Tommy's space

Just announcing that I won't be updating this page anymore until further notice. See my new blog at http:///bla.nointrigue.com/blog/ and gallery at http://bla.nointrigue.com/gallery.

 

 

I love it!

 

Iron Chef is back on TV on Saturday!! And (probably) new episodes too!

 

Also, exam finished today! Uni honour roll comes out next week! and many thanks to Zhiyan!

 

w00t

 

Oh, almost forgot, finally have some work this week, so have money for the next month!

 

Yay!

Now I truly know the value of an Australian passport. Yeah, I'm talking about all the no-visa arrangement and things; and no, you don't really know the value of these things even if you have breezed through immigration while poor sods from lesser nations line up to get visas. You know the true value, when you have lined up in the visa queue with lesser mortals, only to be told at the end of the line that, oh, you have an Australian passport; you didn't actually have to line up for half an hour.

So I got to Tokyo Narita Airport today, and walking into immigration, saw three signs for "Japanese Passport", "Foreign Passport", and "Shore Pass: Foreign passport holders wishing to say for less than 72 hours". Naturally, I fell into the third category (or so I thought), and I eagerly lined up with all the other transit passengers to China to get my three-day visa. Half an hour of queueing later, I get told that Australian passports didn't need to line up here at all. Confused, I went over to the "Foreign Passport" desk, where by now only Chinese passengers were lining up, and the officer at the counter happily slapped on a sticker: "90 days - permitted stay until 2 MAR 2007". Great. It should have said "Our Engrish signs made you waste half an hour. Ha-ha."

At least I was better off than a lady at the next counter, who was desperately trying to get across to the immigration officer in Chinese:

Officer (in English): "Which hotel are you staying at?"

Lady: "Sheng Du Bing Guan. Wo zhu zai Sheng Du Bing Guan." [Yeah, I hope you can read pinyin... without tonal marks]

Officer: "I'm sorry. Can you speak in Japanese or English?"

Lady: "Sheng Du Bing Guan. Wo zhu zai Dongjing de Sheng Du Bing Guan."

[and so on, with the lady speaking slower and louder every time, to no avail]

Chinese person lining up behind lady (in Chinese): Maybe you can write it down, the characters would read the same.

Lady: I don't know how to write it in Chinese...

* * *

You know you are getting old when ...

... the featured AV actress in the hotel "movie guide" is younger than you.

再过一个月就要去上海了， 我得多练习母语写作， 不要弄得到处招人家开国语。 最近 wikipedia 上碰到个台湾+荷兰+黑人的混血，自己认为不是中国人， 就把所有关于台湾的条目里的"chinese"全部删掉，还顶撞回退他的管理员。 害的我浪费宝贵复习时间......  我看最好送他去台湾，保证给倒扁大军打破头。

 

这两天在批一年级计量经济卷子。有些留学生的英文实在差得可怕， 差的我佩服他的创意。 不知道他怎么考到亚斯5.5的。 精彩分享:

 

Q: Describe the shape of the distributions for "Price" and "Odometer".
A: "The shape for price is disturbed."
A: "... The variance measures the data flatulate around the mean."
A: "The rang of the data is from 9588 to 34950. Therefore the data has a rang of 25362"
A: "For price, the mode is bigger than the media. For Odometer, the mode is smaller than the media."


Q: What's the relationship between the two variables?
A: "As odometer reading increasing, price of the car is fooling as the same time"
A: "There is a statistical relationship."
A: (even better) "There is a relationship between the variables. The relationship between the variables is a statistical relationship."

 

It looks like a Zeiss lens or a Swiss watch, but its actually a manual calculator! Just the story behind it is amazing enough. The inventor invented it while in a German concentration camp. It went into production after investment by the Prince of Lichtenstein. It does addition, multiplication, and division, all mechanically! Way better than anything Casio can throw up.

 

 

Unlike most other Transformers figurines, this one actually looks good, as a robot AND as a truck. It's got real rubber wheels with suspension. Diecast components, and best of all, one of Optimus' weapons is Megatron in gun mode!