We tried and failed to have lunch at Estea again this afternoon. Although the bubble tea place has big signs at the front saying it is open for business during lunch hour, it was closed. In order to avoid moving our cars, we head to a sushi place in the same plazza. That place is opened by Vietnamese, therefore on top of sushi, it serves Vietnamese menu. Last time when I went there, I didn’t have a very good eating experience. Therefore I decided to stay away from raw food today. I am surprise the resturant doesn’t not take advantage of the dual cultural heritage and offer mix-and-match Vietnam fusion with Japan, instead they keep the two menu totally seperate. I would like to try chirashi-bun (vermicelli) instead of chirashi-don or yaki-pho (rice noodle) instead of yaki-soba, or even try dip sushi with fish sauce and washibi instead of soya sauce.

Tonight I went to a very special birthday party, it is the birthday of the Fr. Pierre of St. Mary. He is turning 60 this year, and he has been a priest for 25 years. The party starts with the usual Thursday party meeting and Eucharist adoration. It was planned as a surprise party, but the father saw our decoration and food prepared downstairs. The prayer meeting is shorter than normal today, which is a good thing. After the party meeting, we have pot luck, cut the cake and a trivia about Fr. Pierre downstairs. Someone even bought a chocolate fondu fountain. The highlight of tonight is two people dressed as Fr. Pierre’s favourate saints. I know the lady cosplaying Mother Theresa. I joked to her that how come she had became a sister just before getting marry. I think being a church leader doesn’t have a private life. He have to celebrate his birthday with the church-goers, and turn the day into a special get together event to make the church life a bit more fun.

The other two Bit-Char G I ordered from Hobby Link Japan finally arrived. The race track in Steven’s cubicle is offically opened to bussiness. The range of the remote control is very limited, so I have to close off the far end section of the track. To make things worse, the motor from my old car is dying and become very slow. On of that, one of the new remote has really limited range. Those two are not race ready. I swaped the motor of those two cars, and end up with two racable cars. I am going to order several 16000 rpm motors make the cars go faster. I am still waiting for a sales on one running on the 57MHz band to add another car to the track. People in my project team loves the racing track. It is a welcome break when you are so frustrated debugging some really messy code.

See the race track here

Today the fleet of 24″ widescreen LCD finally arrived. Almost everyone in the project get a new monitor, the rest of the team will have it in the next shipment. After I had made my suggestion about bigger display has a positive impact productivity to the CEO, finally the fruit prevail. I miss my dual 19″ display a bit, there are some unique advantages two 19″ compare to one 24″. However, there is an option to add another 19″ along side to my 24″. I am no longer the previliaged guy with dual monitor in the company, but I am glad that the everyone’s work environment is improved because of my suggestion. Everyone loves the better bigger display, I doubt who would go back to the tiny 19″ monitor. The IT department has create a survey on the preformance increase due to the bigger display. The guy who come up with questions is a complete idiot. The question ask how many percentage of productivity increase you will have from a bigger display, and the options are 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. Realistic number from other research shows anywhere from 10-40%. Having options higher than 50% is just plain stupid. On top of that, the special treatment in our department having big monitors makes other department jealous. Some of my friends downstairs complaining they are still using CRT. I think the company better speed up the deployment of 24″ to the whole company or it will hurt the morale of those who havn’t get it.