Although Nokia had make Ovi maps navigation free for “everyone” last month, my Nokia E71 is still not listed as a supported device.  I could try the E72 version but I don’t feel like debugging for manufacturer again here as I usually ended up doing for most other new features new gadgets.  That’s because I have a 5″ Chinese GPS navigation device for my car now which is a very nice upgrade from my older 4″ device since dad don’t want to bother with it after I had given him the 5″ one for his birthday last Dec.

Nokia Maps has been a love hate feature over these years for me.  The nice feature is of course the handiness of having GPS navigation readily available at all times.  However, the installation of maps is a logic (or the lack of it) course in itself.  The single most important feature in worldwide map is having the local language available.  Google Maps does this brilliantly.  The reason being so is that when one is traveling abroad, all signs and people speak their own local language.  Asking for direction or simply checking the street signs to match the location on the map with the local language is the only way.  Even in my local town Hong Kong, official street names can sometimes be translated in it’s literal meaning or by the sound of the  pronunciation, making it difficult to decipher the names between the 2 official languages here – Chinese and English.

I use my phones in English, Nokia or otherwise.  It is because I find English much more easily recognized at a glance than Chinese.  Sorting in alphabetical order alone is enough to make me use English as I still don’t know how a Chinese list is being sorting when not in the number of strokes for the first word.  Like those names in a country list in any M$ products; I could be staring at it for weeks and I still have to search for it one by one or switch over to Chinese input and type in the full Chinese character to let the system search for (or miss) it.  When one downloads a Nokia Map and subsequently upload it to the phone, Nokia sends the map in the language which is currently set as one’s own phone operation language set.  In my case, English.  I am sorry this could be my fault but, what good is an Hong Kong map to any Chinese in English anyway?  If you had further downloaded any maps for the rest of China, you are bound to redo all your map downloading chores.  In order to have maps in the local language, I think one might need to switch the operating language before each and every country.  I doubt that my phone has all the languages in the world.

Having an unlimited data line and Google Maps only solves half the problem.  There is no free roaming for data.

I just fired up Ovi maps online with my computer and saw this…

Ovi Map Screen Shot

The above screen shot shows the widest view on Ovi Maps where it no longer shows “Hong Kong” on it.  Yet, Macau is still promptly being showed on the map.  Way to go HK.

Another thing that shows on the screen shot picture is the local languages available for Ovi Maps.  Chinese (Traditional or Simplified) is not on the list.

Creating a worldwide map for everyone in the world is no easy task.  Google is by far the only one that has what it takes to be on the leading edge.

“After 10 minutes of listening at 2-4x, try going back to listen at 1x or even 1.4x. It will seem incredibly slow because your mind will have adapted to the faster input rate.”

… it might also be a perfect way to make yourself fall asleep much more easily at the lecture hall though.

I have been to enough events where hosts and guests would have speeches and most of them would simply read out their speeches directly from chits. 100% of the time, 95% of the audience would not care to listen. A complete waste of time for saying nothing at all to no one.

Last Sunday in a public ceremony for celebrating 5/4, our ex-Secretary for Justice, Elsie Leung gave a speech where she read out word for word directly off a chit. At the beginning, while she was addressing the guests I suppose, the microphones were off. With her head down watching the words, she kept reading even when the microphones were eventually turned on afterward as everyone then finally hear her continued in her usual boring monotone sticky tongue voice as if everything were normal all along! Her entire speech conveyed only one message to me – she’s a moron.

One should prepare a speech with something that one wanted to say from the bottom of one’s heart and then say it like one is talking as a person with flesh and blood who truly believes in his words to the audience also with flesh and blood rather than reading like a bot to a brick wall. If you can’t say what you have to say, sit down and shut up. Quit wasting everyone’s precious time. Any 7 year old kid could read off a chit. Hack! A speech synthesizer could have done that! Imagine if Steve Jobs read off a chit during his keynote presentations instead. Who would care to buy his products after that?!

As usual, a few of us gathered for a dinner near the Hong Kong Rugby 7s weekend. Other than Mr. Steve Housser, there is no other guests from the school this time around, so we decided to have a small group quiet dinner instead. Being a Monday night, originally, we were going to take a stroll up to SOHO and pick out a restaurant; however, the weather report in the morning said there would be a thunderstorm in the evening. So we changed the plan and made reservation at a restaurant nearby the Causeway Bay MTR station instead so that we wouldn’t get too wet. Although in the end, the thunderstorm came early in the afternoon and it was relatively dry by the evening, we all enjoyed the nice food and had a good chat.

We would like to thank Steve for all the souvenirs, and thank Edmund for recommending a great restaurant and delicious food.

More photos here.

– “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”.

Part II

Part III

Smarter yankees know this is the actual John Howard.

On Dec 16, I followed Tin to Hac Sa, Macau to visit an excavation site. Due to news release restrictions, we have to delay the release of these photos.

The site primarily contains artifacts of quartz and jade from what seems to be a few workshops or a refinery dated back more than 4000 years.

I have always been fascinated by archeology, anthropology, and paleontology. This visit has been most enlightening.

Many thanks to Professor Tang for showing us the correct way of excavation and explaining the finds, and to Tin for letting me know and bringing me to the site.

More photos here.