I have a tight schedule on 1 July 2003. HKTennis.com Tennis Club will have its Fun Day at Hong Kong Tennis Centre starting 2 pm, as the webmaster and secretary I must be there. But how could I possibly miss my part in the 1 July Demonstration against implementation of Article 23 of Basic Law? Like most of the people who care for HK, it is time to step out and make ourselves heard! So I decided to leave the tennis centre by 2:30 pm and join the demonstration. See you then!

Four surgeons were taking a coffee break and were discussing their work. The first one said, ” I think accountants are the easiest to operate on. Everything inside is numbered.” “I think librarians are the easiest.” said the second surgeon. “When you open them up, all their organs are alphabetically ordered.” The third surgeon said, “I prefer to operate on electricians, all their organs are color coded.” The fourth one said, ” I like to operate on lawyers. They are heartless, spineless, gutless, and their head and their ass are interchangeable!”
Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

Not until today I have a true feel of “holiday”. Woke up at 12 noon and spent a few non-productive hours in front of my computer before eating “lunch” at 3 pm. Then played an hour of great tennis in the Chinese University in the late afternoon. Going back home and spent most of the time watching Wimbledon on TV, at the same time downloading MP3 songs from the web… no, did not do anything productive at all, how wonderful! I really need a rest, I could feel that my body is not as fit as before, now I try my best to do all kinds of stretch exercises at home, in the hope that I could be fit for supplementary exam in late August, LOL! Well, the exam results will be released on 2 July (next Wed), am I nervous? Only a little bit. Given my efforts (2 days for each subject), I didn’t have any expectations!

As I was working hard over-night on a website, Steve Jobs delivered his keynote speech at WWDC 2003 and I kept my eyes on the “real-time” translation on MacZin. Just absolutely stunned by Apple this time!!! Not only the long-awaited G5 is realized, the sneak preview of Panther (OS X 10.3) totally blown me away! This is THE dream PC every one longing for: The Power Mac G5 - the world’s first 64-bit personal computer - which throttles past both the fastest Pentium 4 and a dual-processor Xeon workstation! Yet the price is affordable, starting at HK$15,900 only! I just could not think of any reason to resist it. Not to mention that it will come with OS X 10.3, with all the features I wish I have as well as those I never thought that I could have. My mom would just love the new iChat AV with video conference capability, I would finally feel secure with the new security protection FileVault, and there is no need to buy font management and fax software thanks to Font Book and built-in Fax……Apple, I adore you!

Finally I got something to go after on TV again. Wimbledon starts today, so nice to be able to find excuses to stick with the TV and disregard my work (kidding! rent due very soon!). Anyway, what’s even more happier is that Lleyton Hewitt got kicked out in the first round! Andre Agassi is my favourite because Steffi Graf is my life time idol. I managed to get one website done today, feeling great to work in the sun again. BTW, a friend of mine is doing a survey for her project at Cambridge, if you have a few minutes, please help her filling out or help forward this to your freinds and family in HK, Macao or Zhuhai: Sustainable Development - The Hongkong-Macao-Zhuhai Bridge

All my friends know that I am very attractive to mosquitoes, usually few people get bitten if I am around. Today the sun was still shy in the clouds but I managed to play 2 hours of tennis at CUHK in the late afternoon with my coach, Vivian and Phoebe. The mosquitoes there were crazy, I feel really lucky that I didn’t get any bite, thanks to my coach’s super insecticide spray. Nonetheless, it prevented my skin from “breathing” and I felt like in sauna, it’s so hard to concentrate and I lost many many easy shots. 22 June is actually a special day - today is the second anniversary of my tennis portal HKTennis.com, it seems that no one remembers this except me. So I decided not to mention it at the site too, somehow I am getting bored and frustrated, I wish there are more people to come out and contribute, not just take & leave.

Sometimes I wish the weather forecast isn’t that accurate. As it predicts, the bad weather returns today. It started to rain persistently again and I missed my tennis practice - again! This is the 4th consecutive rainy Saturday, what is going on?! In the morning, I attended a workshop on examination-in-chief and cross-examination organized by the Bar Association, it wasn’t very impressive, one added-valule was meeting a few of my old buddies from the LLB class. They were now young barristers and I wish I could join them very soon. Besides, just a day to relax. My body has not gained any real rest since exam.

After several weeks of rain and storm, the sun has finally returned! I seized the chance and played an hour of tennis at the CUHK in Shatin today. No, I couldn’t last for more than an hour, it was just too hot. My clothes were already wet when I got out of the car upon arrival. Playing tennis always brings me peace of mind, so that I could put aside (for a while) my pressure, emotions and anxieties from all sources. I hope the good weather would last, I have not met my league team for 4 weeks and this coming Saturday means a lot to me!

No more tolerance of the repeating “crashes” of my old mobile phone. I got a new mobile phone, which is a second hand bargain from my coach - Sony Ericsson T68i. It is really a great phone and just works flawlessly with my PowerBook. As soon as I plug in the USB Bluetooth adapter, the T68i immediately pairs up with it and I could not only sync the phone with my Address Book and iCal Events Calendar using Apple’s iSync, but also receive files via Bluetooth! I edit my favourite pictures with my family and send them over to the phone as wallpapers and screensavers! It is great fun! The T68i also recognizes all my different types of numbers associated with each record and makes my life so much easier, I no longer have to update numbers on both my computer and my mobile!

Despite much preparation and trial runs, I was still not relaxed when I helped out the Article 23 Conference Live Web Broadcast at HKU today. Probably because I didn’t get enough sleep and had been starving for hours. As you can see the set up in the picture besides, a SONY handycam was connected to my PowerBook by Firewire, transferring all audio and video signals instantly. The QuickTime Broadcaster (free from apple.com) on my laptop processed the live encoding and uploaded the MPEG4 files to an off-site QuickTime Streaming Server, QTSS (free again!) which further sent to two separate QTSS in different data centre for streaming to users. The Live Broadcast last for almost 8 hours today and the show will start again tomorrow at 9:30 am at the Hong Kong Bar Association Website. Judging from the connection statistics and some screen captures from some US friends, the performance was satisfactory. On top of all these, let me give the biggest credits to my stunning & always running PowerBook!