China's solution to Skype

Heyyo, VOIP service from QQ. This uses the existing QQ money top-up system for VOIP service. QQ money is commonly used for games and services.

28 degrees celsius today

It was 8.5 degrees couple days ago, and now it's 28 degrees celsius in Hong Kong ... and I was only here less than a week.
Oh, I broke my iPhone. No more micro-blogging. May peace return to Google Buzz.

Chiba, Japan mayor candidate Speech

Hmm... his name 熊谷俊人 is similar to my Chinese name 熊俊威. He's actually the current mayor of Chiba now.

Chinese Medicine in Hong Kong

There are three types of Oriental Knowledge famous in Hong Kong -
martial art, feng shui, and Chinese medicine. Here is one Chinese
medicine place Bill recommends. 姚述貴, Registered Chinese doctor
at Wa street, Kowloon, Hong Kong. If you have chronic illness that's
hard to get rid of, give Chinese medicine a go.

Feng Shui iPhone App

There are 3 types of Oriental knowledge famous in Hong Kong. Martial
Art, Feng Shui, and Chinese Medicine. Here's a Feng Shui iPhone App
featured in a glossy magazine.

Sony 3D TV

on a Hong Kong glossy, PC+gadget magazine

Milan Station in Hong Kong

is not a MTR (subway in Hong Kong) station. It's a fashion shop named
after Milan in Italy (Yes, Pier)

Directions in Hong Kong

So many shops in Hong Kong, even Honky like me can get lost. There are
posts like this everywhere showing you where to shop in this shopping
heaven.

Hong Kong Subway Info Service

Computer terminals are installed at MTR (Hong Kong subway) platforms.
You can access many sites with these computers. Perfect for
looking up travel information on the go.

Geeky stuff in Hong Kong

Hong Kong sells all types of otaku goods, including figurines, games,
mangas, magazines, pillow cases, and the H version of all of the above.

Kowloon Hong Kong Budget Hotel

hourly hotel price. HK$203 per day. I remember around HK$1000 can get
you some rather high end hotel in Kowloon.

Roof property

Inspecting one of the properties early morning.

Pork Okonomiyagi in Hong Kong

with some stuff on top that moves because of the heat at バルチッ
ク宝太郎 restaurant.

Japanese Curry Rice

Shrimp curry rice on a Hong Kong menu, all the text were properly
labelled in Japanese, English, and Chinese

Chi-Ling Lin billboard

Taiwanese actress Chi-Ling Lin selling watches in Hong Kong

UK Quality

A down jacket shop in Mongkok Hong Kong called UK Quality, targeting overseas exports. And come on, what's UK about these designs?

Hotdog in Hong Kong

HK$10 from Circle K convenient store. Warm with sauce of your choice.
Tasted pretty good.

Chinese Chess Challenge (similar to Shogi)

On the street of downtown Hong Kong

London Restaurant

in downtown Hong Kong.

Shops in Hong Kong

This picture summaries things you can do in Hong Kong. Let's see. We
have Sauna, mahjong, Ginza girl + bath house, night club, and karaoke
box.

Hong Kong is a financial city

Both the Dow and NASDAQ are up today.

Laser hair removal

This super big (and gay-looking) billboard is selling laser hair
removal for men. Remove all types of hair found on men.

Night life in Hong Kong

Night life in Hong Komg resembles that of Singapore's. But instead,
this place has 2 ladies night. Free for ladies, HK$160 for gents (around 13.3 pounds).

Osim Massage Chair

Osim (Singaporean?) massage chair at my parent's place. Very comfy.
Can't wait to go to some human (non-dodgy) massage parlors.

My bed this week

Bunk bed all over again. Feel like living in a hostel now.

TV setup at my parent's place

There's a new satelite box. The box allow us to receive satellite
channels from China, 17 channels. And for some reason, the TV only
supports Bahasa and Malayu. And no, I don't speak Malayu, but I am
still a Peranakan.

Gadget box shop

Another shop in Dragon Centre, Hong Kong with Akihabara influence. People can rent a box in this shop to sell their gadgets such as anime
figurines.

Capsule City in Hong King

Basically ガチャポン (gachapon, Japanese) shop with little anime figurines or toys packed in some plastic capsule balls. Pictured in Dragon Centre, Hong Kong today. There are more than a hundred gachapon machines in this particular shop.

Rice ball - Taiwanese style

Japanese + Taiwanese fusion food. Comes with a little plastic bag.
Under HK$20. Very warm in this cold winter.

New buildings near the place I grew up

more concretes in Shatin Hong Kong. As seen on Oriental Daily today.

Café World 1st look

The inviting friend prompt at the very beginning confused me. I didn't want to invite friends, and someone told me even I hire friends they won't know about it. So here I am trying this game. Also, I noticed all the adverts turned Chinese.

Red Packets 2010

Here's all the red packets I received this lunar year (so far, 5
days). All these red packets have money in them =D. A great time of
the year to be Chinese. When was the last time I celebrated Chinese
New Year in Hong Kong/China? Probably 10 years ago.

Cousin's Farm on Facebook

certainly put mine to shame. Well, while the farm and range in facebook are on one screen, the ones for QQ were on separate screens with no zoom feature.

Coldest day this winter

Today, 2010-02-18, marked the coldest day this winter in Hong Kong
according to the news. At 8.5 degree celsius. When I arrived couple
days ago, it was around 20 degrees. This is my first day actually being in Hong Kong. My CNY vacation in China was over. Got tons of video footages, will edit and upload soon.

China's solution to online music store

This is the online music store for QQ, where you can play music to friends on your contact list. The business model is a bit different from iTune. With this you can play a song to friends once a day if you are an unpaid member of QQ. Or if you pay certain amount of money per month, you can play unlimited songs to your friends or to your clan. The program is fully integrated into the messenger, and it's named "Music Share"

QQ Range

The QQ Farm (Farmville) clone, has a range tied to it. The problem is, anyone can have multiple QQ accounts. Many people sign up for many QQ accounts just to level up in QQ Farm faster. I wonder what's facebook's policy on this. I remember when I tried to change my display name on facebook, facebook said I need to wait couple days for approval of the change.

QQ International Version

Some Chinese Characters seem to cripple my English Windows XP. In search of a solution, I stumbled upon this: An English, French, and Japanese QQ Instant Messenger. Great. All the languages I am interested in.
In terms of functions, QQ beats MSN. The best function I like is screenshot button, paste picture to conversation text box function, and the ability to buy virtual items using QQ money. The QQ site had a logo of the 2010 World Expo (=万博=世博) in Shanghai. (The English QQ is based on the 2009 version of QQ, according to my friend)

China's solution to eBay

PaiPai, the e-auction linked from QQ (the most popular Instant Messenger in China)

Windows 7 before launch

Just got my Windows 7 today. Windows 7 is going to be free until 2010 March. Going to test it out. This version of windows is getting a lot of positive comments.

QQ Music Player

This Chinese streaming software from QQ User Interface certainly beats Spotify in UK or Pandora in US. I love the karaoke text features, and it's like all subtitles just work. There are so many popular Chinese songs to listen to. The text actually says "Love of Hiroshima" and the lyrics says "Loved you" three times.

China's solution to e-banking

U-dun, the device used for major Chinese banks like ICBC bank for online transactions. The device is the size of the iB device for the Singapore POSB bank (a similar device for online banking).
http://www.icbc.com.cn/icbc/html/guanggao/2005nian/0929/udun_050929.html
http://www.dbs.com/sg/personal/ibanking/ibsecure/default.aspx

QQ Space

is the Twitter Clone in QQ

Cousin Tin's Farm on QQ

虎虎生威, as seen on the sign in the screenshot. Originally roughly means Tiger makes you respectable. But this can also mean Tiger produces Wai (part my Chinese name, 威, as in いげん)

QQ Farm

is the farmville clone for the most popular chinese social site QQ.
My cousin introduced me to the chinese version of facebook and farmville. They are basically a Chinese version of the western one.

Shenzhen

the border city of China and Hong Kong. Here there are two gong-an
公安(Chinese cops) on duty at the exit gate of the immigration
building. Yes, immigration control between China and Hong Kong.

Health Declaration Form

is needed to travel from Hong Kong to China this time

TV in Hong Kong trains

3 TV screens like this one in every carriage for the trains in Hong Kong.

Valentine's day tradition in Japan

is for girls to give the-boy-she-fancy some chocolates. New trend is
girls give herbivore men underwears instead. I want some. =D

Tempo the tissue

Tempo is the most famous brand of tissue in Hong Kong. People of Hong
Kong are afraid of germs. People bring tissues everywhere. And unlike
Japan, tissue are not free and they don't come with adverts. Tempo is
the rather more expensive high-end (better) tissue.

A common Chinese tea Pu-li

The most common Chinese tea my parents drink is called Pu-li