I went to read about the “Gongfu tea ceremony” we just performed at a tea-house. From the utensils it is obvious we were exposed to the Taiwanese version, which uses tweezers and a sniffer cup.

The process we learnt seems to be largely similar to what the waiter taught us, with just some minute differences. Somehow I didn’t read that we should drink the 1st cup in only 3 sips because the word 品 has 3 口s. Must have been fun for the waiter too IF he smoked all first-timers. Heh heh.

It was just fun to go through the steps, though I couldn’t really appreciate any taste different between tea in a bigger teacup from a metal kettle. I would probably even have trouble differentiating one type of tea from another, so even if we tried more teas I’m not sure if I can identify one that I like more.

And yup, I’m still awake. It’s not I’m not tired. My type of awake is I’m tired, I lie on the bed, but I just can’t fall asleep. If someone wants to torture me, feed me tea.

Oh. As I was about to finish my post, I realize I drank tea the whole day today. Had a western tea (bag) in Cartel for breakfast, Starbucks passion tea in the afternoon, and 20 doses of Chinese tea at night. I hope it’s all psychological. I shall go to bed again.

后会有期!

Another long-winded story.

I came home from work and sis was showing me how the comp kept restarting itself when booting up. As it restarted at different points during the boot process, and even during POST I diagnosed it as a hardware error. I opened up the casing and found that the catch that locks the processor heat-sink and fan broke so I guess the processor was not spreading the heat fast enough. I manually tied the sink back and the computer started up.

It then loaded Windows and kept restarting again, this time at the same point. I disabled the option to auto-restart when Windows hits a critical error, and the hidden BSOD showed up. Based on the error code I found some documentation on Microsoft. However, I was unable to follow through because the first step says “At a command prompt,”. With the BSOD happening no matter what startup option I chose, I could not get the “command prompt”. I even tried Ubuntu LiveCD, Windows Recovery Console and even a Linux Registry Editor, but couldn’t fix it. So I spent a few hours last night re-installing Windows. Re-installing Windows with the drivers and applications took less time than trying to fix it.

Now I’m already used to it, having to do do re-installation every few months or so.

We were standing by a dark road waiting for a cab.

Along came a car with a cab light lit on top.

*flag flag*

For some reason, the police car has an orange light when its blue/red siren lights are off, and it seriously looks like a cab.

had been a little distracted recently. don’t know by what. my mind will sometimes just go blank and when i recover i think i was just stunned for a few minutes.

the mums with prams and the elderly challenge the escalator,
and the rest of the healthy people squeeze into the elevator.

back to work today. got into my jeans today, and suddenly realized i lost quite some mass in just one week. I couldn’t button my jeans before that, now they’re back to loose again. It’s really a big diff.

Sigh. Restart again.

quote of the day: “Whatever it is…I guess the advice is never fall in love with an IT guy.”

http://leeleelaalaa.wordpress.com/2005/05/05/complaint-gossip-queen-is-back/

Since I did not write any intermediate posts the whole of last week, I shall take my time now to compile them into a single giant entry.

But first, have to find a new place to upload photos.

I’m officially on a 7-day MC since Tuesday.

Takes 3 days to find out I have a persistent fever that doesn’t go away.

Location-based systems
Applying existing location technology to useful scenarios. Information integration to provide value than just location. Examples: bus arrival timings, freight tracking, driving directions (including jam/toll avoidance). For the mass mobile market it could be ATM finding, toilet finding, friend/child finding (at a crowded IT fair).

Location technology
GPS is extremely useful in the U.S., and it’s free. However it has severe limitations here, such as cloud cover, tunnels and tall buildings. To proliferate mass market use of location based systems, an alternative location technology is required. Perhaps something targeted at urban areas such as cell towers.

Mobile Power
Mobile devices are hungry for more power now, and are restrained by the necessary weight for its battery. How can we achieve a significantly higher capacity/weight ratio? Mobile charging without wires? Kinetic charging like watches? Or no battery necessary? Biological power?

Biomimicry
One word covers it all. Path-finding. Drug manufacturing. Materials engineering.

Software Reliability
End-users are suffering from software bugs. What methodologies are other software companies using? Are there many with quality manual testers and high automation? Strategy difference in testing web and app? How many systems are matching end-user needs? How fast are their needs changing?

Relativity
Space-time relationship. Astrophysics?