"Progress"

Went to the Computer Festival in Wan Chai today. Hadn't been to the Pumpernickel in the Art Center for ages, so I went there with my favorite lunchie.

Damn...what the hell happened? This is what the place looked like a few years ago. Really cool looking light railed stairs:



And here it is today. Yellow bars? Seriously? And streams of cheesy lights with waxed clothing hanging from them? What on Earth where they thinking?

Sigh...just goes to show, you gotta make every moment count. You never know when things might change for the worse.

Sun shine, surfs up

Finally some good weather on the weekend. Only means one thing: wakeboarding!!!

Lost at sea...


Ha, got all tensed up doing the jump. Look at my squint and my clenched jaws.

It wasn't until leaving time that I realized that we were so close to Stanley Prison. Seems kind of wicked to lock up an inmate in a prison with a view of people having fun in the ocean.

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Where were you at 12:34:56 today?

Today is the 7th of August 09, meaning that at 12:34:56 the time/date was:

12:34:56 7/8/9

Neat.

See you again in 100 years.

Ramblings of a hopped up mind

Too much coffee during dinner coupled with 34C nighttime temperature = Restlessness.

So while I was lying there for hours staring up at the ceiling with unblinking eyes, my caffeine-charged mind started obsessing over the most bizarre things. It's funny how ideas that seemed so thought-consuming last night turned out to be so incredibly trivial in the morning.

Submitted for your approval, ideas to mull over the next time you're stuck in traffic, lying awake or just plain bored out of your skull:

Why is it that the numbers 1 to 10 are all monosyllabic except for "Seven"? Why not something short, like "Sev"?

What is so special about the number 12 that we need a unique naming system for the first 12 numbers? For example, all the 20's follow the same naming: twenty-one, twenty-two….twenty-nine. But for the 10's, we only start the "teen" naming convention with 13. There's "eleven" and "twelve" instead of "one-teen" and "two-teen". Why are humans so obsessed with the number 12 (e.g. twelve months) that it needs all 12 numbers to be unique?

Why is it "Thirteen"? That implies the "3rd teen", but in fact it's the first teen (Eleven and Twelve aren't considered teens). And why is it 'Thirteen" and "Fifteen" instead of "Threeteen" and "Fiveteen"? All the other teens are simply the integer + teen.

And while were on it, why "teen" at all? Look at all the later numbers: 20, 21 = twenty and twenty-one, 60, 61 = sixty and sixty-one. So why not "ten-one, ten-two…ten-nine, twenty"?

Here's a non-numerical quandary: what's the purpose of the letter "Q"? There's nothing "Q" spells that can't be spelled with "K" or "KW" (example: Irak, Kwestion"). If "Q" could act alone and make the "kw" sound then it could be considered an efficient character because you could use 4 letters to spell "qick" instead of 5 using "kwick". But the fact remains that "Q" invariable needs to be followed by a "U" for all "kw" sounds, so there's absolutely no difference between 5-letter "quick" and "kwick".

Speaking of efficiency, why do we use "Ge" in words that can be spelled simply with a "J"? Example: "George" -> "Jorj".

And the Grand Unification of all my thoughts: If you insist on keeping "Ge", then get rid of "J". Then, we can get rid of "Q" as well and have 24 letters in our alphabet, which is a multiple of the wonderful number Twelve. Ooooooo….

TGIF

July 31, more than half of the year has passed by and yet today was the first day this year that I took a day off from work. Between being a PM for 7 projects and working in the Release Management team, there's basically no time left between projects to take time off.

So it was soooo nice to have a day away from the office. Slept late, did some shopping, had lunch with my favorite lunchie, then went wakeboarding. I tell you, just floating there in the water looking up at the sun and knowing that it was 15:30 on a workday afternoon was an awesome feeling...

Funny Fate

Seems like this year is a good time for celestial events. A few months back, we got to see the largest full moon in decades, and today was the longest total eclipse in Asia in 500 years, and the longest partial in HK for 50.

Normally, I'd take the day off to capture such an event on camera, but I had some meetings that I couldn't miss. But luckily, upon reaching work Mother Nature saw fit to grant us all a gift. The clouds rolled in at just the right amount so that the eclipse could be viewed safely with the naked eye. As always, I had my trusty Ixy DC with me:

Even with a partial eclipse, the streets were noticeably darkened:

Fate's a funny thing. I saw a segment on the evening news that lots of HKers went up the Shanghai - predicted to be one of the best vantage points - to witness this spectacular site. And yet before the eclipse really began rain came pouring down, blocking any view of the sun. Ironically, conditions here at home were so beautiful that anyone who wanted to could see the event unaided.

Ha, even the best laid plans of mice and men...