Hunting for a new mobile phone

Mentioned I was waiting for a few mobiles to come out and thinking to buy 1 of them. They are:

Nokia N96

N85

Samsung Omnia

and Sony Ericsson X1.

Samsung Omnia was the first to come out, and also the first got crossed out of my list. Let's just say Windows Mobile sucks. It's tedious, and makes me love iPhone even more.

Nokia N96 was the second. The OS was slow and unstable. And it's ridiculously expensive. So, it's out.

I haven't put my hands on N85 yet. The price tag looks okay. But with 1000hr+ life time, the A-OLED screen is very short-lived, even it looks spectacular. So, it's probably a "NO" for N85, too.

And there is the Sony Ericsson X1. Rumor said it's coming out next week, priced almost the same as N96. But just like Omnia, it uses WM, that I ain't looking forward to.

Besides these four, Nokia got their very first touch screen mobile coming on the way, 5800 XpressMusic.

Rumor, again, said it will be launched in Hong Kong on 5 Dec. This new baby got me all curious. Will it be as responsive & good as iPhone? Nokia's suggested price for it is just 250euro, which is way cheaper. The price alone almost won a "YES" from me.

But, (yeah, here comes the "but") some big man in Nokia revealed they are working on a few future touch screen mobiles. There may be a Nseries touch screen coming out in 2009. So, I probably won't go for 5800, instead to wait for the N "Touch".

Still, I will get a new mobile before X'mas.

I've got a plan for the next time back to HK. I will get my hands on N85 & X1, and N82. If I don't like N85 nor X1, will buy N82.

Since the launch of N85 and N79, N82's price dropped at least a good $500, and will drop some more. It's really good value, and most importantly a very nice smartphone.

... starting to wonder, who was I convincing?

I was again excusing for being shopaholic.

I AM GOING TO EUROPE! YAY!!!

Technically, only Leeds, London & Paris. Nevertheless, it's Europe.

This all started with Virgin Atlantic's promotional campaign for their new flight VS239 to London. They offered the first 239 passengers return tickets for only $2,390! I wasn't fast enough, still managed to get one for $3,390 which is way cheaper than CX and BA, considered I'll be flying during high season.

Lucky me, not only flying cheap, also spending cheaper GBP & Euro, I managed to get €1=HK$10.5 and £1=HK$12.2 :D
Totally awesome!

So, my plan will be like:

14/12	HKG>LHR
15/12	Leeds
16/12	Leeds>London
17~18/12	London
19/12	London>Paris
20~23/12	Paris
24/12	Paris>LHR>HKG(25/12)

It sucks to be travelling on X'mas Eve & X'mas Day, but 26/12 is not a holiday in Macau, gotta work, have to be back on 25/12 :(

Anyway, I'll be spending my X'mas holidays in EUROPE!

HEEHAH~!

Gastritis, again.

WTF.

God I hate this.

No alcohol.
No spicy food.
No deep fried food.

Coffee?
That I can't resist.

Flight to Taiwan & 1st day in Taichung

30/9/2008

So, I got up at 2:30am, went out to catch the airport bus at 3am, Mom insisted to come along. Got to HKIA at 4am, ate a free breakfast, CX paid for it. Said goodbye to Mom at 4:30am, got through security, usual stuff. Got to the gate at 5am, just in time for boarding. In-flight breakfast sucked, early morning flight sucked more. Didn't get any sleep. Grumpy. Landed at 7am.

Terrible weather, the Taoyuen Airport>Taichung bus got in very late, got on at 9:20am, and it's supposed to be a 8:30am bus.

Got to Taichung at 11:30am. The weather was even worse there, shitty heavy rain.

By the time got on the local bus to Taichung Hostel, I was already soaking wet. I'd spare you the hideous details how I found the hostel. In short, got lost a bit. It's already 1:30pm when I got there.

Spent 8 hours wandering around the city in pouring rain. My umbrella started dripping above me after a hour or 2.

Checked out the shopping district. Went to a famous night market, only a few shops opened, ate some local food. Kinda finished the routine tourist thing.

Getting back to the hostel from the night market was another hideous journey.

Summary for my 1st day in Taichung: MISERABLE.

Dispite all that, I still think it's a pretty nice city.

28/9/2008 (Part 2)

(It's more like a summarized version.)

So I waited with the two ladies from Taiwan, we talked a little. They told me what Taiwan is like under typhoon attacks, I told them where to go to experience a more interesting HK. They were really nice.

It's 3pm by then, the place was still chaotic, no body knew if they were in the right line. I hadn't eaten anything since 9am. The ladies heard me complained about that, they told me to go eat and would look after my duffle bag. After I finished, they had found another counter that would do check-in as well, and a few of us moved there, quietly. We settled everything before 4pm. Lucky me.

I was debating to stay at HKIA till 5am next day or go back home. I wandered around a bit, got myself all exhausted. Finally left HKIA at 5pm, back to home at 7pm.

I got to eat a decent dinner, talked a bit with my family. My parents tried to convince me not to go, of course I was going.

Then I got a shower, and tried to get a few hours' sleep.

Relationship with parents is a LOVE / HATE thing.

My dad is 56 years old, but emotionally he's more like 5. And he made me felt like 50.

I had to apologize to him to get it over & done with.
If not, he could hold grudge for 1 more week, even a month.
The thing is, I worry he would get piles or even protitis if it stuck up his ass more than 3 days. And I am a more mature and better person than he is, so I apologized.

But while I was doing it, all I could think of was:

"Go FUCK yourself, you fucking sonofbitch."


The whole thing was so ridiculous it's almost funny. Almost. Only if he was not my dad.

Just ranting

28/9/2008


Ven & I got up pretty early that morning, so we could have breakfast before taking the ferry.

I was well aware that Jangmi was on its way to Taiwan, had been keeping an eye on it since 26/9. Thought I could get lucky.

After back to HK, Ven & I went our separate ways. She back to home sweet home, me to HKIA for my 13:30 flight.

Not more than 10min, Ven called, said the taxi driver had heard an announcement on the radio. All flights to/from Taiwan after 12:00 had been delayed, included mine. But I was optimistic, as always, Ven commented more than once I'd been too much of it.

Anyway, I wasn't worried, just got a text message from the airline said my flight would depart according to schedule, and called the hotline just to make sure. Everything looked fine. So I got on the airport bus.

It started to get bad from here.

Half way to HKIA, another message from CX, my flight had been delayed. What could I do? I was stuck on the bus in the mid of highway. Was heading to the airport anyway.

When I got there, it looked peaceful. Went straight to the check-in counter, hoped to get my boarding pass. Shouldn't be hard, I'd done online check-in already. No such luck.

The pretty CX crew told me the flight's delayed, got to wait till 14:00 for "further notice". And "please go to counter F14-18 for assistance". That's standard.

So I went to Terminal 2 to hang out a bit, watched some news in the Apple store. And yes, they got an Apple store in HKIA. What people do here? Buy a brand new MacBook and hook up to free WiFi?! Jez...

Around 13:15, got another text message, said my flight's been delay to "5:30, 29 Sep". Note, it's "5:30", not 05:30, not 5:30pm. What's that? Of course gotta ask CX ppl. "Oh, it means 5:30am tomorrow," another pretty CX crew said, "and you have to go to F14-18 for check-in."

I got there, but it's chaotic. There're already like 500ppl gathering around with no order at all. Just couldn't figure out where the line(s) was/were. I just wandered around outside that herd of ppl. After 10min, found a senior CX crew, asked her about the line. (Did it exist at all?) Lucky for me, I was in HK, not the Mainland China. When a line's drawn, ppl actually queue up along it. The senior crew was actually working on getting security draw some lines and get ppl in order, well, as much as they could.

So, I got a line to queue up. Then started to talked to the lady in front of me, who happened to be from Taiwan. She had a boutique in Taipei, and was travelling with her staff and buying goods in HK. They got quite a lot of luggage, 4 big suit cases.



To be continued...

Hagubit & Ven

Why were they relevant?
Because, Ven was a lucky bitch.

You see, Hagubit came to full blown mode on what, 24/9?
It blew my bike, smashed some buildings, flooded the streets... in short, it basically tore up Macau.

But when Ven came to visit on 27/9 morning, the city almost looked like new. Ok, I might exaggerate a little, you got the idea anyway.

Even luckier, she got to ride my bike. I was so happy it survived the typhoon.
Actually I almost gave up on it. Last time I had to send it in to the shop after a few days rain, and spent $500 repairing it. It's just not a tough bike.

So, Ven & I got to hang out together, had a few drinks, drove around & saw a bit of the city.

Everything's great, until 28/9.

A lot had happened in the past week.

1. Typhoon Hagubit
2. Ven came to visit in Macau
3. Typhoon Jangmi
4. Got stuck in HKIA
5. Trip to Taiwan

I can write about all of the above in the same post. Or, I can put them in two, even three.