I’ll be in Singapore for next two days - having a couple of business meetings.

This picture taken from the Cathay Lounge in Chek Lap Kok Airport. It’s a beatiful day, wish I’d be hiking that hill in the background instead.

We’ve been sitting in renovations for quite a while now. First our own flat, then our flat building, and then the plaza was up for renovation. So actually in the last 1.5 years not a day has gone by without construction going on in our vicinity.

The plaza is still quite far from being finished, but it’s starting to shape up and below pictures give a glimpse of the plaza new style.

Our local developer and owner of Discovery Bay - the Hong Kong Resort company - is the one responsible for this all, and I do have to say the end result is starting to look good. I can’t say the same thing about the process they’ve taken to get here; it’s been an endless succession of periods of progress followed by periods of inactivity. Inactivity apparently caused by ‘external factors’ such as licenses, supply shortages etc. These aren’t actually external factors in my view, they’re all part of basic project management and should not happen at all!

I guess this will take another 4 months to complete, maybe more…

Just on my way back after attending Motorola’s launch party of their latest phone.

This made me realize again how much mobile phone marketing has evolved over the past years.

No one is talking about features anymore, it’s all about trends, style, fashion, and a dose of status.

Lots of hk celebrities were invited which is important as it gives the product the desired endorsement by hk’s most trendy few.

Unfortunately I didn’t recognize most of the celebrities… I gotta watch more Hong Kong films / TV!!! And pick up Cantonese I suppose.

Here’s a link to the motoKRZR product page.

I just uploaded the 11 months gallery of Matthijs.

http://marcdelange.com/matthijs/11-months

See also the previous post about our weekend - it gives some background with the pictures!

Marc

The weekend is nearly over. It’s ten pm on Sunday night and I’m typing this while Matthijs is sleeping next to me on the sofa. Nadine’s already in bed as she’s got an early flight tomorrow. Ella just got home so it’s about time to put Matthijs back into his bed in his own room.

Weekend was great. The weather in DB is now turning a little cooler which means no more sweltering heat and humidity, but a very pleasant 28 - 30 degrees with a slight breeze.

This is really the best time of year in Hong Kong; it’s still warm, but no longer hot like in the summer. And the good thing is that usually this lasts till Xmas and New Year.

We’ve spend the weekend around the house and today we’ve been around the city a bit. There was a Mammoth bones exhibition in Olympic and we went to check it out. It’s got twenty thousand year old skeletons from the last Ice Age in China on display.

Matthijs is still too young to appreciate these things, but he was properly impressed by the huge exhibits and even a life size mock-up mammoth.

The exhibit put some perspective to the Ice Age cartoon film he watched tonight - although I probably have to explain the whole thing again when he’s a bit older…

Goodnite!

Marc

I’m watching Fargo on tv. Well actually only the last 15 minutes. This is one of the best films made by the Coen brothers.

In the pictured scene one of the villains is just pushing the last bit of mrs something through the shredder (you can see her socked foot stick out of the machine).

After this scene he’s arrested by a highly pregnant police officer. She then proceeds to arrest Mrs something’s husband, a car salesman who has been plotting the whole thing all along.

This may sound all ridiculous if you haven’t seen the film - but go and rent it, it’s a classic.

I find it hard to explain what makes the Coen brother films such good movies, but there’s something about the atmosphere and photography in their films that really makes them stand out.

I found out that my local lunch place of the last 5 years actually does a mean burger!!! The place is called the Big Apple and their burger is creatively called the Big Apple Burger. The restaurant is one of the last truly independent lunch places in the area.

All the rest is taken over by large global brands - McD, Pret a Manger, KFC, Delifrance, etc in a frenzy of the landlords to upgrade the area into a “high class professional commercial area” or whatever.

I’m happy I can still buy a home made burger in downtown Hong Kong.

Okay back to work now.

Things are heating up on the smartphone front.

Two interesting new models were presented at a German exhibition. Both smartphones are Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, have integrated Wifi, and a built-in keyboard.

One is the Samsung SGH-i600. This phone includes all possible networking standards, incl. UMTS, GPRS, Edge, and HSDPA (and Wifi).

Follow this links for more details and specs: http://msmobiles.com/news.php/5545.html

The other is an O2 phone - created by HTC.

Follow this links for more details and specs: http://msmobiles.com/news.php/5546.html