Carlee is a well known brand of potato chips in HK. It is originated from Japan. I think it is the best tasted chips after I had tried so many different brands. Today I just tried a new ramen flavoured chips from Carlee. Well, it taste like shoyu ramen, to be specific, the shoyu soup. There are so many exotic flavours of Carlee chips, unlike local chips made here in Canada, only have the those old boring flavours. The classic Carlee is bbq and curry flavour. Later it introduced other flavours spicy, seaweed, pizza, okonomiyaki, chicken, ketchup, light salt, etc. It also have time limited edition, like the ramen I just had. Carlee not only taste the best, its texture is very prefect. The chip is not too hard nor too soft, it is fired to have the right cripyness. The only other honourable brand is Pringles, the rest of potato chips bands lacks the charm of Carlee, not even close.

I am going to black list any sellers using UPS to ship their items. I ordered something from eBay, the item itself is not very expensive, but the seller insuranced the item against my instrution and I end up have to pay a small duty fee to the custom, which it’s fair. It’s just 7% GST, and cost me $2 anyways. Then UPS charge the ridicously high handling fee, $17, just for collecting $2 from me. What a rip off. Sometimes I wonder, what did had our government done in the NAFTA treaty. Shouldn’t we had already scrape all the traiff between Canada and US? This makes me start thinking about the WTO meeting happening in HK. In an ideal world and classical economy theory I firmly believed in, all traiff are evil. The WTO suppose to reduce the cost of trade between countries, but it end up hijacked by beneficial groups setting quotas to protect their own interest. I am sure the Canada post is the one most object free cross boarder shipping between Canada and US most. When can we Canadian enjoy the same cheap deals most US consumers enjoy?

Now I have the first draft of my thesis completed, the only thing left to do is wait for my surpervisor to review it, edit it and then cirulate to the examination commitee. I found I am so eager to gradunate that I can’t wait to get the defense done. I have to think what I want to do next. One natural follow up of my thesis is turning into into a paper and get it publish in a conference. Hopefully I can get it done over the X’mas holidays. I also go through the trouble to get the P.Eng title. I think PMC is paying for the application fee, I know enough P.Eng at work to sign my reference and most important it is a title that follow me for life. Although the P.Eng is really nothing more than merely a title you can put on the business card. On the side, I also have to catch up with the movies, TV series, books and animes I had stocked up due to lack of them. There are a few articles I would like to write on top of my usual review on anything I read or watched. I will probably write one about WTO, since it is the hottest topic in HK this week. I also want to complete my article on intellectural properties, it has been two years since I finished the first one third of it. For a longer term goal, I have to think about what course or program I would like to persuade. I am looking into a few part-time or even full-time programs. I don’t have enough information even to start thinking about my decision at this moment, gota do a bit more research on the prospect on those fields.

After a year of struggles, espeically the plainful process of writing out the research work, my thesis is finally completed. It is a 55 pages report that contributes to my master degree. I just sent out the thesis to my supervisor for review. I expect there will be some minor updates in the thesis, but there shouldn’t be any major rework, since I have been meeting with Dr. Hardy to report my progress every week. I will schedule my defense in mid January, and after that I am finally graduated. I have been spent 4 years in studying my master degree, where some of my friends are graduating in merely 2 years. Partly is due to I choose to work on my own research instead of turning a PMC document into a M.Eng report, and partly due to the fact that I am lazy. I don’t know my work is good enough for a M.ASc degree or not, althought it is pretty much the same stuff I have been working on. Anyways, I am happy with a M.Eng degree and getting a paper published would be a bonus nice to have. Now, I have to think about what should I do next for my life.

Tonight after dinner with Pat, I went to Jackson’s place for the annual X’mas party of friend’s at work. The focus of tonight’s party is definitely the XBox 360. The design of the wireless controller is pretty neat, but I am a bit disappointed at the games. I would expect the graphics output to HDTV would be stunning. It is pretty much the same as what I get from computer games. We spent a lot of time playing foosball. The Jackon’s foosball table is very different from the one at work. The ball moves much faster and the player’s position is a bit different. It require finer ball handling. My foosball practice everyday at work does count. Combination of Me and Louis is unbeatable. I also played pool, and by luck I won 2 out of 3 games. The highlight of the night is poker game with chocolate foundue dessert. I did ok tonight, just lost $4 in total. Now, after having so much fun tonight, I am back home to work on my thesis.