Combating illegal music sharing on the Internet has become such a hot topic in recent years, as you can see from the ever-growing popularity of portable MP3 players in the streets, on the bus and in the trains, you really wonder how could the singers and the whole music industry survive. Maybe that’s why local singers appear more often in movies and product advertisements, they just couldn’t make a living out of selling albums. Who are left to buy original music CDs?

Just came across an article in Business Week today about one of the “solutions” that could be employed. This story is particularly interesting to me because it mentions iPod, I currently own a 15G iPod and consider it as one of my most indispensible gadgets, it would be a benefit to every one if such technology is made possible and popular. Meanwhile, I am still waiting for Apple Music Store to come to HK…

Happy Birthday to Daddy! We won’t be able to celebrate with him on his birthday (24 Sept) because he works in Mainland during weekdays, so we went to a buffet dinner at the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel tonight. The food and service are good, the price is reasonable too. Sister and I bought a iPAQ PocketPC for him as birthday present. My dad, in my opinion, is a very open-minded and advanced IT user for his age. I myself always prefer a Palm handheld for its simplicity and ease-of-use, but after considering Graffit, support for Chinese and other factors, I think a PocketPC running a “mini version” of Chinese Windows maybe the best for him.

Today is my last day working for ICON, it’s sad to leave all these wonderful people, we had a lot of fun working and playing together. Noel, Julia, Lydia, Lori, Seb, Alan, Raymond…I’d miss you so much!

I learned a lot of things from this job and leaving in less than two months is totally unexpected. Take a look at my seat in the office - my PowerBook besides a PC monitor, on which I put on a “Think Different” sticker. Now I am back to my full-time freelancer status, but I really need a good break first!

Had 4 hours of great tennis today, I really enjoy playing serve & volley in doubles now, the feeling of putting away volley winners is…hm…exhilarating! Following the tennis and a fine dinner in Wanchai, we went to a nearby Irish pub around the street corner to enjoy a beer. Can’t believe it is my tennis coach’s first trip to a pub! We had a great time there (despite killing a cockroach below our table), occuping a table near the window and be able to chat with the tourists outside and inside the pub. Made a lot of jokes about some of the scenes we saw at local tennis open tournaments, hope to share with you too!

It’s always a great pleasure to meet old buddies. We spent more than two hours chatting in a coffee shop today, I feel like I am travelling by time machine to the old days in St. Stephen’s College. Holly, welcome back to Hong Kong! Glad to know that every one is doing well, the only complaint is that we’re all getting much older and it looks like our 3C class teacher Mr. Wong is younger than us!

St. Stephen’s College, Stanley - Official Homepage

By the way, anyone is going to the 100th Anniversary Dinner?

Bought a great software today - Toast 6 Titanium - which is the best disc burning software for Mac. I would like to particularly mention my new friend Jeff for his wondeful backup program Deja Vu, now part of Toast 6, now you can backup your whole drive to a CD or DVD!

I guess many of you have been suffering from the recent swamp of worms/viruses that spread around the globe affecting millions of computers. I am one of the victims. I have been receiving hundreds of emails titled “My details”, “That Movie”, “Wicked Screensaver” and “Re: Approved” with attachments every day. On one occasion, I got 200 of them in one hour! Not to mention the “return undeliverable emails” flooding in because the worm randomly used my email address. That is such a nuisance! My computer is not infected (because I use Mac, yes!) but I couldn’t stop people from sending emails to me. In the end I chose to disable my most-abused email account (webmaster at hktennis.com) and just pray that the chaos will be over soon. I keep asking myself and the others: why could this happen? Maybe this article will give you some clues: May the Source Be With You .

It has been a long long time since the last typhoon signal no. 9 was hoisted in Hong Kong, actually I have no memory when was it. Whenever there is typhoon, I couldn’t help recall my good old days as a school girl. I remember we were always excited when typhoon approached Hong Kong and prayed that there would be no school the next morning, in sharp contrast to the unprivileged children in many other developing countries like Mainland china. Today I returned home earlier than usual as a worker not a student (well, it was still 5 hours after the No.8 signal was issued), and enjoyed a rare weekday family dinner. The feeling is a bit strange, I suddenly have a few extra hours to waste on TV, magazine and ice-cream. My tennis portal site is finally back, however I am not yet worries-free.