Category: opinion

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Life Journey

A good friend of mine once gave me a Forever Friends card many years ago, it has the following message on it:

You may walk jump, run or fly,

… but please never lose sight of the reason for the journey, and don’t miss a chance to see a flower on the way.

My friend then added the following to this message:

Life is full of wonders if we appreciate and treasure every experience

I carry this card every day to remind me to stop and think of the things I do. Especially when the going get tough and I don’t want to continue.

With our current economic conditions many people are down and troubled by the events around them. I just want to share the above with everyone to remind them to value and treasure what they do have.

The things that are out of our control are exactly that, our energy is better spent on the things we can control.

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PCCW – Netvigator Outrageous

Netvigator Logo pccw

This evening (20:52) my girlfriend received a call on her mobile from PCCW Netvigator telephone salesperson. Like in most cases when one receive this sort of unsolicited telephone call, she simply told the salesperson on the phone that she does not have time to talk, which was the case this evening, as she was at a friend’s house.

Instead of giving up and move on to the next “victim” on their call list, the salesperson calls her back and said, “… I was not calling to give you an offer, but if I was I would not offer it to you.”, then hung up.

First of all these sorts of calls are unsolicited and I would consider them to be SPAM calls. I will be writing to OFTA to file a formal complaint of PCCW Netvigator salesperson’s attitudes. Of course, PCCW’s salespersons are already famous in Hong Kong for having one of the worst customer facing attitudes so that is not too surprising.

I wish OFTA would have an ordinance like the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance for regular telephone calls.

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Auspicious First Day of Work 2009

Many of you know I am not superstitious, although true to my tradition that I started a year ago.

Auspicious First Day of Work 2009

This chart shows the most auspicious day to start your first day of work in the new Lunar Year (2009, Year of the Ox). The exact date depends on the Chinese zodiac sign you belongs to. So you must first figure out which Chinese zodiac sign you are then look at the chart.

PS: note that the official first day (Spring) for the year of the Ox is Feb. 4 (初十). Any babies born between Jan. 26 – Feb. 4 00:58 are still consider babies in the year of the Rat.

May you all have a prosperous new year!

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Happy Birthday!!

Twenty-five years ago Apple released the Macintosh computer. With its original (arguably) approach to computing and Human Interface, it immediately changed the personal computer market, and introduced the concept of GUI. Ever since that day Apple continued to innovate, coming up with original approaches to product design and User Experience. For that, I had been happily using the various models (11 in total) of Macintosh for the same number of years.

Tomorrow is Macintosh’s quarter of a century anniversary; although I am much older, I too will be celebrating a birthday of my own. Is it a coincident that the Mac’s birthday and my own are on the same day? For those who believe in fate may think otherwise.

Over the past 25 years Apple had its ups and downs, with the worst few years during the mid 90’s when Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, was forced out of the company. Upon his return in 1998 the company was transformed once again, which we saw the introduction of the iMac, Macintosh Cube, iPod, Mac Mini, MacBook Air, iPhone and unibody MacBook.

In recent weeks, Apple fans received much news about Apple and its co-founder, Steve Jobs. Through out the Interweb, there are numerous analyses of what these all means, so I will not dwell on these subject further. I personally wish Steve Jobs and his family the best and may he get well soon. At this point it really doesn’t matter if Jobs returns to Apple or not, if he does it will be a bonus to Apple and its faithful customers (followers).

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Taxi Taxi As Far As Eye Can See

This evening at one of the busiest location in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, near Time Square at 21:00 in the evening. Where normally it’s very difficult to find an empty taxi, had so many available taxis that the line up spilled out onto a street three blocks away.
View Toward the Front of the Line View Towards the End of Line

Could this be the result of the recent taxi rate hike before Christmas?

I really don’t understand why the taxi industry of Hong Kong chooses to raise the rates during this worldwide economic down spin, where Hong Kong is one of the many cities taking the brunt of the effects. With many people in Hong Kong worry about the security of their jobs in the coming months.

The taxis industry’s original excuse for raising the rates was the high cost of gas prices, therefore raising their cost of operation. This did not make sense to me, as 100% of the taxis in Hong Kong are fueled by  LPG. Plus gas prices had dropped over HKD4.00/L since their original complaint.

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Apple Strikes a Death Blow on Macworld

Apple announced in a PR that the coming Macworld 2009, held in San Francisco will be the last time Apple is attending MacWorld.

Is this announcement that significant? With the buzz generated with this Apple PR, the Interweb has been buzzing all morning and through out the day with new articles speculating what this all means. With some even brought up conspiracy theories.

Continue reading “Apple Strikes a Death Blow on Macworld”

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Middle School Student Reprimanded for Promoting Linux

HeliOS MascotAccording to the HeliOS blog, a middle school teacher sent a nasty email to HeliOS, the nonprofit organization that supply computers to post-secondary school kids in the states of Arizona and Florida of the United States. These computers are all equip with the Linux operating system (OS) and other Open Source software.

In this email the teacher…

… observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. Continue reading “Middle School Student Reprimanded for Promoting Linux”

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US Capitalism

It appears that United States capitalism is different from typical capitalism.

If your business fails and you are large enough of a company, you can ask the [US] government for money to bail you out. Rather than doing what most other companies in a capitalistic economy will have to do, which is to be original and reorganize the business so it becomes profitable.

Having already set a precedent of bailing out AIG and CitiBank, next week the US government will decide on a bailout package of about USD15B to USD17B, for the three major US auto manufactures: GM, Chrysler and Ford. This is short of what the three companies were asking for, USD34B, to keep them afloat.

The more shocking fact of this story is that the approximate USD17B will only last the three companies until March 2009.

I think for USD17B or USD34B that the auto makers are asking for, the government can use this money to retrain the autoworkers for the future work force. It is not the question of whether United States should have an auto industry, but whether they should maintain status quo.

Do you agree with the US government’s decisions? Please share your comments here.

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Ridiculous Hong Kong Government Decision

Just read in HK Magazine (Nov. 28, 2008 issue) that Hong Kong Customs officers from inspector to assistant commissioner levels can travel to vineyards in France for wine tasting. These are suppose to be working trips to educate them on wine, so they can tell the difference between real and fake wines. All these trips are funded using public money.

That is absolutely outrageous, even if we are not in a global financial crisis. On one hand the government wants to raise salaries of government workers 3%. While they make spending decisions like the one with HK customs.

Continue reading “Ridiculous Hong Kong Government Decision”