Back to Kunming today

My aunt helped me to buy the air tickets from Shenzhen yesterday, Y980 per person including tax already. We are going to Kunming this afternoon. It's always strange to leave, but I still miss the cycling trip so much, Oat said his life would be shorter if he continued to stay in Hong Kong because he was born to ride... a stupid joke, from him, again. Electronic air tickets bought in Shenzhen

Old photos from an abandoned notebook PC.

My sister's notebook PC was broken many years ago and for sure she didn't know how to retrieve the old data back, so Oat and I dissembled it, getting the hard disk out (only 3GB!) and copied some old files (and viruses) back to the new computer.

We found some really old pics (taken by my first digital camera, an PhotoPC 700 Color), there're times that we almost forgot we had taken these shots, something quite distantly remembered, but now resurfaced in front of our eyes. Perhaps it's fun to bury all old memories in a hard disk for ten years and dig them up to see what you think.

My two cousins, once very cute, now very fat:

• This is my younger cousin.  

• I forgot why but my elder cousin had tonnes of photos posing like this, I think somebody told him to make a pair of glasses around his eyes or what.

• Tortured by an egg.

• Because my younger cousin was so cute and funny when he was tortured, we always tried to find some way to tease him. :P

• He seems to be very curious about the number lock, I still carry it around while travelling.  

• Both very curious about the pump, but the elder bro seemed to be cleverer not to suck it.

• Making a sushi roll.  

Transformer camera!

I remember back in the time when I was about 4 years old, my grandma bought me a watch which could be transformed into a robot, I lost that robot-watch on the same day she bought it, in a taxi. I was quite sad, my grandma promised to buy me another one, but soon after that we both forgot it.

I came across a robot camera on the internet, it can really take photos!

• Click on the image to see more photos.

In case you also miss Transformers, go  to Youtube.

The Laputan Robot

These robots look familar? Recognize something?

Birthday gift!

It was my birthday yesterday and this is my gift, from mom, sister and aunt, a Leica Ultravid BR 25.

Long long time ago I had a pair of cheap binoculars and I used to think it was insane to pay so much for the Leica one, until one day when I was trekking in Nepal, met an American traveller and tried his Leica, in 2001, five  years ago. I couldn't even remember the name of that American guy but I couldn't forget the crispy sharp image through the Leica lens, the mountains were all in front of my eyes, it was so real, so stunning that I decided not to buy any binoculars except a Leica one.

And nothing can be better that this is a birthday gift! Haha!

Here it is, Leica Ultravid BR 25.

 

• The Leica Ultravid BR 25.

• The package of the whole binoculars.

 

• This is the Leica specialist, Stanley Street, Hong Kong.

Yulan, the Hungry Ghost Festival

Once upon a time there was a follower of Lord Buddha named Mahamaudgalyagana (目連), whose mother was a bad woman and in turn became a Hungry Ghost after dead. Mahamaudgalyagana visited the Hell and wanted to feed his mom, but it was so hot there that the food was burnt before reaching her mouth. Lord Buddha suggested Mahamaudgalyagana that he should feed other hungry spirits during the 15th day of the Seventh Month and help her mom to save some good karma, then she could be free from suffering. Mahamaudgalyagana did so, and her mom's bad deed was forgiven and she succeedingly became a protector of Ksitigarbha (地藏王). 

This should be the original story from what I've heard, but there's another twist, that traditionally Chinese think that the Gate of the Ghost World would open every year during the Seventh Month of the Lunar Calander, which falls between 25 July to 23 August 2006. During this time one should be aware of the hungry spirits lingering around the Human Boundary.

There are lots of ceremonies for the whole month but I don't understand much, I went with my family to Moreton, Causeway Bay and took some pictures.

• Traditional opera performed in Teochiu Chinese, I've heard that the first day of the performance was done for the spirits, no human should watch.

• Oat seemed to be quite enjoying this festival.

 

• A Chinese doll?

And, if you keep updating to the tech news, you may have heard that Chinese made a human-looking robot recently. Spot the similarity?

(The Chinese Robot which can speak Sichuanese!)

Two fat kids

My cousins spent some weeks in Hunan Province, China during the two-month summer holiday, but I could guess that there wouldn't be much to do except eating and TV gaming.

So, they became two fat cats. Their subcutaneous fat grew faster than muscle that I found them like two bursting balloons. I should take them for a ride... but I don't even have a bicycle in Hong Kong.

Internet speed again

The ISP guy came and checked my home's internet connection, the line test was okay, he helped me to change the setting of LAN card, as follows:

1. 區域連線 - 內容
2. 設定 Intel PRO/1000 PL network...
3. 進階
4. QoS 封包標簽: 停用
5. 連結速度與雙工: 自動偵測.

And I ran the Speedtest.net again, the result is as follows:

Ten times faster!!

Tibetan books

I used to be able to speak some Tibetan some years ago but now I remember virtually nothing, I couldn't even know how to read the simplest word. Strange!

These are the books that I bought in Dharamsala, India, in 2002 (and it took the postal service 6 months to send them back home in Hong Kong).

I hope to learn this sacred language again, probably within this year if things don't get wrong.

Windows Live (Beta)

Blogging isn't really handy if you use the web interface only, first log in, then choose post, and publish, every step requires a few seconds of waiting. It would be even quite a hassle to include pics as you will have to upload that first, another waiting. Of course you can always use the so-called "mail-to-post", but it's far from perfect, no support for HTML codes or image uploading. On a Palm OS device (like the Treo 650 I have), Chinese isn't supported yet. (No Unicode.)

Microsoft released a beta version of Windows Live, which is a desktop client for most blogging services. I have only one blog, this Kong junior's World, using the engine of Blogger.com, so this is the only platform that I tested this software.

After some simple setting at the very beginning, posting new article is a breeze. One thing that I like a lot about this software is that you can easily change your editing view as "Normal" or "HTML Code".

Normal WYSIWYG view:

 

HTML Code view:

At this stage, uploading image to Blogger isn't supported yet (and indeed I don't think they're going to implement this function), but you can setup an FTP server and the upload process is almost invisible.

A cyclist in Wanchai

Perhaps because of the cyclist's instinct, I keep observing if cycling is possible near my home, imagine how you can ride your bike from Wanchai to the Victoria Peak, it's suicidal; how to cycle from Wanchai to North Point? It's another attempt of suicide. But one day when I was riding a tram, I spotted this cyclist:

I immediately thought he must be insane... but wait, I remember some people thought we were insane to ride from Thailand to Tibet. Perhaps this cyclist wasn't insane, but a bit crazy.

We (I mean Pazu and Oat) put our two bicycles at a guesthouse in Dali, I called back last night to see if our bikes are okay, one female staff said, "I can't see your bike!" I tried to explain the location and asked her if she could check it, "Call back after 15 minutes, I'm busy!"

Fifteen minutes later, I called back again. "Why can't you call us later? I just told you to call back after 15 minutes!" She was almost shouting.

"You asked me to call back after 15 minutes at 20:33, now it's 20:48. So what time do you want me to call you back again?" I was trying to calm myself.

Eight.

Okay, then I called her again at 20:00. She said she had checked it already but couldn't find the bicycles. I did recognize her voice, she was the staff who checked us in the guesthouse and she gave me an impression that she was an axxxxx... okay, I won't swear in front of Kong junior.

How could I sleep without knowing the truth first? So I phoned the place again at 23:00, but talked to the security guard directly. He told me with quite a surprise, "Oh these two are your bikes? Of course they are here! Two black bikes!" And he immediately went out to check the bicycles again, "yes they are still here."

What a relieve! Anyway, we are going back to Dali soon.

Picasa Web, my new web album

It was quite a rare chance for me to use broadband internet, I mostly use GPRS as my internet connection (Wikipedia: GPRS) while travelling. Nothing much can be done except reading newspaper and emailing. So finally I managed to upload my travel web album during my short stay in Hong Kong, I choose Picasa Web because it's really easy, easier than Flickr and free of ads and free of charge so far. Photos uploaded include: China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia... I don't have time to put captions and I don't intend to do so indeed. I hope you still like it. Picasaweb.google.com/kongjr

Test your internet speed (from your place to some major cities in the US)

There's another funny site which can test your internet speed quite easily, just go there, choose a city in the United States, the website will automatically determine your location by your IP address, send a data to your computer and test your upload and download speed, like this:

Then it will give you a simple statistics showing your speed, like this:

I was using the Netvigator 8M Broadband in Hong Kong during this testing, but the result wasn't very satisfactory, some Pumbers seem to be ten times faster than my connection! Another friend in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China told me her connection was ten times slower than mine! Why the difference?

14 August 2006: (A follow up post, I have just called the tech support of Netvigator.com, they said our speed was abnormally low for an 8MBps line, they will send a guy to fix it tomorrow...)
Speedtest.net

Something not about travelling: Instructables.com

I came across a rather inspiring site called Instructables.com which lets you share and read a lot of instructions and home-made manual. Like how to turn your bicycle wheel into a customized display, or simply add a 160 degree wide angle lens to your existing digital camera for $11. This is the website in which me and Oat spent the longest time,

I have also made a simple Photoshop trick too, but it seems not too popular there.

Unexpected trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam

Sorry for not posting anything here for quite a long time, we cycled from Guanlei Port to Dali, Pazu got a news from home that his grandpa was seriously sick and he should go back home.

Oat and Pazu then put down all luggages including their bicycles in Dali's Youth Hostel and took a bus from Dali to Kunming and a flight from Kunming to Shenzhen, one more bus from Shenzhen to Hong Kong and yet another flight from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A week after he arrived, Pazu's grandpa passed away peacefully. Everything was quite fast, funeral, ritual, burial.

They are now in Hong Kong and are going back to Dali soon.