Having just came back from a extended working trip I’m trying my best to fill in my experience, at the same time juggling workload.

But things are just getting complicated.. just seems to be going against me.. I am mentally drained.. emotionally drained..

Song of the moment: 陈洁仪 – 天冷就回来

I’m looking out for a new phone recently as my current phone has only dualband; I’ve downgraded from an early Symbian to S40 previously coz of the (first) phone I lost. I took a look at what I wrote in my wishlist:

Candybar phone, light, thin with bluetooth, memory card, cable to PC, simple camera, GPS, wifi/3G, Java, no stylus (this model does not exist!)

I probably wrote this some time back, as such models are in existence already! For example the just released N78 Singtel is promoting now. Maybe not thin and light enough for today’s standards, but I think it is compact enough to be sooo feature-packed. What I didn’t specify in that list are price and design of the phone. By the promotion ($288 2-yr plan, or $0 with trade-in & higher plan) price is really quite worth it for such the entire suite of features.

BUT, too bad, the design is really way out. The look of the phone is pretty good, but the buttons are out of place! I can’t reach the ‘C’ button at all without shifting my grip on the phone. That’s quite a minus to me, the reason I dislike stylus is because I prefer a 1-hand operation, and shifting like this is not good for 1-hand; it’ll slip off easily. The keypad is also not big enough or well separated, unlike my current one which I can do some operations without looking (I can select snooze, off alarm, go to inbox, and other tasks by just feeling my phone while asleep now)

Looking at other phones in the N-series they’re quite close to “my” specs, so hopefully one comes that meets all my requirements or miss the insignificant features. Upcoming 6220 classic (Q308?) have almost the same features as N78, appears to have better buttons, but no Wifi. I’m still considering if Wifi can be dropped with this feature set, its like… I have to pay for surfing? IM? Use GPS with maps? Replace with GPRS/3G? Maybe its even more practical as I need not be in a hotspot, but the charges need to be reasonable. Finally, the price of the phone needs to win me over…

Just watched 綜藝大哥大 showing magic show, and really amazed by some of them. I am especially attracted to street style magic, rather than the stage or majestic style where crafted props are involved. With the props you can make things happen, but I feel street magic is more challenging due to the close proximity of the audience and the angles they can see you from. In addition it should cause non-prepared objects go into a seemingly impossible state, right before your eyes.

And they have formal magic studies (Harry Potter anyone?) and discuss terms like “misdirection” and “penatration”. In the show the magician pushed a bottle cap into a wine bottle, from the bottom. The mouth of the bottle is smaller than the cap, so there is no obvious way the cap can get in, and when its in it was checked: you can’t really pour it out. Second was even more amazing, he borrowed 3 rings from the audience, and interlocked them together in his hands. Really cannot imagine how he did that. But he did it.

No need for playing cards or magic wands to amaze me.

I got to take back my comment that said I’ve no cable, coz just last night, within one hour, I’m on Starhub CableTV! There was a door-to-door offer for a 4-month 50% off contract of CableTV, with Sports channel free (for Euro Cup), all setup fees waived.

Well, if you look directly at my family needs, we don’t really watch a lot of TV, we don’t watch soccer, so it looks like a waste of money. But actually I’ve been waiting for them to approach us to sign up CableTV, so that we become a HubClub member. If I’m not wrong the discounts we get actually offsets (likely exceed) a basic CableTV package, so we might as well get it. Also, the new mobile discount scheme can give us up to 25% considering our household has 3 Starhub Mobiles. Adding to the point that my dad’s monthly bill alone exceeds $100, this shaves at least $25 off monthly. (Guess who’s paying his bill?)

Previously I did receive a call to ask us to subscribe, but when I asked him to send us the details of the promotion as it was quite confusing over the phone, he agreed but didn’t. So he blew a chance. Now with a good offer knocking at my doorstep, installed within an hour, at 10.30pm, some people might just call this “the work of God”… (the 10.30pm was significant to me because the previous Starhub Internet free installation had to take place in the day, and I had to schedule it on a weekend a few weeks later)

One bad point about this is I have to reteach my parents how to use the complex remote control. I whipped up a large-font instructions and channel list for them, but it’s likely they’ll take some time to catch on.

Now I’m wondering my house will become a campsite for Euro 2008, or maybe I’ll now stay home everyday and watch Discovery, National Geographic and Animal Planet…