Been a busy week!

Yes, it has been a very busy week once I stepped foot on HK soil. Hong Kong, Macau back to Hong Kong. Then taking advantage of the "non-restricted" highspeed to download all the patches and upgrades for our Macbook Pro. For only one patch of 140MB from Shanghai would have taken anywhere from "super fast" 10 minutes to an average of 8 hours. Yes, 8 hours. While doing this, I was review all the contracts iron-wife has received for work. Sh*tty construct was all I can say. After reading 3 contracts, I was driven. Driven to pop open a bottle of Chiva Scotch! Once only though! If two bottles, I knew I was in trouble. I could not believe people actually coming up with legal stuff like that and then had the ball to tell contractors to sign as is; and then contractors actually signed them!!! One contract, I actually had to rewrite from scratch and correct all the spelling mistake! Then there was one with both English and Chinese. The Chinese translation did not match up to the English in the proper legal grammatical sense. The Chinese was a literal word by word translation. Scary. I finally told iron-wife to get the company to remove the Chinese. So, in case you all wondering what I have been doing this week, it was not fun and game. It was all work. Serious work. I only had time to surface for air to pick up a laptop, my lunches and that was it.

The laptop, my Chinese teacher wanted a replacement laptop; a Thinkpad. If getting in China, you never know if it is real or authentic. That's how bad it is. And with the RMB is higher then HK$, last I look the conversion rate is: RMB 1 = HK$ 1.14. During a lesson I had with her, we were talking and I showed her the conversion rate... And all of a sudden all the lights went on. When she studied at HK University, the exchange rate was: RMB 1 = HK$ 0.8 to 0.9. Got a top of the line Thinkpad T400 with Windows XP Pro and all, the cost came to HK12,500 (CAD$1,700). This machine is 14.1" and light! Light! About 3lbs or so. And the guy threw in an anti-virus program with one year free subscription, a mouse and a very nice carry case. This Wan Cai Computer Mall is big and houses all sorts of computer shops, Mobile shops, computer components, whatever you want this mall has. Hey, want an iPhone 3G? It's about HK$5,300.

Tomorrow, heading over to Macau to do a day trip to visit mom and dad. Let see how things go over there.

O yeah, I was looking for a Mobile device that I can surf the web, with camera, that I can load application to, that I can listen to podcasts and watch movies, do emails... Well, I thought I have finally found one in this Nokia E71. It shapes like a Blackberry. Very nice; has everything. I went to play around with it in the Official Nokia store. This phone runs on an operating system called Symbian; Nokia just recently bought the entire Symbian operating system from Samsung and Sony (I believe) and will turn this into an Open-source operating system. OK, after playing around for 5 minutes, I could not find what I want from the UI (User Interface). Hey, if I have to relearn, forget it. I am wasting time here. And the screen is wider than long. Basically just like the Blackberry. Nah, not going to pull out my credit card; plus after buying this phone (about HK$3898.00) I have to buy this software called MissingSync (US$39.99) to sync my Mac's contact, iPhoto, Calendar and podcasts. More money to spend. Last I heard there is a recession coming and Cash is king. I looked at another mobile phone too Nokia N95 8GB; basically is a walking Mobile piece of work with 5M pixel camera, Wi-Fi, aGPS, edit Word, Excel documents, 3G, High data packet transmission, TV-out.... for a cost of HK$6,000. Well.... it is as thick as a brick. I might walk funny. And this Nokia N95 also uses Symbian Operating System. I think - NOT. After playing around further, I have come to the realization that Steve did a good job making the UI very intuitive to use. The only thing I hate about his elegant design is NO KEYBOARD. I have decided I guess.... iPhone for me when all the kinks are worked out.