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Yesterday was sunny, very hot, but clear and beautiful day in Hong Kong. We went to Lantau Island with our son where his school organized a Treasure Island fun day. He had a great time with activities like cooking for mum and dad, nature walk, silk screen and paint t-shirts and sand castle construction.

I took this photo on our way to ferry pier, usually it’s hazy in Hong Kong but I was struck by the clarity yesterday.

Click for large photo

Dell laptop explodes at a Japanese Conference. Luckily, it looks like nobody was injured. With more powerful features and faster CPUs the laptops are becoming increasingly hotter to handle. I’ve the first hand experience of how hot a laptop (MacBookPro) can be. So, think twice before putting your laptops on your laps . The Inquirer reader who was at the conference says:

“The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes”.

Wayne Chen has created a web site 2012, which is about the events he believes will happen in the years leading up to 2012. Based on what happened to him (Dec 12 to 15, 2005), Buddha Boy (completes his meditation around 2012), Mayan Calendar (ends at Dec 21, 2012), and the predictions of Remote viewing Tibetan Monks, this is what will happen:

In 2012, the world will start plunging into a total destructive nuclear war.

And at that time something remarkable will happen, says, Buddhist monk of Tibet. Supernatural divine powers will intervene. The destiny of the world is not to self-destruct at this time.

Wayne has shared some of the details of what happened to him with me but I’m not going to write about it here because he wishes to keep it private. This is what he says in his site:

What happened to you?

It was bizarre and landed me in the hospital. Let’s just leave it at that. If you must know, buy me a beer if you ever bump into me - which your only chance will be is if you lose your pride completely and go traveling. Maybe by instinct you will find me. I am not stationary for long.

Looking at the current world events we’re looming senselessly towards war. In one word this is all because of PRIDE. Look at Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Taiwan, China, US, Israel and war on terrorism. Where is all this leading us? What happens when you cannot solve problems with talks and conventional wars? Nuclear war? All this seems too bizarre but still is a very possible scenario. There’s global warming, bird flu and many civil wars going around.

Go to Wayne’s 2112 site, it has loads of information and links. If you ask me whether I believe all this? then short answer is - not sure, but It has made me seriously think about where all the recent events are leading us.

In Hong Kong you can watch the world cup only if you’ve subscribed to Cable TV. They’ve signed an expensive and exclusive contract with FIFA some 4 years ago. Unfortunately me and many of my friends were not aware of this when we subscribed to NOW Broadband TV. I went out to my friends place and bars to watch the earlier matches (which was fun, but not possible everyday for this whole month). The good news is - I’ve found www.ppstream.com, which streams many different channels online and CCTV-5 is one of them, which broadcasts World Cup Live. It is using P2P technology.

One problem however is that the site is in Chinese and you’ll have to download and install the player (which is also only in Chinese). I’ve downloaded the player and installed in my Windows XP machine and enjoying the matches from yesterday (the commentary is in Chinese. So, I watch the game and listen to music ). If you want to give it a shot; here’s how I did it.

Note: I don’t understand Chinese so, I’m just guessing some of the stuffs here . Don’t blame me if your computer CRASHES or if you have other problems. It works for me and hopefully it’ll work for you too. GOOD LUCK

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It’s an official holiday here in Hong Kong today for Dragon Boat festival, also known as Tuen Ng Festival. The main attraction of the festival is the fierce dragon boats racing. We woke up early this morning and headed to Stanley beach for the Stanley Dragon Boat Championships. It was cloudy and raining in the morning but as we reached the beach it stopped raining. We could see the excited crowd and racing boats colourfully decorated, with dragon heads and tails. Each boat had a drummer and 20 to 22 crew paddlers. We enjoyed the day watching dragon boats race, had some delicious Chinese food, did some shopping in Stanley Market and went to Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Here are some photos I’ve taken.

A dragon boat
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Yesterday was Buddha’s Birthday, a public holiday in Hong Kong and I went to visit Giant Buddha at Lantau Island with my wife and son. It is the world’s tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha. A quite interesting day for my son, on our way to Po Lin Monastery he saw some live buffaloes and bulls for the first time in his life. I just thought if you were in Nepal it would be a daily scene . It was a sunny day with clear skies at Hong Kong Island but as we went up hill the Lantau Island we found it covered with fog, and it was quite windy. I’ve taken some photos and here they are..

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Most probably the funniest resignation letter you’ll ever read. I laughed so loud that everybody was staring at me in office. Enjoy the World’s Best Resignation Letter

You wander around the building all day, shiftlessly seeking fault in others. You have a sharp dressed, useless look about you that may have worked for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle.

Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a full frontal lobotomy reversal, I am forced to tender my resignation; however, I have a few parting thoughts:

Google blog was unavailable for a short time few days ago and this is what happened:

We’ve determined the cause of tonight’s outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d’oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

eKantipur.com is reporting that bank account of Meditation Management committee is frozen after the disappearance of Ram Bahadur Bomjon.

The local administration of Bara district on Monday stopped the bank account of Meditation Management Committee after “little Buddha” suddenly disappeared from the meditation site and could not traced anywhere.