Skype on Cell Phone

Skype released a beta version to run Skype on regular cell phones. The website contains very extensive information, including what phones are supported, estimate cost, etc. What concerned me the most of the cost, of course. On the cost section, it says: "There’s a data charge from your operator. A person with 20 contacts, who’s online for 1 hour, IMs for 10 minutes and has a 20 minute call each day will use about 1MB of data per month. The more data you use, the higher your charges may be." I checked my date rate of my calling plan, it is 0.02NTD per 128 bytes, so if I use 1M on my cell phone, then the monthly cost just to use the data alone will be:

1024x1024/128*.02=163.84 NTD

Since the assumption is that I only use it an hour every day, and 30 days per month, so if I want to use it 24 hours per day 30 days per month, then the monthly payment will be

163.84x30=3932.16 NTD, which is around 1300 USD

3932.16 NTD is just the data rate. I also need to pay for the actual cell phone rate. The rate I got is 0.18 NTD per second, so if I call 20 minutes per day, 30 days per month, then the total cell phone rate will be

0.18x60x20x30=6080, which is around 200 USD

I am not a heavy cell phone user, and am getting pretty much the most expensive rate because I am using prepaid card (don't worry, company pays for it), so the cost to stay connected is huge. One may do better to use 3G plan in this situation, with all-you-can-use package, which runs at around 900 NTD, I think, then this whole thing will become more affordable. Of course it is always important to a cheaper calling plan. Mine is just absolutely outrageous.

Movie List

Scheduling a business trip to Israel for engineering training. Now have penciled in 2 weeks, from September 1st to September 12th. Flight will have a layover at Bangkok (omg), but don't think I'll want to stop to have a one-day tour there.

So that does not leave me a lot of time to watch all the movies I am interested in. Schedule is then necessary to analyze the risk, and plan has to be there to mitigate the risks (os: hello? business talk?)

August 16: Dark Knight. I am so determined to watch this movie at IMAX theater (10% of the determination is spent on my work, and I'll so successful), which is only 20 minutes away from where I live and I have never visited, so need to reserve the tickets this evening to make sure I don't have to stand in line anxiously before the show time.

August 23: Drifting Flowers (Chinese website): This is a Taiwanese lesbian movie. Same director as Spider Lilies. From the introduction, the story is divided into 3 sections, and all 3 sections intertwine together. Sounds interesting. The main language used in this movie will be Taiwanese (our dialect), which makes it more appealing to me. It will be released for this coming weekend, so I'll need to go watch this movie as soon as possible. I don't think it will survive in the movie theater for too long.

August 30: Mama Mia. Who does not want to be a dancing queen? Well, true, but let's focus more on Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. Meryl, loving you~ no questions asked. Pierce, I am sure he is the father. He is so cute and should spread the gene.

That does not leave me any time for Made of Honor. I may need to pass cute Patrick Dempsey and move on, or, try to squeeze him in my tight schedule. Hmmmmm. it feels good to say that.

Blue Screen of Death

My laptop crashed on me twice, but I was unable to catch the screenshot in time. Now I am more experience with it, so when I clicked on an icon this morning, and the computer came to a halt, hard disk driving spinning, I knew here it comes again. Voila! Blue screen of death! It only showed for about 10 seconds. Why am I so happy to capture it? It is supposed to be sad.

Mummy 3

It is a fun movie. Don't take things serious, and just enjoy it. There are so funny things in this movie, like how easy it is to find the emperor's tomb, chasing scene in Shanghai, how easy it is for the main actor to defeat emperor when the emperor is supposed to have super power. Anyway, the overall impression is that it is trying to copy too much from Indiana Jones. Even how the Chinese general dies in the wheels reminds me of a scene in the second episode of Indiana Jones (or the first one?). However what bugs me more is the 3-headed dragon. Chinese dragon is supposed to fly without wings, and deals with mostly water elements, not flame. Seeing the dragon flying in the sky made me wonder if there is a Harry Potter chasing behind it with a flying bloom, which makes more sense to me.

But don't take me wrong. I had a good time watching it.

Uncheck Blog in Profile

I don't recall this function was there before. Anyway today when I logged in to change my Goggle profile, I was surprised to see this option if I wanted to have my blog list shown on my profile or not. Not that this is such an issue, since most blogs are open on the internet anyway, however, just good to know that I have the choice to have this information revealed or not.

He Lives in You

Found this on Youtube, one of my best friends.

Samuel E. Wright plays Mufasa in this video. He also sings Sebastian in the Little Mermaid. Cool.

Auguest 10, 2008: I compared CD and this video. Have to say that there are so many layers of music intertwined in this video that make it so much better than the CD. This is great video to keep.

Lion King

I had waited for this musical to be on the stage for a long time, well, ever since they released it would come to Taipei! Long wait. Got tickets early, well, as soon as the tickets were made available, and then another long wait for 3 months. Though there were some glitches in inviting a friend, I was there, the first show last Saturday!

Although the story is nothing new, there is a strong contrast between dark side and bright side, this is still a very good journey, to see how simple elements can be converted to such powerful stage performance. Singing was excellent. I especially liked Mufasa (who doesn't) when he sang "He lives in me". He sang well, and the music, and background singing just made it perfect. I bought CD afterwards (music download from Amazon of course), and still love this song.

My second love is at the second half of the play, again the main song is "He lives in me", however, Mufasa died earlier, this time, The monkey sang the song. Something that looks like wind swirled at the background, then Mufasa's head popped on the stage. Again, simple stage, wonderful singing, strong compelling emotion, this is such a treat from the stage. I am not able to retrieve the same emotion from the CD.

Third love is when Simba was tricked and was trapped among raging animals. Again, simple stage, but the effect is stunning.

Last, but not the least, I always enjoy the moment at the end of the show, when the performers came up to the stage. Nice moment to see them as persons, not characters, and applaud to tell them how much I enjoy the show.