So today I decide not to bring the camera with me when bringing the dogs to the park in Sai Kung. “It’s going to be the same stuff as always, no need.”

So first when I get there, the tide is lower than I’ve ever seen it, exposing all sorts of rocks, which have people climbing all over them and fishing.

Second, perhaps because the combination of Saturday, holiday and beautiful weather, some seriously hot women walking their dogs.

And third, some guy decides to bring his pet tortoises to the dog park! These were big – at least a foot long – and attracting a ton of attention from humans and dogs alike, as you’d well expect.

Well, at least I had the camera on the iPhone …..

Got several things that I’m looking to sell off, thought I’d pimp them here, drop an email to hongkietown at gmail dot com if you’re interested in any of this ….

* Sony A350 DSLR with Sigma 28-300mm lens, wired remote, various filters

* Casablanca Ultimate Collectors Edition Blu-Ray boxed set, still sealed

* Novatron NTD37HD multi-codec media player with 500 gig drive and remote control (mine has HDMI output, the one reviewed in this link doesn’t)

* Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones

* Archos 504 portable media player, 80 gig model

* Synology DS106 NAS drive with 320 gig hard disk

* KitchenAid Artisan Series mixer

Geek and other stuff ….

Time-Warner recently spun off its cable company in the US. They’ve introduced a tiered service plan for internet access. The top plan offers 100 gig at 10mbps for US$75 per month. If you go over your allocation in any month, you’ll be charged $1 per gig, capped at $75. That means a potential monthly internet bill of US$150. Does 175 gig per month sound like a lot? Not with a multitude of websites streaming HD video movies and TV, among other content. I would suppose that HK ISPs are watching this closely.

Over in France, Sarkozy’s attempt to pass a bill that would allow cutting off internet service for people who were thought to be pirating audio and video, failed to pass in the National Assembly. Most lawmakers decided to skip the vote – there are 577 members but the bill failed with a vote of just 21-15. The bill will be resubmitted in a somewhat different form.

The iPhone app store is getting close to 1 billion downloads. That’s in less than a year. The person who downloads the billionth app will win a US$10,000 iTunes gift card, a MacBook Pro and other goodies. Follow the link to see the all-time top 20 free and paid apps.

I’ve downloaded 85 apps, probably about 70 or so free ones. The ones I use most are Bloomberg, Evernote, HK Mark Six, Hong Kong Weather, mSecure, Oblique Strategies, Pocket God, Remember the Milk, plus a backgammon game and various unit and currency converters.

I only knew it was Passover because I know it generally comes around Easter time and from reading some other folks’ status updates on Facebook. At least it meant that I got to call my mother and wish her a happy holiday before she had a chance to call and curse me out for forgetting. There’s no winning with her but I try to minimize the losses.

Obviously a Seder was not in my plans but without giving it much thought, Thursday night I had a BLT for dinner – so pork and bread. Friday afternoon Italian salami hero for lunch (more pork and bread) and then Friday night kicked off dinner with crab cakes.

Hmmmm …. can’t even recall the last time I had matzoh or gefilte fish or a latke. Oh well.

Is there any place in Hong Kong that does a decent blintz or pierogi? And I could kill for Roumanian tenderloin steak. (And while I’m at it, chicken fried steak. With lumpy mashed potatoes and white gravy.)
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Re-started my Mandarin lessons this week. Decided to go to a school because I know I’m a shitty student and figured I’m best getting something approaching a professional teacher rather than some college kid looking to make money on the side. But also wanted private lessons, both so that they could be tailored to those bits I remember plus flexibility in case of any remaining business trips. Yes there are probably cheaper options out there but I didn’t want to spend weeks investigating and agonizing over a decision; I wanted to get started ASAP.

This one place offered a free sample lesson and fit my requirement for being relatively convenient to the MTR, so took my free lesson last week. I liked the guy who was teaching me; from Beijing, good English and didn’t laugh at any of my jokes, which I figured meant I wouldn’t be able to distract him from the business at hand, something I’m awfully good at.

But following the first real lesson this week, when I sat down to study, I realized that the lesson was all over the map. The guy didn’t stick to the book that he’d given to me (which led to pages of handwritten notes) and he was giving me some simple verbs and nouns and then racing right to some pretty complex grammar. Oh crap, I thought to myself, I’ve paid for all these lessons in advance (to get a discount) and now I don’t like the teacher. I hoped that things would get better as they went along.

When I showed up for the second lesson, this guy greeted me by telling me that he had a previous engagement that night and had arranged for a substitute. Only the second lesson and he’s the one dumping out? I kept a lid on my temper for the time being.

Then it turned out that the substitute teacher was giving me exactly what I was looking for. She used a different book, there was a good combination of the familiar and the new, and she also knew to jump back a page or two every 10 minutes and quiz me on earlier stuff.

By the end of the lesson, I asked her if she could be my permanent teacher. She was fine with that, but wanted me to be the one to inform the other guy. When the class finished, the other guy was there – what was his previous engagement, teaching someone else?

Anyway, I went into his office and said, “I don’t want to offend you but I’d like her to be my permanent teacher rather than you.” He agreed so quickly and so calmly, it almost made me feel as if I was set up. The whole thing just seems odd. But I’ll continue with this woman and see how it goes.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, yes, she’s cute. But some of what we covered (in Mandarin) was her asking me about my girlfriend and telling me about her boyfriend. So that line is drawn.
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I’m doing the Mandarin classes for several reasons, not the least of which is that I hope that having at least some facility with the language will make the job hunt easier when the time comes.

On the other hand, I’m starting to think to myself that I’m feeling really burned out on what I’m currently doing. I’ve been doing the MIS thing for 23 years now – 17 of those years spent working for large multinational corporations. How much more of that do I want to do?

I feel the same way about going into consulting – it would just be more of the same.

So (and yes, more than a few commenters have said this, and some people IRL too) I have two basic choices …. take the severance package and use it to get by until I find a similar job, if possible. Or decide that it’s time for a change and take at least part of the severance and use it to start something of my own. But what? And where? Luckily I’ve got some time to work on that. (A restaurant featuring chicken fried steak? Would that be big here? But the 1% I know about what it takes to run a successful restaurant ain’t enough to go down that road.)

FYI – I have started my own business twice in the past; neither time was successful though the second did better than the first, which is sort of how I ended up doing the corporate IT thing. I have also worked for two start-ups; both are still around.