.

Sway

Juz last monday afternoon my bro was still online. Monday midnight when I got home I couldn't get onto the net. Alright. Mebbe it's a temporary problem, so I tried the next morning, and the next evening. Cannot. I called starhub but they couldn't find the problem. Brought my modem to my cousin's place to try and it worked perfectly, cables and all. Checked the ipconfig on command prompt. It showed an invalid ip address. Wat luck. I called starhub again. They told me to get an ethernet card. Ok, so I went down to sim lim sq, bought the card and cable and went home. Freak. Then I found a cable in the modem box they gave last time. Wasted 5 bucks on the cable. Opened the cpu cover, tampered here and there, finally installed the card but it still wouldn't work. Tried to renew the ip address but there was always an error message. Then I called starhub again. Told me to call the computer vendor. Screw starhub.. whenever they can't solve the problem their advice is to call the computer vendor. Yeah. I suspect they have some checklist of standard steps to follow. When something crops up that strays beyond this standard list of things to rectify, they are helpless. Boo.. lousy. I wanted to diss at the person and tell her I'm going to switch to singnet if they can't give me better advice then I realised I was still under their contractual period. lolz so cannot use scare tactics =p Finally decided to ask my cousin's fren for help. Nothing wrong with the com. The modem lights were on as normal, USB ports working, ethernet card working, drivers all intact, settings in place, cables were fine, but juz couldn't get on the net. Didn't want to waste time, so I formatted my com. Tried to renew the ip address but still couldn't. Right. Now we were convinced that it was starhub's problem. Mebbe someone over there clicked something by accident. Don't really know. But finally established connection after trying to renew over and over again for 10 minutes. Juz as well I formatted my com. Got rid of all the trojan horses and spyware.

Late post

I didn't get lost in hk ah.. came back last monday, not last night. Spent 5 days there. I love hk! Hahah great place to shop, eat and sightsee. This post is slightly late. hey not my fault =) We left on 27th morning. xinling and huili went to see us off. Thanks girls! Reached there around 1030. Checked into hotel. Our hotel was at yau ma tei in Kowloon. Lunch was at this stall near the hotel. Had roasted goose and char siew. The char siew was fantastic! Our first authentic hk food. Then walked around the yau ma tei and jordan area. hk streets are so happening! Ok I can't help notice that the guys there have nice hair! Nice style, nice colour! Envious leh.. The shops there were not cheap. Still reasonable but not really good buys. Managed to buy a few clothes though. Evening we went to nu ren jie. Long stretch of road with dirt cheap bargains. Something like the one behind bugis village but 10 times longer. Every stall sells almost the same types of shirts and pants, but they jack up the prices to fleece tourists. Met one singaporean lady who was also shopping there who told us to sha jia to half of the price they quote. kaoz.. imagine how much they profit normally. I only learnt towards the end, after I had bought a few pieces le.. then I got wiser and sha more. Good buys!

Took the mtr to hk island the next day. Their mtr is so similar to singapore's. Nice and clean, with a lighted map to show you exactly where along the mtr line you are at. There are ads in the tunnel that view like a minivideo when the train goes past. Innovative eh. Octopus card is like our ezlink card. But we didn't buy that cos the minimum value is hkd150. yup, transport there is ex. A trip that's one station away is hkd4. Got off at central, then took a bus to ocean park. Passed by happy valley on the way. Zhen qing fans will know that it's pao ma di! There's really a racecourse there. Spent the whole day at ocean park after that. There's lowland and highland. Have to enter and exit from the lowland, and take cable car to the highland. The view was good. Had to be one of the longest cable car rides I've ever taken. Was very hot that day and we walked one big round in the park before reaching the rides. Sat the roller coaster, abyss, and a few more other cheap thrill rides hehe. First time sitting a loop roller coaster. This one was 3 loops! But it wasn't that scary cos the ride was very fast. Quite enjoyed it actually! Then took the abyss. Right, my cousin freaked me out when he was describing his experience. Turned out that he took the gold coast 38 storey high one. And the free fall lasted 5 whole seconds. Not this one. This one wasn't that high and the free fall was at most 2 s long. But when I was up there anticipating when the thing would drop the feeling was horrible! Yeah I kept saying shit the first I was up there lolz.. and I closed my eyes during the drop. Second time hope was beside me and he was shouting when we reached the top. I was taking in the view lah, don't waste heh. Then I opened my eyes the second time. Good. And good for hope who didn't want to try at first! Tried other rides, then watched the dolphin show. They have an atoll reef, something like underwater world but it's a lot deeper. It started to rain in the evening. Supposed to go to the peak but we saw no point going when it was so cloudy. Took the cable car back to lowland. Ok this ride was scary cos there was thunder and lightning around us haha or was it that we were scaring ourselves for the fun of it. Then we went to pacific place. There's a nice food court there. I think we felt quite at home there and chatted away til it was late. All high-end shops there.

Day 3 was the tour to lamma island. Visited zhou run fa's old house (nothing spectacular but it was part of the itinerary) Had a seafood lunch there. ivan chatted up this fellow singaporean who was with his other 2 frens. Turned out that 3 of them were from cat high too. 2 yrs older, 82 batch. Found them to be ok initially, then thought they were weird. Not in that sense but they are strangers after all. shrugs. Nothing much on lamma island. Quite serene. Seemed to be a draw for caucasians cos we saw many on the island.

Then went to taipo. The wishing tree! Anybody remembers watching hk dramas and they would show people trying to throw their wishes on the tree? yep, we went to that one! We went with the 3 guys. Took a taxi there. As soon as we opened the taxi door, the old ladies started to swarm around us. Whom to buy from? Couldn't decide, so qich, huiting, yiqing and I started to walk in down the road. And they began to chase us. I feel quite sorry for them actually, so old le and still have to run after us, trying to get us to buy the scrolls, incense and oranges. yeah, although we eventually bought from this lao po po who charged us more than the rest, I still feel sorry for her. Down to the task! There are 2 trees. One is for health; one is for marriage. So the 4 of us bought 2 scrolls each. Then we started writing down our wishes in chinese. (She muz be chio, ti tie, da fang, etc.. =p) and for the health one I wrote wishes for my family and frens. Cos it's already tied to mandarin oranges, we juz have to throw it up on the tree and hope it catches on a branch and stays there. The higher the better! The marriage tree was easy. 15 minutes and we were done. Then we went to the health tree. kaoz.. when I was throwing my wish up, my scroll caught someone else's and I threw his down! ooops. Hahaha. And it was weiliang's! One of the 3 cat high guys. So paiseh.. he had to throw his up again. Seemed that everyone managed to get their wishes on the tree so quickly. only ht yq and me couldn't. I think I threw at least 30 times.. I threw until the string snapped and got orange juice on the rest's faces (paiseh) and had to buy another orange. Hahaha. It was an ordeal ok! I got red joss stick marks on my fav yellow t-shirt, orange pulp on my face; same with yq cos she also threw until she lost count. Muz be our wishes for our family were heavy.

Went to the peak after that. Took a tram up. Very steep ride. Breathtaking view. Had dinner at the 3 storey marche there. I spent hkd127 on that dinner alone! Went out after it was dark and took more photos.

On sunday we had dim sum at ding hao restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui. Ordered 20 over luo of dim sum and the bill was so cheap. Then went to granville street. Shopped the entire afternoon, then went to avenue of stars at night. There was a light display show, and the laser came from the tall commercial buildings on hk island opposite. But we didn't catch much, and the audio accompaniment was in cantonese anyway. Went to temple street juz next to our hotel after that. Had dessert. qich bought sesame paste that was ground so finely it really looked like clay. Yum. Temple street is more of a cheapened version of nu ren jie, and they don't sell many clothes either. A lot of jade, women's jewellery, household appliances, and porn. I think I saw a xie zhen of shu qi.

The last day was a rush. Only spent about 3 hours on hk island, then had to rush back to the hotel. Went to the sogo there. 10 storeys of sogo.. s'pore doesn't have sogo anymore pity. But I was still quite happy with the buys there. Haiz 5 days is too short =p

Salt and sand

Last week wasn't eventful. Tuition, tidying my room. Weekend was better. Learnt windsurfing with gh and mingchang on saturday. Windsurfing is hard.. For the first half of the lesson, I fell off the board more times than I managed to grip the boom. The second part was better; I could finally move. Can actually feel the wind tugging against the sail and I sailed 10 metres? haha. But I'm confused about the steering. Ended up with a backache from uphauling the sail. It wasn't that bad. Need more practice I guess.

posted by Alvin @ 8:40 PM |