Nice weekend

Going to galleries, shopping, reading, watching TV ... well, a little bit of work too ... What a nice way to spend my time.

Will start oil painting classes on Wednesday, a two-solid-day workshop on arts for disabled over the next weekend, long working days expected for the next two weeks at least.

Tough time ahead.

Remember the Milk

I just updated my Remember the Milk. According to my tasks list, I have 22 tasks at work tomorrow, 10 of them are prority No.1. Where's my time?

Sunday night blue......

Olympic Manic

My Olympic souvenirs, fresh from Beijing!













Fu Niu LeLe (mascot of the BJ Paralympic) phone strip. It will go nicely with the pink LG KC550 I am going to get. I hope LeLe will get along well with Elmo.






A 4G JingJing USB. The pink strip comes with LeLe though. Don't know what to do with it yet as I have several smaller USB drives, but combining them all together might not be good from the security angel.

In search for a notebook, from a gender perspective

Incident (1)

Because of a sudden impulse, I am thinking to get a new notebook, and have been looking around for several weeks.

Today, I set my eyes on a new pink Sony Vaio (VGN-SR15G/P). It’s thin, it’s light, and it’s around my budget (although to the high side). Most importantly, of course, it’s in PINK. It’s the nicest pink notebook I can find.

Unfortunately, this pink Sony Vaio has only 1G RAM. There’s a faster variation of the same line with more RAM and bigger harddisk. However, IT’S ONLY IN BLACK!!!!!

Incident (2)

I was watching the seven-episode LG promotional five-minuters on their new notebooks over the weekend. It’s sort of like a series of music videos – beautiful people, beautiful sceneries, nice music, etc. all under soft lens :) The series is about two men chasing the same woman.

My question is – is it targeting to men or women users? Isn’t IT commercial usually targeting to men? If that’s so, should it be two women chasing a man? If that’s the other way around, does it mean that women become a big market for IT products?

Incident (3)

I was at the Wanchai Computer Centre one day hoping to get a portable harddisk. I have to say it isn’t a very women-friendly place to start with. All the sales and customers are men, and they simply don’t want to talk to women, especially those don't look like knowing anything about computers. (I believe young beautiful girl is an exception.) Suddenly, I heard a female voice talking to me.

I was relieved.

I think there's really a big service gap for women IT sales.

日唸唐詩三百首

These are what I got today -- kids version of some old Chinese literature.

The wonderful part is, all the Chinese characters in the books have Putonghua pin-yin!

YEAH!!!!! Exactly what I wanted.

The collection has 10 books in total, but I could only find eight today. If you happen to see 三字經 and 成語故事, make sure you let me know!

Spring Resolution

Off-line by 11pm and sleep by mid-night.

P.S. Mission fails on the first and second days :(

Friday off

Visited the "World of Mirrors" at the Science Museum today after having a hair cut. Since it's a mirrors exhibition, not everything you see from the collage is real! There's also a "mirror maze" (2nd to last pictures of the 1st row), which I had to walk through carefully as I have a great tendency crushing myself into any glass/mirror!

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year, also at the Science Museum, is great too. Make sure you check it out before 1 May.

One of my finest hours

I went "wow" when I saw this book in store, after an office event, this afternoon.

Churchill is one of my heroes, and I have been wanting to get this book for a while. I had tried visiting two Page One in one day but all they had were books with lots of scratches on the covers.

Bought some more as well (but where's my time?). The bad thing was -- I thought bookstores were still on sale but the one I visited ended the sale earlier than the others :(

Too bad.

[For those not in HK, bookstores with a Chinese background usually have major sale during Chinese January, cause "book" and "lose" in Chinese sound the same!]

Tired

I will reborn after 8 March. Stay tune.

No Right Click

This is the problem of the touch pad of my notebook, so it's gone for maintenance again. (No. I have nothing in the harddisk. Everything is stored in my two portable harddisks, so nothing can be released.)

So I will have no computer at home for a while. That means blog will be updated less frequent (although I have lots to post), and also less traffic in Facebook. Be patient!

Nightmare on Christmas

I am still suffering from my "24-hr sleepiness symptom", and went to bed around 9pm on Christmas day.

I then woke up at 1am, cause my head ached a record high level in recent years. It's like being hammered with nails to my head.

AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got out of bed in the hope of locating any pain killer at home but in vain. After struggling for a while, when I couldn't stand the pain anymore, I finally decided to got dressed and visited the Circle K downstairs (at 1am!). Luckily, it's a real 24-hr convenient store (some 7-11s and Circle Ks closed at mid-night), and I got a pack of Panadol there. In 20 minutes, my headache was more or less gone (thanks goodness) and I went to bed again.

Then the real "nightmare" came. I dreamed of a cat wondering my bed side and used its fore leg to touch my face.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I couldn't scream at all.

And I woke in the middle of the night again. No wonder my Chinese doctor said I don't have quality sleep.

P.S. Pain killers used to be my good friend. My record was taking eight Tylenol a day (maximum dosage) in a few consecutive days, till one day I received an email from a friend telling me that I would die soon if I continued.

P.P.S. Cats are my life-time greatest enemy.

I am flying to Edmonton tomorrow!

My latest Facebook status

Ida is busier than you can imagine as someone don't know how to use their brains...if they have one...

Salmon Bagel -- From a different perspective

Lately, people have been asking me what's going wrong, cause they had read the previous post.

Well, thanks. I am quite OK except a little bit exhausted from work, and practicing Chinese calligraphy again and the evening walk make me sort of relax from the tight schedule.

However, when I wrote the previous post, my real intention was to share my happiness (of eating fresh onion when there's no expectation :) and show how easy it could be to stay happy.

I can be happy quite easily, to my and many of your surprise. I am fueled with energy every morning when I walk pass the HK Park to work, seeing all the people working on the trees, the flowers and the fishes despite the heat or the rain. I feel warm when I see kids giving up seats to elderly in the train. I am delighted when I hear the sound of some real musical instruments from a Canto-pop CD.

It all depends on how you look at one thing.

P.S. I think I have to improve my writing skill.

Salmon Bagel

I walked pass the HK Park to Pacific Place and grabbed a salmon bagel for lunch just now. When I opened the wrapping, I saw there were some fresh onion in it, and I suddenly felt a strong sense of happiness during a rather depressed period of time lately.

It's not that difficult to feel good sometimes.

P.S. Fresh onion is my favorite veggie, among a handful that I eat :)

Long time to post

It has been a long time since the last time I blogged. I have been very busy lately and still am.

With the Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi done on the previous Sunday, my Mandarin study will be on hold for a while. It had absorbed quite a lot of my time in the last couple of years, and I think it's time to do something else. However, I still plan to spend a little bit of time daily to practice.

Well, may be after HP7.

Right after the Mandarin exam on 22 July, I was busy every moment while I am not at work nor sleeping on HP7. Anyone finished it yet? I still have less than 200 pages to go. It's so sad the Mad-eye died at the beginning of the book, while Dobby died almost immediately after his appearance.

After HP7, there would be a lot of things waiting for me to do as well. For example, cleaning up my room and bookshelves, following up some personal and financial issues, lots and lots of reading, knitting and cross stitching, visiting museums, etc. Oh yes, I will need to make some updating to this blog as well. Many of my friends' links are not yet added. Also, anyone have Facebook? I need quite sometimes to make it looks "professional".

P.S. I use "ismtse@ualberta.net" in Facebook. Make sure you add me :P

Home Impovement

I took this picture while having my evening walk tonight. I find this kind of bamboo structure quite amazing, good for the whole building and also good for some small home improvement. If you look at it closely, it is only supported by some triangles (I know they should have a more proper name, but I have to say I give everything back to my Structural professors. I feel sorry for them :( I stood underneath for about a minute, examining it for a while, and decided to take a picture.

Although I am not in the field, I still have the appetite for any kind of construction, from event set-up to real construction sites. (Oops! I forgot I was supposed to be a transportation engineer!)

Today, I had had my Putonghua class exam. After another Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi on 22 July, my study on Putonghua comes to the end, for the time being. I will take a break (don't know how long) and try something else. Lots of books and halfway through knitted sweaters are waiting for me!

My hair

For all my life, I am being complained for having too much hair. There's plenty of it, and it's never quite "manageable". But today, I notice that my hair is getting quite thin, too thin even to an alarming stage.

......

My goodness!

I can't tell you how shocked and worried I am today. I know there's should be something else that I should worry about (e.g. mandarin exam again coming Sunday), but my hair sure is issue no. 1 today.

I know it sounds very stupid, but can't help.

......

My friend reminded me that I had changed shampoo, which doesn't seem very good, lately, and suggested me to change a milder one. So I will. Hope it will get better soon. Maybe it's some unavoidable things for being old :(

P.S. Rose, anything good from Adamant Eve?

Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi

I passed! Although I only got the lowest grade, it's still a miracle. I had to say my mandarin was a mess that day.

Fatigue... ...