Category Archives: Uncategorized

Went to my uncle’s funeral yesterday. My mother was pretty sad, and I guess many other people were sad too. Ate lots of food and cake. After the funeral we brought all the flowers and put it at my grandmother’s (Joseph’s mother’s) grave. Had to dig away some of the snow.

Been playing Mass Effect a lot lately. I started on this game before Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space. Then there are a few Wii games that I started before that, and I might finish those Wii games after Mass Effect. If anything, my new years resolution is to finish the games I’ve bought. Also to lose weight. Oh, I did lose something like 2kgs. Which would be the 2kgs I gained in Hong Kong.

Now my goal is to lose two more kgs! By eating lots and lots of vegetables. Because I hear vegetable fibre is good at pushing crap out of your system. Or something like that. I still exercise every morning, even if it’s really light exercise! Now I cycle on my exercise bike while watching Heroes. Leon said it’s pretty stupid in the newest season, but I just randomly read a comment that it got better after a while, so I’m giving it a chance. Maybe I’ll even watch Lost again! The Dollhouse finale was great by the way! Too bad the show was cancelled, but they wrapped the show up pretty good I guess.

Other than Mass Effect, haven’t really done much lately. Went iceskating with Tina and Stella last week. Oh, also I made two awesome wallets! The ones I had fell apart. Even though not all of them were cheap Hong Kong wallets. Anyways, the first one was this:

It’s made from a used (and cleaned) milk carton. It feels pretty sturdy! I happened to have some self-adhesive velcro that I bought in Hong Kong in 2008, so it was easy for me to make this, but I guess buying this kind of hobby materials in Norway might be even more expensive than just buying a new wallet. 😛 Well, you can just use a rubber band or some rope or so instead anyhows. I followed this instructable, but it turns out there are a bunch of milk carton wallet ideas at that site, so you could look at more of them if you’re interested.

But while I was making that wallet, I saw the instructions for another awesome wallet, which I made here:

This one is made from the circuit sheet from an old keyboard and packing tape! If you happen to have one or two old keyboards lying around that you don’t plan to use, you can make this.

Yeah, I guess I’m gonna go back to playing Mass Effect now! Started it up, but then thought I should blog first since I haven’t done that in two weeks again. Okay, gaming time!

The first week after getting back from Hong Kong I were too tired from jetlag to do anything useful after work (I started work the day after I got back). Then the week after that I spent almost all of my free time playing through Dead Space, finally beat it yesterday. The end boss fight was epic! I kinda wanna get the prequel for Wii now, even though that one is just a short on-rails/light gun shooter. But the atmosphere in this game is great, and the story, however clicheed, is pretty well presented. Which is why I want to get the Wii game, to see more of the story. For those who doesn’t know anything about these games: Dead Space is about a rescue mission on a space ship which turns out to have been taken over by aliens/monsters, and Dead Space: Extraction (the Wii prequel) shows the story about how the ship got overrun by those aliens. Anyhows, if I find it cheaply anywhere, I guess I might buy it.

As for what I’ve been doing in Hong Kong since my last blog, I guess I’ll just list some of things that I did:

• Went to a karaoke and then walking around at a mall and IKEA with my cousins and brothers. The IKEA meatballs are served with a few potato chips instead of potatoes! Apparently, potatoes are actually pretty expensive in Hong Kong. They also had a giant turkey leg meal that I wanted to try, but didn’t because I had already eaten quite a bit before going to IKEA.
  
• Forest fire near where I stayed in Hong Kong
• Ate at toilet restaurant. The bath tub curry I had tasted okay, but only had a little meat and vegetables on top. Most of it was just rice and sauce…
  
• Went to Macau with some friends and walked around mostly just looking at casinos and also the famous church wall that I didn’t know anything about even after I went there. Also Macau is awesome because they sell this giant Optimus Prime:
  
• Went to Ladies’ Market in Mong Kok with Simen, her brother and Yann and Monica.
  
• On new years I actually ended up staying at home in the evening, watching Up (HD version on a 40″ or so TV) with my younger cousins. It was pretty cozy, and the movie was quite good and sad… The movie ended just in time for us to go watch the countdown on TV, before going to bed.

Hmm, didn’t actually do anything special the last few days, just shopping and seeing friends and family. Oh, I wanted to take a photo of the stuff I bought, but I was too tired and just ended up stashing things from the luggage away. Well I mostly bought random stuff anyhows. The coolest thing I bought was definitely my new mobile phone:

Acer Liquid Android phone!

Biggest complaint I’ve got on this phone is the fact that it doesn’t have any flash on the camera, so it’s impossible to take any photos unless it’s bright… but I ended up buying the phone anyway. It has a faster processor than the HTC Hero, and also has a higher resolution, making things “clearer”, allowing it to show more things on the screen at once without things getting blurry. For example, browsing web pages should be a bit better than on the older Android phones because you can actually show more of the web page at once without zooming out, and things still won’t be blurry. I have to admit that I haven’t tried any other Android phones much though, so I’m just assuming… In any case, the screen is way better than my previous phone, Nokia N95.

Android is fun to use too, installed tons of (free) apps and games on my phone, although not all of them are as useful or fun as others. I really like MangaDroid, which is a simple app for reading manga online. Too bad GPRS is pretty expensive, otherwise I might’ve used internet apps more… For now I settle with only using internet when I’ve got a WiFi connection.

As I mentioned in the first few sentences in this post, after getting back from Hong Kong I’ve mostly been tired and then occupied with Dead Space. But actually I went to the movie theatre twice the last two weeks. Watched Sherlock Holmes and Avatar 3D. Both movies were enjoyable, although I have to admit that watching Avatar in 3D wasn’t as awesome as I would like it to be. For one I feel like things seem a bit blurry, not sure if it’s because the 3D glasses were cheaper (we watched Avatar at Colosseum, which sold cheap 3D glasses that we can keep, but when we watched Ice Age 3D and Bolt at Ringen, they lent us huge, sturdy 3D glasses that we had to hand back after the movie), or if it’s because it’s a “real people” movie and is therefore not as clear as pure 3D CGI movies. Not that Avatar isn’t mostly CGI, but eh.

I really dislike how I postpone blogging so much and end up writing a lot… *sigh* Aaaah, just one last thing I want to add! There will be a Final Fantasy concert in Stockholm in June! Since I actually went to the second Play! concert in Norway even though nobody else went with me, I guess there’s no reason why I won’t go to this one. Most likely at least a couple of friends are going with me this time though! But the seats are numbered, so I kinda want to wait with buying untill I know roughly (or exactly) who wants to go. So we can sit at least a bit close to each other. Hopefully the seats that are left by the time we decide aren’t too crappy.

Tell me if you wanna join!

Been in Hong Kong (and now Guangzhou) for almost a week now! Haven’t done much shopping yet, just been eating rather a lot and seeing some people. It’s good I guess, should try and relax more, rather than stressfully trying to buy lots of stuff.

Had a couple of morning (7am) dim sums with grandmother. It’s pretty chilly in Hong Kong these days, especially so early in the morning. Getting up so early also makes me rather tired early in the evening. Have almost only been out to buy some usage items like shampoo and bottled water, etc.

Everyone in my family had a haircut, I think for 45HKD per person or so. The barber went with my suggestion of just cutting my hair short, but tried to make it fancy nonetheless, maybe out of pity for my lack of any sense of style. Don’t think I’m gonna bother trying to recreate it once I’ve washed that away. We also went to church on Sunday, and met with some of Leon’s friends from when he was living in Hong Kong for school.

Went to Guangzhou on Monday. Passing the border didn’t take as long as we remember from last time! Just like Hong Kong 10 or so years ago there are mostly squat toilets in Guangzhou, even in some finer restaurants. Lots of buildings and roads are being built or renovated because of the Asian games (2010 in Guangdong?) though. There’s a lot less English here than in Hong Kong, by the way. Which is to be expected, but should be noted if you plan to go there.

Have mostly gone to meet relatives and friends in Guangzhou, but we also rented a minibus with a driver to drive us around to various places, like this goldfish garden place. Did some shopping too, I finally bought some new shirts (29RMB each) and socks (3 for 10RMB, I heard I could’ve gotten cheaper), also a 500 pieces Final Fantasy X2 puzzle for 10RMB (undoubtedly unlicensed). Things really are a lot cheaper here, soft drinks at 7-11 are roughly 2-4RMB!

Partly because of that, we’ve been having huge meals with our relatives and friends (and the driver) both for lunches and dinners. AFAIK most of the meals cost roughly 30-40RMB per person, even though we had some expensive stuff like duck, goose and crabs on some of the meals.

We also went to a karaoke one night. They had this awesome fruits basket! Also they had some anime songs (that we couldn’t sing anyhows) and Melodies of Life (which I tried to sing).Now we’ve gone back to Hong Kong to celebrate Christmas with our relatives. Going to have hotpot! Which should be good, since eating hotpot means eating slowly instead of stuffing ourselves with lots of food quickly. And I’ve been eating way too much the last few days in Guangzhou (and before that too, I guess)… Eat less! Maybe. Either way, I really need to lose some weight. When I get back to Norway.