Yesterday, after dinner at the Festival Walk and shopping for some Parma ham at the Great, I saw my favorite Rose on sale for HKD$128/bottle from $158 at the Watson’s Wine Cellar. There is another 10% off discount for paying with the Dao Hang Bank credit card. When I asked the salesman how long the sale last, he said it would be until the end of August.
Since they only had 2 bottles left on the shelf, and I left my Dao Hang card at home, I placed an order for 6 bottles which the salesman said they would be ready for pickup this Wednesday at the earliest. Fair enough, I then left him with my name and number.
I just received a call from the same salesman telling me that the wine I chose has just been put back on the regular price of $158/bottle, and that they would not be able to fulfill my order at the sale price.
What poor pricing knowledge of their salesman! Had he told me it was the last day for that price I would have at least bought their remaining stock even if they had more than 2 bottles left and without my Dao Hang card anyway. A quick look at their website still had it listed at the sales price of $128/bottle at this moment.
I have canceled my order.
Update (16:30) : A call to the ordering phone number listed on their website comfirmed that the sale for the Rose is indeed over. However, after telling the story to the lady who answered my call, she agreed to check with the management to see if they could do anything for me.
Half an hour later, a man from the Wine Cellar called me back and said that they could give me the same sale price for this particular order. They would not be able to give me the 10% discount with Dao Hang card over the phone, but AE card could be used for 3 times the point collection which worked out to be about 6% off. I ordered 12 bottles and got free home delivery. Pretty good service.
The Hubble Space Telescope is about to be scheduled for the ending of its service to make way for the newer James Webb Space Telescope.
Published by James at 18:46 UTC Jul 23, 2003
in misc.
When those who had cheated tens of thousands of dollars should have been fired, those who had started a war which claimed tens of thousands of lives regardless of any reasons should have been rewarded… with the Seppuku.
Same goes for you too, Dr. Yoah.
DPReview has just posted a preview on the lastest digital camera from Nikon – the D2H. Along with the camera, Nikon has also announced 3 new lenses and a new flash. The AFS 200-400 f4 VR G, the AFS DX 17-55 f2.8 G and the AF DX 10.5mm f2.8 G Fisheye as well as the Speedlight SB-800 flash.
Update (24/07/03 00:07) : Official Nikon info here.
Address: G/F, 4A Lion Rock Road, Kowloon City
Tel: 2383-3515
Cuisine: Western
I went to this restaurant last Friday night with a couple of net friends. We ordered some fresh Australian oysters, seafood soup, goose liver, Angus rib steak and rack of lamb.
The oysters were quite good. At $16 a piece, it was a steal. The seafood soup was tomato base with a piece of mussels, clam, prawn, and some small squids each – not bad. The outside of the goose liver was a little under cooked to my taste; I’d rather prefer to pan fry the liver at a higher heat making the outside slightly burnt, leaving the center slightly undercooked.
Angus rib steak was pan fried instead of roasted prime rib. I didn’t have time to ask them if they had it roasted first. However, at HKD$250 for a 2 person portion of Angus beef is not a bad deal at all. The Lamb was good. Both came with a variety of vegetables and chopped fried potatoes which tasted pretty good.
Expect about HKD$200-250 per person without alcohol. Set dinners are also available at a lesser price tag.
Not a bad place for a relaxing dinner for two.
Published by James at 13:31 UTC Jul 18, 2003
in News.
NASA officials are analysing the last minute of recorded and transmitted data, and the crew and cockpit conditions of the Space Shuttle Columbia before its fatal accident.
Published by James at 21:51 UTC Jul 16, 2003
in News.
Today, both Secretary of Security and Secretary of Finance announced their resignations and have been accepted by the CE TCH. Too bad, my dearest Director of Health, Welfare and Food Bureau Dr. Yaoh didn’t. I’d say they should all do what the 500K people wanted and resign, and don’t reassign the positions. Let them big mouths run for Government for a while, and see how they bring the world economy around.
Three cheers for the people! Hip hip hurray…
Published by James at 12:31 UTC Jul 16, 2003
in misc.
About 3 weeks ago, I wrote this. Festival Walk, a local shopping mall owned by Swire Properties, had decided to stop accepting cash for their parking lot payment entirely early this month. This turned out be much more than just an annoyance.
Yesterday, after finished shopping at the Park ‘n Shop, we found that the Octopus machine for redeeming Park ‘n Shop’s free parking coupons was out of service. We had to drive to the other side of the parking lot to redeem the coupons. After which, when I have my card checked at the exit gate, the machine says “card error”. Immediately, I thought this is so stupid. Had they lost all my entry and credit info, I would have lost all the money as well as the entry time in the card, where neither of which I would have any prove to make my claims.
This isn’t the same as using the Octopus card for the bus, where a fixed charge is listed right there at the point of payment for you; nor is it the same as using it for the MTR where there is only a difference for a few dollars involved. A full day parking could be charged in case of the lost of a regular parking voucher could run you some HK$300 or more, which might turn out to be the same case for losing the entry record for the Octopus card. Had they have the entry time printed out on a invoice for you for Credit Card and Octopus card payments just like a parking voucher would do for cash payments, that would eliminate any unnecessary argument.
Luckily, the card error was just for that moment. I took the card off the machine and put it back for scanning did the trick. Yet, it still doesn’t solve the problem if there were a total system failure, or just a simple problem of the hubby drove in with his card and forgot to give his card to the wife to leave, or simply forgetting exactly which Credit card was used.
The management now has 3 guards at the entry and exit gate instead of what used to be just 1; and 1 personnel at each and every machine areas to show customers how to use the machines, which is the same as the number of shoroff’s officers they used to have.
I wonder if it is even legal for not accepting cash at all for any kind of payments.
After installing a number of software onto the Fujitsu P5010, like most of my other computers, I found it became slower in several regards; namely, powering on and off, in and out of standby mode, and opening and closing some of the applications. Furthermore on the P5010, for some unknown reasons, Forte Agent would only open after a full system boot/reboot, and refused to open after the system had come out of standby mode. Restarting, going into standby mode, and shutting down became extremely slow, and some of the toolbar applications could not even close properly.
Yesterday, my brother-in-law showed me how SpyBot (as listed in PCWORLD.com) works. I was amazed how many spyware and adware it detected and cleaned out. So, I decided to give it a run on the P5010.
WOW! Like the song title – What a Difference a Day Make. Sure enough Spybot listed some 30 or so spyware and adware, and I had them clean out by a simple press of a button and a fresh reboot to clean out the rest of the opened files.
I went ahead to try out standby mode and powering mode along with Forte Agent. No problem at all. They all went back to their original clean, fast and swift operations.
I then went on and had it installed and ran on all of my other computers.
Yippykaiyea….
After searching for a proper PDA or PPC for a couple of weeks and found none that really suits all my needs, I have decided to forgo a couple of features. I have decided I have no immediate need for any online functions, at least any direct build-in online functions, considering what I need to do with it now, and most likely I would never be away from a computer with online setup for more than a day, I could simply upload my writings later in the day. Even if I would be away for more than a day, I would most likely be overseas where Internet roaming costs are far too high to justify even the relatively much shorter logon periods. No big lost here. Along with that, I would have no immediate need for a build-in Chinese system either. I don’t like full Chinese OS anyway.
What I have decided I need here is a build-in keyboard for easy data entry. I have never really gotten use to Graffiti, and I don’t like soft keyboard much, and add-on keyboard would be to bulky and clumsy. A build-in camera which would make documenting more fun and less hassle than a plug-in one. And voice recording for those quick thoughts.
That basically boils down to a line of Sony Clie models. I chose the PEG-NX80V/H for its 1.3MPix CCD and build-in spotlight over the NX73V’s 30KPix CMOS without any build-in light. The NZ90 is simply too bulky and expensive. Too bad the NX80V/H don’t come in black.
Continue reading ‘More on PDA’
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