Other than visiting doctor for my cold and god some medication, I had attended three mini-gathering today. The first one is get together with the WYD team. I had to drop off my photos to Jan at the 6:30 mass at St. Paul, and then I drop by at Earl to say hi to those who can make it to the dinner. I don’t have much time to catch with their stories since I have to run to see another friend. One thing I know is that they had to desperately look for the Eucharist and watied 6 hours for bus to leave Marienfield, arrving in Koln at 11p.m. I feel really lucky that me and Pat got away relatively earily. SoB has a wedding to attend tomorrow, so he come to Vancouver for just 2 days. I have dinner with him and talked alot about friends in the Lasalle group. Then somehow Derek is in town tonight as well, he is having his flying trip from SJ all the way to Victoria. So I have drink with him afterward. Too bad that SoB has to rest early tonight so he couldn’t join us for a drink. As he said, he see Derek almost every week in SJ, what’s the point of seeing him here in Vancouver. I found I am repeating the similar topics with Derek, just disscuss them in a different aspect. It kinda odd I am seeing them quite often this year. I just met them last month down in SJ and I will see them another next month when Mingwai come over.

I found that I am spending quite some time reading info about my new iPod shuffle. I am looking forward to use it as a replacement for the CD player in my car. It is just inconvinient to burn CD. Finally I am catching up with the digital trend by having my own mp3 player, although my player is a bit lame without the screen. But hey, it’s free, what can I ask for more?

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.

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.

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.