Moon Cake Part II

[FPS (first person shooter) beta testing mode]

Went to market early today (woke up at 6.30am, go at 6.45am). Went with parents and younger sister. After the routine breakfast (Loh Mee Banzai!!!), saw an auntie selling moon cakes.

Mum ask the auntie how much was she selling the moon cakes. Since the moon cake is not professionally and prettily packed, just choose what you want and she will put the moon cake into a cheap cheap plastic bag, expect the price to be about RM7-8 with eggs.

Surprised! Its no where near it. The traditional red bean paste and lotus paste cost ONLY RM2.50 per cake! With yolk, the price goes up to RM4 per cakes. Got the shock of my life there. RM4! Then what the hell are the people at KLT or Queensbay Mall selling? Gold and diamond crusted packaging on the moon cakes? Or the paste itself is prepared from some kind of rare food on the earth? Really don't want to say this at the blog, but WTF is the world moving towards? Packaging and money is more important than people's happiness to eat moon cakes? But who will they care? Smart way to make money, which is selling less amount for more premium product, is the current trend, and will be the way of life for the future. Good for investor. Bad for normal 人民. Sounds more and more like communist, am I not?

Bought RM30 worth of moon cakes from that auntie...Sounds a little but it is a lot...Hope they don't taste bad...

Don't think too much...This is life. And my immature mind. But who cares. This is my space to rant. Now...Where is my moon cake...And feed the fish...

Apple starts the war on PSP/DS

Apple finally started rolling the ball on PSP and DS, by saying that PSP and DS are overpriced piece of gadget and uncool.

According to Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing VP, PSP and NDS are too overpriced as their game price is about USD$20-40 per game. Also, he stabbed the heart of the faithful PSP and NDS lovers (me as one of them. PSP ftw!!) by saying that these gadget is no longer cool. Unlike Apple's iPod touch and iPhone. They are cool, small and have 20,000 apps that is relatively cheap compared to PSP and NDS. However, do remember that iPod touch and iPhone price are much much higher compare to PSP or NDS. So Apple calling PSP and NDS overprice is like telling a bunch of monkeys that horse is bigger than an elephant (bad comparison, I know). Also, PSP was (now is not) sold at a lost, but get back the money from the software. So calling them (PSP and NDS) overpriced is a bit too much. Tell that to yourself, Apple.

Brother, you may be right in saying that PSP is uncool. The form factor of PSP is too bulky for my liking. And the price of the game is relatively high. But then again, for the quality of the game (gaming experience, that is), PSP and NDS rules! iPod touch/iPhone is not suitable for many types of gaming categories. Try playing FPS/TPS or fighting game (Street Fighter/Tekken) on iPod/iPhone. You will wish that they have some buttons for it, or else a cheap replaceable touch screen, if you get what I mean. The strength of iPod and iPhone lies on its touch screen and accelerometer. Games that built around these capabilities may be fun, but the fun factor does not hold as long as the button type gaming.

Although PSP has no accelerometer or touch screen, PSP/NDS has buttons. Plenty of them. 6 dedicated buttons to be exact, 1 analogue stick (although badly positioned) and directional pad, not to mention 6 other dedicated button to control the volume, brightness etc. All of which are very important for gaming experience, and is not found in iPod/iPhone. Media wise, PSP plays them decently, but not everyone like its interface, although i do ^_^.

Also, the ability to hack your PSP (if you need help on this, just leave me a message. I am pro here...XD) means that you can play pirated games on your PSP for free, similar to jail breaking in iPod/iPhone. I am not bad-mouthing Apple, but the many apps for iPod/iPhone are not for serious gamers. It is more suitable for database type software, puzzle games and web browsing, but definitely not for most type of games. In addition, iPod/iPhone's media function are much better compared to PSP. NDS? Was never in the range to target iPod/iPhone in that area.

Whats the conclusion? You asked? Well, conclusion is, iPod/iPhone is never good for serious and long term gaming. PSP and NDS kicks Apple's serious arse in that area. However, web browsing and media playing function wise, iPod and iPhone is the clear winner there. So if you are into both gaming and multimedia, the best solution is: get BOTH PSP and iPhone. NDS? Never on my radar...

Now then...Feed the fish will ya? They hunger for your love...

Moon cakes

It is almost "moon cake festival". The time of the year where young people (kids only though) play with cute cartoon lanterns and eat some moon cakes, and probably with pameloes if you can find them.

Now that brings me to my point. Moon cakes. Who does not love them? In addition, it is part of Chinese cultural delicacies. Well maybe some of you do not like moon cakes for whatsoever reason. But most of us do anyway. With or without egg yolks. With whatever stuff inside of the moon cakes. Red bean paste, lotus paste and other "abdominal filler" within the moon cakes, together with the thick yummy crust of the moon cakes...The combination (or probably the crust-only moon cakes) provide the addictive sweet taste that will make you want for more. It makes the taste bud goes all euphoric (at least for me). And what a emesis-inducing description that is...From me who is bad at describing things.

Anyway, the things about moon cakes is price. Once upon a time, 1 moon cake cost only about RM5 without yolk. RM7 with 1 yolk. RM5! And now? With all the beautiful packaging and aggressive marketing, the cost of moon cakes sky rocketed to RM10+ in recent years. Today, I went to Queensbay Mall, and the price of the moon cakes shocked me! RM 20 (tax not yet included) for a NORMAL moon cakes. With no yolk. But I must admit, the size and the packaging of the moon cakes seems (a little bit) bigger and pretty than the standard not so pretty moon cakes. And the funny thing is, people are still willing pay that exorbitant fees for that silly piece of moon cakes. With a nice packaging of course. And what a brilliant idea anyway. And these type of moon cakes typically flood all the market place, including Carefour, which I depends my grocery from. As a result, unless I got a know-how and know-where and a car, I won't be able to get a moon cake that can satisfy both my stomach and consciousness.

Extrapolate that to other things in real life: Every "premium" products are always much costlier than they supposed to be. With better looks and perhaps better quality. Maybe not all are costlier than they are supposed to be. PSP and PS3 are sold at a loss from Sony. Which is great, supposingly. This is a fact of life. But this will also inflate the price of other competitors, knowing that with an inferior product, they could sell the product at near premium price with a cuter or better packaging and aggressive promotion. But then again, what can we do, you might ask. Nothing. Really. Nothing. No one want to go back to the way of communism or socialism where the trade are all heavily controlled. And it is counter productive and counter development, which I do not think any people will want it. Also bear in mind that price that goes up will never go down again. Never.

For now, I am still looking for a "easily-accesible-yet cheap-enough-for-my-wallet" moon cake to fill my lust for moon cakes...

Duck

It has been a while since I found some interesting pictures. The following pictures will not have any hidden meaning (to those who are paranoia about hidden meaning thingy). I am a simple person. And do note that guys are very simple minded creature(refer to The Ugly Truth) as compared to women.

That giant ducky is 9.5m tall, 11m long rubber ducky, currently floating on a river in Osaka. The invasion was not the first time in earth. Other place seems to have been invaded as well...

FYI, I especially love the night view of the ducky, where the duck is gazing the moon...Romantic...???

Life lesson from the lab, Part I (If I am not too lazy to update anyway)

Just want to tell the world I am alive, not that any people will care anyway. From this sentence, you can feel that I am in a "negative" mood. Perhaps it may be caused by the daily routine of lab work, which may progress till late in the night. Or perhaps it is triggered by my lack of precious personal time caused by the research. So I will describe several life lessons I learned from the lab, which can be useful in our daily lives.

Also, perhaps it is because I am a early person. Being with a late person does really reduce the time I have a date with Uncle Zhou (周公). But then again, as long as the date is longer than 6 hours, I am happy with it. Though my mind may be blank during the research, causing me to make hell load of critical mistakes. So what is the divine punishment that I will receive for the mistakes? Bazooka-ed and machine gunned, coupled with a dark aura surrounding me for a few hours. Thus: Lesson 1: What ever you do, make sure you have enough sleep before you do any serious stuff that have high probability of killing you, especially if you are working with perfectionist woman (go watch The Ugly Truth...). Mistakes are not tolerated. So sleep more and rest more.

When doing a research, you will definitely use some machine. Some machines are not so popular and less users will be using them. If you use that most of your time, great. However, if you are using the popular instrument, chances are your machine are being used by your colleagues when you want to use it. And if your experiment is time-sensitive experiment, congrats! You just screwed up your experiment! And you are welcomed to redo it. Luckily, there is a booking system where you can booked to use the machines at certain time that you want, provided you appear within 15 minutes of your booking time. Conclusion: Lesson 2: Always plan your things ahead, at least by a day, or better still, planned everything before you start doing anything. Many people knew these, but not many people implement it. It reminded me of a friend's PM in MSN: Fail to plan = Plan to fail.

Conflicts are common in research. Your fellow researcher may want to use a certain machine. However, you already booked the machine. So technically you have the right to use it. Not them. However, beware of a jump-queue jutsu (un)commonly used to counter this problem: Lecturer-Who-Don't-Care-About-Other-People-From-Other-Group-Demand-To-Jump-Queue jutsu! FYI, jutsu means technique. This jutsu is commonly deployed by people who do not want to negotiate to get things which they could not, and we have seen a few examples here. So what can I do in this case, you asked, since the lecturers "dai sai", ruthless and even 得寸进尺? The remedy, as shown by CCJ, is to: Lesson 3: Learn to negotiate with the other party. You give one I give one. Everyone happy. But do not push me over the limit. Or you will not get anything at all. In addition, Lesson 4: If the other party want to use it no matter what, DO NOT LET THEM BE if what they want will screw up your experiment. They did not do proper planning. So its their problem. Help if what they want will not hamper you.

When you enter the world of research, there will be peoples who were here before you. So technically, they are your senior. Most of them are pretty helpful and will help you if you ask them, provided they are free and not pissed off you, which is the case of me. One of the master student (at least one) is pretty pissed off me and SL because we worked on the area near centrifuge. The area also contains other machine like vortexing, microcentrifuge, incubator etc. Thus us working there means road block to their work. In addition, we shift to a working bench nearby, and kena halau lagi cause she suspect us contaminating her whatever stuff with bacteria. Meaning pissing off that very same senior again. Anyway, which comes to my point: Lesson 5: Be friendly with the seniors. Do not create enemy out of them. They can help you a lot in the research. I have got to thanks Ms. Chuah for helping us a lot with our research thus far. Oh...And my communication skills sucks. Probably due to my "do not like to talk to people" style. Which is why I am not able to talk to people like SL did, making friends with many people in the lab. Sometime I wonder why I choose to walk this "silent" pathway...Sigh...

Thats it for now. Until I am ready with more material and free time...
Now where is my ice cream...