Jan. first had always kinda sucked for me, last year I came home at 2am after having the usual new years dinner with my family and started working on version 2 of hyperactiveman.com... because there just wasn't anything else for me to do. The year before was even worse, I was in LA with my partents and my dad's family, went to this fucked up LA Chinese association New years ball crap that my uncle James invited us to go to. Basically an event for people to show off how much money they can spend, I hated every single second of it.

This year we did the same dinner at the Jockey Club thing as last year, san Karen, who had to work on new years eve in NYC... :( I so wish she was here, cuz it's been a while since we as a family spend time together. Tonight joining us for dinner (same as last year) is the Chan family, actually I think they invited us... I have no idea how all that works anyhow... they've been our family friends since I can remember. And of course their kids Iven and Connie who I've known and played with since I was 5. Of coruse I lost touch with them as friends once I moved away and well we all got older, the two families don't spend much time together, they pretty much became accquentences rather than friends.

Originally my plan for Jan. first was to build a flash photo gallery of the photos I took during the dinner, in an unexpected twist, during dinner Connie asked me what I was doing after the "required dinner" and I told her I was going to go home and do nothing. Well, I got something short of a smack in the back of the head for not having a life and then she invited me out to go party with her friends. Cool! Now here's the interesting thing. I've know Connie since I was 5, we hung out, played but we never really just hang out together, I mean in all these times before, my interaction with her was always in the presence of our parents. Shit I've known this girl for 16 years and tonight was the first time we really hung out togeher! Needless to say, I saw a totally different side of her. She is a total blast to be around, she so freaking funny! Did I like totally miss something all these time? I honestly can't believe I've kinda stop considering her as a friend since I was 15, as I felt like she was just a family accquentence. Well, I guess I was really wrong about that. It was so nice to hang out with someone who is also always a ball of energy, blunt as hell and have 16 years worth of history and dumb inside jokes that we can bring up and laugh about.

All of a sudden this trip home means a lot more than just going home, in the past 10 days I found and realized the many things that I've been missing, reconnected with the things that are important in my life. Finally I realized why I am always unhappy with something, it's because I tried so hard to live a life without history, I keep trying to start fresh, I keep trying to forget, not realizing that I can't move forward and be happy without knowing where I came from.

Now I know why I felt so weird about leaving Boston, it's because I realized Hong Kong is where I want to be, I want to stay here.

Now for the first time in my life, my mom, dad and I sat during dinner talking about a film, never mind the fact that this was also a cartoon. It's great to finally have them understand why I love Japanese animation so much, I mean they totally dig it! Remember the DVD set of Miyazaki's work? They want it! So this is also something I never thought would happen, I am going to go buy a cartoon DVD set for my parents tomorrow... I think this is weirder than teaching my mom photoshop, or hearing my dad say "Word!"... yes he threw that out during lunch today, I have no idea...

After dinner it was soccer time! Fulham VS. Manchester United. Watching soccer is fun, I wish I have more time to do that when I'm in Boston, but then they really don't show a lot of English soccer in the US.

Well it's the 31st here now, about 23 hours till 2002. My next update will be next year, so happy new year to everyone! This also means hyperactiveman.com as you know it has been around for almost a year now! Jan 4th 2001 was when the weblog thing really started. I don't think I'll have a redesign for the site though, I'm happy with how it's working now, plus I really don't feel like re-hacking the Greymatter stuff, but then again you never know, I may feel inspired and work on one. Well, see ya all in 2002! Happy New year! 2002 is the year of the Horse on the Chinese calender if you are wondering.

Now Ghost recon is kinda different, I've been playing it for about 2 hours now, this time around, I get it and the whole playing out the mission things is way cool, I keep killing the guy I'm trying to capture though. So yeah... next round, next round.

My mom went on this insane Compact Flash purchasing binge. She kept buying new cards because somehow she just can't get the idea that the "film" of these cameras are reusable. So good news for me, I taught her how to "reuse" these cards and now I have two brand new 128mb CF cards! Well more like one actually, since one of them is from the Kodak digital film series so that one is fucking speedy dope, the other is this piece of shit, retarded Eagle Tec CF card, it's great for storage but totally worthless in the camera, it takes about a minute for the card to save a picture! And that's with my mom's 2.1 M-pixel camera! I didn't even bother trying it with mine, I already have issues with how long it takes to write to the Maxell 96mb card I currently have. I guess once I get back to Boston I'll have to go and order one of those 16x Lexar cards.

Ok, so I guess I'm finally going to go watch "Sprited Away" tomorrow. Yes another cartoon by the master Hayao Miyazaki. (Yes I don't call it Manga or Anime or whatever, it's a Japanese cartoon, deal with it.) I've always loved his work, I remember my mom bringing me to watch "Laputa: The Castle in the Sky" when I was 7 and I walked out in awe. My mom then rented "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" for me, I think I watched that tape like 6 times before we had to return it. Then the film that marked the spot for me was "My Neighbor Totoro", I've lost count how many times I've watched that film. Just amazing. And then somewhere along the way, I kinda lost track of Miyazaki's work, since that was when I started moving around a lot and all that crazyness. So I have yet to watch "Kiki's Delivery Service", "Porco Rosso" and (go ahead kick me now) "Princess Mononoke". I think I'm going to go pick up that super dope DVD set I saw today of all of Miyazaki's work. Well Tomorrow I'm going to reclaim a little bit of my childhood and watch "Sprited Away", hey my dad and I are going! HAHAHAHA! My mom was so cracking up about that, since my dad walked out of "My Neighbor Totoro" when him and my mom took me and my sister to see it way back. In his words "It was too sweet touching for my taste." HAHAHA! My dad is awesome.

I had lunch with my dad today, it was really nice to sit down with him and just talk shit. Today was special because we actually didn't talk that much about the company and business, which is usually ALL we ever talk about. Instead we talked about life, decisions and lessons. It was rather deep and something I'd never expect to be talking about with my dad. But it was deffinately the most timely and most welcomed talk I've had with my dad, getting an assurance from him is one of the best thing to hear when you are all confused. My dad is the hardest person to please, him agreeing with my ideas as to what I want to do with myself means everything to me. I'm also glad that I convinced him to take a few days from work to come to my graduation in May, FINALLY! After all these years, my dad actually showing up for something related to my life! We are a family of workaholics, too often work comes before everything else, yeah... not the best of things but it's an accepted fact in this family. So that was a good lunch and he's totally cool about me not heading into work anymore for the rest of the break, since I really can't be that much of a help if I'm leaving on the 6th.

So since I was not going to work anymore, I left work early and went to check out some books. I ended up buying a new pair of pants as well... Yeah... well that's Hong Kong for ya, it's a heaven for shoppers! I also went and picked up the English manual for my Coolpix 5000, my camera is a Japanese import, it was cheaper but it also only came with Japanese documentations. Needless to say I was having problems figuring out how to best set up this camera, well I'm finally able to learn to shoot great stuff with this camera.

So after that I went to get dinner. Now this is where the evil part comes in. Of all the places I could have gone, of all the award winning restaraunts and eateries I could have gone to... I went to Mac Donalds. Don't ask why, I kinda just did... it was weird. Now if that wasn't bad enough, I went to the Starbucks next door to get a coffee after the meal! It was almost like my habbits kicking in. Wack! PLus neither of the two things felt or tasted quite right. The MackyD stuff in Hong Kong is either really dry or tasted really watered down compared to the stuff in the US. My mocha also tasted different, but what felt REALLY off was me paying HK$30 for a cup of Grande Mocha. HK$30?! It's like US$3.80, which is about 50 cents more than the price in the US. In that sense it's ok, but in perspective that fucking expensive! My lunch the day before was HK$25! That's noodles and a glass of iced tea! Damn, now I realize what kind of money I've been putting into my daily coffee fix! One interesting thing here is that they don't offer the Venti size in HK, they have Short, Tall and Grande... Yes we have the same stuff here as in the US, but it's just that little bit different. So I figured it out, I've been super tired and cranky for the past 5 days because I haven't had a cup of coffee since I got on the plane in Boston on friday morning. Problem solved.

It's so fucking hard to find peace and quiet here. I guess that is something I don't really miss. Everywhere I go I feel like I'm alone in the chaos that is Hong Kong, I'm home, yet I don't feel like I belong anymore. I'm just going along with the flow, work, eat, work, shop, eat, shop, sleep. As of now, I can't wait to head back to Boston...

I really don't know about working in this "Industry" anymore. I'm just getting so damn jaded from everything I do. I mean it's so damn sad to hear it, but I'm at work working my ass off, trying so damn hard to deliver a good design and all that. And then I sit in the car with my dad and he's talking about that maybe this company isn't worth continuing, that there is no money in this whole Web production thing and maybe I should look into something else as well. Blah.

This is the B&W G3 450 I work with at Edport/Affirmscore, yes puck mouse and all.

Me at playing with the camera at work... (yes I couldn't see anything for about 10 minutes after the picture, didn't realize the flash was on full blast.)

Graffiti old school style. This stuff is done by a 60/70 something years old man who calls himself the "King of Kowloon" He says he's fustrated with the world and writes his fustration on just about EVERYTHING in sight. I love his work, I wish more people will agree with me instead of calling him someone who defaces public property. At least the government does not try to white wash his stuff, since they think it's actually good art work. Most of his work is around where I work, I'll go out and get more pictures of them during lunch and after work.

This is a picture from around where I get most of my computer stuff in Wan Chai. Just kinda shows urban living at it's most condensed.

Just an interesting picture taken in a park right by Central (Hong Kong's financial district)

Waiting for a taxi at a taxi stand can be boring, esspecially when they all kinda just pass you already with passengers. (all the cab on Hong Kong island are red.)

OK more to come soon.

(BTW, the post times are totally off since the server is in Boston and is logging my post with EST rather than Hong Kong time. Just add 13 hours to the post time and you know what time of the day I actually posted, not that it really matters.)

Ealier in the day I went to the Playstation 2 EXPO, smaller than I've expected, but I did get to try out a few games, mainly MotoGP2 and Grand Turismo Concept. I can't believe I didn't bring my camera along... there were some really cool stuff there.

So after that I continued my hunt for a Lexar Compact Flash card, it really seems like NO ONE in Hong Kong sells them! Now they are the best, so isn't it Hong Kong's motto that everything has to be the best?! So where the hell are these cards!? My search laned me at a camera place I've never been before. After some talking and stuff, I picked up a new flash for my camera. Yeah man! I have a great set up going on now!

The flash I got is the Nikon SB-50DX AF Speedlight. I'm so happy to finally be able to get a Nikon Speedlight, I've always settle for some random brand flash which never quite work with my set up. It's super nice to get a Nikon product in it's full glory, the Nikon gold box. Not that I don't like their new packaging, but the old school Nikon gold box just looks cooler, more eligent.

Spend the day doing some shopping with my mom, but none of the much dredded typical shopping with mom shit. We were shopping for digital camera eqipment. It was funny to be walking through a computer mall with my mom and we both react with excitment to new and cool digital equipment. My mom totally dig the iBook, but I think she'll look into buying one in time. Our mission today was to look for a good photo quality printer for my mom. Well we ended up going home with the Epson Stylus Photo 895, didn't know what to get her for Xmas, so I paid for it and called it that, she was totally excited about the printer, this one has a PC card slot so that it can act as a stand alone photo printer, super dope set up.

Well we got home pretty quickly after we picked up another thing (more about that thing in a bit), I set it up and by 5pm we were printing out all the cool pictures she wanted to have printed, never saw my mom so excited about something invloving a computer or the word "digital", it was fun for my mom and I to make fun of my dad later during dinner about how "Mr, Internet firm CEO" is lacking quite a bit on the technology front. Oh, the fix to the "major account mess up" my dad said about our DSL connection? DSL modem power switch was on "off", he actually went ahead an opened a new account and all that to "fix" the problem...

So my mom getting totally into digital photography turned out to be a REALLY good thing, now she's learning computers, becoming a total gadget geek (we are talking what type of PDA she should be getting.), and she also now understand and feel my pain in the loss of my last digital camera. So right after we picked up the printer, we headed over to my (and now her's as well) fav. digital camera speciality store to look at camera accessories, she was looking for things to add to her Nikon Coolpix 775, and I was just drooling over the Nikon Coolpix 5000. At which time my mom asked me "Is that the camera you've been looking at getting to replace the one you broke?" And I just kinda said "Yeah well, I've been putting some money aside to kinda have enough and then maybe borrow the rest from dad to get it before I leave HK." Of course the "some cash" in what I said, ment about 10-15% of the price of the camera. Then my mom said the totally unthinkable, "Well lets get it now! I'll buy it for you for Xmas! But I get to play with it too!" Holy shit! My mom did not just offer to buy me a coolpix 5000! Well, I'm home now with a new digital camera. I'm super excited. Thank you mom!

So after a few hours of setting up printers and cameras. We all headed out for dinner. While in the car my dad and I got to talking about his company and the things we can do to make it more cost effective and all that. It was weird, I've tried so hard my whole life to stay as far away from my dad's line of work since I don't want to end up working for him, yet we both always kinda end up heading in the same direction. So we spend the rest of dinner talking about the company and it's direction, my dad was extremely excited about some of the ideas I have for the company and oddly I was excited about throwing ideas back and forth with my dad. Shit just connected, I wasn't a bumbeling fuck, I didn't just sound like a business person, I fucking felt like one. Well a few things I said hit a nerve, so my dad got on the phone and called an early morning meeting tomorrow. And right now, I'm finishing off some of the notes I'm to present during that meeting. Fuck man, I REALLY REALLY hate to say this, but this whole business/mamagement thing is fun. Have I really been denying my interest in running a business all this time because it's what my dad do? Is this whole design thing I'm doing just another one of my lame phases to rebel? I've been into the operation of a business since I can remember, I was brought up to be corporate, and tonight really showed me that I'm still very much into it, fuck! I have a suit and a power tie to prove it!

Maybe it's part seeing that many of my friends are leaving Boston and that it will be weird for me to return to find yet another place that feels so familiar but it just isn't anymore. I guess having moved around so much, I never really have a place I can truly call home. Yeah sure Hong Kong is home, but to be honest, I don't know if I feel like I belong there anymore. I don't really have any friends there and you can never know Hong Kong unless you live there, so in a sense I'm tourist of sort. It’s kinda sad that I have to rediscover my home every time I head back, shouldn’t I just know?

I did something kinda odd today, I called a few of my friends to say “Bye, I’m heading home. Talk to you soon.” Normal for most people, but I’ve never done that before. I never felt the need to call and stuff because the trip home used to be just that, leaving and then coming back. Since I was 10 I’ve learn to never take any thing for granted, friends I made came and went as both them and I moved to different schools, places and countries on a regular basis. I guess that’s why I never have any really close friends, cuz I just got sick of having people I care about walking out of my life all the time. From then on, I learn to not have anything that I can’t easily walk away from and start over, that includes people in my life. It’s a harsh way of life, but I guess it was better than getting hurt all the time. I guess that’s why I love being alone, you hurt no one and no one hurts you.

So then why it is so damn hard for me to leave this time? Why can’t I pack with out feeling really weird? Why can’t I walk away with the confidence that I had before? Why am I feeling like I’m leaving something really important behind? Have I forgotten what it means to just not give a shit about anything and move on? I feel like I’m leaving tomorrow with a lot of unfinished things, but work wise I know I’m done. So what the hell is it? What changed? What can’t I walk away from? I feel like crying, I don’t know what for but somehow it just feels right to. Maybe somewhere a long the way I let my guard down and started to care, maybe this is what giving a damn feels like…

Waited around for a bit, and then did some last minute programming fixes for my Programming class, so I can hand in a rather broken kynyc.com. and then wrote the paper I had to hand in for that class. So Joe came by picked up our work, headed out. And that marked the end of my semester.

All in all I think I did quite well. I did take an incomplete for video #2 of my directed study, I just got my footages from Turbo Mike today, I should be able to start on them once I get back from Hong Kong.

That is all for now. I am going to go get a beer.

But still I could have gone back to bed, which I’ve been known to do, but there is this thing call two papers due at 5pm or fail (got the email notice when I was talking to my mom). So here comes the ironic part. In order to write about things happening in the world, I have to cut myself off from the rest of the world to get it done.

The ironic twist of academic high achievement, you think you know a lot, but you never really do, a paper never really symbolize or represent your knowledge in the subject, it just shows how willing you are to put up with reading someone else’s mindless rambling and rewrite the same basic ideas in your own words with a few of your own ideas added for flavor. I don’t feel any smarter or any sense of achievement after writing a paper. To be perfectly honest, I’d much rather be teaching my mom Photoshop right now.

I want to thank everyone for their support.

Yes the playground graphic is very unlike my stuff, but then I have to try new things! More to come in late January!

Why? I have no idea. I honest to god have no idea what drives me to do the things I do anymore. Do I have a reason? Do I need a reason? Do I have something to prove? What do I have to prove? I have no idea.

I'm in this fucked up confused mess, because all of a sudden I lack a reason to be driven, but some how I just am and that fucking scares me, I just keep looking for things to keep me busy.

It's like the second there is no stress in my life I freak. It's worse than any drug, I just can't chill out, I just need to keep working. I started drowning myself in work as a way to run away from my problems, It worked like a charm, I forgot about everything and everyone and for a while I was happier. But I left behind all the people that I cared about and now the work became the problem and all of a sudden I realized I'm all alone and I have no where to run away to.

While there I hung out with a few people I haven't seen or hung out with for a while, it was deffinately nice to chill with Mike and Jen, I always seem to run into them EVERYWHERE I go! But never get to hang out with them, so tonight was a refreshing and welcomed change. It was great to see you two tonight!

Now Dave Roberts! I REALLY need to hang out with this kid more! He is really something! Funny as hell. Just a joy to hang out with! Dude you should totally keep the cowboy hat as a daily item.

The twins! I honestly haven't seen them around at all, it's great to be able to hang out with them, those crazy fuckers! Well here's the link to my directed study site digitalerrors.com if all goes as planned I'll be posting the final version of the video tomorrow.

Tom Tom Tom, totally great to see you before you leave for LA, even better that it was at a party, good luck there man!

Well I'm listening to some Bjork, playing with some design ideas I had while I was at the party, yes, call me a dork, but I love designing, so whatever! Now I know I drank quite a bit tonight... but I don't feel drunk at all... I have a feeling I'm going to pay for it bad tomorrow morning.

First, Hyperactiveman is a nickname I got from my friend Jorge when I was 13, I was living in Singapore then. The nicknamed is a spin off of the comic book character ‘Radioactiveman’ in the Simpsons.

The original version stayed the same until I started working on
version 2, a few days before new years day 2001 when I was home in Hong Kong, and updated on January 4th (Red) with the theme: love your neighbors. I have not been home since then. I really love that design (the current look is way off, since I have all these wrong images from HV3 linked in) HV2 chilled in it's really red condition till June 26th (which wasn't really meant to be that way...), won a DMS in it's terms as my online representation. This is the version where I feel Hyperactiveman.com truly started.

Then onto the shortest lived design yet Version 3 (yellow) with the theme: Blunt{objects} which was in service from June 26th to September 4th. This was a fun redesign, but I got sick of dealing with the javascript scroller, since I started posting really long posts. So a redesign was in need to fix the heavy weight in file size and compatibility issues.

So on September 4th came HV4\blue working with the theme of "I'm always hungry", there was nothing filling about it, I remember that being the title of a design book I came up on when I worked on Version 2, and thought that it kinda speaks my state of mind, where I'm always hungry from something, so the blue stayed up only for a very short time. October 23 I re-launch the site in white calling it HV4a\white after I took it down for a few days, I don't even remember why I took it down in the first place.

So HV4a has been the way it is for the while, with addition of the Greymatter journal software in November, I've pretty much stopped working on the site itself and focused on updating the journal.

Well I'm heading home again. So marking almost a year since HV2, almost a year of speaking my mind, post retractions, redesign, continuous whining and stupid pictures. Where to now? I really don’t know. I feel like I should do a “One year as we know it” Anniversary Edition when I’m home but it’s been a long long journey and deep down as much as I enjoy working on this site, I feel like maybe it’s time to move on. After all these years I don’t feel like I’m the Hyperactiveman any more, not that I ever was, but I definitely am not the same person as I was when given the nickname. I’ve tried so hard to hold onto my past and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere in my personal life. Well, maybe it’s time for the Hyperactiveman to retire and for Keith to start a new page.

Somehow my outlook just changed tonight, I was at the lab for a while, Joe helped me out with some of the problems I've had with my flash project and it seems that while calm and collected, I pretty much managed to figure out what I was doing wrong with a few pointers from the master Jodzine himself, I think I'll have something decent to hand in by Wednesday.

Also a few interesting things happened today, I realized while I may whine and bitch a lot about working at the lab and all that shit, when it comes down to it, I really do enjoy working there. I mean yeah there are the idiots that just plain piss me off, but then there are those who really knows or at least really work hard at learning the stuff. Those people I really enjoy helping out and teaching, since they actually care about their work and to those people I thank you for making my job that little bit easier, that little bit more enjoyable. Plus I've met and worked with some really cool people.

I hung out with James and the Saabworks boys tonight, which is always fun, good food, good beer never hurt anyone. It was really cool to hang out with them.

So what am I still up at 4am? Well James and I decided that the house is too much of a mess and we are cleaning. Yes at 4 am. the usual time we clean the house anyway. While cleaning we saw that we still have the cooler from our summer bbq#2 sitting next the to stove. Well we picked it up and decided to move it to the basement... it was heavy! We opened it and found beer and really nasty water still left inside! Apperently we totally forgot about them after the party! That was almost 4 months ago!!! So I guess the summer bbq madness continued well into the winter! OK back to cleaning, maybe I'll find something from the first party! Wish me luck!