Two of my colleagues just bought the PSP, the machine had arrived this week and they brough it in to show us. Their version is slightly different than the one my other colleague got on the first day. This version is hacked and can play downloaded from the memory stick. With unlimit supply of games for free, I guess the handheld game machine is a bargain. I heard that the latest version of PSP had fixed the firmware so the hack is no longer valid. I am quite impressed by the graphics, it is comparable to an average PS2 game. The machine itself is a bit too bad, can’t easily fit inside a pocket. Although the PSP is really nice, I don’t feel the urge to get one. I just can’t find any reason to play games on the go, since I can’t think of when can I play it. I rarely take public transportation. I don’t wait in the line often, if I have to, I will probably forgot to bring the PSP. When I’m on travel, I rather read a book so I don’t have to worry about recharging the battery. Most important, most of the games aviable to PSP are just clones of PS2 games. Until I see a truely ground-breaking game with totally new game play, there is no point to playing similiar games of the same genre on a smaller screen.

Today when we went to lunch at Mui Garden, to our surprise it is closed. There is a notice on the door saying it is under renovation for a few days due to small fire in the kirchen. We lost our number one default place to have lunch. That will cause us some headache in deciding where to go this week. So we went to Tofu shop across the road, where we havn’t been for quite a while. While we were eating, we were speculating the real result of Mui Garden is closed. It would be surprise if it is the city order it to close due to hygiene problem. No resturant owner with right mind will post that reason out on its door, that will scare the customers away. I tried to search the website of the Burnaby health deparment, but I could find a list of resturant it had warned. I think the government should let this information easily accessible to the public to give us better protection.

Today is mid-autumn festival. Living in Canada, I don’t feel much festival mood here. The main reason is the next day is not a public holiday like in Hong Kong. It is nothing special about a festival if it’s not a holiday. I don’t like eating moon cake very much. I remeber when I was a little kid, I like it alot. Probably the freshness of moon cake wears out or it is simply moon cake is good with peer pressure. Tonight we went to Pat’s friend’s place BBQ. It’s quite nice to spend the night with some friends, although I bearly know those people and the talks are so superficial to a point it is very boring. The only highlight is her friend’s place has a small golden retriver. I found playing with the dog is more interesting than talk to someone neither of us had no intention become a deeper friends. The BBQ dinner is very fulfilling with lots of food and several different kinds of moon cake. After dinner, her friend suggest watch a movie, so we end up watched an 2 years old rerun. Some of us were very tried and very eager to go home, but we all waited politely for the end of the movie and dash out in no time. Why can’t we call it a day while we had a good time, it is better than waste another 2 hours staying together just for the sake of staying together.

Charlie made a mess of Pat’s carpet while she was in Hong Kong, and it did it again last night. As I had promised Pat, today we went to rent a carpet cleaner from Safeway to clean the carpet. Cleaning carpet is easier than I thought. Just fill the machine up with water and cleaning solution, then move it back and forth on the carpet like vaccum cleaner. The dirty water sucked up and hold in the upper compartment. We spent the whole afternoon cleaning all the carpet in her’s place. The dirty water is very horrible, looks like ink. This pure hand work free up my mind. Doing house cleaning is a very good excerise sometimes. I think I should rent one and clean my own apartment some time.

Once made up his mind, many people never go back to revisit his decision. Just like once we black-listed a resturant, we never go back to visit it again. I remember when I first start working at PMC, we tried out different resturants close to work every week. Out of various reason, the group, as a collected conscious, stop going to one resturant after another. Gradually the resturant list has shrinked to the only a few visited places. Occasionally, we try out the new resturants, but usually the new one are not attractive enough to make us break out of the habit only going to the default ones. I like to go to a Korean resturant on North road, but this resturant is black listed by the group due to limited selection of food and the price. I havn’t eat there for quite a while. Today, I have the chance to pick where to have lunch. So I decided to go there again. To my surprise, the resturant has changed hand and has a new menu. The lunch combo is only $4.99, which comes with small side dishes, a large portion main dish served on hot place and dessert. The few came with me today all agree this resturant is good enough to enter the default list. The moral of this story is that we have to give a black-listed resturant a second chance, you may find pleasure surprise. This principle can also apply to people. Sometimes we may discover something by giving a second chance to someone we havn’t forgiven.