It’s all about shoe lacing methods and functions, and proper shoelace tying to prevent slipping knots.
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Archive for February, 2007
From this evening…
- “Febury” as in “February”, by my niece
- London National “Gary” as in “Gallery”, by Professor Man Kit-wah
- “definnation” as in “definition” by local fashion designer William Tat-chi Tang
How does one spell correctly without knowing the proper pronunciation? One does what local does best - by brute force memorization. Perhaps we have “Spelling Elephants” rather than “Spelling Bees”.
The largest predatory fish ever lived.
Do they still exist?
A couple of days ago, some of the thumbnails of many flickr’s photostreams have been mixed up with other people’s photos while their main photo files remain intact. I thought it was all fixed yesterday but here is the message this morning…
We are at the turning point of the Chinese New Year now and most companies have made their year end and year start dinner party reservations. Due to this year being a very good year for some businesses and a surge to a record high local security stock market, many restaurants have been fully booked despite have some extremely high prices.
A friend told me a couple of weeks ago that his company has made reservations at a mediocre Chinese chain restaurant at a price of over HKD$9000 per table of 12! This is a place where I would consider expensive if they had charged over $1500 a table. I suppose it has more to do with having a place to gather the company together for an event than having a meal itself. It may even have something more special than their regular menu item, perhaps some Abalone or whatever but it wouldn’t matter how exclusive the food material is, not having a good chef would be a big waste. I’d rather go to a better place and order less food.
Since I enjoy dining with a few friends, there bound to come a time when we simply ran out of ideas of where we would want to go. Some friend are quite picky about the cuisines they have being cooked absolutely ethnically authentic. This is mission impossible here in Hong Kong. We may have the authentic ethnic cooks but we don’t have all the authentic herbs and ingredients. We may not even have the authentic stove. For instance, something as simple as Naan bread, where in Hong Kong does one find a stone pit with charcoal fire? What matter is personal tastes. IMO, it doesn’t matter if any food is being cooked in absolutely ethically authentic way, if it tastes good it tastes good, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.
When we shop, we get deals. “Regular”, “Sale”, “Quantity Discount”, “Freebies”, “Points”… etc.
Lately, the most widely used deals in supermarkets would be the Buy-2-for-the-price-of deal. The problem with most of these deals is, one doesn’t usually remember what the “before” regular price truly was. For the new deal, there comes a new price tag something like this : $30.20ea. Buy 2 for $59.90. Or better yet, just the “Buy 2″ price without even having any single unit pricing listed at all! So what was the real original single unit price before? What if I just want one unit?
A blackcurrant pastille for irritated throat that comes in golden and silvery tin cans that I am quite fond of but rather expensive so I don’t usually buy them is Grether’s pastilles . One time I saw it in a well know local chain drug/convenient store that it comes in a huge golden tin can that’s about 10 times the regular quantity on sale for $75 from a said regular price of $116 so I bought a can. A few weeks later, the same item was put back to its $116 regular price for about 2 weeks and then it was on sale for $110. Another 2 weeks later, there was a store wide 10% off discount on all regular priced items and it was put back to its $116 regular price so the final prince with the 10% off came to $104.40. Just as I was expecting it to get back to the $75 sale price soon, all of a sudden, it went to a “regular” price of $146! And then a couple of weeks later it went down to a “regular” price of $126. That’s still $10 more than its original regular price.
A friend used to work for a children clothing chain store that sells some semi expensive name brand children clothing. For instances, a T-shirt could be something like HKD$250 regular price. Once each season there would be a 15% off sale. Once a year, there would be a 90% off sale! That’s right, ninety percent off. During which, the store would be turned upside down by customers just like a garbage station. So suddenly, the $250 T-shirt becomes a $25 T-shirt. Much like those mock Gianni Versace Roman Face emblemed jeans that many Philippino maids wear beside their Mistresses wearing the Real McCoy.
I used to buy Aigle mountain/travel wear. Their local stores don’t have on site sales at all. Only VIP discount and special off site VIP invitation sales. VIP discount is 10% off and 20% off during the month of the VIP’s birthday month. Once every few years, it would have a VIP 20% off sale fortnight. The problem with that is, their regular prices have been kept rising in recent years to about 30% more than what I had paid for the same items. So what used to be a regular 10% VIP discount membership has become a 4% markup even during that extra 10% off special sales fortnight nowadays. Yet the new models of those “same items” I bought now come in some similar but inferior material and craftsmanship. Naturally, I haven’t been buying their stuff for over 2 years now.
Just last night when I was having some Japanese dry seawheat from a local company I noticed something different about the package. The one that I buy is a huge zip lock bag that holds many strips of six packets much like strips of stamps. I buy this huge pack since they last very long and are relatively less expensive than their hand size package. I distinctively remember each of those six packets in a strip has 6 pieces in them. The package was bought a couple of months ago and I just noticed last night that each of those six packets in a strip now has only 4 pieces of seawheat in them! That’s like a secret 33% markup! Much like that missing 1-1/2 inch Pizza Hut pizza! The trouble is, this kind of markup probably doesn’t get reflected in the consumer price index and I haven’t had a salary raise in 14 years.
WhaUSay?!