Official Baptism Photos: Repost

My big day, a selection of my photos. I like the first and last photos, in the last photo I was caught just as I got out of the water. I also like the way the ripples form in the water. Since I went first I didn't really get to see the others getting baptized, I'm glad that through these photos I can see their special moment too :).

Official Baptism Photos!

Official Baptism Photos are out! The link will only be live for 7 days, I'll download the photos when I get home :).

Dinner and Update

Just a quick update. Had dinner with my folks at the food court in the Japanese department store. You know I like my burgers, so I had one and balanced it out with a salad. Salad looks good, except for that hole in the leaf. Had a quick walk around with my parents to bet brekkie then came home. I pray that you're feeling better and that the planning for the trip to Taiwan will go smoothly.

Short Update

Hey boo, just a quick update. Nothing much new today, had dinner as usual at the food court. Had Korean noodles with BBQ beef, egg and plenty of veggies. I'm continuing to read the books 'Bomb, Book, & Compass' and 'Counterfeit Gods'.

Baptism Day: Photos

Photos from my day anew :). I hope you have a restful sabbath day. I got a surprise congratulatory text from Vincent, my friend from class! I'm not sure how he knew I got baptized, although my best guess is that he attended the 5pm service today. I had a good restful Sunday, it was good eating with my friends and family. We're not going to Japan after all since all the tickets are full. I guess most people in Hong Kong try to take advantage of the Easter holiday to go travel. Are your siblings on break yet? I hope I'll get to do something restful here in Hong Kong, I actually wasn't so happy with idea of going on a trip to Japan on such notice since I thought it would be more stressful to have to plan everything out and take leave to make the trip worthwhile. So I'll get to spend my first Easter as a Christian in Hong Kong. I've been getting a lot of firsts lately, like my first true Christmas. It's exciting :).

Here are some select photos from today. I'll send the official church ones as soon as I get them.

Summarizing sentences of my testimony:

Baptism :)

Talking with the pastor after, receiving his book gift.

Caregroup!

Caregroup leaders

Talking with the head pastor.

Baptism pool

Yummy dim sum with caregroup and parents.


Last but not least, my books. I've started reading the Tim Keller book already.

Baptism Day: My Testimony

I grew up in a predominantly Buddhist household. I was never deeply religious and I was taught to be self reliant. This led to many problems in my life. I led myself to carry the burdens of life and not share with others. This led me to adopt addictive habits in my life, such as the indulgence in gaming, alcohol and pornography, and instead of facing the issues or work in my life I led myself to my indulgences. The first time I heard about Christ in my life was when I was young in Primary School where during Christmas time we would often hear about the nativity story and sometimes about the life of Jesus. Many of my close friends and classmates were also Christian and they would often invite my family and me to Church on Sundays. I would go with my parents since they were open minded to exposing me to the Church experience but since they were not believers themselves I never had the opportunity to truly experience the love and caring of a Church community and to truly grow closer to God during my early years. I was taught how to pray but being young and naïve I prayed to God to show himself to me, to prove that he existed. I prayed that he would talk to me and answer my prayers. This went on for a few nights but I convinced myself that God could not hear me.

It would not be until many years later that it took an emotional crisis during my secondary school years to return me to Church at the suggestion of my parents, and with their emotional support too. I could not control my emotions and I would cycle between feeling extremely depressed and extremely elated. I felt that return to Church during this time in my life truly helped me to recover from my emotional crisis, but yet again my stay at the Church was short-lived. The crisis was led on by my inability to cope with the stresses at my school and my striving to remain self reliant. However I did not truly learn from this crisis and my harmful habits remained due to the fact that I could still not fully open myself and share my feelings, thoughts and struggles with those in my Church community. It took me a second more serious emotional crisis during my college years in the States to reach out to God again. This time my condition was more serious, the episodes of depression and unnatural feelings of elation would disrupt my life. It was made worse by my attempts to run away from my struggles with school work by indulging in my addictions in gaming and pornography. This was obviously not the solution. I went to an evangelical event on campus called Impact 1 that shared the stories about how God was working in Africa. In retrospect I truly felt the Holy Spirit move through me as I heard the stories and joined in the songs of worship. I was given my first personal Bible at the end of the event and I even talked to others about my new interest in the Christian faith. However even though Christ was knocking on my door, my stubborn and doubtful heart refused to receive him. I would spiral further into my emotional turbulence and I almost even dropped out of college when I had to take an academic term off to come home to recover. I was blessed that I would be able to return to my studies and even graduate. When I look back into my former spiritual life it confuses me why it took me so long to come to Christ. It took me two crises to both bring me closer to God again. I feel blessed that it did not take a third in order for me to come to Christ. While I was at college I met a good friend who was Christian. When she told me at first it did not really strike me. I had many Christian friends in the past and I associated being Christian with being good. We developed a close friendship and she eventually became my girlfriend. Being a good Christian girl she invited me to go to Church. I was very open to the invitation due to my good experiences with Churches in the past. At first I enjoyed going so that I could take away the moral message from the Church service but I was reluctant to to truly believe in God. It would take nearly a year later for me to come to Christ. My girlfriend was concerned since I was moving back to Hong Kong from the States. I was blessed to find the Church community at Island ECC. Going to the services made me even more curious about Christ so I joined myself onto the Alpha course. The Alpha course was the pivotal point in my Christian life. I could truly experience the community and caring of the Church in an environment where all questions about faith could be asked and answered. I saw God moving through other people's lives and change them and this affected me too. When I look back on my previous spiritual experiences I know understand that Jesus was always knocking on my door and that it was only because of my stubborn heart that I would not let Him into my life. My previous Church going experiences were not a waste because they gradually led me to a true understanding of God. My walk through two emotional crises without faith was a way for God to call out to me and point out the sin in my life. During the Alpha course there was a retreat and during this retreat I truly felt at peace and I felt closer to God. I felt the Holy Spirit moving through me again, as I did before during Impact 1. I prayed the sinners prayer and I truly felt at peace with clarity of mind. I came to Christ. Though through my human eyes it felt like it took me a long time to come to Christ I know and trust in God's perfect timing.

Since coming to Christ I now have a clearer outlook on life. I am still an imperfect person but by God's grace I know that He has always been reaching out to me throughout my life. Since I have accepted Him into my life I can now trust in His power and I know that I have never been alone in my life since He has always walked with me before I even knew His name. With God in my life I am no longer bound to my former bondages, addictions to gaming, alcohol and pornography. Even if I am tempted again I know I can confide in Jesus and repent. I now know that there is Jesus in my life and despite any trouble I face He is all that matters and He will be in my life.

Day Before Baptism

I've got my clothes ready and the caregroup leaders thoughtfully organized a lunch get together for the caregroup tomorrow after the Church service. I'm excited :). Tomorrow will be a new day for me. I'll send you photos :).

Also, on a random note, I finally found my iPod shuffle. I lost it a while back, I found it underneath the sofa. I think that made my day. It also means I'm going to postpone my iPod photo revitalization until later.

That's all for today. I'll see you tomorrow.

Tapas with Beer

Good food, good cold beer, good company :). I had dinner with my friends in Central tonight, in Lan Kwai Fong.

We had a bunch of dishes: pizza, salsa on toast, lamb skewers and lastly (as shown in the photos) ribs and nachos. I'm glad the photos came out well, one of them came out dark but I was able to manage to edit it in Picasa before posting it. Guess which one was edited? Afterwards we went for frozen yogurt, then called it a night. It was nice meeting up with my high school friends again, we're thinking of going out again for dinner in the next couple of weeks.

On my my way home with my friend I saw a lot of drunk/rowdy people in the MTR. I guess right now is the beginning of the qualifying games for the Rugby 7's in Hong Kong. Rugby 7's is a variant on regular rugby in that there are 7 players, instead of the usual 15, per team with each half playing for only 7 minutes, making for a fast paced, offensive focused game. The rowdy people in the MTR were all wearing pink rugby shirts and they were making noise on a little trumpet. One of the people in the large group of rugby fans accidently started going up the down escalator so the whole crowd started cheering her on to run to the top. She successfully did it, although I think one of the MTR staff turned off the escalator just before she reached the top for security reasons. The Rugby 7's in Hong Kong is the single largest party event of the year, people traditionally go to watch rugby and party and get drunk. I've never been but then again tickets are rather expensive. I read this news article and I guess since it's from BusinessWeek it was hard to tell that the story was actually about rugby and not finance.

Also, somewhat random, but I found this commentary from Gizmodo about Google pulling out of China and censorship issues and how that relates to previous Western Imperialism. The writer's (actually he's one of the head writers) parents are evidently from Hong Kong so he spent a his summers here. I found this paragraph interesting:

China should fear Google, as a government, and a people. And even as people scared of their own government, and people like my father, a capitalist living in Hong Kong, who often defends China's right to freedom from western influence. Seeing the perverse effects of westernization on Hong Kong, good and bad—a land where a few years ago it had the most Rolls Royces per capita of any country, where shopping seems to be the national past time, and with no major art museums—I don't blame China for being wary of big business: "Regrettably, Google's recent behaviors show that the company not just aims at expanding business in China, but is playing an active role in exporting culture, value and ideas."

Videoblog No. 001

It's been a tiring day today, caregroup was a good break from that. I brought in pizza, as usual and we also had home made purple rice porridge with chicken Korean style and 'Chinese style' spicy Korean rice cake with sausages. The Korean rice cake was dubbed Chinese style since it was made by a Chinese member of our caregroup. Someone also brought along fries from the Canadian burger joint, Triple-O's. Another person came a little late with salmon sushi bento. It had different kinds of salmon sushi, salmon sushi roll (with the salmon on the outside), salmon sashimi and salmon nigiri. To top it off, we had homemade oreo base cheesecake for dessert after the bible study. According to the baker it took only 30 minutes to prepare then 1 hour to bake. The cheese was cream cheese and it was combined with egg and sugar. Crushed oreos were used both as a base as well as an additional filling. It was yummy, but a little on the sweet side, had to follow it up with plenty of water.

Here's my videoblog, in case you forgot what my face looked like and what my voice sounds like.

Summary of Chinese Learned At Work

I thought it might be useful if I summarized some of the Chinese I've learned at work, perhaps you might learn some new characters, certainly since they're simplified, I still can't figure out an easy way to type traditional since I use pinyin input. The dictionaries I use are the CEDICT Chinese-English dictionary and the 21st Century English-Chinese Bidirectional Dictionary through the Lingoes dictionary program (it's free to download). When I hear something being said I'll try to type the pinyin correctly into Chinese characters and see whether the definition in the dictionary matches the context in which I heard the phrase.

恐怖 (kong3 bu4): According to the dictionary this means terrifying. The context I heard it in was when Phd was talking about how the vast amounts of cells kept in petri dishes by another lab worker.

赶紧 (gan3 jin3): To do things in hurry. I actually learned this inadvertently when I actually heard the next word...

干净 (gan1 jing4): Clean. Heard in context of 洗干净, since stuff in the lab often needs to be clean so as not to contaminate samples.

懒(lan3): Lazy. You can probably guess the context.

认真(ren4 zhen1): Used to describe me from time to time. I thought it meant busy but according to the dictionary it's more along the lines of 'take seriously'.

试验(shi4 yan4): Experiment. One of the first words I learned.

毒 (du2): Poisonous. Used to describe whether our drugs are effective against cancer cells or not.

小/大老板 (lao3 ban3): 小老板 is my boss. 大老版 is the guy who's there, even on Sundays, and enjoys walking around the labs. He does have a purpose of course, I think he's been coming more frequently also because of the new lab room that just opened with the new employees coming in.

骗 (pian4): To deceive, to cheat.

傻 (sha3): Foolish. Mentioned when I tell a bad joke.

杀 (sha1): Er... To kill, murder. I found this by accident when trying to look up the above word.

困 （kun4): To feel sleepy. Phd mentions this when she feels like dozing off.

中联办 (zhong1 lian2 ban4): Liason office. 北大 mentioned he needed to go there before he left.

钥匙 (yao4 shi): Key. I lock up my laptop in a drawer so I need it in the morning and when I leave. I usually get it by myself but one of these days, when I remember how to say 钥匙 I'll ask someone to pass them to me.

手机 (shou3 ji1): Cell phone. It's prounced with an extra word in Canto so I didn't quite catch this at first.

恭喜(gong1 xi3): Congratulations. Said after a long experiment.

成功 （cheng2 gong1): Success. After a long experiment.

坏掉 (huai4 diao4): Broken. Our water purifier, a very vital piece of equipment since almost all experiments need pure water, was broken for a long time. You can't imagine how happy I was when it was fixed. The machine is surprisingly complicated and expensive, we go through a lot of effort to have pure water. I think that it's funny that before the machine was fixed we would sometimes use distilled drinking water since its purity is good enough for our experiments. I guess in the long run it would be more expensive to buy water on a regular basis rather than have an expensive machine that purifies water for a long time.

分手 (fen1 shou3): You already heard about this one. Boss and Phd were jokingly asking when I would break up with you.

份 (fen4): Portion. I think this is the right word? I heard it being used to describe a routine work in the lab, where we split a big bottle of a solution into smaller bottles.

定 (ding4): To place an order. Mentioned when we order stuff for the lab.

配(pei4): To make up (a prescription). Used in the context of mixing powders into solution or making other simple routine chemical solutions in the lab.

打水 (da4 shui3): Fetch water. Context is for when we fetch water for our flasks for drinking, or to fetch pure water when our water purifier was broken. At first I thought it would be a 'da' that I didn't know, I didn't figure it would be this 打.

I think that's all for today. Hopefully you found this interesting/useful.

Lazy Post III

Another lazy post! I finally managed to call up the doctor, I got an appointment from April 9th. Tonight my dad called to check up on my uncle, and he's doing well after his surgery. My mom's coming back for a week for Easter. She's back on time for my baptism. Hope you slept well, I want to see what food adventures you're up to today :).

Today's youtube

Collection of Today's Thoughts

I came back a little later today, I had an experiment that I had to attend to till 8 and I left the lab around 8:50pm and arrived home around 9:50pm. I'm a little tired, but otherwise I'm in good spirits.

I read this article on my Google Reader when I got back home. If you didn't know already, I use Reader to read almost all my websites I go to. What Reader is it gets what's called an RSS feed. An RSS feed is basically the original website's blog posts/news posts exported into text and pictures that can be read like e-mail. Reader regularly checks for new posts from the websites and puts all of the posts from all the websites together in chronological order. It makes for much easier reading, since everything is in one place. It's also rather addictive. Like e-mail it is almost impossible for my Reader 'inbox' to be empty. Until I get really bored and 'read' all of my websites. I don't read every single article and I usually just skim through and use stars to mark interesting articles to read later. By doing so, I have lately managed to keep my inbox relatively empty. As opposed to thousands of posts I'm now left with 68, as of the time of writing. You can add any website that supports RSS, as a matter of fact your public blog supports RSS. I've subscribed to it but since I read your site directly from blogger anyway I rarely read it on Reader.

Today I found this article, I found it rather interesting. It says that shopping 'European-style' by shopping for groceries daily can help to make your groceries fresher and cheaper. I don't think it's solely a European concept, here in Hong Kong most housewives/helpers shop on a daily basis. I often see helpers get on my mini-bus from the Wan Chai market in the morning with groceries to head off to the homes of their employers in the Midlevels in Hong Kong. I know that my mom shopped for groceries almost daily too, and so does the helper for my grandma. In my personal experience I've also found that meats will often have discounts, as mentioned in the article. Also at the two Japanese supermarkets in the Japanese department stores in my neighborhood have deep discounts on fresh sushi near the end of the day, although the time they have the discounts is too impractical for daily eating.

I wanted to elaborate a little on my favorite science fiction writers. Frank Herbert wrote Dune, it is an epic book that has been compared to The Lord of the Rings in terms of epic scale and detail. The style of science fiction writing at the time of Dune was more focussed on new technologies and new ideas, whereas Dune was ground breaking more for its ideas on geology, psychology, religion and its unique depiction of an alien planet. Dune is set on a dessert planet and follows the journey of a young leader in a foreign land where a rare drug-like substance called spice is mined. It is very valuable and enables space travel, among other things. I don't think this short synopsis would do the book any justice so if you're still curious the wiki is here.

My other favorite is Phillip K. Dick. His short story The Minority Report is the basis of the movie of the same name starring Tom Cruise. His book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. The book is about a blade runner, a man who hunts for androids who break the law. In the case of the book the androids are latest model produced by a technological corporation for use in mining labor. There is also a 'pleasure model', I'm sure you can figure that one out. The corporation uses a new technology to synthesize emotions in the androids, making them impossible to distinguish from humans using emotional tests. Again, if you're interested the wiki is here.

Last but not least is Isaac Asimov, perhaps you can tell Isaac about him (Isaac Newton is another famous Isaac!). He is one of the most prolific science fiction writers of all time, he wrote about 500 books and over 9000 letters and postcards. I'm not sure what books he's famous for, however he is famous for creating the fictional 3 laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I think the most recent movie based on Asimov's works is 'I, Robot' starring Will Smith. It is based on a collection of short stories of the same name. I have read this short stories and I look forward to reading more of his works in the future.

I was thinking of compiling all of the new Chinese that I've learned at work but I suppose I'll save that for another post. I don't think I know how to write all of the words I've learned!

Reading Habit

Have you read a good book lately? I just finished reading Rendezvous with Rama, a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke, as I mentioned earlier. Clarke is famous for penning another science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was put onto film by Stanley Kubrick. I haven't read such a good book in a while, I couldn't put it down as I was finishing it last night before going to sleep. The next book I'm interested in reading is Bomb, Book & Compass, a non-fiction commentary by Simon Winchester on Chinese civilization. I'm assuming it's good because it, like 'Rama', is also from my dad's book collection.

Looking at old book covers makes me feel lonely for some reason, their cover art is often dull and abstract. The smell of old books always brings me back to the days in primary school when I used to read books more either in the school library or in public libraries. I think it's good to continue my old habit and pick up reading again. Any suggestions?

Quick Update

Hey boo, it's been a long day at class and I managed to get some relaxing time around home with dad, ate in and had sushi for dinner. I should sleep soon, it's getting late.

Please pray for my uncle, this morning my dad got a call from my uncle's wife saying that he had to go to hospital for surgery on his stomach cancer. Please pray as he prepares for surgery, I pray that his surgery goes successfully and that he does not have to endure much pain.

Special Dinner Today

Special might be a little bit of an overstatement but dad was happy today because his stocks are doing well, so we ate out at the Thai restaurant in the neighborhood, Thai Pepper. We usually 'eat out' on weekdays but we rarely eat at restaurants, we usually eat in food courts. We had a pretty simple, but wholesome meal of fresh fish and rice, as well as a shrimp cake and fish cake side dish. I was actually so tired and hungry that we ate the other side of the fish before I realized that I hadn't taken a photo yet, luckily the other side remained intact. It was a nice refreshing meal after a long week of work. After work today Phd wanted to figure out how to walk from the uni. to the Central MTR station, so we went together on a 30 min walk. It was mostly downhill so it wasn't too tiring, and there's also a machine where you can save 2 dollars on the MTR by tapping your octopus card. So, by skipping on the bus trip to the MTR, in total I spent only HK$3.4 (less than 50 cents) to get home. The time it took to get home was about the same, 1 hour. I might try this in future, get some exercise in everyday!

Yummy fish!

Vlog Thursday

This week's videolog

Some pictures of the birthday cake baked by Ling of our caregroup (she's on the far right of the first photo) for Ed, the birthday 'boy' turning 30. These shots were kind of bad in terms of timing because someone else was taking photos too, I was kind of just taking candid shots. The candle was a sparkler! Too bad Ed blew the candle out before I got a photo.

Here's Ed blowing out the candle, his wife, Jo, is next to him and Ling is on the far right (not sure where her fiance is).

Yummy homemade chocolate cake getting cut. Yoona, on the right, is the co-host along with husband Charles.

A Burger and a Salad After a Long Day at Work

I'm glad that TPR is being so helpful to you and I'm glad that you've made the decision to come to Taiwan. We'll be closer and besides you'll be makin' that bacon. You've got plenty of time to prepare yourself physically and mentally.

I worked till a little before 8 today and decided to treat myself to a burger at the Japanese burger/coffee shop called Freshness Burger. I pass by it almost everyday to get the minibus home since it's right in front of the bus stop and I've seen several branches elsewhere, but I've never eaten there. I think the name put me off at first, I thought it sounded weird, but today I decided to give it a try. At first I was thinking of getting a regular beef patty hamburger but instead I decided to go more healthy and chose the mushroom burger instead. I got 15% off using my student card and snapped some shots while waiting for my burger.

This is their little ketchup and condiment stand. The spherical light says 'World Spice' and the bottom looks like a retro fridge.

The 'Yucha soda'. It's soda with honey citron mix at the bottom. My piano teacher once gave me honey citron tea mix, it's kind of like marmalade but it's good for making hot drinks, especially when you have a cold. It tasted pretty good as a soda.

Maybe next time I'll try the regular hamburger, apparently the beef is 'healthy hormone free 100% Australian'.

The salad and drink, looks awfully empty without the burger. I was too hungry so I ate the salad first while waiting for the burger.

The mushroom burger! It's literally a large mushroom the size of a meat patty in a burger. The onions were sauteed just right, it smelled really good and the onions were really soft. The mushroom was big and juicy, I hope it had enough proteins to substitute for the beef!

It's so hot and juicy that it steamed up my camera lens...

My stalkerish view of the bus stop.

Hope you enjoyed the burger as much as I did.

Back to food...

Back to my regular material. Today's lunch was 米线 with 水饺 and broccoli. It's supposed to be in Yunnan style and it's been one of the regular dishes at 美心 along with 四川 style spicy noodles. I think it's one of my most veggie filled meals lately.

My dinner looks a little sparse from this angle, but you know I'm a sucker for omelet rice. The chicken steak and tomato sauce wasn't bad either.

Just a few random thoughts as well, often on the MTR I see people playing all kinds of games on their DS, PSP, iPhone or other device. Before it used to be that the DS and PSP dominated the handhelds being played but lately the iPhone/iPod touch are starting to dominate. Sometimes it can be annoying when people are so focussed on the game that they lack awareness of their surroundings, playing as they walk or blocking doorways while they play. Gadget owners in Hong Kong generally fall into two types. The cheapo who uses old Nokia phones from the early years of mobile phones and those that change there phone every few months. I forget the exact figures, but an average person in Hong Kong will change their phone probably around once a year. Today I saw a person who probably falls in the cheapo category, he was using an old Palm PDA with black and white screen to play Bejewelled. I think he was playing the demo version as well since he kept restarting the game. I guess this disparity reflects the class gap in Hong Kong well, but somehow Hong Kong seems to chug along just fine. Crime is relatively minimal and despite the stressful nature of Hong Kong I think most people are generally happy.

I hope you get all of your questions answered about TPR, hopefully I can catch you in the morning.

I Love You

On pain of making a corny blog I titled the blog "I Love you". I don't have any food photos for you today since I didn't have anything particularly yummy. Instead I chose a few pics to post up before I slept.

Lookie, it's a heart I drew for you a while back using a red light and long exposure settings (15 seconds if I remember correct) to get the effect right. It took a few attempts but I liked how this one turned out best.

One of my favorite pics from the trip, makes me feel all warm inside.

Finally, a fun photo. You already know I like this one but I wanted to share again.

The end of this post is a little random but I was reminded by what my friend Vincent posted on Facebook, "Whatever He says to you, do it". He didn't quote where it's from, but it's from John 2:5, when Mary, mother of Jesus, tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. This Sunday, our guest speaker for our sermon, who once taught our Pastor in seminary, argued that this is the most wise and most important advice imparted by anyone, in the whole of history and the universe. I hope that this will hold true for both you and me. If you have time you can listen to the sermon --> here.

The sermon is on March 14th and is given by Ronnie Stevens titled "The Wedding Feast at Cana". I just realized that I can now also go back and watch the sermon I missed on Valentines day, I'll watch that tomorrow morning perhaps. I love you, I hope I can get some rest tomorrow and spend some time with you.

Lazy Post II

Lazy Vlog

Went swimming again today. The air was a little cold but the water was warm. Did the frogstyle again. Talk to you tomorrow.

Lazy post

Boo. Today's post is a lazy post, since I celebrated the end of the work week with a meaty gaming session. It's 3am, it's late and I should sleep soon. You get another videolog since you didn't get to see me much today...

Today's Youtube vlog

This post is kind of all over the place, but I've also discovered a new way to watch/listen to music on Youtube, it's a new function called the 'YouTube Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool'. It's kind of like a smart electronic DJ that will select the artist you search for and other related artists and songs and create a playlist. It's kind of like Pandora, except you get the music video and you can also directly modify your playlist. You can check it out at www.youtube.com/disco

Saw this one from the car blog I read...

Saw this when I got distracted uploading my videolog. I think we heard it in your car. I like the song. The video is also trippy. Listening to it on my headphones makes me happy, the sounds really come out clearly.

Short Videolog

The Game I've Been Playing Lately

This post, however unlikely it seems, is for you. I feel like videogames are sort of my arena and are my little world when I don't get to talk to you at night, so I thought I might share my little world with you.

You probably didn't know but there is a social network for games where you can play with friends. It's called Steam and it's very popular. Many of the computer game publishers publish their games on the network and you can buy and download them, instead of the traditional format of buying the games in-stores and on CD/DVDs. I haven't bought many games but one of the games that I've been playing lately is called Team Fortress 2, it focuses a lot on team work. There are two teams and usually the objective is to steal the enemy team's intelligence. The basic rules are that there are two bases, yours and the enemy's. The two team colors are red and blue so the bases are also colored accordingly, as are the characters. There are points where you can pick up packages to replace lost health and lost ammunition. After you consume these they are regenerated after a fixed period of time. The main goal is to collect the intelligence from the basement of the enemy base and return it to the basement of your base 3 times. Whichever team does this first wins. You get points for killing enemies, healing people, capturing the enemy intelligence and defending your intelligence from being captured. At the beginning of each game you are spawned in a 'safe area' where the enemy cannot enter and you can replenish your health and ammunition indefinitely. You can return to the safe area at any point. When you are 'killed' you are 'respawned' after a set period of time depending on the specific rules where you play (the details of the rules can be changed). Killing the enemy only has the advantage in that you slow them down slightly from capturing your intelligence and your team mates.

You can play as many characters:

a heavy weapons guy: he has a strong machine gun but he walks very slow. He also has a lot of health to compensate for his slowness. Russian nationality.

engineer: he builds stuff to help the team, these include automatic sentry guns, teleporters and resupply for ammunition and health. American nationality (midwest accent).

medic: he heals people. After healing people for a long time he can charge up an invulnerability ability, which he can employ to make the person he is healing invulnerable to enemy fire for a short period of time. This can be a great advantage when you need to storm the enemy base and get rid of many enemies or the engineer's sentry gun. German nationality.

spy: he can cloak to become invisible and he can destroy the engineers buildings, disguise as the enemy and backstab people (which instantly kills them, but only works when you sneak up from behind). Seems like the coolest character but people quickly start becoming paranoid and start shooting their own people because they think you're the spy. Once you get shot by the enemy your disguise is revealed. It's not easy being a spy. French nationality.

Scout: he runs really fast, he usually steals the intel but his firepower is weak. His main strategy is to hit and run to slowly wear down the enemy. American nationality (with a Boston accent)

pyro: shoots fire, is resistant to enemy flames. He's pretty fast on his feet and is good for close range attacks. You can check for spies using your flames, when an invisible spy gets lit on fire he become visible. Your flames will continue to damage the enemy until they are put out by themselves, until your enemy is submersed in water or when you are healed either my the medic, items or by an engineer's building. This guy wears a full flame retardant suit, no one has any idea what his nationality is because his voice is muffled.

soldier: shoots rockets. He can either be a close range or far range fighter. His rockets are great for dealing with sentry guns or heavys since they deal a lot of damage. American nationality.

demolitions: shoots mines that explode on his command and shoots grenades. Arguably the most overpowered class. Since it is hard to aim grenade they do a lot of damage, but a lot of good players have already mastered the art of shooting grenades so they can be deadly. Using mines he can also be a very tactical player. He is a black Scottish man.

sniper: he can shoot people from afar. If you hit people in the head, the payoff for the difficulty of the shot is, of course, that you incapacitate the player. Australian nationality.

You can also talk and communicate, I usually just type shortcuts that allow me to communicate quickly, I find it weird to speak on my mic with strangers. The game tries to foster team work and usually the team that works well together and communicates best will win. The game regularly updates every few months with new 'maps' (locations to fight) and weapons for each of the classes. Each update is free and you can play the game indefinitely. The game also has an 'achievement' system where you can earn achievements based on your performance. This makes the game more social since you can share the list of your achievements with friends.

You can find my website with my achievements here -->Clickity click

You can also see how many hours I've been playing, about 2 hours on average for a weekday. Although this is much less than what many players play on other games, say World of Warcraft, I'd probably want to spend a little less time in the game. Also, unlike World of Warcraft there is no monthly fee, so I won't spend a fortune playing this game.

Just wanted to share my little world with you. I hope you gained some insight to my gaming habits. If you clicked on the website you'll see that currently my favorite character is the heavy weapons guy (aka the heavy). Each class has a different nationality and everyone, except the pyro, has a little video exposing their charcter. My character is dumb witted but powerful guy who loves nothing but firing his gun, he even named his gun Sasha. He has a strong Russian accent. The game makers have an interesting sense of humor. You can find the character expose videos --> here.

Even though you might not relate to the game the videos are quite funny.

Photo Overload!

My noodle bowl in action! I actually didn't have this today, I took the photos earlier but didn't get the chance to share.

My lunch today, 烧肉饭. It's a little fatty but it's a good small portion. Got my meat, carb and veg (yes I know, I should eat more veg).

On one of my walks today I headed to the lotus pond, next to there was a little pool of koi. Unlike the poor koi in Hawaii these aren't overfed. I took advantage of a man feeding the fish to take a nice photo of them all gathered around the food. I know you don't really like fish, but aren't they pretty?

Last but not least, dinner time. I had 上海排骨担担面. It came with 菜肉包 which is lightly fried after being steamed. Yummy meal. It's not as spicy as it looks! The black stuff isn't soy sauce in case you're wondering, it's 辣酱 with 黑醋. I like to dip my 包 into it.