Monday, 26 February 2007 15:06 PM
Sitting in the CX735 to Singapore, waiting for push back at the gate. Today in an Airbus 340-300, and should take about 3.5 hours. Hong Kong’s hazy, Singapore’s rainy - so nothing new.
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Tuesday, 20 February 2007 23:18 PM
The year of the pig started on Sunday - and we had a few days off for the annual Lunar New Year celebrations.
Fortunately most of the new restaurants around DB are now open for business and in fact I had a great weekend just hanging out in ‘da bay’.
Posted in hong kong, discovery bay | No Comments »
Sunday, 11 February 2007 21:45 PM
In the middle of the night I arrived in India’s government capital. Cathay Pacific’s flights to India depart on rather strange times - they leave Hong Kong at 10.25pm, and you arrive in Delhi at 2.15am - which is 4.45am in Hong Kong. So you can see how my night-rest was torn in two!
Anyway, after the trip to the hotel - through some flooded areas on the way as I landed in a big rainstorm - and checking in it didn’t take me more than 10 minutes to jump in bed and continue the night’s sleep.
The next day - today Sunday - I did some sightseeing and visited India gate - a war memorial, the Red Fort, and Akshardham, a modern temple complex devoted to the Bhagwan Swaminarayan. Interesting sights especially Red Fort, which is where India was given back its independence in 1947.
My impressions for a first time visit to Delhi: the city is incredibly flat, i.e. there’s basically no high rise building on the horizon. From my hotel which seems to be one of the few highrise buildings I can’t see many other things sticking out of the treeline.
The other thing that’s noticeable is that this is a governmental capital. There are lots of ministerial buildings around, and the lobby of my hotel is buzzing with diplomatic or government looking folk, while body guards, drivers and big cars sit in the drive way.
Last thing to note is that I had a terrific snack in Red Fort; Aloo chat, which is potatoes with a nice mix of spices. Just marking the name here so I can remind myself!
India Gate
Red Fort
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Sunday, 11 February 2007 21:09 PM
WillItBlend.com is a site that’s devoted to finding out if things blend.
Interestingly and expectedly, they’ll take any item you’d not normally put in your blender and see “if it blends”.
Take a look if you want to see them take the shit out of toy cars, mobile phones, and an iPod as per this example 
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Wednesday, 7 February 2007 20:42 PM
A few days back I was looking at a handsome paper profit on my Lenovo shares. They went up to 3.48 at some point while I purchased them near 3.00. A nice 15+ percent profit!
Then IBM decides to let go of 300M Lenovo shares they were holding at a price of 3.20. Voila the price dropped 7% within 15 minutes trading from 3.44 to 3.20!!!
IBM made their profit as they got in on a much lower price, but all those retail investors like me saw their profits evaporate in a few minutes.
What’s the lesson here? Well I guess you can’t beat the big boys.
If you can’t beat them, join them, so maybe I should become an investment banker real soon. Let me know if you have a vacancy
/m
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Wednesday, 7 February 2007 11:22 AM
This caught my eye in SCMP today. A lady took a wrong bus and ended up separated from home and family for 25 years!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Woman comes home - after catching bus 25 years ago
REUTERS in Bangkok
A 76-year-old woman from southern Thailand who got on the wrong bus 25 years ago and ended up living at the other end of the country has been reunited with her family.
Unable to speak, read or write Thai, Jaeyaena Beuraheng boarded a bus in Malaysia thinking it was bound for Narathiwat, one of three Muslim-majority provinces in Buddhist Thailand’s far south, where most people speak Malay.
Instead, she ended up 1,200km to the north in Bangkok.
Her predicament grew worse when she boarded a bus she thought was heading south only to end up in Chiang Mai, a further 700km to the north, the Nation newspaper reported.
She eked out a living as a beggar for five years before being arrested in 1987 and put into a centre for homeless people in a nearby province, where she has remained ever since.
The woman was finally reunited with her eight children - who were told she had been run over by a train - after three students from Narathiwat came to work at the centre and spoke to her.
“It was only when the students in Muslim clothes visited her and she started chatting to them that we realised she wasn’t mute and could actually talk,” centre director Jintana Satjang said.
The woman had been known as “Mrs Mon” because centre staff thought her mutterings sounded like Mon, a tribal language in neighbouring Myanmar.
(courtesy of SCMP)
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Tuesday, 6 February 2007 23:32 PM
I walked by the local computer mall during lunch today - the “298 Computer Zone” on Hennessy Road (see here for location).
The reason was really to see if there’s any new gimmicks, gadgets, or widgets worth wasting some money on. Well, fortunately I came back without having spend any money, so no immediate new things to buy.
What did I learn on new developments on the market today? No new products here, but some new developments still;
1.
Portable DVD players with built-in LCD screens are really dirtcheap currently. You can get one for about 800 HKD, or about 100 USD - with a 9 inch screen. Nice for personal inflight entertainment, or for the kids. With the prices this low I’m now actually considering buying one for my 16 month old baby. So he can watch his ‘Nijntje’ and Pooh bear on his own screen rather than on daddy’s plasma.
2.
It’s amazing how much prices on digital SLRs have come down. When the D70 came out, I had to splash out about 8000 bucks on the body. Now you buy a new digital SLR at around 4000 bucks hong kong.
3.
The striking absence of Windows Vista from any of the shops or advertising in the mall. I certainly was WOWed in the wrong way with this! In fact, the only Vista logo I’ve seen was in the dodgy pirated CD shop I passed, which was happily selling Vista copies, next to all other Microsoft OS versions.
Will aim to update again on ‘lunch walks’ around the Hong Kong electronics stores when I’m not too busy.
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