I found driving to and from work without audio books is really boring. I can listen to my old CDs, which are merely background noise. Or I can listen to new mp3 downloads, which mostly are just mediocratie songs. So I search the bittorrent sites and downloaded all the audio books I found interesting. There are over 10 of them. Now, I have another delimma, how can I listen to the audio books? My iPod shuffle is not very user friendly for mp3s in general, worse for audio books. I have to press too many buttons to start playing when I start the car. I want to get a real iPod but the current generation has been out on the market for almost half a year. The next generation should be just around the corner. I don’t want to spent several hundred dollars then see a price drop in a few weeks after my purchase. I have to wait for the next iPod release cycle. Then I can decide whether to buy the new generation at the same price or the old generation at a cheaper price. For the mean time, I will resort to an ancient method, burning audio CDs. Althought it is a bit wasteful burn the audio books to CDs, since mostly likely I will only listen them once. However, just think about how much I would have to pay for if I buy the audio books. The cost of blank CD is nothing. I can also lent the audio book CDs to my friends.

Italy won the world cup final. I was watching the game with Pat at Commerical Drive, the Italian Town in Vancouver. It is really crowded, we couldn’t find any seat in any pub. Luckily we are able to squeeze inside a small pizza resturant with a large TV. There was over a hundred people packed inside the small corner shop. It is not very comfortable, I have to half stand, half lean on a table for the whole game. But it has very good atomsphere, everyone supports Italy. The whole place got worried in the second half of the game when Italy under heavy attack by France. Then we all cheered when Zidane got kicked out with a red card. The penalty shotout is really tense, the whole place was quiet during the 5th goal then bursted into joy when it scored. People flocked to the center of the street to celebrate Italy winning the game. The Police blocked off traffic going into the street and turn it into a outdoor party. There were seas of Italian flags, people were singing and dancing in the intersection. It was a really good experience.

Here is some pictures I took today.

It is time to renew my auto insurance. I have been procastinating the renewal until the last moment. This year I finally got the road star status qualified for 40% discount. I can also get cheaper insurance from private company instead of from ICBC. The ICBC is cheaper for new drivers, where the private section goes after the high margin old drivers market. The tipping point is once you have the road star status. I found the insurance system is discriminate against new drivers by charging them higher rate. It takes a new driver 10 years to aquire the road star status. Before that, he has to pay a higher insurance premium for his potentially higher risk, which I think is unfair. Many new drivers never have an accident and they drive as safe as old drivers. Insurance is an industry working with probability. Maybe the insurance regulation body should consider applying philosophy of probability as guideline to regulate insurance companies. It seems many people think the insurance market is highly unfair to the consumers. Insurance should be just a risk deriviative tool, should not treated as investment nor saving.

I just start using a very cool open source install messager called Gaim. This instant messager can connect to both ICQ and MSN, both accounts are unified in a single window. I can send messages to my friends in both network exactly the same way. I no longer have to open two messager and take up large chuck of my screen. I would like it to have a few more extra features to be more user friendly. The contact list is not compact enough, each row of contact is a little bit too wide. I can’t arrange the contact list freely and it doesn’t show offline users. Other than these kind of minor visual problems, Gaim is a very convinient and very usable piece of software

You can download Gaim at here.

I am having my first Mandarin class today at Langara. It is a Mandarin class special tailored for Cantonese speakers. Normal Mandarin classes start with learning the characters and grammer, which is too easy for me. I have learnt Mandarin many years ago back in HK. My listening is pretty good, if it is spoken slowly. However, talking is quite a challenage to me, I always use the Cantonese words pretending to be Mandarin. We started with pin-yin like every other Madarin first class. I think pin-yin is only good to help you prounce the word the first time. To be good at Mandarin, it is important to link the sound directly to the characters or even the meaning of the words. Almost everyone in the class are men. I guess woman has more talent in language, so they don’t need to learn Mandarin in a classroom. They can just pick up the language easily from daily usage. Hopefully, I would able to carry out basic conversation after finishing the level 1 and level 2 classes. I don’t need to speak perfect Mandarin Bejing accent. Actually as long as others can understand my Mandarin, I am proud to have a Cantonese accent. I always found the Bejing Mandarin sounds quite ugly, the Taiwan Mandarin sounds more beautiful. Luckily, my teacher was born in China but lived in Taiwan for many years. Her Mandarin is easy to listen and easy to learn.