Vincent Cheung

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Monday, May 01, 2006

Here and there

Conducted some questionable transactions thanks to Craig's List. First order of business was to meet up with some guy outside of a gas station car wash to unlock my cell phone. Took a whole like 1 minute and $10 to do it. He hooked up some contraption to my cellphone and it was magically unlocked. Now I can use it with any sim card. While I didn't really have to do this because I could just use Amy's old one, I wanted to do this anyways so I can use a sim card in my phone when I say, travel to the states some other time and then have a local number and not have to pay roaming charges. Or, next time I go to Hong Kong, I can just buy a sim card with prepaid minutes and use it in my phone.

This comes to my next transaction. Meeting some guy, "Elvis", who's cell phone is weird b/c when you call, you don't hear a ring, instead you hear a personal message and then rap music. I met him at Kinko's and $10 later, I had a brand new Cingular sim card. This will let me use the sim card with a prepaid plan with my newly unlocked cell phone. While, I don't really need this, it will be useful when Jill and my family visit (in two separate visits) or next time I travel to the states. Oh btw, it's ok for you to stay here Jill. You can either sleep with me in my double bed or bring a sleeping bag. Well, the couch may work as well.

After these, everything else was legit. I had lunch at Subway's, followed by Jamba Juice - I had orange berry blitz (like a fruit based slurpee) with a femme boost (yes, I got the female boost, but I wanted the calcium). The drink was good.

Also hit up Target, Fry's Electronics (geek heaven and I got a bluetooth headset for my laptop), and Albertson's (usually a pretty nice grocery store, but this one was pretty ghetto).

Then I rollerbladed around my place for an hour and a half. People don't really rollerblade around here. I've seen like a billion cyclists, but no bladers. The roads are also not very rollerblader friendly - sidewalks are narrow, are made from tiles or are bumpy, sometimes the sidewalks just disappear, sometimes the paths are dirt paths. The most telling thing that bladers aren't common is that people are freaked out by me rollerblading. It's like in Winnipeg. People jump out of your way when they see or hear you coming, unlike in Toronto where they don't flinch at all.

Went to a Big 5 Sporting Goods store to see if I could get a screw for my rollerblades and laces. The guy really had no idea what was going on, even though I had my rollerblades on and showed him. I saw some laces, but they didn't look very good. I think i'll have to go to a specialty rollerblading store.

Google apparently has a bike purchase discount program, hopefully it applies to rollerblades and if it does, I'll buy myself a new pair. Mine are still good and I like them, but they are 5 years old and they could be made out of lighter material.

I also randomly bladed around the Stanford campus. That place is freakin' HUGE. If it wasn't for the maps on the side of the road, I wouldn't have made it out of there. They even had some beach volleyball courts on campus. I managed to find the Hewlett and Packard Electrical Engineering buildings.

Oh, and one other thing, I found myself in the "Stanford Shopping Center". It was a strange thing. I rollerbladed "in" to see if there were any sports stores (for my rollerblades). I don't know if I was allowed to or not, but I don't consider it indoor because I never went through any doors, thus I should be allowed to rollerblade through the mall, but it seemed weird. It was like just individual stores next to each other in one area and the corridor between the stores on the sides had a roof like thing, but it was partially open air, so it was kinda indoor, kinda not. No one yelled at me, but I just kinda zipped through. There was an Apple store there :)

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