dermk4 BLoG

有些人很會把廢話包裝成故作關心的話、動聽的話，正如阿諛奉承總會有受落的人，喜歡聽這種廢話的人也不少。小弟居住的屋苑就有這樣的一個女保安員，拿過多次最佳服務獎，偏偏我每次離遠見到她便會立刻眉頭一皺，心中盤算又要怎樣應付她的連篇廢話。

數週前為粉皮的婚禮借了舅舅的車子作花車駕了兩天，婚禮的週末剛過，小弟正欲前往乘搭村巴上班，不幸給她攔著，便有了以下的對話:

女保安員: 嘩 鄧生，乜你換左車呀?
小弟: 哦.. 唔係， 我幫人做伴郎借左人地架車啫 (心諗: 關你叉事咩!)
女保安員: 哦... 我仲以為你買新車添.... bla bla bla.... (下刪一段我聽唔到既廢話)
小弟: (索性唔理佢... 費事徙氣)

然後今早又有以下的一段，這一回小弟真的沉不住氣了...

女保安員: 鄧生，丫你朝朝都好早喎
小弟: (以為自己早左起身都唔知，望下個鐘，8:15am)
下? 番工呀...! 8 點幾啦，仲早? 咪玩啦!

Recently spotted a locally available 20v 1.8T (transversely mounted, engine code: AUM/ARX/AUQ/ARY) salvaged from a 2002 Audi A3, a wild idea of dropping this award-winning motor into my 2003 Polo immediately came up, my current 16V 1.4 has 62,000km on the clock, already a bit on the high side in Hong Kong standard.

The infamous 20v turbo (5v per cylinder, in-line four) powerplant has been offered by the VAG group in various Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda and Audi models since 1995. These include Audi TT, A3, S3, A4, Volkswagen Golf, Beetle, Passat, Polo GTI, Seat Leon, Skoda Octavia, just to name a few. The engine's vast availability and relatively straight forward installation into many Volkwagens have made 1.8 turbo conversions very popular in especially the UK, the average damage for such a conversion comes to about four thousand British Pounds (engine and ECU included).

Now, given that the new Polo 9N3 GTI is powered by an almost identical transversely mounted 1.8 turbo, which means engine mounts, hoses and other engine accessories can be bought straight from the dealer without the need to specially fabricate, to get the conversion job done locally is not impossible.

UK-based Quantum Performance Engineering offers a plug & play 1.8T engine management kit to get the 20v turbo running instantly on various VW platforms. Priced at £1,000, with the ECU pre-mapped and wirings included, the QPE kit basically makes the 1.8T conversion a piece of cake to any experienced mechanic. Empty the bay, mount the engine, connect the looms... and I'm all set with 230hp at my foot!

Easy as it is, there are still some important things worth noting:

Transmision: Audi did not bring any 2002 Audi A3 to Hong Kong with a manual transmission, transplanting an engine with an automatic transmission to a manual car might be a bit tricky to local installers.
Costs: Unpredictable labour and parts costs, as no one has done this in Hong Kong before.
Legal issues: How hard/easy is it to get the vehicle license updated accordingly?

The conlcusion is, to my knowledge such a conversion can be done with relative ease, but due to the high monetary and opportunity costs involved, I won't do it until I have a pile of cash for my disposal at the fingertips.

Thank you Carol for the big surprise, I was touched.
You deserve the warmest wishes, and may you have a memorable and romantic Christmas.

Those who know me well might have heard of my VW enthusiasm, however I do appreciate the look of some other Euros, among them Lotus' 2nd generation Elise stays firmly at the 1st place on my wish list. While definitely not able to afford one anytime soon, I do enjoy reading the bits and bites about this piece of art on the internet.

Local Lotus forum Elise Republic is one of my favourite resource site. From the posts and conversations one could tell that local Lotus owners are mostly well-educated professionals, chances to have a participant from Mong Kok in this forum is minimal.

Another good thing about this forum is, that if you are in the market for a used Elise/Exige, post a picture or license plate number of your target, members of the forum would likely be able to tell you its mechanical conditions and repair history.

And if you would like to start getting to know her, this forum has everything you need to know about this beauty, from Rover K-series engines to the Yamaha-designed Toyota 2ZZ-GE powerplant.

Take a look at the Elise Republic.

On Dec 15, Adobe released Photoshop CS3 for Mac in universal binary as a public beta. CS2, the previous version of Adobe's Creative Suite collection, has to rely on Rosetta technology to run on Intel Macs.



My hands-on experience to run Photoshop natively on my Core2Duo 2GHz MacBook was impressive, the splash screen showed up for only 9 sec, while CS2 needed about 30 sec just to start up. Transforming, paint buckets and applying filters were vastly accelerated compared to the previous version.

RetouchArtists Photoshop benchmark test results

在剛過的星期天有幸作粉皮及 Michele 的伴郎，見證他倆在眾人的祝福中組成一個基督化家庭。在此再次祝願他們夫妻恩愛，快點生個宝宝。





在婚禮中也遇見兩年多沒見面的朋友林小姐，彼此問安並愉快的談了一會，感覺不錯，原來時間真的可以沖淡一切不消提的舊記憶。

談到舊朋友，不可不提剛從芝加哥回來渡假的朱小姐。越忙越漂亮的她，才剛到埗兩三天便在百忙之中抽空找我和蒲小姐飯敘。在這位相識十載的老朋友跟前，我可以把心事掏出來談什麼都可以，甚至會彼此分享近來有什麼約會的對象... 「師妹」、「法國人」，我們幾乎無所不談。粉皮常說我情路坎坷，我說最少我曾經幸運過。

Same old intro music, Aston Martin DBS, Bond ladies and non-stop action scenes.
Excuses to miss?

心血來潮在 Google 鍵入 "The Heavens Are Telling" Video，誤打誤撞給我到本地 DJ / 「頭條新聞」主持及 Podcaster 林子揚的部落格 「CMM 腦地圖」中抓來了北宣詩班及管弦樂團獻唱 The Heavens Are Telling 的片段。

* 片中佩戴眼鏡站中間的演唱者就是林子揚

http://www.cmm.hk/cmmp/cmmp_060.mp4



The Heavens Are Telling 是深崇 110 週年堂慶獻唱的曲目之一，北宣詩班的演出水準簡直讓我看得我目瞪口呆，咱們深崇詩班也要努力啊!

民進黨一門兩傑總統阿扁 + 高雄市市長陳菊這一個組合，我老是覺得和詹培忠做香港特首 + 劉慧卿做政務師師長有異曲同工之妙。

到時兩岸三地大可來個「雞犬不寧大合奏音樂會」。

The words and lyrics of the old carol 'O Holy Night' were written by Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure in 1847. Cappeau was a wine seller by trade but was asked by the parish priest to write a poem for Christmas. He obliged and wrote the beautiful words of the hymn. He then realised that it should have music to accompany the words and he approached his friend Adolphe Charles Adams(1803-1856). He agreed and the music for the poem was therefore composed by Adolphe Charles Adams. Adolphe had attended the Paris conservatoire and forged a brilliant career as a composer. It was translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight (1812-1893).

Source & lyrics: http://www.carols.org.uk/ba32-o-holy-night.htm

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

Different versions of the beautiful hymn on Youtube.

by Josh Groban.
by The Corrs.
by Celine Dion.
by Sarah Brightman.
by Mariah Carey.
by a choir.

As the best time of the year approaches, may we once again be told by this song the story of Christmas.

昨晚慶祝 cowboy 生日，大伙兒飯後在 Pacific Coffee 閒聊，席間我隨手拿起 06 年秋冬的 Zip Homme 來翻翻。嘩... 不得了，不看還好，一看便欲罷不能，結果 24 小時後我便捧著厚厚的一本回家慢慢品嘗。



這幾季比較引起我注意的除了獲 Christopher Bailey 妙手回春的 Burberry Prorsum 及街頭巷尾都看見其蹤影的 Dior 外，還有無論可觀或可穿性都甚高的 Costume National。不知道大家有沒有留意到 Costume National 及其副線 CNC 近年走勢凌厲，大有成為第二個 D&G 王國的潛質?

一個賺錢的時裝品牌，除了要有讓一眾 fashionista 嘩然的設計外，生存之道離不開廣闢戰線，務求上至天皇巨星，下至旺角 wet 妹都逃不出它的魔掌。現今如日方中的 Dolce & Gabbana 和 D&G，十多年前的 Gianni Versace、Versus 與 Versace Jeans Couture，大家必定還記得中學年代的 Jean Paul Gautier、JPG 和 Gautier Jeans 吧? 這幾個品牌的成功之處，不就是上有戴妃、哥哥、Madonna，下有學生、OL 和白領的擁戴嗎?

Costume National 於 1986 年由設計師 Ennio Capasa 創立，1987 推出首個成衣及女裝鞋系列，1993 以 Costume National Homme 名義進軍男裝市場，及後版圖逐步擴展至香水、皮具、副線 CNC 及高檔系列 Costume National Black Label。

Costume National 及副線 CNC 在本港分別由 Joyce 及 IT 代理。

It's for you YO, my underlying words are: animal instincts don't change, leave it ba la.

Suddenly something has happened to me
As I was having my cup of tea
Suddenly I was feeling depressed
I was utterly and totally stressed
Do you know you made me cry
Do you know you made me die

And the thing that gets to me
Is you’ll never really see
And the thing that freaks me out
Is I’ll always be in doubt
It is a lovely thing that we have
It is a lovely thing that we
It is a lovely thing, the animal
The animal instinct

.....

Listen on YOUTUBE.

From the Dec 1 issue of HK magazine, the pioneer of free newspapers in Hong Kong.



I like particularly "Nicholas Tse's idiot's guide to crashing your car" and "Eason Chan's my father's money management".. they were so funny. You may not wanna miss the two contrasting facelifts in the "COLD & HOT" section, DoDo's versus Ocean Park's, damn it, they almost laughed me to death.

According to MacRumors.com, the long awaited Apple mobile phone will be...

- coming out in January (And it's tax season, everyone...)
- available thru all phone providers (he's talking about the US, obviously)
- "It's small as sh*t" (Wow...)
- Don't know anything about the Operating System
- The OS is supposed to be "cool" (who doesn't know? the whole idea is supposed to be cool..)
- Doing some unique things (like what... iChat AV on a mobile phone maybe?)
- Two batteries, one charger. One for MP3 portion and one for Phone. (... did you just say it's small like sh*t?)
- 4GB ($249) and 8GB ($449) (People were guessing the 8GB is $200 more bcoz it's a smartphone varient)
- Flash memory, Slide out keyboard (I think he means numeric keypad, not QWERTY...)
- Maybe touch screen? (For $249? I doubt that...)

MacRumors also quotes Macscoop/MacOSXRumors on Apple releasing an ultra-thin MacBook Pro with a 12" widescreen, sporting Intel's Robson Cache Technology, which stores some of the boot files in NAND flash memory instead of a traditional harddrive, to provide an almost immediate start-up of a Centrino-based notebook.

繼把口臭過馬桶既所謂 IT 人之後，今朝晨早流流搭地鐵又見到 D 行為令人不齒既賤人。

有兩個互不相識既後生仔，一上車見到有兩個位，就以迅雷不及掩耳之勢將屁股一沉坐低。另一邊廂，有一個仲早過佢地上車既阿婆正搖搖欲墜咁行緊過去。原本你地身手敏捷，又睇唔到阿婆，其實我都無咩好講，不過最衰俾我見到佢屁股下沉果一剎那眼尾係睄到阿婆既。咁佢點做呀? 咪即刻攞 Pocket PC 同 iPod 出黎扮咩都唔知囉。

我最慶既係，我無誇張，個阿婆真係企唔穩就跌就跌咁，呢兩條敗類都可以若無其事繼續玩佢地既 gadgets。我心諗，究竟係你兩個都咁不幸係孤兒，屋企無老人家，定係佢地食左秦始皇御賜長生不老藥，一定無阿婆呢一日? 諗來諗去，我覺得最有可能都係佢地好有自知之明，知道自己咁賤格，一定唔方長命得去邊，應該都等唔到阿婆呢一日架啦，咪索性唔讓囉。

如果佢兩個咁啱又係孤兒，又無讀過書，咁無人教過佢讓座都唔奇。但係兩個都著恤衫打呔，又有錢買埋 D 幾千蚊既 gadgets，睇落又唔似文盲喎。究竟係賤格已經成為時髦，定係唔賤格係香港真係生存唔到?

我睇住呢兩條友，不禁將我早兩日鬧阿 IT 人果 D 刻薄句子係心裡面再 repeat 左一次...