William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 2006.

China Round 2

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

This is the first day I begin tackling some of those problems that have gone unfixed for such a long time.

The shower head was so clogged with green clorine crap. I am sure a good dosage soaking of CLR would have fixed it but it looked in so bad shape and I am sure it so cheap here to just toss it and buy it new. I unscrewed that off easy enough.

The second thing I needed to fix was the kitchen light.

Wow, that is a shoddy job if I have seen one. It is 40W circuline T5 bulb round flourscent tube bulb. After much testing, I have acessed that the ballast was not working. So I removed the light from the ceiling. It is at this time I found out that out of the three screws up there, only one had hit stud, the other two hit empty air. After taking if off, I saw this really thin wire. I was worried there was a transformer in the ceiling because I didn't see the usual 14/2. With some more testing, I confirmed that they cheated an didn't even use 14/2 wire, but some really thin 18 gauge stuff. I guess it is ok for 40W transformer since that is not even 0.2A at 240V.

The third thing I had to do today was I had to reinstall her Chinese to English software on her Chinese Windows XP. What a pain in the ass. I had a hard enough time turning off her PPPoE settings to configure her router to her modem. You trying to follow the control panels in Windows only by pictures. Anyway, I found out she was using Kingsoft's FastAIT 2002, which is a pretty cool program. It apparently does Japanese to English too. Hmm. worth looking for a copy of this thing. It can translate sections of text or can be used in a web browser to decode whole web pages.

Went to Carre Four again to buy the shower head (only 35 yuan, about $5.00 Cdn). Couldn't find any ballasts, which I was not a surprised. Oh well, it means I will have to go to the home improvement store like Obi. They ought to have that kinda stuff.

The Experimental Chinese Food Of The Day is:
Lay's Cool Lemon Flavour Chips

Ok before you flame me for picking on Lay's too much, they have some weird choices here which must be explored. Well, maybe.

Anyway, the potato part is the same as in Canada. The only real difference is it has this real powdery lemon taste to it. It reminds me of licking the lemonade crystals out of a package of Tang. Now, I don't know where they get the idea this is cool. It sure isn't cool tasting like a mint or Menthos. I am sure they are thinking it is cool tasting like lemonade... Ummm... NO. It tastes so chemical like and so fake.

Save your money and buy regular flavour chips, eat it while sipping on a Snapple Lemonade.