Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Camp visit

Pat goes to the WCCCLC camp again this year and help out by being a group facilitator. I am exempted from going to the camp this year thanks to SoB’s and Derek’s visit. Still I drove in to give Pat moral support today. The camp site is not very far away, just outside of Chilliwack, took me 1 hours to get there. One of the special feature of tonight’s program is World Youth Day sharing. There are 6 people in the camp went to WYD this year, including myself, and two of them I never met before. Due to the extra two people, the sharing ran overtime and we have to cut back the words we originally planned to say. I made a conclusion on the pilgrimage with focus on God’s blessing. I will elaborate more on that when I write my article on the afterthoughts of WYD.

Finally I had received my iPod shuffle today in mail. When I got a call from the rental office saying there is a parcel waiting for me, I have no clue what I will receive. It has been so long since I open a bank account in TD just to get the free iPod shuffle, and I already gave up my home of getting the iPod, thought something has screwed up in the process. Anyways, now I have my first mp3 player, and I can say goodbye to burning CD. I must admit the design of Apple is very impressive, the iPod is nicely packaged. Even open the box taking out the iPod is such a pleasant experience. All the components sits nicely in their individual air tight seals, unlike other mp3 players that only sit in plastic bags in foam boxes.

In addition, I came across a wonder website www.pplive.com. This site broadcast TV channels from China live, including TVB and ATV. All you need to download their software than serve as a peer-to-peer middle man between the streaming server and your media player. The quality is quite good, some channels even in par with TV. Definitely worth to give it a try.

Foosball

Foosball is a game that mimic the action of football in a table. I used to play it once awhile in univeristy, but I am never good at it. Back from my vacation I found that PMC had made a game room after rennovation, and it has foosball and table tennis. Everyday at lunch time and after work, there is a big crowd playing in the game room. Today I finally lay my hand on the foosball table. I partnered with Jason, and lost big time. I even scored one goal for the other team. Chris and Alfred is not doing very good either. Tonight, the gang decided to practice foosball at Jackson’s place after dinner. We played foosball for the whole night. I slowly discover the skill of how to play it well. One mistake of beginner is trying to hard to chase the ball and having too much unplanned reactive shots. The ability to stop and control the ball is the key to win, second to that is the strength of shots. My shots are weak on strenght since my left waist can’t really twist fast enough to deliver a powerful kick. However I companse my weakness with strategies. I focus on the players of my opponents instead of the ball, which is bigger and easier to follow. Still I need more practice on my reaction time and ball control. Too bad that my chess buddies at work are not addicted to this game. I guess I will be hooked to this game at work for a while until the novelity wears off.

Imperfect Crime

There is an unusual news happened in HK this week. A step mother hire her ex-boyfriend and gangsters to slay her step son, out of the jealous of her husband having affairs with other woman. This case has made headline news for several days. Finally police gather enough evidence to catch the wicked woman. The hitman are amatures, they leave many traces behind in the scene. The weapon is tracable and the escape car is also identified. When plan a murder, buying a new marlee knife and hire off duty taxi is definitely not a good idea. Although the police had placed the executors under watch, it is much harder to catch that woman, although almost everyone in HK had guessed she is the one make the order. If there is not enough evidence, the gangsters can take all the charges in court and leave that woman guilty free. After a week of interrogation by the police, she finally make a deadlymistake today by paying the gangster their dues through a bank. Once the link between her and the those who carry out the act is established, the police has enough evidence to put her behind the bars. There are always risk in hiring people to carry out the job. The weakest link is the reliability of hitman and the method of payment. That’s why in all murder mysterous stories, the crime is always commited by the killer himself. There is not much exciting detective element in tracing the momentary link behind the scenes to lure readers in the plot. On a second thought, that reminds me an article I read from BBS new. If that woman is living Congo instead of HK, she could save all these troubles. She can simpily declare her step son is processed by demons and the village priest (mostly of the time are christian pastors) will take care of the rest.

Catch up

There are many things I have to catch up after I come back from my trip. One thing is I have to download the mp3 published in boxup while I was away. I found thate Ronald Cheung new CD is really good, almost every song has a good melody. He spent most of his time acting in comedies that makes me forget he is originally a singer. On top of it I have to catch up with my reading of Economist and PC Magazine. I could skip most of the time related news in economist, but the economal analysis has a longer time life that is still applicatable for a while. I had updated the photos of my trip to my photo album, but I had make so many typos in the description that I think I should go over it once more before I share it with my friends.

I still have seen my other luggage, for another 3 more days, I could declare it a lost and claim the insurance. If I could get both $500 from AC and $800 from travel cut, that should be sufficient to cover my lost. However, I rather see my own bag back to save all the troubles of claiming the insurance. I have to file in lots of paper work to get the claim reimbursed, and I doubt the possibility of having the complete amount pay out to me. You know the insurnace companies are always dodgy.

Life back to normal

I am still in a holiday mood today, even though I had to go back to work. I spent the whole day catching up all my emails and unpacking the boxes since I had moved my cube while I was away. The schedule suddenly become much tighter when some additional features added to my block. There was a good news waiting for me, finally I moved up the queue a little bit and got a small pay raise. I keep retelling the same story at least ten times while I was treating my colleagues with chocolate I brought from Germany. I am so good at telling it now I can simpily summarize my trip to different length of conversation.

I heard some good news from Verona about her progress. Hopefully me and Pat could go out with them for a double date sometime soon. She has been collecting my email at work, and I recieved a mysterious package containing a PMC watch and a nice PMC folder. I have no idea who and why sent the gift to me. I suspect it is related to the suggest I made to Uncle Bob.

Air Canada is really screwed up, I received one of my luggages today, and is the not so important one only has lots of dirty clothes. I rather they delivery my backpack which has all my valuables and then let me claim the $800 insurance for baggage lost on my dirty clothes. Let’s see when I will get my other luggage back.