Author: RipperDoc

You thought I had enough gadgets? C’mon, you should know me better than that! This time it’s a super gadget – an Eten M600 Windows Mobile Phone. It did not only lighten my materialisti conscience, it also lightened my wallet – or account, quite dramatically. (I payed 4800 HKD for the phone including a 1GB SD-card).

I was chosing between this device and the O2 Xda Atom or Dopod 818 Pro. In the end I chose Eten for it’s good price, good reviews and fast processor. The cons I already knew about, compared to the two other devices, was that the Eten is slightly larger and heavier, lacks EDGE (fast GRPS data transfer) and it also didn’t have an FM radio as the Atom or a 2MP camera as both the Atom and the Dopod had. The camera was a minor interest for me though as no PDA cameras are good enough for serious photography, no matter if they are 1.3MP or 2MP.

Now my Eten is up ‘n running – what can I say about it? Well, it is fast (except the restarting of the device, which is very slow). It is very cool. The screen is really good and so is the general build quality of the device. The basic phone functionality works as it should and the sound is apparently good. What have gone wrong then? I had a lot of trouble setting up the WiFi and it is still not running as smooth as I wanted (might have to find a 3rd part application for that). However, the problems is not in performance of the wireless but in getting it to connect in the first place – which I solved after doing everything step by step from the manual.

The biggest trouble, however, is that my Eten somehow triggered an avalanche of general computer problems. Synchronisation failed sometimes, my USB Hub behaved strange, I couldn’t connect my old Motorola E1 ROKR and Windows started locking up for no reason at all. A few strange application crashes has happened on the Eten, but nothing catastrophic. At the moment though most problems seem to have vanished or stabilized so I just have to wait and see – they might just have been freak errors.

My concern right now is to find good software for Windows Mobile 5.0. I though I just had to search Google, but I was mistaken. The web is cluttered with sites proclaiming freeware Pocket PC (PPC) software which is actually shareware or stupid themes. In the end, it seems most PPC software, no matter how unneccesary it might be, will cost me. And I don’t like paying for software. I found a few programs, none of which I have been able to try out seriously, but sooner or later I might compile a list of good, trustable PPC freeware just because of the apparent lack of such lists online. Maybe you know any good freeware?

A couple of sites of interest for Eten users or speculants:

• Kennysia.com
• http://www.eten-users.net/
• Pocket PC Singapore Community

For those of you who have yet checked out my gallery, or couldn’t be bothered by going through all the pics, here is a post with my own selection of the best photos of the trip. They are in a small format to not completely fill up the blog – click on them for further viewing pleasure:
Singapore

Kuala Lumpur

Langkawi

Lemanak

Mulu

I have to warn you, this short post contains politics. Read further at your own risk. Politics may cause head ache, rashes, bad breath and less spare time. Consider yourself warned.

Yes, I’m afraid I have to state my opinion here, as so many else have done. Luckily for you still reading, my opinion isn’t very complicated. So here it comes:

It’s a cartoon. It’s just a cartoon. Cartoons of that kind are supposed to provoke, generalize and make fun of people that do or don’t deserve it. And what more, the cartoons where published in a smaller danish newspaper, not international media. Cartoons are published everywhere in the world daily that provoke people of different religions, races, opinions, organizations, etc. I thought only Swedish people would be picky enough to portest about cartoons, but obviously the muslims are as picky as Swedes (but in Sweden people write to the newspapers, in Middle East they start a riot).

What’s happening now is sad and a bit bizarre, but not unpredictable. The conflict is not about the cartoon, it’s about the polarization between the west and islam. A polarization that is neither new nor based on as simple things as cartoons or general alienation. It is conflict over millenias and it’s also, nowadays, a conflict of oil and global economics. The constant conflict have made the islamic world unstable (with very few exceptions) while the west in general have a much greater political stability.

So basically, people, forget the cartoons. They are not the issue. Stop debating them, it’s just silly. Unfortunately, the protesters will use the cartoons as a pretext for further instability – they have all the reason to protest, but not about cartoons, but about how their own regimes are corrupt and how the US stations troops in their countries (or neighbouring countries). The issue of the cartoons are not a reason to the polarization, they are a consequence of a much deeper conflict, that most certainly will get worse over the following years. I’m just waiting to see if the muslims manage to unite and start making political demands with the power to back them up instead of bombings and riots.

Chinese New Year is a really big event all over China. It’s the end of the lunar year and this time it became the year of the dog. A whole set of traditions (or call it “superstition”) comes with the CNY. The most important is to spend time with family and relatives. So I did that, or more correctly, I spent time with Shirley’s family during a weekend on Lantau Island.

Basically, it all started with a “yam cha”, a lunch of dim sum with around 10 people. Shirley’s sister Jenny brought her puppy dog Bi-Bi which made it much more interesting (otherwise it’s not very entertaining as everybody else in the family speaks cantonese). Dim sum is very traditional Hong Kong food, and it’s basically lots of small dishes, often dumplings or small buns, most of them steamed. I like some of it and dislikes lots of it, which is my general approach to chinese food. But it can be really good if I know what I order (and Shirley did as always a great job translating for me).

The weekend then continued with a family BBQ at Lantau Island, a night at a rented apartment and a visit to the traditional fishing village Tai O the following day. The whole event was always very chaotic and noisy, but in a charming way, and all in all I felt very welcome and had fun, although the communication between me and the rest of the family was almost non-existent.

During the Chinese New Year I have experienced a couple of charming/peculiar chinese customs:

• All married couples have to give red pockets with money inside to all that are not married, so called lai see. These usually contain between 20 and 100 HKD each, but when you combine a large family the total amount increases fast. I received around 400 HKD in lai see’s, which felt very strange for me – it’s not my family and I’m not allowed to give anything back to them.
• A lot of chinese don’t trust the dishwashers at restaurants, so when they receive the porcelain they clean it again using the tea and hot water that is compulsory at chinese restaurants. I found this very… peculiar.
• Many chinese try to save their hair growing from moles in the face (!) because it brings good luck. The longer hair from the mole, the better… it is also considered good to have a little finger that is longer than the ring finger, which of course is hard to achieve – so what some do is to grow their nails on the little finger to be longer than the ring finger…