What an irony...

It was still not too ago that I watched the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic.

I remember there was a scene where the children were bringing the flag to the pole with the music " A Hymn to the Motherland" playing in the background. I felt very emotional and moved when I first saw this scene.

The government seems to want to imply that it is under the current regime that these children will have a bright future after many years of civil wars and chaos in China.

However, in less than 2 months, many brands of milk produced it China was found to be contaminated with Melamine. It is not caused by any accident. It happened because of greed. Some bastards want to make more money.

Many children and babies (estimated now to be at least 53000) are fallen ill due to acute kidney failure. There has been 4 deaths already. Many more cases probably go unreported.

A postive image that took many years to build for the olympics is now completely shattered. I don't know how I can trust the commuist party to govern China anymore. 

Shopping

I went to China town to do some shopping last Saturday. I was planning to buy moon cakes but retreated from the plan after seeing the price. I end up getting a hair cut and only bought one thing:

I really like the message on it!

Hong Kong Legislative Assembly Election

Some of my thoughts:

-I am pleased to hear the pro-democracy camp (泛民主派) has managed to keep 23 seats in the assembly. This will at least allows the pro-democracy parties to veto controversial government bills such as article 23.

Dude, don't give any honorable excuses to make yourself feel better.
You know you are just too lazy to bother to vote.

-I am disappointed at the low voter turnout. Only 45.2% of the voters voted in this election. I find some of the response from the non-voters very laughable. If you are not happy with any of the candidates, you should at least cast a blank ballot to show your dissatisfaction. It is a citizen's responsiblity to vote in a democratic society. If you don't care about voting and voicing your opinion, maybe you should move to the mainland, where one doesn't have to "worry" about voting.

Either HK people are really forgetful or they fear revenge from the Beijing government

-I can't believe Regina Ip (葉劉淑儀) is elected. Do some people forget about her attitudes on pushing article 23? She doesn't seem to regret it even today. I would never consider supporting a candidate that would support or not attempt to stop the passing of article 23.

-The pro-democracy camp should consider merging the parties together into one uniform party. This will helps strenghts the votes and will allow them to gain more seats. Of course in reality it is easier to be said then done...

It is too bad that I can't vote in this election because I am in Canada. Hopefully I will be back to vote on 2017 when Hong Kong will have universal suffrage for electing the chief executive. Meanwhile, Canada is going to have an election on Oct 14th. I wonder if Stephen Harper will win a majority government? I need to research before I cast my ballot on the 14th.

Samsung T220HD - My mini review

I finally ordered Samsung T220HD TV/monitor couple of days ago. I got if from NCIX. Their express shipping option is a real deal. I ordered it on Monday morning before 1pm PST and received the monitor on Tuesday morning!

Why can't there just be one input for everything?

It is probably the best smaller size TV/monitor combo on the market right now. It features one component input (with R/L audio input), one DVI and one VGA input, one PC audio input, a DTV tuner and best of all, two HDMI input!

The monitor is 22inch in size and has built in speaker. The speaker's quality is a little better than most monitor's built in speaker. It is still far from ideal though. Samsung is smart to include a headphone output and a SPDIF audio out on this monitor.

I connected my PC to the monitor using DVI connection. I am not a professional reviewer so I can't comment much aboutthe picture quality, but everything looks great on to me.

I also connect my PS3 to the monitor using HDMI. The PS3 recognizes the monitor can accept 1080p signals, despite the max resolution of the monitor is 1680x 1050. It doesn't have any problem down scaling PS3's signal. Games and Blu-ray look great at 16:9 mode

The monitor has several mode for scaling images: 16:10, 16:9, 4:3 and Zoom. It also comes with a remote control

Too bad the 24inch (T240HD) and 26inch (T260HD) versions are not available in Canada. This monitor is perfect for students like me that has a PC and two gaming system (PS3 and XBOX360. The XBOX is still in Vancouver) living in a small place. I am suprised Samsung is the only company that make such an "adaptable" monitor.