Car Keyless Entry

I have been trying to replace my car keyless entries as one of them is dead and the other one is dying. I talked to a dealership yesterday and they were going to charge me $250 for a remote. I didn't like to pay that much but then I didn't have a choice. So I went there and hoping to get two new remotes. Well, it turns out that my remotes are after market remotes and they can't do anything about it! I have always thought that my remotes look weird but never dig deep into it to find out the details. This visit proved me right. Anyway, so I went this place call "Car Toy" to see if they could help me out and it turned out that, they couldn't neither. Bummer. And you know what, the salesman tried to sell me their shining remote system that would cost $300. I gently declined. What the heck. I am willing to pay but they can't help me out? Fine, I have decided to do all the research about car security/keyless entry system and will see if I can fix it myself.

Anyway, it's more like a rant. Pretty tired today...

中學會考

特然想用中文寫這個日誌，但請大家包容我的中文因為我很久已没有寫作中文了。真的有點兒不慣。哈哈．．．

昨天是一年一度香港中學會考放榜的日子。在報紙上讀了很多令人鼓舞的新聞，例如有身體缺陷的學生克服困難考獲佳績（分別有六優，八優和九優），亦有迷逃學生改過自生而課獲得不錯的成績。他們的堅持都是值得我們學習的。

這個放榜也令我回想起我當年拿自己成績單的情況而那一次的成績也給我機會來美國進修。時間飛逝得，轉眼間我已在美國十數年了。有時真的在想：如果我没有來美國，我的生活會時怎樣呢？

（我真的很久没有寫中文和打中文，十分生疏．．．）

When did you cry?

I was talking to a friend today and she told me that she recently watched a movie, The Notebook and cried quite a bit but her husband was like, "oh okay. am I supposed to cry?" (I kinda put words in his mouth :) Lol... I just find the conversation funny but anyway, it kind of got me thinking when I cried last and I have no freaking idea when it was.

I have gone through times when I felt down, I have heard some really sad stories, I have also watched some really touching movies but I haven't cried in all those situations. In fact, tear was never in my mind. It's actually kind of strange now that I think about it. I wonder if most guys just unconsciously want to be tough so they don't cry (even if they try)? Or maybe guys just don't have emotions?

Now that questions to all the females, do you like a guy more if he cries? Do you feel like he is more romantic?

Caribbean Cruise

I just talked with a friend about my cruise vacation today and I thought why not sharing with my readers? Here you go and hope you can make good use of it.

Back in May of this year, I went on a 7-day Caribbean cruise with my friends and the cruise boat was Carnival Valor. This link shows the exact cruise we joined. We got Ocean view cabin and each of us paid $625 for the cruise. Before I went on the cruise, I thought it would be one of the most boring vacation I would have ever had. Well, I was totally wrong. I have to say it was one of the best vacations I have ever had. Why was it good? First of all, it was super relaxing since we really didn't have to plan for anything other than getting airfare down to Miami, booking the cruise, and booking some tours at port of calls.

To make it even better, the food was pretty much bottomless! I love eating so much and the bottomless food just made me super happy. Mind you, they are not those crappy buffets that you get from college or some Chinese restaurants; they are definitely above (or even way above) average restaurants in most cities. Sit-in dining is a given every night and they serve a 3-course meal - appetizer, entree, and dessert. They have quite a lot of options for non-vegetarians and the best thing is that you can order as many as you want. Any example of food we ordered? Well, to name a few, we had lobsters, tiger shrimps, halibut, steaks, prime ribs, sushi, and all kind of fancy desserts (which I don't care much about since they were too sweet for me). Man, I feel very hungry now after thinking about them. I have pictures of some of the dishes and will post links here eventually.

Where exactly did we go and what excursions did we do? We had four ports of call, Grand Cayman, Roatan (Honduras), Belize, and Key West (it was a replacement for Cozumel because of swine flu). At Grand Cayman, we joined a sailing tour to see the sting rays and to snorkel; sting rays were amazing and the experience was awesome. At Roatan, we joined a private tour to see the islands; we got to see the local people and try out some local fruits. We originally planned to snorkel over there but then it was too wavy so it got canceled. We went hiking in a jungle and chilling out around a beach instead. At Belize, we visited a Mayan ruin and did a river touring (kinda boring though). As for Key West, well, it's in the US so it wasn't that exciting and we just went to a beach to hang out. A piece of advice, it's much better to join a local tour than to join the excursions through the cruise as local tour is usually cheaper and better. Of course, you need to do some research to make sure that the tour has good review (see end of post on how to do that).

A lot of people asked me if it was boring to be on the boat. Let me tell you, not at all. You know, you can always eat when you are bored :). Eating aside, you have a lot of other activities you can choose from. There is a main show every night; it could be a musical/dance show, a magic show, or a stand-up comedy. Other than the main shows, there are some smaller game shows (indoor or outdoor) that you can participate or be a spectator of. For days when you don't have any port of calls, you'll have formal nights - it's a night when you have to dress up for dinner. It was actually pretty fun and it was great for photos. If you want to be more active, there is a gym, a basketball court, and a running track (which is pretty awesome as you are jogging and looking over the ocean). By the way, the cruise boat has 13 levels and it is always fun to explore what's there on each level. To top it off, there are also parties, casinos, and clubs.

Considering how much cheaper it is now, if you haven't cruised before and have the time and money, you should consider taking a cruise. It's totally worth it. Carnival is awesome. If you do decide to plan for a cruise, I highly recommend the Cruise Critics froum. I learned everything from them. Of course, you could always ask me.

Reading

How many books did you read in the past 3 months? Do you have a list of books you want to read? How frequently do you check a book off that list (that's you have read it)? How many of them have been on the list for over a year? Let me share with you my answers to these questions. I've read ZERO books in the past 3 months. I have a list of books I want to read but I almost never check any book off the list. In fact, the list just keeps growing and I wonder why I bother keeping such a list. Come to think of it, at least 90% have been on the list for more than a year (I kinda stopped adding to it until recently).

I don't know if you face a similar issue - there are so many books you want to read but you almost never ever read any of them. I know it's just laziness but it's very frustrating. It's not like I don't want to read but then every time I pick up a book, I would fall asleep (granted I only read before I go to bed). I tried going to the audiobook route but it didn't work neither. I feel like I just can't focus or haven't tried setting time aside for reading. If you have figured a way to "solve" this problem, let me know. Actually, I wonder if there is a better way to read. Maybe I should just get a Kindle?

Outside Seating

I have been living in my new home for about 7 months now. On my way to work every day, I walk pass many restaurants (about 15 restaurants). I notice one common theme among them - they all have outside seating. These outside seats weren't being used during rainy winter season in Seattle but they are being used extensively during the nice summer season, which is what we have been having in the past few months.

Outside seating is nice but I think it's only nice if you oversee a lake or some nice view. Who would want to sit outside and look at a parking lot, a road with lots of traffic, and a street with lots of bums or drug dealers? Even worst, who would want to eat food that is covered with dust, which I don't think is a good thing? I seriously can't make sense of outside seating in the city. Maybe I just don't know how to enjoy life. Lol...

Site Designed & Learning a new language

It's been almost a year since I last updated this blog. Actually, there are only 20 posts in this blog (compared to 180 posts in my previous one) and I really haven't been blogging actively since 2007! That's almost 2 years. I stopped blogging much because I really didn't have much thoughts to share and even if I had, I had been lazy about writing them down. Well, for some unknown reasons, I have been having a lot of thoughts that I want to share so I have decided to resurrect this blog. In order to show my commitment, I have redesign this blog. It took me about 15 hours from finding a template that I can base my design on to learning the blogspot-way of doing stuff to getting the final design out of the door. (By the way, I've also signed up for Amazon affiliate program and Google AdSense and decided Google AdSense looks too ugly so I didn't even show it.) My thought is that if I had spend so much time to do the work, I would really want people to see it which will give me motivation to produce more content. We'll see how it goes. By the way, if you ever want to update customize blogspot template, let me know, I could help you out.

So what's new? Well, I recently won a year-long subscription to the new service from Rosetta Stone called TOTALe. I think it's the first time I have ever won anything (shoot, does it mean that I will never win anything again?). Anyway, I need to pick one language to learn and that's the hard part. I want to learn so many languages but not one of them is a clear favorite. I was thinking about these five languages, Mandarin (I am not fluent at all), French (learned in college but could never speak), Hindi (just for fun since I know a lot of Indians who speak it), Japanese (I am planning to visit Japan at the end of the year), and Spanish (I wanna visit Mexico and some countries in South America). I eventually narrowed down my choices to Japanese and Spanish.

I asked a couple of friends for their advice and then I did some research on these two languages but I still couldn't make up my mind. I then asked myself, "What do I want to get out of learning a new language?" Well, I, of course, want a language that will help with my travel so I want one that is used by many countries and then the choice is obvious... I have chosen to learn Spanish! I'll see if the program is good and maybe one day I can speak fluent Spanish!