I had only played 15 minutes of soccer tonight. The reason is the court is double booked, and we only found out when we were there. We suppose to start the game at 10p and play until 12a, which is two good hours of excerise. It turn out that the court is booked by another party on 10:30p, so we got kicked out after 30 minutes. The time I spent in driving to Richmond is more than the actual game play. The court told us they had booked us in tomorrow instead. Too bad that I couldn’t make it to tomorrow’s game. Going down to Richmond two nights in a row is too much for me, not to mention the high gas price. Somehow I am surprised by the court low-tech booking mechanism. Everything is done over the phone or in person. Although they have a computer system to keep track of bookings, but that system is not on-line aviable.

This reminds me a recent HK news. The company helped the government to setup online booking system for government sport facilities are charged for making fake bookings. According to the contract, the company will get a hugh bonus if the on-line usage reach the quota ahead of schedule. The company is stupid enough to ask friends, relatives and even hire students to do fake bookings to reach the quota faster. How can it not arose the suspect of the adminstration if an exceptionally large number of users didn’t show up at their booked slot. The moral of this story, if you want to scam off someone, especially the government, please at least spend sometime to play devil’s advocate on the scamming scheme. Instead of hire stupid student, use that money to offer cash-back to real users would probably yield a higher usage naturally and legally.

I was organizing my toy display tonight and move the empty boxes on the shelf to make more room. I found myself has been following toy news on the internet closely, and participating discussion in the toy collector’s forum. I don’t find many people in real life share this same hobby as I do, maybe with the only exception Kenny. I think collection Japanese toy is more common in HK than here in Canada where there a lot more other things to collection. Unlike other people I met on the net, I didn’t buy random toy that appeals to me. I only buy the toy line I like most and to complete the line. I will sell off the toys from the line I dropped to free up some shelf space. I believe if I wait a bit longer, I could even turn a small profit from selling those toys. From now on, I will focus on just three major toy lines: all new Macross toys, Gundam HCM-Pro and non-MSV Gundam FIX. Occationally I may buy SoC if Bandai remake something I always wanted or owned as a kid.

I got the DVD with everyone’s WYD photos from Jan last night, it’s over 3.5GB in total. I have been checking out the pictures this afternoon. I tried to delete some blurry and meaningless ones without me in the picture. This process took me almost 2 hours, and I reclaim 500MB disk spaces. It interesting to check out other’s pictures. Although most of them are identical shots from different angle, some of them do capture important moments. I was taking to my colleague the other day on the problem of organizing photos. He is using Adobe albums to tag all this photos for easy searching. I just dump all my pictures in a directory with sub folders sorted chronologically. I have to remember the when about of the event in order to dig out some old pictures. The only logical solution to this problem is desktop facial recognition, cameras with embed GPS and album software able to sync up with the outlook calender. Every information about the picture: time, place, event and people is then fully captured. This will once for all solved the problem of trying to identify that mysterous picture from the past.

Today is Pat’s birthday. We had started with having dim sum at Crystal Mall Top Gun. Although I had heard bad reputation from my friends, I found that place is quite decent. The food is pretty good and not as expensive as I thought. The best part is each of us get a tea set to make our own favour of tea. I walked Charlie in the afternoon while Pat was organizing her WYD photos. Tonight we went to the Oktoberfest at St. Paul with Tammy. Tammy is born on the same year same day as Pat. Before we had down to Richmond, we droped off the birthday present for Brenda, and I took a picture of three birthday girls. I wonder what is the chance of knowing three people have the same birthday.

The Oktoberfest tonight is so-so, can’t compare to the real Bravian food we had in Germany. However it is always good to get together with the WYD team. The most disappointed thing of tonight is how can an Oktoberfest without German beer? We stayed until 11:00p.m., had some folk dance with the church old folks, and I got pushed out to particple in a stupid dancing competition in traditional german way. Then we headed to the Also Louge in No. 3 road to have a drink and cut the cake. That place is quite nice, we had ordered some cocktail and appetizers, both taste pretty good. The waitess suggested flaming lamborghini for Pat and Tammy, said it is the birthday drink. It a pretty smart way pursading us to spend more money, cost that drink is usually the most expensive cocktail on the menu. Tammy is pretty drunk after taking the flaming lamborghini, which is equivalent to 4 shooters. Somehow Pat is still quite awake, probably she has a higher body mass ratio. The girls talk a lot of things which I pay no attention to. I was concentrated in watching an old Charlie Chaplin movie showing on the big screen. I think it is the first Chaplin film I had ever watched, and I think it is very funny. Those old Chaplin really suits the atomsphere, it’s black and white and soundless. What a brillant form of entertainment without bothering the guests. We stayed there until almost the closing time.

Tonight, I went to Grand Ball Room for their friday night dancing party with Pat for the first time. We tried to pick up our dancing skills, but unfortunately I had forgot all the moves I had learnt before my vacation. Moreover I have trouble counting the beats of the songs. No only I can’t count how many beats in a bar, I can’t even tell the genre of the song. The only exception is cha-cha and tango which have easy to recongize features. Thus Pat gave me a special training on counting the rythm. We sat there for about an hour and I had counted the beats of more than ten songs. I found the songs with heavy and simple drums is much easier to follow. At the end, both me and Pat have headache from the beats, so we decided to go home early. On our way back home, I felt there was a hammer keep pounding my brain in a rythm while I was driving. I guess I will see the rythm and beats in my dream tonight.