8 Things You Don't Know About Me

I've been tagged to post a list of 8 things you don't know about me. Here goes:

1. I repeated kindergarten. Yep, that's right, I failed a class that consisted mostly of coloring and trying not to wet your pants.
2. For a brief time in the 80's I had the back of my hair grown out and permed...and no, I wasn't in an 80's pop band.
3. I have owned a pair of "Michael Jackson" parachute pants with zippers all over them.
4. I have never had a broken bone.
5. For the longest time, I thought spinning classes consisted of people spinning around...wouldn't that make them dizzy?
   
6. I have never read any of the Harry Potter books nor seen any of the movies. I know, I know...I'm missing out, so sue me
7. I used to have the entire script to "It's Christmas Time Charlie Brown" and "The Grinch that Stole Christmas" memorized. I wholly blame my obsessive little sister over that. She probably still has it memorized.
8. I wish I had an eyesight problem, so I'd have an excuse to wear glasses. I think they look good on me.
   

The Modern Equivalent of Posting on the Refrigerator

"Hi Beth,

Comments on your oral exam - speech on 10 July 2007:

Beth has demonstrated persistence and great effort in learning Putonghua.
Beth is very interested in learning Chinese culture and pratice the language
when she travelling to China. She is a keen learner and try very best to
attend the class, she also actively participate class activities. Her oral
exam was excellent in organizing thoughts/ideas and put them into menaingful
Chinese expression. She exceeded my expectaion as an English speaker at this
level. Overall, she is very hardworking and committed student. I really
appeciate her effort and learning attitude.

Warm regards"

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yes, yesterday was my birthday.  I am 29 now and have begun the dreaded countown to 30.  How can I be almost that old?  You know how in 1999 all those know-it-alls loved to state that the millenium doesn't start until 2001, not 2000?  Well, I'm going to claim that I'm not in my thirties until I'm 31.  30 will be my "transitional year."  No longer a young punk, not quite a mature adult.

Beth did a great job helping me feel special on my day.  Sorry, we don't have any pictures to share.  We forgot to bring the camera along on our celebrations.  We both worked yesterday and went out to Outback Steakhouse for dinner.  Despite the fact that we knew there were several Outback's in Hong Kong, we have never been to one here, so that made it a more special treat.  We gorged ourselves with Aussie Cheese fries, a Bloomin' Onion, a 14oz steak (me) and caeser salad (beth) and of course several tropical drinks.  Somehow, we managed to squeeze ourselves out of the booth and roll towards a taxi to get home.  I say, it's not your birthday unless you eat 'till it hurts!

We get home to discover that Beth had come home in the middle of the day to bring in birthday balloons, Godiva truffles, champagne and other decorations.  She outdid me once again!

For my present, my lovely wife bought me a nice watch from amazon.com  It's a solar-powered watch that you can use scuba diving.  Water resistant to 200 meters and has a depth sensor to record how deep under water you are.  I don't have it yet, because we had it shipped to my parent's house.  We'll pick it up when we visit washington in a couple of weeks.

Thanks Beth!

No fireworks here

No, we don't get off work for the 4th of July in Hong Kong. I'd imagine we'll get this as soon as Chinese-americans get a week off for Chinese New Year!

But, most importantly...Happy Birthday, Bethany! :)

If you need to bail me out of jail, I'll be the one with the blood soaked umbrella

Be forewarned, this is the time of year that I start to get pissy. If it's not the humidity drenching you in sweat in a too-crowded, poorly ventilated elevator....before you've even left your apartment....then it's pouring down rain every where you go.

Lately it's the rain that's the culprit. In my best effort to survive the elements, I have a large golf umbrella that I use when I think it's going to rain. A regular umbrella is an absolute joke here...it does no good. Even the golf umbrella isn't as effective as you'd think. For one, rain rarely falls straight down...it is usually accompanied by wind which blows it every which way. Secondly, walking with an oversized umbrella in Hong Kong is like driving a semi on a sidewalk. It's too crowded with other umbrella users, forcing one of us to raise or lower our umbrella to avoid collision; trying not to hit it against the ubiquitous low-hanging signs and ever-present bamboo scaffolding.

What the umbrella does do, however, is a good job of mimicking a sword or a baseball bat...that is, when I'm not using it in a feeble attempt to keep rain off. As I struggle through the streets, fighting for a taxi or trying to get to the gym on my lunch break I have to fight off the urge to whack people with my umbrella. And I mean whack in the Soprano's sense of the word, not just a light slap on the tush. And I'm not just talking about the old, slow people whom you have to navigate around (who always insist on walking side by side and taking up more room). No, I'm talking about fellow pedestrians, likely as frustrated as I am. What's their great crime?

Existing.

I have but one request, don't just die on the street...that would certainly cause more of a stir...and more traffic. Perhaps even lasting until my commute home...doubling the length of my taxi trip. No, no....if you want to do me a favor my departing this earth, you can fall off of the next ferry you happen to be on. Don't make a special trip to do so...that will only add to the ferry wait. And make sure no one sees you...the last thing I need is a search & rescue team jamming things up further.

Really...I'm not a bad person. I view all human life as precious...even those who seem most unlovable. And I have no problem reconciling that high-minded value with my morning commute, murderous tendencies...perfectly rational in my book.

They should really have a warning label on these umbrellas.

Eye in the Sky

Beth and I saw our first Hong Kong movie yesterday.  We saw "Eye in the Sky" (cantonese, with english subtitiles) which was filmed entirely in Hong Kong, most of it on the island in places we are regularly around.  As we've mentioned before, we often see movies being filmed here, so we were interested in seeing the end result of one of them.  On one of our first days out after arriving in HK, we witnessed a jewlery store robbery, which turned out to be a filming of a movie.  Beth wrote about it here.  About a month later, we also happened upon another movie being filmed.  Well...it turns out that these were both scenes from Eye in the Sky!  What's interesting, is that when both these scenes were being filmed, they appeared to be from a fairly low-budget, small film.  The crew was fairly small, the roads generally weren't closed off, etc.  Eye in the Sky was a fairly well produced movie and got a fair amount of publicity in HK.  I don't think it will be coming soon to a theatre near you or win an Oscar, but it was entertaining.  If you want to get a good picture of HK and get the chance to see it, I do recommend it.

What's it actually about?  Good question!  It's about the "Survelience Unit" (i don't know if this actually exists) whose job it is to track and follow suspected criminals.  They utilize a network of CCTV feeds, fancy spy equipment and good old fashioned stalking.  They are the people who are just hanging around on the streets: young kids, a beggar, a business man...all covertly operating as spys on the street.

Warning...may not be suitable for all viewers

Believe it or not, I haven't seen Passion of the Christ, yet. I picked up a VCD copy at the mall here in KL this evening. Very interesting warning label, wouldn't you say?:


When The Passion opened in theaters, the government only allowed it to be viewed by Christians. Tickets could only be purchased through churches.

Interesting article...

to read while in Malaysia. In case you haven't read Beth's blog, I have been going to Malaysia a lot lately for business. While I knew it was a Muslim country (meaning that Islam is the official religion), I also heard that there was a fair amount of religious tolerance. I guess that tolerance only exists if you're the 'right' ethnicity.

Here's a link to the article:

"Malaysia rejects bid for Christian convert to remove Islam ID tag

Ian MacKinnon, south-east Asia correspondent
Thursday May 31, 2007
The Guardian

The highest court in Malaysia yesterday rejected a Muslim-born woman's appeal to be recognised as a Christian, ending a six-year legal battle that will heighten concerns over discrimination of the country's religious minorities.

Lina Joy, 42, had fought the decisions of Malaysia's lower courts in an effort to have the word "Islam" removed from her identity card, arguing that the constitution guaranteed her religious freedom.

But the panel of three judges decided, in a majority verdict, that it had no power to intervene in cases of apostasy. These cases fall under the jurisdiction of Malaysia's Sharia courts, which run in tandem with the country's civil courts.

However, it has never been made clear which branch of the court takes precedence. The Malaysian constitution guarantees freedom of worship, but ethnic Malays must be Muslim by law. "She cannot simply, at her own whim, enter or leave her religion," Judge Ahmad Fairuz said during yesterday's ruling. "She must follow rules."

But Judge Richard Malanjum, the only non-Muslim on the panel, said it was "unreasonable" to ask Ms Joy to turn to the Sharia court as she could face criminal prosecution because abandoning Islam is punishable by a fine or jail. Critics of the verdict expressed dismay and said it failed to uphold the legal rights of Malaysians.

Two-hundred Muslim protesters who gathered in a prayer vigil outside the court yesterday greeted the verdict with cries of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great).

Islam is the official religion in Malaysia, where 60% of the country's 27 million people are ethnic Malay.

The woman, born Azlina Jailani, started attending church in 1990 and was baptised eight years later. She was given permission to change her name, but "Islam" remained as her religion on her identity card."

This is too funny!

Vertigo Remixed

Scuba Diving

Although, Beth did a great job writing about it here and here, I thought I'd write a bit about our scuba adventure.

The first thing to know: it was fun.  The second thing to know: it wasn't easy.  The easiest part of the whole thing was probably being underwater; everything else was difficult.

The hard part starts with getting out to the dive site.  The Great Barrier Reef isn't exactly just off the shore.  I think we were a bit spoiled by snorkeling in Hanauma Bay in Hawaii:


To get to our dive site, we had to take a hour and a half boat ride in pretty choppy waters.  This pretty much guarenteed seasickness by most on the boat.  Earlier in the week, we went on a similar trip, this time to snorkel, not to dive.  Nearly everyone on the boat hurled at some point.  Some got so sick that they didn't even go out in the water to dive or snorkel!  I held off puking on the ride out to the reef.  However, after enjoying my first snorkeling session, I came back to the ladder on the boat, removing my snorkel before I was safely out of the water (such a rookie mistake); the choppy water delivered me a mouthful of sea water.  Added to my already queay stomach, this was too much.  I ralfed like 5 times right there on the back of the boat...lovely.

So, by the time it came to our scuba dives, we both had a bit better of a sea stomach...but not by much.  The other difficult part was being in the water (at the surface) with the scuba gear on.  
As mentioned, the water was pretty choppy, so we were bobbing around quite a bit (adding to the nausea); trying to listen to our instructor's shouts as to which way to swim to, when to begin our descent, trying to make sure I stayed with my buddy, Beth, who looks eerily similar to everyone else in full gear!

The last difficult part (for me) was the actual descent.  On the first day of our dive adventure, I didn't really have any problems descending.  However, on the second day, I had problems staying underwater.  Confused?  Allow me to explain.  A critical component of scuba diving is maintaining proper buyouancy.  You wear weights around your weights to compensate for the fact that your body does not naturally sink in water (especially if you have a little extra fat on your body, as I do!)  Plus, you have strapped on your back, a big hurkin' tank filled with air.  I don't think you have to play David Letterman's "Will it Float?" in order to figure out that that will keep you at the surface unless you add some weight!

So, on the second day, I had as many weights on me as the previous day.  We begin our descent down the descent line that is tied to the boat down to the bottom of the dive site.  This is difficult to hold onto as the rocking boat keeps tugging it up and down.  When we near the bottom, our instructor has us let go and swim the rest of the way down.  For some reason I start floating up to the top!  I try swimming downward, but it's no use and I just keep floating up to the surface!  This is generally not a good thing, as you are supposed to ascend at a slow rate, due to the nitrogen you've absorbed into your body through breathing the compressed air.  The next day I increased the weight on my belt and that helped a bit, but I still had some problems controlling my buyouancy, though.

The other difficult part about getting scuba certifed, is that you have to perform a number of skills underwater (we were 18 metres under).  You have to let your regulator (the thing that allows you to breath) out of your mouth, drop to your side, and then find it again and place it back in your mouth.  All without accidently breathing in any water. 

You have to remove your mask for 30 seconds and replace it, and clear the water out from your mask.  You do this by blowing air through your nose while tilting your head up, allowing the water to be blown out of the bottom of your mask.

Also occasionaly difficult is the fact that descending underwater puts great pressure on your ears.  You know how your ears plug up while ascending and descending in a plane?  The effect is much, much greater underwater.  You begin to feel pressure in just a few feet underwater.  You have to "equalize" your ears to reduce the pressure.  This is done by plugging your nose and trying to blow through your nose, forcing air through your ears.  You have to do this every couple of feet as you descend and as you ascend.

So, it's lots of work...but, was it worth it?  Absolutely!  It is lots of fun being underwater and floating around, seeing the fishes and the coral.  I highly recommend it!  I just wish that I could dive off a dock somewhere and not have to take the vomit comet out to sea next time!

How Cute is She?

Let me count the ways....


Happy Birthday Bethe! :)

Chinese New Year

Even though it's been quite a while since CNY, and some of you may have seen these pics already on our photobucket, I thought I'd blog a bit about it here. I've been a neglectful blogger lately, so I'm trying to make up for lost time!

So, what's there to say about Chinese New Year (or CNY as "those in the know" call it)? In many ways it was a bit anticlimatic, things really slow down during CNY and a lot of people leave HK. They say that during CNY, the world's biggest mass migration takes place, because Chinese from all over the world return home to mainland China to be with family. Even still, there were still some interesting things to see.

These are all over the city during CNY. I think there tangerine trees. They line the streets and people purchase them for their homes. I don't exactly know the cultural significance of this, but I think it has to do with showing that you are prosperous. Prosperity is very important to the Chinese. It's also possible that the word for tangerine rhymes with something that is lucky. That's the case with fish, which they eat a lot during CNY. Words that rhyme or sound like good or bad words is very significant to the Chinese. For example the word for "four", which is "sap" rhymes with the word for death. For that reason buildings don't have a 4th floor, 14th floor, 24th floor, etc...


You see a lot of these as well...the tree with red envelopes, not the cute girl in front of it! Red envelopes (with money inside) are given to single people and children from married people as well as from bosses to employees.



Don't have much to say abou this...the stuff is red, which is a common CNY color


Red lanterns, common to see all year, but more so during CNY


During Christmas and CNY many of the buildings aligning both sides of the harbor are decorated with festive lights, much like houses are decorated during Christmas....cool, huh?


Okay...this isn't CNY related, but we did see it during CNY. Every night at 8pm buildings along the harbor on HK island participate in "A Symphony of Lights"
Basically, a laser show, set to music that is piped into various hotel bars, restaurants and even along the waterfront. It doesn't get any cooler than this! This picture doesn't even do it justice...there's a lot more lasers and other light affects that stretch along the harbor.

Diving into it!

Beth and I are going on holiday to Australia next month!  We decided to take advantage of the Easter and Ching Ming Festival holidays running together this year, giving us a 5 day weekend.  IN total our 9 day vacation will only 'cost' us 4 vacation days which is a plus.  Originally we'd thought about heading to Sydney, Hunter Wine Valley and North Queensland, but after going through the options it was clear what we really wanted was more than a few days on the beach.  Even though Sydney is something to see, sometimes time away from the big cities is most preferred.  Specifically, we'll be going to Cairns, the most common jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef.  I think Beth mentioned in an earlier blog post, how we went snorkeling in Hawaii and had a great time.  We loved the idea of going snorkeling at the reef, as we're told there are lots of unique creatures to see that only live in that area.

In thinking about how visiting the reef may be a once in a lifetime opportunity, we decided to take our experience to the next level and try scuba diving!  In order to be fully prepared and not have to spend any holiday time in a classroom, we took a scuba course this past weekend which involved coursework, tests and scuba dives in a swimming pool only 3 metres deep.

Scuba diving it turns out is much more complex and a bit more stressful than we probably thought, but it is also lots of fun! In the middle of our first dive, I remember wondering whether I was going to be able to handle this for real once in open water.  I had trouble - a few times t ook water into my mouth when removing and reinserting my regulator (breathing device); I had to come up to the top to remove excess water.  However, by the end of the day, I felt like a natural and am looking forward to diving in the open water in Cairns! Hopefully, we'll find a way to get a water proof camera down there to take pictures!

Honestly, scuba diving isn't something I ever thought I would be interested in, but can totally see this being something we get into and look to do when we go on holiday.  Apparently there are lots of good places to dive in Southeast Asia.  One exception to that is Hong Kong -- not too many places with good visibility here due to the pollution, I'm sure.

We'll keep you posted on our adventures!

Is Asia's bad air stirring storms in West?

Sorry about this! For the record, the pollution in Hong Kong mostly comes from mainland Chinese factory...and we're as peeved about it as anyone. Not only does it ruin our great view (#1 skyline in the world!), it keeps us sick! Both Beth and I have had more colds this winter than ever in our lives...one right after the other!

We'll do our best to keep the pollution down!

Valentine's Day

For my love, my one, my only: Thanks for a great Valentine's day, but more importantly for making every day with you both a joy and an adventure!

I love you!!

My Job

Yes, as several of you have pointed out, I have yet to tell you about my new job. This is mostly due to the fact that I don't have as much free time available thanks to...that's right, the new job...

I've had this job for over 2 months now. It's for a small IT company, located in Central, Hong Kong. It's basically a project management position, with the work changing as new projects come up. For the first 6 weeks I was working out of the Hong Kong airport. Now I am gearing up ( i.e. doing lots of reading and research) for another project that should in gear by the time we get back from our vacation in Hawaii.

The project at the airport was to install over a hundred check-in workstations in a new terminal. Due to many delays, this part never actually happened by the time my part of the project came to an end. However, I did get to do the following:

• Installed servers, switches, kvm's into 2 server rooms. This involved the frustrating and sometimes painful job of reconfiguring the racks to fit equipment of various sizes. If you've ever worked with caged nuts, you know what I mean. It's basically like putting together Ikea furniture in hell.
• Helped to prepare and image over 100 workstations, involving installing over 100 pci cards.
• Moved heavy equipment back and forth and back and forth again...to different areas of the airport as well as the server rooms in the new terminal, which was still a construction site, by the way.
• I had the pleasure of having to coordinate deliveries and work done by contractors...both of whom usually spoke very little english and didn't have a good sense of time management/time estimation.

The new project I'm gearing up for will be configuration and installation of a new POS software system for a retailer in Malaysia. It's fun to involved in ERP/SCM systems again...should be a good project!

Happy New Year!

For New Year's Eve, Beth & I celebrated at Hong Kong Disneyland. The park is definitely smaller than the US one, but we had fun anyways. We rode Space Mountain twice as well as a couple of other fun rides. You can view are pictures here.

Consider this a Public Service Announcement:

And, in case you're wondering how I made this post...google is fairing pretty well during this outage, don't know how they do it, perhaps they have distributed servers around the globe...although, anything we can access is at glacially slow speeds. I feel like it's 1992 and I'm on dial-up with my 9600baud modem!

So, google products (gmail, google, blogger) work as does skype I believe...and, of course anything hosted in HK, such as: thestandard.com.hk, from which I copied this story:


Earthquake pulls plug on local businesses

JonathanChengandagencies

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Hong Kong struggled to cope Wednesday without access to large swaths of the Internet and the regional phone network, fearing the implications of a telecommunications slowdown that could drag on for weeks.

The tie-up, triggered by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake late Tuesday night off the southeast coast of Taiwan, sent ripple effects through the heavily wired and technology-reliant territory.

Financial traders worked without up-to-date stock prices and travelers were unable to call home, while ordinary Internet users were left without the staples of modern life, like access to Google and Yahoo.

Leng Tai-feng, president of international business for Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest phone operator, said two of its undersea cables were cut, with repairs likely to take two to three weeks.

Crews fixing the cables would have to pull the cables up and transfer them to a ship for repair, the company said, while Lin Jen-hung, Chunghwa's vice general manager, added: "Quality will improve day by day."

Voice calls to the United States were down to 40 percent of normal capacity in Taiwan, while Singapore Telecommunications, the largest phone company in Southeast Asia, reported a slowdown in Internet traffic in its area.

PCCW, whose local telecom services rely heavily on those damaged cables, warned users to expect "congestion over the next several days."

PCCW said the damage had slashed data capacity in half, while an upsurge in usage of Internet sites in the region added to the congestion problem.

"We are in the process of diverting the data and are monitoring the restoration of the cables," the company said.

Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong also issued a brief statement Wednesday, saying it had contacted and followed up with the suppliers of the undersea cables.

"Immediate actions have also been taken to provide limited telecommunications service to affected areas," the statement read.

SmarTone-Vodafone, the mobile service provider, sent a message to its Hong Kong users in the afternoon, promising service would be back to normal as soon as possible.

Internet access in Beijing was reported to be slow.

But officials there declined to give further details.

Vinh Tran, a spokeswoman for HSBC, said that there was no access for its online banking service in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland.

Both the Hong Kong stock exchange and the Securities and Futures Commission reported no disruptions to operations.

Some telecom companies were working Wednesday to reroute their service by other channels, including through Australia, the Indian Ocean or by satellite.

Meanwhile, Ng Nam, director of the computer center at Hong Kong University, said service may not reach normal standards as those cables are not accustomed to handling so much traffic.

The long-distance telephone service was cut off from Hong Kong to 19 places, including the United States, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand.

Experts were hesitant Wednesday to attach a price tag on the shutdown, but warned that delays could persist for some time.

"A lot of people are definitely going to be seriously affected," said Gary Chan Sheung-han, a professor of computer science and engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Those people included traders like David Leong of First State Investments in Singapore, who told a reporter: "I can't trade if I don't know the prices."

Diego Wittlin, managing director of the Hong Kong office of a small German toy exporter, said the telecom meltdown meant that business - and all means of contact with head office - has come to a crashing halt.

"I tried to call Europe about 20 times today," Wittlin said. "But the phone and Internet are both down, so we can't even fax."

For the time being, he is taking solace in the fact that his competitors are down as well - and that business is in the traditional Christmas season lull.

Still, Wittlin added: "It's a very uncomfortable situation. It just shows how vulnerable our systems are." Should the outage continue, Wittlin said he will resort to more basic means of conducting business - using courier services for important documents, burning data on to CDs and mailing them through the post, and trying to fax as much possible.

"You just have to redial 20 or 30 times, that's all," he said. "When e-mail's gone, these days, unfortunately everything stands still."

Wittlin's headaches highlighted a troubling point for IT experts trying to prevent a repeat of the incident: that global communications in the region, now more vital than ever, rely on a surprisingly small number of cables under the sea.

Charles Mok Nai-kwong, a former head of the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers' Association and current chairman of the local chapter of the US- based Internet Society, said he hoped the situation will be fixed quickly.

But he admitted there are only "very limited things" that local telecom providers can do.

"Some people may be asking what Hong Kong can do to prevent this from happening again, but the question is: what can the world do?" Mok said.

He called on the consortiums that own and operate undersea cables to "re- evaluate the situation" by diversifying traffic and placing cables in different locations.

But it will cost money: up to US$500,000 (HK$3.9 million) per kilometer, according to a report earlier this year by Paul Budde, a telecommunications analyst in Australia.

"Planning an undersea cable, we're talking about billions of dollars and years and years of time," Mok said.

One of the two cables that were broken is owned by a consortium that includes Singapore Telecom, France Telecom and Pakistan Telecommunication.

The other is partly owned by China Unicom, StarHub and Telekom Malaysia.

Great new song, cool new video

by U2