Chinese voodoo & a R2D2 bag from UNIQLO

8 Mar
2010

So I was talking to someone the other day, and realized that alot of people who read this (yeah the whole three of you) don’t actually live in Hong Kong and are quite surprised when I talk about, what I feel, are normal everyday occurrences. For example, I had this conversation back in December with a friend from Toronto:

me: Dude, there was another acid attack today
ColdSoup: Oh did you know..
ColdSoup: … wait, WHAT?
me: Yeah some guy threw acid off a roof into a crowd, again!
ColdSoup: Uhh wow. AGAIN!? I was just gonna tell you about how there was a shooting down the street from me, but … wow.
me: I miss shootings and stabbings. It sure is a whole lot less scary sounding.

So my point is, I’ll try to talk more about the randomness I see here in Hong Kong. Now I know… Hong Kong is not like Japan or Korea where they got some crazy stuff happening every other day, but Hong Kong can be interesting too!! I was down in Causeway Bay yesterday when I saw these huge crowds under this bridge so I went to check it out. Apparently it was a special day for something I only know how to say in Chinese. Its a form of voodoo I guess, and what happens is you write a name on this paper and then the lady will smack it to oblivion with a slipper, set it on fire and … yeah. Kind of crazy if you ask me, but hey, I don’t judge. Read the rest of this entry »

To: My future self. Why bother?

6 Mar
2010

You know whats sad? I walked into a bank today to deposit some money and walked out with an upgraded bank account and a new Visa card.

TheFuzzy : @cokematic Also, congratulations, you’re now marked as a prime target for telemarketeers.

That’s ok, only telemarketers call me on my cellphone. What is even more sad is this:

FutureMe is where you can write an email to yourself to be delivered at a later date. What’s wrong with the picture above, you ask? Its blank. And no, it’s not because I haven’t started writing (I’ve been staring at it for 30 minutes).  You see, I don’t really know where I see myself in 10 or 15 years time anymore. Why was this so much easier when I was a kid!? I think its partially due to the fact that I’ve always had a “plan” for myself and reality, being the bitch that it is, had other things in mind for me. Seeing how thing never go as planned anyway, I think I subconsciously tell myself “why bother?“.

For two hours I struggled with this. Then I played some Civ 4~ Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe I should start using the stairs

3 Mar
2010

Don’t you hate those awkward elevator moments?

Like when you are in a rush and you get into an elevator and you hit that close button. Then out of the corner of your eye (or maybe even blatantly staring), you catch someone running for the elevator but you let the door close anyways. And you think everything is fine, but suddenly, the door re-opens, and the person you tried to shut out gets in.

And you’re like “Yo man, I totally tried to open that door for you”

Or when you get to work in the morning and you get into an elevator, and there’s someone you know inside? If you have headphones on and they don’t, out of politeness, you take your headphones off even if you don’t say another word to each other for the rest of the ride up.

What if you both have headphones on? Do you take them off? Or wait for the other person to take theirs off first? Yesterday I took mine off, and when the other person didn’t take his off, I put mine back on.

God these posts are mundane.

Oh Ronny

2 Mar
2010

“I think both teams are winners, and hockey in general. Sometimes the best team in the tournament doesn’t win the gold medal.”
-Ron Wilson

Thanks Ron. You are a jackass, but you are OUR jackass <3

Edit: sorry, I was actually jsut using this post to test the problem I’ve been having with my feed not showing up in Google Buzz. At least I’ve got the problem figured out now.

Revenge is best served GOLD!!!

1 Mar
2010

Canada Wins!!! Surprisingly large turnout for the game this morning, I think anyone in HK who woke up at 4am for the Canada – USA game was Canadian~

After the game, I walked to work (it really sucked that I had to go to work after) in my Team Canada jersey and alot of people stared- Meh!

The cure for homesickness

28 Feb
2010

So I ran the Standard Chartered (half) marathon today, with a goal of finishing in 1.5 hours. Lets just say things didn’t go as planned and I ended up with a horrid time of 2 hours 9 minutes. I really don’t have any excuses, I just wasn’t prepared and I didn’t devote enough time to train (Getting only 2 hours of sleep the night before didn’t help my cause either). I told some people about how disappointed I was with my results and most of their answers were along the lines of  ”Its ok, you tried your best” etc. While I know its social convention for them to be the optimistic one and all, in the back of my mind I was thinking to myself, “That’s total BS man. Total BSSSSS”. I guess sometimes trying your best is just not good enough; this is one of those times. Anyway, the marathon is over, nothing I can do about my crappy time, I’m just going to have to train harder for the next one!! >:o

Ok, now that I got that off my chest, guess what I got last week?!!!
That’s right, a care package from home! I was feeling very homesick as of late; I’m almost a quarter century old and this was the first time I spent CNY away from my family, so it was a big deal for me. Plus all the ass kicking Canada’s been handing out at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics just makes me want to be there for it all.

Yes, those are cinnamon sticks, and yes, hot apple cider form Second Cup!! The DVD was something Kev sent to my home in Toronto like 8 months ago, and I finally got it (its got like Gunparade March and Midori no Hibi on it, it probably would of been faster for me just to torrent it. Oh well)!

And of course, the Team Canada jersey! I’ve been sleeping with it on since I got it. The gold medal game is on at 4:30am local time tomorrow (that’s in like 6 hours!) , so I’ll be going to bed now so that can get up time to catch the game down at my favourite Canadian bar before work. Isn’t funny how I’m getting more sleep for the Canada-USA than for my marathon? ….  :(

GO CANADA GO!

edit : OK so my favourite Canadian bar was already FULLY BOOKED!? It took me three phone calls before I could find a place with  table for 8 people. Jeez!! I’ve never had to make reservations at a bar before =__=

My apartment walls are sweating

27 Feb
2010

Its not really hot yet, but its bloody humid here in Hong Kong. Instead of watching my walls work up a sweat, I decided to put in abit of effort fixing up my blog, ’cause its an eyesore. I’ve been meaning to change it for a loong time now since I never really liked the old theme, but the slidey-pictures-header were kinda cool (yeah I’m the type of person who sells out to a gimmick. Sue me). Anyway, aside from the gimmicky header, everything else about it just pissed me off. White on black? No thanks. Sidebar on the left? Ugh.

Besides the theme change:

  1. I’ve added a twitter feed as well as a Google Buzz feed to the sidebars. I’m not so sure about the twitter, I may remove it later since my account is protected for a good reason. Ok I’m lying. It’s only protected to prevent spam followers, I’ve got nothing to hide … honest!
  2. I’ve enabled Pushubbub
  3. I’ve disabled comments on the blog <- Scratch that, I’ll just leave comments on. No-one comments here anyway lol.
  4. I’ve also disabled auto Facebook updates. Instead, I’m trying out this Post to Facebook plugin instead. Should give me more choices in terms of how the post shows up on Facebook, as well as let me omit posts from showing up there at all.  Honestly I’ve never been a fan of how posts show up as “Notes” on FB, no embeds and… yeah.

About my decision to disable comments on the blog? Well its not like people leave comments here anyway. Most of my replies come via twitter, Google Buzz and Facebook. I’m still trying to figure out a way to combine all these comments at one centralized source. Until then, I’ll probably leave comments here disabled. Hell, I would disable comments on Facebook too if it let me. They used to! I don’t know why they don’t anymore. *grumbles*

Enough ranting, I’ll probably make some other minor tweaks here and there. The Google Buzz widget is not functional enough for my tastes yet (doesn’t even let you clock on the Buzzes), but that’s ok, cause you should just be following me on Buzz instead. Other changes I’ll probably (sneakily) make within the next week month: add a flickr stream thingamabob and maybe get some site banners/headers up (although I kind of like the plain-ness of it all).

ps. The new theme may of killed some of the formatting for my old posts, but I’m not really going to bother with fixing them.
pps. Crap on a stick, strike-throughs don’t seem to be working at the moment.
ppps. Ok, running into some problems with the post to Facebook plug-in, it posts to Facebook properly, except it takes the text from my Google Buzz widget as the “preview” for the post, so I gotta delete it manually …. need to find a way around it. Or possibly a new plugin. But first, sleep.

Canada vs USA, twittered

23 Feb
2010


So much fail, I don’t even…

While this was not an elimination game, there were bragging right to be had (and an automatic quarter-finals berth, but that’s just the bonus). I probably don’t need to tell you this, but hockey in land of the red and white is serious business. While I couldn’t watch the game live, with the help of the #canusa hashtag on twitter, following the game wasn’t too difficult (it also provided for some good entertainment).

These are just some of my favourite tweets from #canusa …

pennachetti: Haha I’ve never seen my dog watch the tv until now
(multiple sources) CBC Announcers: “Sidney Crosby. The only thing Canada can put in the net.”

Final score : USA 5 – CANADA 3

marygazze: Canadians still talk about the 1972 series v. Russia. My Q. to Americans: will u talk about this game 38 years from now?

38 years from now, Americans might not remember this game, but we Canadians? Probably will. Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently my friendship has been outsourced to India …

17 Feb
2010

So I got this email today with the words “LOL no 647 613 (thanks Anni) numbers” and a (Toronto) phone number. I decided to call the number (long distance plan ftw) and it was sent to a recording message informing me that my friendship was outsourced to India.

Hilarity ensued.

What I learned from all this? Apparently if you send an email with the words “LOL” to me, I’ll probably call it, even if it’s long distance. In my defense, I’d probably trust her if my life depended on it.

On a completely unrelated note, the last parts of my computer should be arriving tomorrow (1TB WD Black Caviar RE3 x2 and my 24” LG monitor). I’m pretty stoked about that!

Ps. That number is, 647-476-2995. I have no idea if there is a charge for calling this number, I definitely hope not, but please call at your own discretion!

unorganized thoughts on Google Buzz

17 Feb
2010

My mind is a little unorganized right now, too many things going on at once (sitting at home and vegetating for a two days didn’t help much). Anyways some personal thoughts on Buzz:

Google buzz isn’t a Facebook replacement; It’s also not a Twitter replacement. It is a much improved version of Google Reader Shared Items (GRSI), with a better comment system and a whole lot less buggy (Don’t even get me started on how much I actually hated GRSI). Yeah, I actually like Google Buzz.

Likes:
Gmail integration
Comment notification (yeah I know alot of people whine about it, but you can easily set up a filter to have it bypass the inbox)
Realtime updates
Comments show up on GRSI for those who refuse to make the leap to Buzz

Dislikes:
I wish they would use the “compact” mode like how shared items show up in GRSI, that way I can scan though all these buzzes quickly.
How a buzz that has been recently commented get bumped to the top again. This should be optional/disabled (how the hell will I ever get through all these Buzzes. Are they even called Buzzes? Argh)
A “re-buzz” option would be nice too.
The sharing dilemma*
It would be nice if in the event that two (or more) people I follow posting the same thing on Buzz, it should be stacked and not show up as separate buzzes. (Not sure how well that would work out, actually…)

The Sharing Dilemma:
Prior to Google Buzz, anything I though worth sharing would be posted to Facebook and GRSI. If it was funny enough, then it would be posted to Twitter too.

After Google Buzz, well things got complicated. Witch such a large overlap,the decision is not as straightforward. I think I’ll go with posting things on Buzz and see how that works (although if its really good I guess I can still repost to FB and Twitter. I Kinda feel sorry for the people who are in the centre of the Venn Diagram though)

ps. It just occurred to me that Buzz would make a great metablogging platform. I hope this will reduce the amount of Twitter ranting I see (You know who you are! I mean there’s a 140 character limit on Twitter for a damn reason!!!)

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