a driving lesson. :)


Here he is getting familiar with the layout. In case you are wondering what he is doing, he is trying to turn on the air con - its hot in HK!


With the air conditioning on, the car cools down a bit and its time to hit the open road. Considering its his first lesson, I'm actually quite impressed. Look - he even has both hands on the wheel!


No Gerry! Keep your eye on the road!!


That's better! Remember, you need to stay alert at all times when you are behind the wheel.


Here you can see the instructor reminding him to check his blind spot.

Video(games) killed the movie film star

Wow - another game related post on this blog. I know I promised to keep gaming stuff on my gaming blog - but this topic has enough social consequences that I figure its worth putting on my main blog. Plus, I wanted to sound really smart by using the term "social consequences".
:)

Just in case you weren't aware, Halo 3 (a video game for the Xbox 360) was released on September 25. Arguably, Halo 3 is more than just a video game. By now its almost become a cultural phenomenon. For example, how many other mainstream video games are used by churches to pull in kids.

However, the item of news that I found most interesting is this.

Basically, for the October 5 weekend, Box Office sales at cinemas were at their lowest since 1999. Total industry ticket sales (in the US) were only at $80million. And the reason for the drop in moviegoers has been attributed to the phenomenal success of Halo 3 which topped $170million on the first day alone. Not bad for an industry which is supposedly targeted at kids.

Of course, the drop in moviegoers couldn't be for any other reason, right?

All jokes aside, it does indicate the emergence of video gaming as a serious hobby. As a gamer myself, I know that video gaming is a billion dollar industry. However, video gaming is considered by many, including the mainstream press, as a hobby for kids - assuming, of course, that they don't denounce it as the work of the devil in the first place!

Although I say that facetiously, the fact is that some people have denounced games as being evil and tools used by the devil in order to corrupt our youth. In a similar way, this exact same thing has happened with novels, movies, music, comics etc etc etc. And no, you don't get any brownies for spotting the trend.

However, with the phenomenal success of Halo 3, does this represent a turning point for video games? Will video games now become socially acceptable? Not a chance!

I fully expect mainstream press to continue to sensationalise the video game "issue" rather than dealing with it in a mature manner.

Despite this, the fact remains that video gaming is now on the map in a way that it never has been before. Furthermore, gamers are now more politically active and aware than at any other time in the history of video games. And this is wholly down to the fact that with the amount of money being poured into video games, it is now worthwhile mobilising, in a political sense, in order to get the right video game agenda onto politicians tables.

Yes - video gaming as an industry is moving beyond the stigma of a kids hobby. However, I don't expect this issue to go away until the passage of time has meant that people like me (ie people who grew up with the first generation of video games) have grown old and died.

And on that morbid note, its time to bid you adieu (at least until my next post).


PS if you can recognise the inspiration for the title, then you are an old git like me (Git off mah lawn!)

Do I really need a new laptop?

I gave a lot of thought as to whether to post this or not. The problem is that this post will make me look like an idiot. On the other hand, everyone knows I'm an idiot anyway - so I decided to go ahead and post.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I mentioned that I was looking for a new PC - primarily because the fans on my desktop are so noisy. However, since making that post, my desktop has been acting very temperamental. After switching it on, it would automatically switch itself off after 10-15 minutes. At first, I thought that maybe it was upset that I was going to replace it with a new sexier laptop (reminder to self - in future, make any blog posts about replacing my desktop from a different PC).

However, I soon remembered that I had a similar problem to this before. Many months ago, my PC was also switching itself off as soon as I ran any software. In fact, I even blogged about it. That's right - it was a recurrence of my CPU overheating problem. Actually, I shouldn't say recurrence as I never actually got around to fixing my PC last time. After a while, the problem disappeared so I just forgot about it - till now.

Anyway, as the PC was now completely unusable, I took it to a PC repair shop (I went back to the shop which built the PC as the owner is very trustworthy). I take it in and the guy opens up the PC, takes one look and says that the problem is that my CPU fan is caked in dust. I had a look for myself and sure enough - the CPU fan was caked in dust. Apparently, all I needed to do was open up the PC and vacuum up the dust off the CPU fan. So heading back home in shame, I promptly did as he suggested.

As you can see from this blog post, my PC is now working again. Furthermore, the fan is a lot quieter as well (as the CPU was overheating, the fan must have been going into overdrive hence the noise). Obviously, its not as quiet as a laptop PC - but it may be quiet enough to not disturb the missus when she's working.

Which means that I may not need to buy a new PC after all.

Looking for a Laptop

Have any of you used an Apple Mac?

The reason I'm asking is that I am looking to buy a laptop. Currently, I use a desktop PC which is placed in our study and takes up most of the desk. As the PC is quite powerful, the cooling fans on the PC are also quite noisy. In fact, they are so noisy that the missus is complaining that they stop her from thinking (the study doubles as our home office and is where she spends her time at home when she is working from home).

As a result of the noise, I am now basically banned from turning on my PC if the missus is working from home. Unfortunately, the missus is a workaholic - so this basically equates to a ban on turning on my PC if the missus is at home!!

I'm sure you will agree that this is an unacceptable state of affairs! So what to do? As I firmly believe that all problems can be solved by throwing money at them, I have decided to buy a new laptop. :p

The question is - do I buy a PC or an Apple Mac?

I have heard lots of good stuff about the Apple Mac. In fact, I used to use an Apple Mac waaay back in secondary school. However, I have never before considered buying an Apple Mac simply because the gaming software on an Apple Mac is a joke. Seriously - if you say the words "Mac gaming" to any serious gamer, they will just collapse and rofl. Being a hardcore gamer myself, I naturally always went with the PC.

However, with Apple using Intel processors and the release of Bootcamp on the Apple Mac, the situation is not so clear anymore. Bootcamp is basically a software which allows Macs to either boot up using Mac OS or using Windows. In theory, I could use the Mac OS for normal stuff and then boot up in Windows if I wanted to play some PC games. Now granted, Apple Mac hardware isn't as customisable as PCs and may be slightly more expensive (you are paying a premium for the Apple brand of course). Also, I would need to buy a separate copy of Windows. However, it seems like I can get the best of both worlds by buying an Apple Mac.

Which, to be honest, sounds too good to be true.

So my question is - are any of my readers using an Apple Mac? Does anyone have experience with using Bootcamp to run PC games? Am I missing anything else from this equation?

Serves ya right, ya cheating scum!

I'm back! Sorry for not posting on Wednesday but it seems that Shanghai has blocked my blog. As I said before, I probably need to be nicer to the Chinese government! :)

Anyway, for those of you who watch football, you will have no doubt heard about the Dida incident. For those of you who don't watch football, you can check out the YouTube clip below to see what I'm talking about.



Basically, during the Celtic vs AC Milan match, Celtic scored a (very) late goal which put them in front. As you can imagine, the Celtic fans went wild. A little too wild as one fan runs onto the pitch. Said fan then runs upto Dida (the AC Milan goalkeeper) and taps him on the cheek/neck. Dida then starts to give chase before realising that someone touched him and then dramatically collapses onto the floor. He is then stretchered off the pitch while holding an ice bag dramatically to his head (ie not where the fan tapped him).

Now, just in case there is any doubt - I think the actions of that fan are deplorable. He has been banned for life from Celtic games and will also appear in court. He is getting his punishment for his rash actions.

However, the actions of Dida are, in my opinion, even worse. The playacting by Dida is cheating - plain and simple (and also farcical - can you believe this guy had to be stretchered off!!). And luckily, UEFA have agreed as they have given him a 2 match ban. And in my opinion, the cheating scum got what he deserved.

Some people may consider the ban to be excessive especially in light of the fact that diving for a penalty (which is also cheating) only warrants a yellow card. I don't care - I have always deplored cheats and I have always wanted people to be punished severely for cheating.

Especially in situations like this. I think Dida knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that Milan were going to lose that match and he deliberately cheated in an attempt to get the match abandoned so that Milan could either replay the match or get a win by default (especially as this isn't the first time this has happened so there is precedent).

Dida - you should be ashamed of yourself.

Badminton skill (or lack thereof!)

I'm just back from playing badminton at my club. Hold on, I hear you say! Doesn't Jokemeister normally play badminton on Tuesdays? Well you observant chipmunks - you are right! I do normally play on Tuesdays.

However, I need to fly to Shanghai tomorrow which means I can't play. Turns out (and I wish I knew this before) that the club will allow me to switch to a different day of the week on an ad hoc basis provided that there is enough room on the other day. Luckily for me, there was a spare slot in today's session so I played today instead.

Kind of strange feeling after playing today. Normally, for badminton players, I classify them into 2 groups. The first group are people who play regularly (either currently or in the past). The other group are people who only play occasionally for fun.

I myself am in the first group and I can easily beat people in the second group (no surprise since I do play regularly). However, whenever I have played people in the first group, I have always been one of the worst players in the group. I've never had a problem with this - to be honest, I'm not exactly the sporty type and I've always been bad at sports. For example, back in University, my friends would generally beat me. When I first came to HK and played with my uncles and their friends - they would all beat me. Even in the group I currently play with on Tuesday, there are only a couple of people who are worse than me.

However, in todays group, I was actually one of the better players - which really surprised me. My partner wasn't very good (I'm quite confident in saying that I'm better than her) and after we won our first game, we were up against 2 guys. The first thing my partner says is "shit, they're good". However, although they beat us, the final score was 11-8. Those 2 guys then managed to win another 2 games and stay on the court so that we were up against them again. Again, we only lost 11-8. Both matches were quite close (and good fun!).

As a kid in PE class, I was always the last kid picked (can you hear the violins?). I'm not used to being one of the better players in a group. As I said - it feels kinda strange.

What color is your car?

The color of my car is champagne. I don't actually know what color that is meant to be but that is how the dealer described it. In practice, its kind of like a mix between a very light grey color and a very light gold color. Furthermore, I make sure that the car is clean (the maid washes it once a week).

Which, according to this website, means that I am careful and pay attention to detail while wanting people to know that I am wealthy and independent.

However, my favourite car would be a red Ferrari which I unfortunately can't afford. So does this mean that I want to be a wild person? When I purchased my car, I also seriously considered a black or light blue car. Which indicates that I'm in control and peaceful.

So - does that sound like the Jokemeister you know?

Badminton racquet

When I first started playing badminton, I used to prefer a head-heavy racquet - mainly because I liked to whack the ball. The problem is that I'm not a very good badminton player and my smashes were never particularly dangerous. In fact, most of the time, the opposing player would very easily knock the ball to the back of my court.

Another problem is that my reaction times aren't particularly great so that whenever someone smashed the ball at me, I would never be able to return the ball. The fact that I had a head-heavy racquet also didn't help much! So in summary, I wasn't able to win many points by smashing and I couldn't return the ball when smashed either. :(

As a result of this, many years ago, I decided to switch to a more defensive style racquet - one which wasn't as head-heavy and hence quicker for me to play with. My thinking was that I would prefer to have a chance to return a smash (as I wasn't very good at smashing anyway). And this has been the case now for many years.

Anyway, while playing badminton last night, the strings on my racquet broke (a Yonex Isometric Swing Power 900). As far as I can recall, this has been the first time that the strings on my racquet broke as a result of play (normally, I replace them either due to age or because the tension has leaked). Luckily, my friend had a spare racquet. He lent me his old Yonex MP100 (which is a head-heavy racquet) and we restarted the match.

Now, bear in mind that our opponents for that match weren't particularly good (don't get me wrong, they were much better than me - but just not someone which I would classify as good). Having said that, they were still good enough to return most of my normal smashes relatively easily. However, after I switched to the MP100, the extra velocity on my smashes was very noticeable. In fact, I even won quite a few points just by smashing the ball at them - which for me is a very rare circumstance.

After playing a couple of games last night using the MP100 and predominantly smashing the ball, I'm just wondering now whether I should rethink my decision to use a defensive racquet. To be honest, I had a lot of fun last night just whacking the ball as hard as I could. I'm under no illusion as to my skill - I know that if I had been up against some good players, then the extra power on the MP100 wouldn't have been enough to make up for my lack of skill. Having said that, I really had a lot of fun last night whacking the ball as hard as I could!

I really like my ISO900. It has a very flexible shaft and feels very light in nature (I bought the defense variant). However, maybe its time to retire my old racquet to the bench and get a new one.

Halo 3 comic

Recently, I talked about creating a Halo comic. Unfortunately, this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

You may recall that I was going to do my first comic based on the Halo 3 storyline. However, the problem is that the story part of the game mainly occurs during cutscenes - which aren't recorded by the game. Unfortunately, I don't have a capture card so I can't capture the video to my PC either.

This means that all of the exposition explaining the story will somehow have to be ported into the game engine. And not just ported into the game engine but during the limited control that I have during the campaign.

So what problems does this actually create?

Firstly, unlike the Red vs Blue machinima, I am limited to 1 person. Which means that I can only control 1 person. Which means that it is very hard to setup the scene so that I have people talking to each other.

Secondly, as I'm creating a comic of the story portion of the game, it means that I will have to take screenshots from the campaign mode. Which makes it even harder for me to setup the scene. In case you don't understand why - you have to remember that while I'm positioning my guy for the best shot or best pose etc, I'm also being attacked by the AI covenant forces!

Even if I can get around all these, due to the requirement to put all the cutscene scripts into the comic, it means that I am going to have to spend a lot of time storyboarding the comic so I know what it is I'm trying to do. And all this is before I even start playing the video looking for screenshots!

Which leads me to the last and also possibly biggest hurdle. The camera in the campaign save games isn't as good as in the multiplayer games. Although I can control the camera placement, I can't rewind. This means that if I accidentally move past the shot I'm looking for, I have to exit the video and reload it from the beginning. Which is a huge pain in the ass when you consider that the first level took me 51 minutes to complete (which also means I have a 51 minute video to review!).

All in all, a lot of problems. Having said that, it might still be doable. However, I think I will need a lot more experience with storyboarding and graphic layout before I can tackle making a comic of the Halo 3 campaign. Which is why I have gone back to the idea of creating a comic based on one of my multiplayer games. Anyway, not sure how long it will take me - but I will let you know if there are any significant developments.

Gerry and Doraemon

Okay - after 2 posts about Halo 3 - I'm going to try to get back in gear and do a blog post that contains no video game references (other than this line!).

Anyway, Gerry loves playing with all of his various teddy bears etc. Although not his favourite, he has a big stuffed Doraemon teddy which is just slightly bigger than he is. During one of his "play" sessions with Doraemon, I grabbed the camera and took a quick video of him and Doraemon.

As you can see from the video - they are BFF!
:D

Halo 3 (again!)

At this time, I really should apologise to my regular blog readers. As you can tell from the title, this is going to be another game related post. Unfortunately for you, the only thing I can think about at this moment is Halo 3 so you will have to just bear with me until the thril passes. Don't worry, I'm sure it won't be longer than a week ... or two. :)

Anyway, one of the things about Halo 3 that has really impressed me is the video function. All games are automatically recorded by the game as you play. After you finish playing, you can then play back the video and watch what you did. Whats great about it is that you have full control over the camera in this video and you can take film clips or screenshots to show off what you have done. Its really a very cool idea and I've spent an inordinate amount of time playing around inside the video instead of actually playing the game.

You can also refer to my gaming blog if you wanna check out some screenshots from the game. I intend to post ongoing screenshots of my gaming sessions in there. However, this has gotten me to thinking. What else can I do with this function?

The obvious thing is to create a Halo comic strip. To do that, all I would need is some decent screenshots, Photoshop (or an equivalent) and a healthy dose of imagination. I can get the screenshots from the game and I have a photo editor. The question is whether I have enough imagination to script an actual comic.

Maybe as a test run, I could create a comic based on the Halo 3 storyline. By following the storyline, I already have an idea of what dialogue to include so my imagination won't be stretched too hard! Also, it will give me an idea of how feasible the project is (viz a viz time and my limited ability with a photo editor!).

Halo 3

Halo 3 gets released tomorrow. At this point, I guess I should apologise for another gaming related post. However, at this moment in time, Halo 3 is the only thing that occupies my mind - so I guess you'll have to bear with me.

I say it gets released tomorrow - however, it would probably be fairer to say that it gets released tonight. Toys R Us in Harbour City is having a midnight opening tonight so that eager Halo fans can buy the game at the stroke of midnight (and hence technically 25 September) and then rush home to play. Which is actually the first time I've heard of this kind of thing in HK.

You see, midnight openings are very common in the US and in the UK for big games. However, I've never heard of it happening in HK before. To be honest, I wonder how many people will show up at Toys R Us tonight to buy Halo 3. Maybe I'm being harsh on HK people here but the impression I have of the HK market is that there aren't that many people who buy originals (I'm one of the few) as most will buy or download pirate games.

What do you think? Am I being harsh on HK people or is the place really a pirate haven?

Time to buy a new razor

I don't know why but this video really resonates with me.

Maybe its time to buy a new razor.

Video from my new camera

Continuing on the theme of my new Casio Exilim, below is a video we took of Gerry using the camera. In it, you can see Gerry counting to 10 before he gets too enthralled with taking apart the PC!

Anyway, the video is another reason I dislike the Casio Exilim. The reason is that the Casio Exilim records video in the Quicktime movie format. However, I don't have a video editor which can edit Quicktime (my previous editor came with my old Canon camera).

Granted, the Casio Exilim does come with a CD which includes a video editor which can edit Quicktime. However, the program (called Ulead Movie Wizard) really isn't very good. In fact, in my opinion, its a piece of shit software which was probably designed to make you buy a different video editor. Coincidentally, on the CD is the trial version of a different, and more powerful, video editor which you can buy. How convenient!

This pisses me off. The software bundled with the Exilim is basically worthless. I know one of my readers is considering buying a small digital camera. Now obviously, I don't know what software comes with the newer Canon cameras - however, based on the software I got with my old Canon, I'm guessing it would be better than the shit I currently have. Based on my experience with the Casio Exilim so far, I would recommend you go with Canon.

By the way, can anyone recommend a free video editor to me?

Pics from my new camera

You may recall that I bought a new camera recently.

Here are some pictures that we took of Gerry using our new Casio Exilim. Unfortunately, they were taken before I realised I still had the time stamp on (personally, I hate that function - imo, it just gets in the way of the photo).

Anyway, one thing that I really don't like about the Exilim is that it doesn't automatically rotate pictures to get them the right way up (For the record, my old Canon automatically rotated pictures both in the Camera playback mode and also upon transfer to my PC.). You can see from the last 2 pictures below that they are on their side. This is because the camera was on its side.

Now granted, I know how to rotate the pictures manually. However, I will be taking hundreds of pictures using this camera. I really don't want to rotate all the pictures manually!


This is a picture of me reading a story to Gerry. Look how happy he is!


Gerry likes his sweetcorn. So do I! :)


And some random pics of Gerry at home.

Back in BJ

As you know, I am in Beijing at the moment. I arrived last night and took a taxi to get to the hotel from the airport. However, being the idiot that I am, I gave the taxi driver the wrong name for the hotel (I'm staying in a different hotel than the one I normally stay in due to our new hotel policy).

In my defence, it was an easy mistake to make. I gave him the abbreviated name of the hotel. However, it turns out that there is actually a completely different hotel in Beijing whose name just happens to be the same as the abbreviated name of the hotel I am staying in!

Apologies if the above is confusing but there is a reason I am not giving out the hotel name.

Anyway, when we pull up to the wrong hotel, I can see that the name doesn't match up (but that it is similar). At this point, I realise my error and give the taxi driver the correct name for the hotel I am staying in. Luckily for me, the correct hotel is quite close (in fact, its just up the road!).

Unfortunately, the wrong hotel is in a one way slip road (that runs parallel to the main road) so in order to get back on the main road, the driver has to take a large detour down the rest of the slip road. This kind of slip road seems to be quite popular in BJ - especially as there were a couple of restaurants and another hotel on that slip road.

So, as he is driving slowly down this slip road, we pass a guy holding a stack of business cards standing next to the slip road. He holds out a couple of cards to me but I ignore him. Undeterred, he throws the cards into the taxi (the front door window of the taxi was open). Unfortunately for me, this seems to be a common practice in BJ as well. As the taxi slowly went down the slip road, I was assaulted by a constant stream of business cards being thrown into my face!

You may recall that when I was here in March, I had an incident with a madam who accosted me on the street with a business card (And if you can't recall, you can refresh your memory here). Well, it seems that they are all at it!

I am currently the (not so) proud owner of a stack of business cards. On one side is an alluring picture of a young pretty girl with the word "Student!" printed across the top. On the other side, emblazoned in bold text, is a telephone number. In slightly smaller print, it says "You Want beautiful Young chinese girls for Massage and more service... Yes, that's What we have!" (and yes, I am copying that verbatim - capitalisation an' all). Apparently, there are a lot of chinese and russian students in BJ as the chinese and russian style "massage" services are available 24 hours a day.

What can I say - if you are ever in BJ and need a "massage", let me know.



Coincidentally, I will be going for a massage tonight.
:)

My new camera

A while ago, I mentioned that I was looking for a new camera. Well, after hours of painstaking research - trawling through websites looking at numerous reviews of different cameras - I finally made my decision. Based on the reviews, it looked like the Canon Digital Ixus 950 was my best bet. All the reviews were positive and generally indicated that it was a very good camera.

So, armed with this knowledge, I hit the streets to check the street price in HK. Naturally, I brought my wife along with me as she is better at negotiating for discounts than I am.

We wander into the electronics store and ask to see the camera. The salesmen grabs the model off the shelf and plonks it down onto the counter in front of me. Then he opens his mouth and proves to me that he is an expert salesman.

How? In the 2 seconds it took for him to grab the camera, he was able to size us up perfectly. He knew exactly who was the party he needed to make the sale to. Furthermore, he knew exactly how to make a sale.

After plonking down the Ixus 950 in front of me, he whips out the Casio Exilim and turns to my wife. Launching into a spiel about how the camera is the thinnest camera in the world and how it comes in different colors etc etc. I type etc etc here as this is the only thing which my wife can remember from that conversation. At this point, she had already been sold (especially by the nice burgundy color of the Exilim!).

We walked out of that electronics store with the Casio Exilim. As I said, an expert salesman.


PS I am off to Beijing tomorrow so may not be able to post for the rest of this week. According to a friend of mine in BJ, my blog is now blocked in BJ! I guess I should have been more discreet in my criticisms of the Chinese government!

Update - I just realised. This is my 100th post! Woot Woot!

Wood Wedding Anniversary

Wow - can you believe I have been married 5 years now? My Wood wedding anniversary was on 1 September and to celebrate, the missus and I went to El Cid in Causeway Bay. As you can guess from the name, this is a Spanish restaurant.

Ever since I started trying to save some money, the wife and I haven't really spent much time dating or eating out. As this was our wedding anniversary, we decided to go out for dinner. Okay - granted, a night out at El Cid is hardly what you would call fantastic fare (the tapas there is only okay but the paella was quite nice). Still, it was a nice opportunity for us to get out and away from Gerry. A little bit of quality time for us.

After dinner, we went to Haagen Dazs for dessert. The missus had a cookie crunch (with 3 different scoops of ice cream!) while I had the hot chocolate brownie. If you have never had the hot chocolate brownie at Haagen Dazs - you haven't lived!

1 square of chocolate brownie with thick chocolate sauce over the top (served hot naturally!). This is accompanied by 2 scoops of ice-cream and another generous side lashing of thick chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Yummy! With the delish dessert to top things off, we really enjoyed ourselves last night.

Of course, the 1/2 liter of sangria helped as well.

A nice night out

These days, I only get to go to the pub once in a blue moon. Luckily for me, the sky tonight was very clear and the moon was very blue!

One of my colleagues at work is off to China next week in order to intensively study Chinese (the guy is Malaysian). He will be there for 3 and a half months before returning to HK to get married. Okay, so I made up the marriage part - but he is coming back to HK!

So tonight was his going away drinks night - a perfect excuse for us to get together and have a few drinks (while hopefully accompanied by some pretty girls)! While we managed to get the pretty girls bit right, unfortunately our drinks were cut short. Halfway through my first beer, he got a call from his girlfriend. Not long after, he gave us a shoddy excuse ("I had arranged to meet her before" - sheahh right) and then left early. Yeah - he left his own going away drinks night early!

You can tell this guy is prime marriage material - he is so going to be under his wifes thumb! And I should know. After all, you know what they say - it takes one to know one!

Miss South Carolina

You really have to pity this poor girl.

Basically, Miss South Carolina was at a beauty pageant which was on live TV. She was asked a question and completely screwed up the answer (and I'm being nice when I say that - just watch the video if you don't believe me). Ever since then, the internet has been ruthless in its urine extraction of this poor girl.

First off, I don't know her. And I have no idea of how intelligent (or not as the case may be) she is. However, one thing I do know is that no-one is as stupid as that video would seem to portray (unless there was some kind of medical condition involved). Looking at other videos of her, she looks like a normal girl.

So what does this tell us? Well, I would guess she was just overwhelmed by the situation and panicked. In fact, in her comments on her own performance, she says that she didn't hear the question properly and simply made a mistake. Quite frankly, this seems to be the more likely scenario.

Still, the video is funny.
:)