New Phone: HTC Legend

I just realized how much Google has taken over my life when I got this phone.  I entered my Google and Facebook information so I could automatically get logged on.  All the Google products, Gmail, talk, calendar were automatically set up.  In the original wallpaper background I could instantly go through Facebook, and the calendar reminded me it was my payday tomorrow!  When I tried to add contacts it automatically went to my Google contacts.  Good thing I know where to find the information on how to wipe my info off the phone!  I've been reading about it on blogs, and it's a concern of mine if I hand off the phone sometime in the future.

Where'd my face go?:


Oh...there it is...


HTC's trademark 'chin'

Mexican Take Away for Dinner

My dad kindly brought back a burrito and 2 tacos for dinner.  Do not be fooled by the closeup shots!  The portions, unlike those that I'm used to back in Cali, were rather small.  The food was still pretty tasty though.  The new place was featured on local TV and one of the founders also posted an article in an online magazine. I thought the article was pretty interesting, it has the whole story and background behind the Taco place.  It was really yummy but after eating it I wasn't satisfied, since I was expecting a Cali sized burrito.  I took a break by going on a supermarket and department store run with my dad to get light bulbs and his breakfast.  I think all these Hong Kong places are ganging up on me to try to make me eat less.  I went to Mos Burger to get a Hokkaido ice cream.  It was $16 (US$2!) for a tiny little cup.  It was yummy, but like the burrito, I expected a larger portion.  Since it was a such a small portion though I ate it slower and tried to savor it.

I'm gonna be trying out a regular push up and sit up routine.  I tried looking up whether it's effective or not online and given my late hours at work I think it's a good regular exercise I can get done before bed.

Quick Canto Review

Feel free, to skip through since I do not have the tools or the time to edit all the 'ums' out ;)

Just Some Thoughts...

Today it was raining hard.  I don't know why but that brought the dragonflies out and they were flying everywhere.  I thought it was rather strange since once the dragonflies started flying around they started dying when the droplets hit them and they started to stick to the ground in puddles on the ground.  I might be thinking about it too much but it also reminds me of the people in the world who do not know God, who do not have direction in their lives and like the dragonflies, they are headed in the wrong direction of the rain rather than that of safety and shelter.  I guess it really struck me because dragonflies are also God's created beings, how can they survive out in the rain?  Seemingly some people are also created and destined to fail.  However, I remember what Jesus did for us at the cross, and I remember that we are not deserving of God's mercy. but that it is only through His grace that we can receive it through the belief in His son, our Lord Jesus.  Unlike the fate of the lost dragonflies, there are many Christians in the world who have God in their hearts and have therefore dedicated their lives those people who lost in the world without faith.  I am thankful for you and those people at Alpha who have helped to guide me to my faith.  I skipped out on care group today to come home to rest and eat with my parents, and I'm most likely going to skip out on worship that I was going to go to with high school friends this Friday and Saturday night.  I think care group is really great, it's a stopping point in the week where I can get back to the fundamentals and enjoy fellowship with fellow Christians.  I've missed going these past two weeks.  Hopefully this lung issue won't effect the upcoming weeks and months too much.

I've finally gotten to the good part in my book 'Bomb, Book and Compass', past all the nonsense of the life of the Chinese history writer from the 50's.  I think it's good to get a good picture of the man, even with his flaws with his issues of polygamy, because we all have our flaws.  But now that I've read past that I've gotten to the good chunk of the book, about how he dug up old Chinese scientific and cultural contributions that affect us even today.  At that time (during the second world war) conventional Western wisdom dictated that Chinese people were backwards in terms of scientific discoveries and knowledge and that most of the modern knowledge of the time originated from Western countries.  Most of us now know that this is wrong, and that due to many years of stagnation, the rich cultural and scientific past of China was unknown to the Western world.  I'll probably start talking more about these Chinese inventions and discoveries as they come along.

Clinical Observations and Photography Thoughts

As you may have noticed, I tried messaging you from the imaging clinic around 1:30am.  Thought it was interesting they computers there, probably catering for the business man who's always busy, although they'd probably be more likely to just their Blackberries.  Which makes me wonder, how's my boo been sleeping?  Hope your sleep schedule is back to normal after Saturday night.

A few observations from the doctor's waiting room.  I've noticed at my dermatologist and the lung doctor they like to keep newspaper clippings, often of news stories about themselves.  Had a quick look through, not all of them are of him of course, he had some clippings about SARS and the avian flu since I was looking at the clippings from that time period.  I thought putting Mr. Bean on the TV was a good idea at first since it provides comic relief (one of the patients was laughing out loud), until Mr. Bean's antics started bothering me so I had a quick look at the Time magazine.   To my surprise it was the latest issue, don't doctors usually leave old issues in their clinic?  I'm glad you called, it made me realize what time it was and it relieved me of the worry that you might stay up late waiting, hope you slept well.

Most of the digital photography that I did in the past was point and shoot, meaning I never really fiddled around with cameras since the past digicams I've used were are pretty simple.  The most I ever messed around on my older cameras was on 'long exposure', keeping the camera aperture open to take a photo for a long period of time.  I like making movement of light streaks come up on photos.  With my newest camera however I can play with even more things, like manually focusing on objects (adjusting the focus distance), adjusting the shutter time (the amount of time the light is allowed to reach the film or sensor in the camera), adjusting the aperture size (the hole that lets light into the camera) and adjusting the ISO (high ISOs are more sensitive to light, meaning better photos for fast moving objects or things at night, the cost of high ISO is a grainy image).  I thought it would be fun to review over these aspects of photo taking both for myself and for you.

Notice the difference between the two photos?
2f


8f


The focus distance is the same, meaning the camera is focused on the card decks in both pictures.  However, the photo on top was taken with an aperture of 2.0f and the bottom with aperture 8.0f.  You can see a difference in the background.  As I mentioned briefly above the aperture is the hole in the camera that lets light touch the film, or in the case of the digicam a digital sensor (either CCD or CMOS, but more about that later).  By using a bigger hole on top the light from the background becomes blurred and only the object in focus remains unblurred.  By using a smaller hole on the bottom even the light from the background comes through relatively unblurred.

A smaller f number means a bigger hole and a bigger f number means a smaller hole.  It's a little counterintuitive but I try to remember that in low lighting I need a lower f number and in brighter lighting I have the flexibility to also use a high f number in addition to the low f numbers.  When the hole is smaller (higher f) less light comes in, so to compensate you either have to make the film, or sensor, more sensitive by increasing the ISO or the time that the light comes in for (shutter time).  By using a higher f you can also make interesting effects on light.
2f

8f

  

Again the low f is on top and the high f is on the bottom.  Since the aperture is made up of 6 pieces covering the hole by making the aperture smaller as shown on the bottom the light becomes distorted to look like a 6 pointed star.  That's all for photography today, I'll continue to update tomorrow.
Publish Post
Tomato status report!  They're growing quite handsomely.

Google Maps Fun

I was just finding the location of the doctor's clinic for tomorrow when I decided to have some fun on Google street maps.  I knew they had the street view for some of the main roads but they even have the street view for the back entrance to HKU that I take in the morning.  I thought I might share it, it's a little road that leads to a pedestrian only entrance.  I take this way since there's a minibus that stops close by and the building that I work at is near this back entrance, shown in the second map as the Chong Yuet Ming Physics building.


View Larger Map


View Larger Map

The West Gate

View Larger Map

The East Gate

View Larger Map

As a continued update here are my tomato plants, growing happily.  You can see the little pot as well as the mossy pot to the right with more tomato plants that I started growing.  I wonder when I need to transplant them.  If you zoom in you can see that all 5 seeds in the little pot have started growing, and that two of the stalks are shorter than the others since they are late bloomers.  This flash photo turned out pretty well I think, not too bright.

Last Nights Dream and Funny Joke From this Sunday's Sermon

Just wanted to share a few thoughts unrelated to anything we talked about your night time and your morning time.    I guess I didn't get to share these thoughts because they were kind of random and had no reason to come up.  Last night, or probably to be more accurate this morning, I had a rather vivid dream.  I remember parts of the plot and parts of the locations, but not the people.  I think the cast of my dream was an ensemble of unsuspecting classmates from high school.  It was dark for the most part, I don't think we saw any daylight.  The locales seemed like the countryside of Hong Kong.  For most of the time I was preparing for this huge diving expedition.  I don't think I've told you but when I was younger I thought that the deep sea would be scary.  This might have been because of one of the adventure series of books that I liked to read, or the scary creatures that lived in the dark, or the immense pressure that was in the deep sea.  It was strange that I would dream about deep sea diving since this would be one of my biggest fears, instead I treated the trip as a fun and liberating one. For some reason the deep sea was bright and clear and I could sea everything.  I could breathe without a water supply, and so could my two companions.  We dived near Hong Kong I guess, although we did take a boat ride that took us further off the shores.  We were on some kind of mission, although from this point on it is a little hazy.  By the time I woke up it was 11.  I think I found it especially hard to wake up since the dream seemed so real so I slept in till 12.  I think that was easily one of the strangest, most enjoyable and most vivid dreams I've had in a long time.

At church the pastor was commenting on how words are often complicated and easy to misunderstand, and how that affected the word 'deliverance' in Philippians 1:19, since the translation from Greek could be better interpreted as 'salvation' (can discuss more later if you want :)   ).  So he made a joke about how it is often easy to be misunderstood when speaking other languages and he made an anecdote about two separate events of miscommunication when he was a missionary in China.  One time he was on a tour at the forbidden city and the tour guide made a mistake by describing a location where the emperor liked to come with cucumbers, she meant to say concubines.  On another occasion he introduced his wife as his 茄子 instead of his 妻子.  I think it's funny because I heard someone comment that pastors are often afraid that people will remember their jokes during their sermons, but not the message.  I'm thankful that I remember some of his message too!  I've been thinking about setting up a system where I write my notes on the service bulletin and then coming home to transcribe it onto a master set of notes on my computer...

To round off my thoughts I'd like to share that my butt muscle aches from squash.  Why, why do I always forget the butt muscle?  Next time I'll need to remind myself to stretch it well first.  Actually, a lot of my other muscles are aching, but not as badly because I stretched them.

Squash and Other Shenanigans

Boo, I had a good time at squash today.  I was a little rusty at first but as I got more into it I had more fun.  I think my skill level was moderate compared to the others, lost out to the more advanced players and won over the beginners.  I think it was good exercise though, manage to get a lot of rounds in.  Hopefully I stretched enough!  I even talked to someone afterwards who wanted to make it regular club that would meet once a month or so, I should e-mail him back.  The chap's name was Craig, it was interesting since he was from South Africa, like one of the people from my care group.  They also happened to go to the same university.  I also met someone from Chula Vista, San Diego.  All in all it was a fun time, hopefully I can get some more squash in the near future and learn from the advanced players!  I still have a long way to go in terms of most of the basics: fitness level, strokes and most importantly footwork.

After squash I went out to peep at shoes at the Adidas originals store.  I don't know if it was the music or what but I felt kinda dirty looking at the shoes with a bunch of other guys in the store, we all over the shoes, examining them and scrutinizing them.  Thankfully the changed the track from the booty rap song to some more tasteful stuff.  Found the shoe I was looking for, the Nizza Zip Hi.   Only saw one color, black fabric with white rubber, but that was the only one I was really interested in anyway.  Costs HK$599 (77US), lower than expected especially since some other shoes were going for closer to $1000.  I didn't try them on yet but I guess if really want them I know where to get them, although I'm having reservations since I have the same style of shoe but without the high ankle and it kind of pinches my feet at my little toes.

They're releasing the Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D in the theaters here, are they doing that in the states too? They're really milking this new 3D craze and the profits they make from the pricier tickets.

I have not forgotten the three little monsters!  Once I figure out what color I want for them I'll finish them off.  Here they are protecting my computer screen from unwanted visitors.



Also here's the growing fourth plant, you can see it a little in the background. I'll take more photos of all the other plants in the big pot too when it's brighter.



Today I saw a little gachapon I couldn't resist. It was a little DIY 'puzzle' of various Marvel superhero characters. The one I got was the hulk, it was a lot of fun. Plus it was cheap so I don't have to worry if I lose the keychain. I thought that it was funny that my camera focused on the face of the little cartoon character in the picture of the second photo 'cos it though it was a real face.

It's Friday night, I'm tired.  I nearly fell asleep at my computer just now.  I came home at 10:30pm and I should get started on my sleep.  When I take the minibus from school to the MTR station I almost always pass by Central and Lan Kwai Fong.  I didn't take you when you we were here, but in Lan Kwai there's a lot of bars and clubs.  People were already drunk at around 10 when I passed by, makes sense since it's a Friday night.  Usually when I pass by it's around 6-8ish so at that time people are usually much more sober since they're only started drinking.  I usually pass by the gaslamp and that Starbucks I blogged about yesterday too, they're on the same road the minibus takes.  If it wasn't for my dad I'd never have noticed there were gas lamps, and if it wasn't for my classmate I wouldn't have known there was a special Starbucks there.  My dermatologist happens to be on the same street as the gas lamp and the Starbucks.  I noticed the building before too, it has a weird name, Club Lusitano, only a few of the upper floors belong to the club and the rest of the building is rented out to offices or private doctors.  As you know, my psychiatrist is also in Central, as was my former orthodontist.  A lot of the office building spaces get rented out to Doctors in the Central district.  This was actually how my mom found my psychiatrist, by looking through the directory listings of an office building predominantly rented out to doctors.  I now know they have public listings of various certified doctors on the internet too, which is much more convenient.

Finished work around 9 and had a fatty dinner.  Walked around and took some pics.  I'm too tired to blog about Thailand's situation right now but I'll get back to that next time.

Cris cut fries with plenty of ketchup :D.




Pork burger mmmm.


Caramel custard for dessert,one of my childhood favs.


The little red dress.


Random sleeping couple...I wonder why they're sleeping here!  I wonder if anyone woke them up before the mall closed...


Don't know how I didn't get to post this.  Sushi dinner!  A good reason to eat in.

Special Retro Style Starbucks

Went to Starbucks today to meet up to organize work for my project that's coming up next month.  We actually didn't get to sit in the retro area since a couple were taking what looked like wedding photos.  The decor of the retro area of the Starbucks  is similar to that of old Hong Kong.  It is very meticulous and I've only seen such places in movies or other retro styled places, such as Shanghai Tang, it is very rare to find a genuine old style restaurant in Hong Kong anymore with the rapid turnover of places due to competitive renting and leasing of retail spaces.

The couple with the photography crew.  I tried to be discreet so I didn't get very good closeup shots.


More behind the scenes.


There's a Cuban coin there in the tip jar, spot it?




Old style windows, tables and seats.  You still find these sorts of seats common, but they too are fast disappearing.




This display is cute, it's a collage of the rear ends of Hong Kong vehicles.  The people's legs swing from side to side.


Old style TV and fan and little cupboard.  Reminds me of grandma's place, except she recently got a new TV, and her fan is new too.


Old style Chinese calendar, still commonly used though.


They still do this too, hand written menus.


The style of tiling used is quite rare now too.  I think there's a Chinese opera poster in the background.  Even the store room sign uses retro type typography.


Miscellaneous house hold goods.  The collaboration was between Goods Of Desire (G.O.D.) and Starbucks.   The only reference to G.O.D. efforts is in this shot, can you spot it?


More random stuff, I like the toy astronaut/robot.


More menus, didn't take a photo of the actual Starbucks counter but they have the normal style menu there.


Back to reality *phew*, we were sitting here discussing our project for a mock marketing proposal for a fictional Alzheimer's drug.

My Tomato Plant is Growing!

See those three little leaves sticking out?  I thought the day would never come.  I'm grateful for the amount of sunshine we've been getting lately, but not the heat that it comes with.  Hopefully it will expedite the growth of my tomato plants though!



My progress with the 3 monsters.  I decided to paint ears/horns today, didn't know what to do for the robot though.  I finished coloring the body of the cyclops octopus.  I aimed for an octopus kind of purple shade, it ended up really dary though.  I like how the ride horns on the horny cyclops turned out.

我今天回家得很晚，十点才回家。在上出租汽车的时候我听过一个电台广播节目，我觉得很有意思因为有一个人说普通话，一个人说广东话 (reminds me of when one of the small bosses talks to one of the researchers, he always talks in Cantonese whereas the researcher always talks in Mandarin)。Oh well, had fun swimming again with my dad today, it feels good to exert myself, maybe I should try to time my laps as an incentive to improve.

Japanese Food and other Random Saturday Happenings

Just a quick update, I know I haven't blogged a while, been coming back late or been busy with studying for the midterm.

Just some random photos from today, I didn't mention it earlier but for dinner I had dinner with friends at a really authentic Japanese place.  I mentioned that you were coming next month, so we'll probably have another dinner gathering when you come :).

First though, some random shots of what I'm guessing is a photography class.  There weren't only guys, there were some ladies taking photos too so I wasn't as creeped out as I would have been if it was all guys.  The model was OK looking I guess, the lighting wasn't great today though since it was foggy.  Taking photos of photographers is one of my favorite subjects, since it's not often that you see the other side of the camera.








Cats are another favorite photography object of mine.  They're common in an area I used to volunteer one summer back in High School so I took photos of them when I could.  They like to hide in odd places, which makes for interesting photography.  This was the cat at the Japanese restaurant.


This one's looking up to the top of the shelf.  It eventually gathered the guts to climb all the way up the shelf by hanging onto the fabric with it's claws.


Gyoza.  Pretty yummy, I thought it was interesting how they left the crispy layer intact.



We also had a range of other stuff, we had grilled onigiri, where the rice started to become brown and hot.  Probably a complete opposite of what you like, but I thought it was interesting.   Also had chicken gristle, fried chicken skin, beef tongue, chicken liver, quail eggs, sushi, chicken wings and sukiyaki.

Here pictured is tempura and eel rice.

My Care Package!

Thanks for the care package boo!  I've been looking for a distraction from my video games, my new painting project should keep me occupied after work :).  I've started working on the eyes first today, I'll try to decide what colors to do next.  I had fun wetting the soil and seeing it expand and planting the tomato seeds too, I haven't done any handicraft or gardening work in a while.  I might have been a little too eager, planting the seeds right away, since the sun isn't shining as bright as it would be later in the Spring, but I'm sure they'll grow fine and I have the backup seeds just in case :).  I'll keep the plants plenty of company, it's on the window sill next to wear I sit.  I'll be sure to use the Peter Rabbit notes too, I put the sticky notes on my table the magnet memo on the bridge.  I'm sure they'll remind me to be a good boy and return home early.

Thanks for the letter too, it smells nice :).  I like Luke 11:9, as it reminds me that it was Jesus who came knocking on my door first so that I would be able to seek Him.



I'll get to munching on these soon :D.  I got home a little late so I wanted to save eating them till breakfast time.  They look good!  I think they should still be fresh since you wrapped them up in the box so well :).


Rising cake of soil.




Dotting the eyes.  Decided to go for bright bold colors for the eyes.


I wanted greens eyes for the robot.


The end product for today.  I'll update the three baby monsters regularly, I want to take my time on them :).