Help me update

I apparently need help encouraging me to update my blog and upload pictures. Help me by bribing me or giving me really good reasons to do so.

For those that don't know, I don't have internet in my flat, so I tend to not spend much time online while I'm in HK. That seems to have a very significant impact on my desire to blog...

Pics Uploaded

I've uploaded pics to Picasa from the past week or so:

More pics from Jess's Bday Party

Tennis pics

Pics of my flat

Pics from Wii night(s)

Misc. club pics

Misc. HK pics

Mahjong Night

I'm tentatively playing my first game of MJ tonight with Albert, Fish, and IPM. Albert and Fish taught me the basics last night, so I'm all prepped to kick their asses ;) Wish me luck.

Bureaucracy FTW!

I just went down to the law faculty to check in and was handed a form and told to fill it out and mail it back...to the place where I was standing. That's right, I can't just fill it out and hand it to them; I have to mail it to them. That means I still don't know what my schedule is going to be next week. On the plus side, on my way back to my room I saw a table for the chess and board games club. Unfortunately, like most socially inept gamers, they have their games on Friday nights. As I plan on either traveling or going out on the weekends, I doubt I'll be able to join them. It is reassuring to know that gamers are the same on both sides of the planet.

I'm off to Taikooshing to meet Albert this afternoon. I've never been there, so I may take some pictures. It's just another area on HK island, farther down the island line than I have been.

Irony

OMG, I was just laying on my bed surfing channels and what do I find? Sitting in China watching TV, I come across a program talking about bats in Austin, TX. how's that for irony?

Afternoon Constitutional (boring post)

I just went for a hike up to the Peak. Visibility was quite poor, so no pictures this time. I think it's about 5-6k from Robert Black up to the Peak, with about 1/3 of that a decent grade; the other 2/3 being is mostly horizontal, at least relatively. The new building was complete, so I wandered around in there for a while and looked around on the terrace. There's a Madame Tussaud's, Swarovski, and a few other interesting stores. There were some really nice pieces at Swarovski's; I wish I had some decent income so I could get things for people. There was a group of school kids playing Pachelbel's Canon, which is my favorite classical piece. After some leisurely strolling at the Peak and getting some water, I walked back down and now here I am. I think it's Peanut Butter and Jelly time! Actually, it's just peanut butter time, so I can get some protein.

Navy just let me know that the flat is ready, though they're waiting on curtains and new light fixtures, which arrive Friday. I'd move in, but I had to prepay this room. I'll check on getting a refund and moving into the flat early, but I don't have much hope.

I just realized this entry is really boring. Sorry about that, but I can't think of much interesting to say at the moment, too tired. I'll make up for it in my next entry, promise.

Oww

After getting back to my room yesterday afternoon, I did some exercising, which included the hard stomach exercises Jill told me about. I'm having a hard time moving this morning; every time I move to anything short of a fully extended position, my stomach cinches up and makes standing difficult and painful. It's good, because it shows progress, but it hurts! I'm thinking of walking up to the Peak today, so hopefully I won't be able to move my legs tomorrow :)

Oh, and I can't sleep very well. Granted, I slept a few hours early in the evening yesterday, but I fell asleep about 02:00 and woke up about 06:45, AFTER taking the ambien my mom gave me to try to fight jetlag. That stuff apparently does nothing to me. I wonder what that says about my body chemistry that ambien doesn't knock me out, at least for more than a few hours.

Off to breakfast now to see who the early risers are this week.

Pics uploaded

Pictures from Jess's bday and Gencon have been uploaded to, respectively:
http://picasaweb.google.com/brittfrey/JessSBday
http://picasaweb.google.com/brittfrey/GenconIndy2007

Lunar Eclipse Tuesday

Anyone want to go up to the Peak with me on Tuesday night to see the lunar eclipse? Local time will be 18:42 (moonrise) to 20:23 (end of eclipse).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070824/sc_space/viewersguidetuesdaymorningslunareclipse

I know I'm in China...

...when one of the channels in my room is Panda TV. That's right, a channel that broadcasts the daily activities of pandas on four webcams.

Value Added Content

I forgot to mention the bonus feature of my room at Robert Black: jackhammers at 9am, right outside my door - literally, like 5 feet from my door. I guess I won't be oversleeping...

Try not to miss me too much...

After a long day of traveling, I arrived in Hong Kong yesterday. I arrived at 15:00 on Friday, HK time (02:00 Friday, Austin time). Albert was at the airport waiting for me, being the badass friend that he is. He took me to Robert Black college, where I decided to spend the next week until my flat is ready. Robert Black is where I stayed last summer, so I am familiar with the area and such. Albert dropped me off around 16:00 and I spent the next 3 hours getting into my room and taking a nap.

At about 19:30 or so, I got up and headed out for Jessica's birthday party. I had to walk down to Central to find an ATM, as I was without cash, then up to Soho to Cru, the restaurant at which we were eating dinner. I got the opportunity to meet several friends of Jess and see a couple of people that I knew from last summer. It was great to see Jess again, even if she did put "Britt(any)" on my nametag ;) Dinner was quite nice, though the chocolate martinis tasted horrible. I did my first shot (two actually), which was not bad, but was also not something to get excited about. Overall, this whole drinking thing has been rather unimpressive. Granted, I haven't been drunk yet, but I don't plan on intentionally becoming so, and I haven't noticed anything great about being tipsy.

After dinner, we went out to Dragon-I. We got the VIP, skip the line and list, treatment again, which I'm beginning to get used to hanging out with some of my friends here. I'm not as intimidated by the rich/model crowd anymore and mainly think a lot of the women just need to eat something. Overall, it was pretty fun, though there were some issues that came up that required some cheering up. We mostly sat around in the outdoor area chatting and having a good time. Next, it was down to Q, a new(ish?) club in Lan Kwai Fong. It was pretty cool, with a pleasant decor and not very crowded. I did some not-very-good dancing, but it was dancing, which is a start for me, and we had a grand ole' time for a few hours. Amazingly, I just happened to run into Marco while there. He is a friend I have from last summer that I know through Albert. Once he recognized me, he promptly jumped on me and wrapped his legs around me - funny, but why can't some of my female friends do that? ;) He was on his way out, so we chatted for a few, then he made his way out. Around 03:00 we left and people started dispersing for home. I walked with Jess up to another bar where we met Steph and Michael. At this point, I decided to leave as well, as I had been fighting jet lag all night.

The walk home nearly killed me; I had forgotten how hard those stairs are to climb when the escalators are off. Oh, wait, they call it the TRAVELATOR now, sorry. At least that removes the problem of what to call an escalator that takes you down (escalator should only be for 'up'). By the time I got to my room, my shins, calves, stomach, and kidney area were killing me. Granted, I had been on an airplane for 20 hours, walked around town before dinner, then danced some, but I'm going to have to do a lot of exercise to get into shape. I am tentatively planning on walking/jogging up to the Peak everyday, which should get me into shape really quickly. Anyways, I got to sleep around 04:30. Unfortunately, I woke up at about 08:30 :(

I spent about 45 minutes shaving and showering, then went to eat breakfast. I had good ole' congee, hot tea, and toast. It's almost like being back in Austin with the Spanish Trails ladies again, only I traded the company of pretty female friends for congee - not a good trade, imo. After breakfast, I went to the office to get a power adapter so I could charge my laptop, then left to run a few errands. First, I went by 7-11 to get a SIM card. Unfortunately, when I asked for a SIM card, the guy at the counter pulled out a list of about 10 options and all the text was in Chinese. I just went with the one that looked like what I had last year, and that worked out. Second, I walked down to Central to get an Octopus card - that's the auto-debit card for the transit system and several stores, like 7-11 and Park N' Shop. Third, I went up to the Park N' Shop at the top of the TRAVELATOR! to get a few groceries. I picked up some bread, nutella, peanut butter, tim tams, Lindt, crackers, soup, cheese, and insoles (I've been needing those for a while). Fourth, and finally, I came back to my room to catchup on emails and post to my blog, which I am currently completing :)

I have no plans for tonight, but Jess or Albert might give me a call. Honestly, I wouldn't be sad if I just spent the night resting. Sure, it's not exciting, but I had a long day(s) yesterday. Pictures from last night should be on Jess's fcbk and, hopefully, some of the other people will be uploading pictures as well. I'll copy them down later and put them up on Picasa for people to see. It's about 14:30 on Saturday now. I'm going to try not to take a nap, maybe unpack my bags, and get in some exercise, I think. Later faithful readers!

Geek week begins...

I will be leaving for Gencon in Indianapolis in about 4 hours. For those that don't know, Gencon is like Gamer Mecca. I'll get to spend 5 days around overweight, socially inept, stinky gamers. Granted, there are normal people there as well, and I like some of the overweight, socially inept, stinky gamers, but the overall percentage of those qualities is much higher at Gencon than probably anywhere else in the world. There are a couple of special events running that I wrote, I have a few meetings to attend, and some announcements to handle. Other than that, I'll be running some games, answering questions, avoiding questions, and wandering the dealers' room. If you have requests for items from the wonderful world of geeks, let me know. Yes, some of you have already told me, like collectible vinyl figures, but there might be some really cool stuff there that would suit some of you and I would have no idea. So, leave a note and I'll see what I can do.

I get back to Tulsa late Sunday/early Monday, then leave for Shanghai/Hong Kong on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Smell my nutmeg!

No, I'm not going to help you make that make sense. MWAHAHAHAHAH!

I thought I might give my faithful consumers a glimpse at one of the revolutionary features of Britt 5.0. Previous versions of Britt used rudimentary and discrete importance and meaning routines. All events were evaluated for importance and meaning. These routines...ahh, screw it, this programming metaphor is getting old quickly. Anyway, I used to look at everything that happened and try to figure out what it meant, thinking everything had to mean something. Also, once I thought I had stuff figured out, I would decide if something was important, pretty much an all or nothing type of thing. While I used to make fun of Rod for thinking in discrete terms, where everything had to be all or nothing, I've realized recently that I was doing the same thing. Even worse, I was thinking I was being 'mature' for thinking that way. For example, while Rod would turn the A/C on full blast until he was cold, then turn the heat on, I wouldn't get into any types of relationships unless I already knew I might be able to be with the girl for a long time. If I didn't think marriage was possible, I didn't want anything more than friendship, if I even allowed for that.

I'm starting to realize that this is idiotic, immature, and probably just an extension of my desire for control and fear of commitment, which are probably the same thing really. Sometimes, things don't mean anything at all, or maybe things aren't clear to the people involved. Sure, sometimes events or actions have meaning, but not everything does. And jumping straight from nothing to everything, does it have to be like that, and is that even a good idea? I need to be willing to be wrong if I ever want to be right. Of course, like Socrates, I should always realize that I know nothing, but that's very hard to do :)

So these are things I've been thinking on for a bit and plan to think about a good deal more over the next few months, among other things. If you want to talk about this topic or similar ones, feel free.

Britt 5.0 is currently in development with public beta testing beginning in Q4 2007 and an expected release date in Q1 2008. Check back often for previews of other features in development.

Friend needs work

I have a friend that needs a job in ATX or Ft. Worth in copywriting, marketing, PR, or (she didn't say these two, but I think she might like them) photography or singing. I'm biased towards ATX :), but if you know of anything in either town, please let me know.

Somewhere a rainbow is weeping.

I actually have no way of tying that title into what I was going to post, but it's just so damned funny! I was watching Psych (good acting in that show) and the main character was making fun of his dad's shirt and said that it was colour genocide. Ahh, comic gold.

Anyway, I've begun work on Britt 5.0. If you anyone has any feature or bug fix requests, now is the time to inform me. Don't worry; if it's bad, I won't hold it against you, but I might kill you for it. Don't let that deter you from providing creative feedback, though. I already have some things in development, but you could provide ideas that lead to amazing advances in Britt technology and maybe, just maybe lead to the salvation of all humankind from the alien, monkey overlords. If you don't want to help me, at least think of the alien, monkey overlords.

Getting my google page setup

Sweet! I am getting my iGoogle page setup with RSS feeds of all the blogs I check. Instead of having to go to them all individually, especially when they don't update very often, I can just look for new stuff on iGoogle. I got blogspot blogs figured out, but need to check livejournal and Y! blogs now.

For blogger, add a gadget to iGoogle that points to http://name.blogger.com/feeds/posts/default

For Y! blogs in Hong Kong, add a gadget that points to http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/name/rss

For LJ, go to http://name.livejournal.com/data/rss or /atom.

So, the problem I'm finding is those stupid friends that make posts private.

I figured out how to login through an atom feed. For LJ, for example, do the following:
http://user:password@name.livejournal.com/data/atom

Damnit, that didn't work. :(

Fantabulous Meme

This one is definitely worth doing.

What would you do...
If you heard the penguins were taking charge and over running the country?:
Mobilize my team of guerrilla warriors and take back the country against the threat of flightless birds.

If you heard that the world was going to end tomorrow?:
Find a way to stop it.

If music wasn't existent?:
Umm, make it exist?

If you saw a man/woman streaking across your front yard?:
Smile and cock my head to the side (no pun intended) and be a bit confused, especially since I don't have a yard.

Have you ever...
Almost drowned in a type of body of water?:
No.

Streaked?:
No.

Streaked with friends?:
Missing prerequisite.

Try to jump off some type of large and tall platform?:
Of course. Wait, how do you try to jump off something?

Tried to fly?:
Yes.

Eat something just to prove to someone that you could?:
Not to prove that I could, but to broaden my experiences.

Went out and tried TPing a house or any of the sort?:
Yeah, think so.

Bologna'ed a car?:
Huh? People do that? Never heard of that.

This or That?
Toilet Paper or Leaves?:
What the hell do you think?

Pens or pencils?:
Pens.

Laptop or computer?:
A laptop is a computer. Between a laptop and a desktop, probably a laptop.

Lol or haha?:
It really depends on the situation. There are subtle nuances separating the two.

Smile or Frown?:
Lately? Smile.

Smile at someone who was staring at you or wave the middle finger?:
Smile.

The Used or MCR?:
Lost me there.

Chicken or Turkey?:
Chicken.

Pie or Cake?:
Cake.

Divorce or Forever Married?:
Who would want to get divorced? When I get married, I want it to last.

Good boys/girls or Bad boys/girls?:
A bit of both (good and bad, not boys and girls, sickos). I want someone that is a fantastic person but has a bit of a wild streak and maybe some bad past that they've overcome like a comic book villain turned hero.

Crayola or RoseArt?:
Hmm, probably Rose Art.

Crayons or Markers?:
Different tools for different tasks.

Random things... more.
Sleep with a stuffed animal?:
I have.

Fell down the stairs?:
No. I'm graceful, like a dolphin. How many dolphins have you seen fall down stairs?

Fell UP the stairs?:
Yes. Dolphins don't climb stairs very well.

Climbed a mountain to it's highest peak?:
Yes, and love it. I would like to do it again sometime.

Dived off a diving board in 3 ft. water?:
Yes. I can do shallow diving perfectly well.

Rolled down a hill and then smash into a parked car at the bottom?:
No, but I once flipped my bicycle while going down a hill and had it land on top of me while I slid down the asphalt of the hill.

Wanted your parents to shut their mouths when you already know what to do?:
Of course.

Favorite...
TV Commercial?:
I don't really watch TV, so I don't have a large enough sample size to know.

Type of Dog?:
Border collie.

Type of Cat?:
I love most cats, but I tend to prefer ones that have a bit of attitude but are cool about it.

Weather?:
I like extreme weather, bright sun, lightning storms, snow storms, ice storms, tornadoes, curtains of rain, high winds, etc. Of course, I also enjoy a nice calm day as well. They elicit different types of feelings.

Pen?:
I forget the brand, but the artsy ones that Cristina got me.

Telephone?:
I don't like using the telephone, but obviously the iPhone is keen.

Binder?:
I'm not in elementary school, though law school is like it sometimes...

School activity?:
Skipping it.

Work place?:
I'd love to work in a think tank, solving myriad world problems.

Room in your house?:
I'm homeless, and I think my next place is a studio.

Type of computer?:
Eh, something that works.

Type of car?:
Aston Martin, though I like my Scion tC.

Type of sound?:
A smile. You figure it out :)

Nearing the end people...
Ever wish for something that you knew would never happen?:
Yes, see the title of my blog. Though I think of them more as unlikely rather than impossible.

Wish upon a shooting star?:
Everytime.

Tried eating bubbles that came out of a bubble bottle with the bubble wand?:
No, since soap doesn't taste good.

What time did you start if you remember?:
About 18.05.

What time is it now?:
18.13.

Did you enjoy the questions?
Yes.

Why in the world did you take this anyway!?:
You had me at penguins.

Virgin post

Welcome all to the magical, mystical Britt show. This is my first post here and will be used primarily to test the layout. I may have to check if fcbk can import blogger posts as well. So, sit back and enjoy the wonderful content that awaits you in the near future.