Today at lunch, Edwin showed me the Gundam game on his PSP. You all might already know that I am a long time Gundam fans. The new game is very attractive, so I played in car and while waiting for food. The game play itself is similiar to the old Gundam arcade game, but with different machines. It also come has story mode and support multi-player via the built-in PSP wireless protocol. Edwin had already finished the game, so all the machines are unlocked. The graphics is very nice, especially the glare and explosion effects. However, the game control is much worse than the old arcade game. The movement is not very natural, the terran doesn’t interact with the players. The moves are very limited, only very basic long range gunfire and meleec combat. In summary, it is a total disappointment. I wonder Bandia make this title just to milk the Gundam franchise. I rather they sincerely port the arcade version to PSP. Another reason justify not to buy original copy of mostly crappy games. Edwin is trying to convince me buy a PSP, my response is wait until I see the killer game, which I doubt will ever be made.

I have listened to a very inspiring speech on procrastination, which I found is one of my biggest problem. There are three types of procrastination in general. The first type is the prefectionist. They won’t start working unless everything is planned out prefect, and everyone knows you can never archive perfect in planning. The second type is fear to success. Once the work is done, they don’t know what to do next or fear to work on something unknown, so they keep prolonging the work. The thrid type thinks the work is too tedious, they don’t bothering to start working on it. I think I have combined problem of the second and third type. The remedy to the procrastination is divid up the work into small managment task, and allocate a set time slot to work on it. If you couldn’t finish it within that time slot, at least you had start working on it. One can never get any accomplished by thinking about doing the thing, you gota act.

Mui Garden is finally reopened. This resturant is the default place to have lunch. When we are out of ideas, we can simply pick it with no objection from anyone. It was closed for a couple of months already. The resturant has posted a notice on the door saying it is closed due to renovation, but I don’t see any work going on every time I go by there. We suspected it got a warning from the health agency and have to close down for inspection. I don’t want to cook tonight, and somehow I wander to Mui to check whether it has reopened without any expectation. To my surprise, it just opened today. Everything, including the menu and the waitress are still the same. I ordered the hainanese chicken I had missed for so long. Maybe I am a long time customer, I got a free upgrade from chicken breast to chicken leg. It is as good as before. Anyways, we don’t have to be troubled by where to go for lunch anymore.

When I went to T&T in Metrotown for glocery shopping today, I found out that the chinese bookstores next to the supermarket is closed. There used to be two chinese bookstores next to T&T, one is Taiwan based, and the other one is China/Hong Kong based. When I go to T&T, I usually stop by these two places to check out new books. I don’t like Taiwan books very much. I found there are way too many yet another translated copies or very taiwanized get rich quick books. Althought there are some good writters and a few translated gems, especially on literatures. The China/HK based one sell lots of simplied chinese books, and some first shipment of new HK books. I won’t mind reading simplied chinese, but the paper quality of those books really bothers me. It feel like they are printed on tiolet paper. I had finished reading quite a few books standing right there, but rarely I make a purchase with them. If I can wait, I can always get it cheaper by ordering over the internet. No wonder both of them had to close the doors. I will feel something is missing when I go to T&T for a long while.

I went to Cellar Jazz at Boardway and Almo on friday. This is the first time I go to a jazz lounge, and I found that place is pretty comfortable. Listening to jazz is more for the life style it represent than the appreciation of the music itself. Jazz is commonly associated with the bobo (bourgeois-bohemians) way of living, especially those protiated in HK TVB shows. The atomsphere in Cellar Jazz is very different from the usual bar that only serves alcohol. $10 ticket for whole night of entertainment from an ameture jazz band is reasonable, and the drinks are priced like anywhere else. I like the music from tranditional jazz trio pieces, piano, drums and cello. But that night has added an odd instructment to the show, african drums, I found the sound of african drums doesn’t fit very well to Jazz. I would like to listen to a Jazz band with a Saxophone player next time.