short|cuts

Covered a total of 32.79KM today. Had some really good home-made ice cream at an ice cream parlor at Eastwood Road - Ice Cream Gallery. Dinner was at the Tampines Indian eatery which serves great Indian curry and a mountain of rice.

Our bikes. Taken outside the ice cream gallery.

Tags: Giant, GT Aggressor

I’ve been asked lots of time:

• Why get an iPod when you can get many other alternatives with much more functions?
• Why are you using a Sony Ericsson phone with so much less functions?
• Why must you wear an Oakley specs? Any other ordinary specs will serve the purpose too
• Why do you get crazy over Apple products?

My simple answer to all those is: I buy what I want from a product, and not what the product has.

Simply put, I want a product that does not have a boatload of functions (some of them I might not even use often), good design, a superb user-interface that would give me optimum user experience, good build quality and the status (yes) that comes with it.

If you don’t want any of those, go get a Creative product, for example.

I have an iPod. It has must less functions than its closest competitors. But I love it. Why? Simply because it’s gorgeous, easy to use and I feel good carrying it around.

Why did I choose Apple’s iPod over Microsoft’s Zune? 2 reasons:

1. iPod has way much better user-interface.
2. Zune is ugly.

Why I’m using a Sony Ericsson phone instead of the everyone-has-it Nokia phone? 3 reasons:

1. Superior build quality.
2. Superior user-interface.
3. Nokia phones are ugly.

Yesterday was iDay, the launch of Apple’s latest product: iPhone. Yes it is not 3G, does not do MS Office Apps editing, no FM radio, no GPS, locked mechanism, no 3rd party softwares. But heck, take out a Nokia N95 (the most feature-stuffed mobile device money can buy now) and an iPhone. 5 mins later, the person with the nokia will probably playing around with the GPS himself, while you have just made a new friend.

I’ve held and tested the N95 before. It felt like a brick.

The bottom line is that, technology is so advanced now and is advancing constantly that we can get products that are overloaded with features and functions.

We need to sieve out the quality ones.

Tags: Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Creative, iPhone, iPod, Zune, Microsoft, quality

Based on an actual event.

Simple to make and delicious!
Serves 6 (but feeds 4)

1. 1 pack of Japanese curry paste. Easily available at your local NTUC store.
2. Chop up 2 carrots, 5 potatoes (use good quality ones), 2 white onions and chicken meat (or whatever meat to your fancy) into bite-size chunks.

3. Melt some butter into a pot. Fry the vegetables and meat until the onions are slightly golden brown.
4. Add 3 cups (720ml) of water. Bring content to a boil

5. Once boiling, bring it to a simmer. Add the curry paste and stir. Stir until curry thickens. [Video]
6. Turn off the heat. Serve with steamed white rice

This is another testament to Apple’s unparalleled ability of coming up with innovative products. So much so that other (major) companies see it a threat that they have to come with something to match it, or use it as their “design” mold for their “new” products.

Since the announcement of the iPhone, there had been numerous attempts by many manufacturers of mobile communication devices to come out with phones that have functionalities that mimic that of the iPhone.

Below is a list of 3 of them:

LG Prada - This is one of the better of the lot. Credits for the stylish design. The interface is kinda intuitive but somewhat unresponsive.

Video

HTC Touch - Basically a Windows Mobile 6 device with a souped up theme. They even tried to copy some of the transitions of Mac OS X - with very little success of course. Navigation is well, what you would expect of a Windows based machine.

Video

Worst of the lot - Total rip-off. Similar to HTC Touch, it runs on Windows Mobile 6; with an iPhone theme. They have 1 Billion + people, can’t they think of something good?! Heck they even copied the logo.

Video

#1

“..You know, while I was serving my NS on P.Tekong, I would always look up the sky at night; and admire the many beautiful stars. But tonight, in this room, I can only see 2 stars; they are your eyes..”

#2

“..I think I might need a GPS device soon..Because I’m lost in your heart..”

Can’t believe I just wrote those!!! haha

Day 8 - Last day

The rest of the gang left either on Friday night or early this morning at 4am for LA, leaving only myself in SF. Got an E-Mail from one of them, saying he lost his watch in San Francisco International Airport (SFO), but was later found by the police and it ended up in SFO’s lost and found.

Woke up earlier in the morning, ran around the neighbourhood to find a internet cafe to print out the claim form and his photoID. Either they are closed on Saturday or they open at 10am.. and I’ve got a flight to catch. Finally, I managed to print the documents at the UPS Store.

Tip: Next time if you wanna send someone a document for printing, please send it in a printer-friendly format. It really saves people a lot of trouble

After printing, it’s another mad rush to the Airport. Checked in at the International Terminal; walked (a long way) to Terminal 1, where the lost and found is located.

“We’re opened from Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm”

Great…. after all the mad rushing..closed. The lost and found counter is actually inside a police post. Police in America also work 5 days a week??

My one week in SF has been an enriching and fun one. Gave me lotsa new perspective on things and life. Here’s another tip:

To all Singaporean who like to complain about Singapore (about anything) and yearned to leave this country, you better start appreciating what good system and good government we have here.

Got sick of burgers, chips and fried stuffs; so I decided that my last meal in SF will be rice. I miss rice!

Bye San Francisco! I love U! I’ll be back!!!

Photos