Frustrations of the everyday office worker in Hong Kong:

You come into your office building in the morning and walk into an empty lift.

You’re having a small and private moment of happiness as you’re the only one in the lift, and this will mean that the trip to your floor is going to be fast and smooth, with no stops along the way! Whoo hoo!

The doors start to close and you’re still alone.

Then, a hand peeps in to your lift and pulls the door open.

Fine - one more passenger, so max one more stop on the way up.

But then another 2 passengers rush in.

And another one.

And another three… And another one…

Doooooh!

Before you know it, you’re in the lift with 14 strangers and maybe 1 or 2 co-workers.

And when you look at the lift button panel, you see that you are going to make at least 10 stops before you reach your floor.

Frustrations…

I just uploaded the pictures of Matthijs’ 10th month. This time I used flickr.com as the engine behind the album. It’s very easy to use and straight forward to integrate the flickr.com photo albums in a posts in Wordpress.

Click on below title to go to the page with latest pictures:

Matthijs 10 Months Album

It’s 34 celsius and we’re in Ooh La La beach club near Cheung Sha. We’re on our 4th bottle of rose together with a bunch of other people.

This is the life.

Matthijs has been having a great day especially playing with the muddy sand in the sea during low tide.

Nadine prepared a really delicious breakfast today.

I wonder what her motive is…

Cars used to be an important coffee and lunch break topic when I worked in Holland.

I worked in an IT company where most people would get a company car (”lease bak” in Dutch) the minute they came in. So for most people this was a reason for discussions on latest models / accessories etc.  At the same time, car programs on TV would be a major attractor of the same demographic; the so called IT / business professionals / sales persons that drive around in company cars.

When I look back at those days, I’m now surprised by how much I’ve lost track with car trends. When you live in Hong Kong, you basically don’t need a car (well unless you live in Sai Kung or in South Island perhaps). Public transport and taxis are just so convenient that it’s more of a hassle than a practicallity to have your own car.

After moving here I quickly lost interest in latest car models - and compared to back in Holland I now only notice a new car model when one drives past me rather then reading about it months earlier in magazines or on TV. For instance I only recently noticed that there is a new sequel to the VW Golf…

I’d rather keep spending more on taxis and be chauffeur driven around, rather then scrambling for parking space in the city. And the added advantage is I don’t have to worry about drinking and driving. Something that would always be an issue in Holland (who’s the Bob?).

Anyway, how did I get to this topic? Well I did see one interesting car in a film I recently watched. I watched Firewall with Harrison Ford. In that film he’s driving around in what I thought was a Bentley. I really liked the car because of its boxy and oversized looks.

Done a bit of research and it turns out to be a Chrysler 300 - see below.

So should I need to buy a car I’d look for this one currently.

I’m drooling already…

This is the first PDA phone I see that combines a QWERTY thumb keyboard, built-in WiFi, and Windows Mobile 5.0 - Pocket PC - in a small form factor.

There are many other interesting phones out there, but most lack built-in WiFi (like Motorola Q).

So I’m going to wait and see when I can get my hands on one of these to try out. It’s not in the shops yet, and this site currently only has it on pre-order.

This could be my next phone…

Detailed specs:

Processor: TI OMAP 750 200 MHz
Operating System: Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Edition
Keyboard: QWERTY
Network: GSM900 / DCS1800/PCS1900, GPRS Class 10
Size: 122 x 65 x 13.5mm (ultra slim)
Memory: 128 MB ROM + 64MB RAM
Display: 2.5″ QVGA 65K Colour TFT
Imaging: 2M Pixel CMOS camera
Battery: 1250mAh Li-Ion
Connectivity: IrDA / Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP / Wi-Fi(802.11b/g) / mini USB (1.1)
External Storage: mini SD
Messaging: SMS / WAP / MMS / Java (MIDP2.0)
Applications: Pocket Office (Word / Excel / PowerPoint), Pocket IE / MSN
Audio: 64 Poly MIDI Ringtones / MP3 / AAC / AAC+ / WMA / WMV
Video: MP3/MPEG4
Synchronisation: ActiveSync
Input Method: Keyboard or touch screen

LOL: Today’s Dilbert about business ideas:

:)

The playroom in the resident’s club is one of Matthijs fav hangouts. There are always lots of other kids to play with and there is a “ballenbak” (no idea what that’s called in English?) filled with loads of balls to play around in.

Floors are well padded and as you see in the video - when Matthijs drops at one point, he just gets up and continues walking - without a shout, cry or tears. That wouldn’t be the case back home on our hard wooden floor…

Enjoy the video.

The redevelopments in Discovery Bay town centre are still not complete. But finally a new place opened - an Irish place that has Irish pub grub as well as Indian curries. Quite good food actually, and good service. Only a detail is that they didn’t have their alcohol license done in time, so you can’t order beer or wine for consumption inside as yet. Currently, they let you go to the wine shop next door, buy a bottle, then come back and open it in the restaurant…

They’ll get their full license early September so till that time it’s retail prices on bottles of wine.

Hong Kong’s liquor licensing laws can work out a little strange!

Another sign from China with interesting translation to English. The picture was taken by a friend who recently visited Guangzhou.