Little Red Dot

You know the track-point buttons on Thinkpads? In Chinese they are referred to simply as the "little red dot." Funny, eh?

Okay, Carina has been a bit slack with updates and I am STILL waiting for feedback on my thesis. In the midst of applying to graduate school (namely Duke) I am also in a bit of a lull. I figured I would use this time to be productive with a blog post for the folks back home.

We have been back for over a week now and more or less readjusted to life in Hong Kong...at least as much as we are ever going to adjust. I am still waking up well before the sun is out so I can have a decent run. Today I made the mistake of sleeping in (5 AM rather than 4 AM) and had to do some considerable dodging of little old ladies. Yep, they're still clogging up the sidewalks.

The good news is that we're doing fairly well logistically. Carina activated her visa when we took a day trip to Macau. The trip cut into our budget, but it was a cheaper option than, say, flying to Thailand again. Unfortunately, we scheduled the trip for early in the day and wound up on the casino side of Macau. This meant nothing was open until right about when we were going to leave. Bummer. Well, at least we had a nice walk through a very nice ghost town.

Things in the department are par for the course as well. This semester's seminar series has already begun (without much fanfare, sadly) and I'm back on my fame for asking questions and taking notes. Even if I don't use any of this information in my thesis, I love to learn. Besides, it's free air conditioning!

We've also been hitting-up the new Thai restaurant next door. It's not Thai quality, but it's about what I'd expect from a mid-range Thai restaurant in the US. I guess we have an Indochine substitute for our time here. Here's to hoping it fares better than the Indian restaurant did (their modest prices should help).

Oh, right, and the reason for the title to this post: I'm getting Cara a new laptop as an early Christmas present. There are some great deals for HKU students on laptops right now and I used my status to pick up a new machine that should fulfill all of her needs and more. I even picked up Adobe CS 5.5 at a heavily discounted price. I like to think this is part of being a good husband...and I'm curious to see how AMD's Llano chipset works out.

So thumbs-up for a decent first week back in Hong Kong.

With any luck, my supervisor (Chris) will be giving me some feedback today on my thesis. I mean, it's doubtful, but a boy can hope. I also need to ask him about a recommendation for my graduate school application. Hopefully my TA'ing for him will sway him to do a few favors for me...