Lerk Thai

I met her for dinner after her lessons that day. We were at Marina Square, and as usual, dunno what to eat. So we walked around looking for food, passed by Lerk Thai, and the promotion posters caught our attention. It was a weekday, so Marina square was pretty quiet, and most of the restaurants are empty, Lerk Thai was also empty, but decided to eat at Lerk Thai since I've not tried it before, and I was hungry.

Her order: Crispy Soft Shell Crab with Glass Noodle in Hot Pot

Crispy Soft Shell Crab with Glass Noodle in Hot Pot - S$9.45

This is Lerk Thai's new specialty dish, which was having a 50% promotion. This is a pretty interesting dish, Lerk Thai is pretty good with the spices, the crab and the glass noodles have a really rich taste. By the way, glass noodle is 東粉 or Tung-Hoon, google it if you still dunno what it is.

My order: Massaman Curry

Massaman Curry - S$11.90

Awesome dish, it is voted the World's No. 1 Delicious Food by the CNN. Extremely spicy and fragrant, the gravy is thick, but not gluey. They have a pretty generous amount of chicken and potato, so it is pretty filling.

Choked on the spiciness once, which brings me to my next point: this restaurant charge for ice water. More specifically, they do not serve ice water, they sell you mineral water. Of course, I didn't start a "Joanne Peh incident" and quarrel with their management, but I refused to order any drinks. Call me stingy, but when the 10% service charge is in the bill, I expect the minimum of ice water to be served. There is really no right or wrong in this, but just imagine the kind of impression you will leave in your customers..

Overall, Lerk Thai's food have pretty rich flavor, in contrast to Thai Express, which has subtle but impressive taste. The ice water part is a pretty big turn off, and this reminds me, Thai Express serves free flow ice water.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc - Inaccuracy in touch screen input

I got an Xperia Arc recently. Camera is great, screen was great. The problem? Touches NEAR the edge of the screen are being received as inputs AT the edge of the screen.

This is what I mean:

Where the touch was supposed to be

What the Xperia Arc receives as input

This is a really retarded problem. I wont even call it a bug, since it is likely a hardware limitation. I was using HTC Desire, it didn't have such problem before. Even Samsung doesn't have this problem.

This causes a lot of problem in game-play and, depending on the user, a lot of problems in daily admin usage; since many apps seem to like placing small buttons near the edges of the screen.

I suspect it's a design flaw in the phone: It is likely that Sony Ericsson employed a digitizer same size as the screen, as such, touches near the edge are inaccurately received. For HTC, I think their digitizer is slightly bigger than the screen.

If you're using an Arc too, you can try playing "Cut the Rope", try touching the reset or menu button at the top right corner in the game, then you'll know what I mean.


I posted this problem online several times, there are always some idiot Arc users insisting that there is no such issue with their Arc. Well, maybe they're really lucky, but I've tested over 10 sets of the Arc, the problem is real.

Went to the Sony Ericsson service center at Wisma Atria, the pinoy women insisted that there is nothing wrong with the phone, and even tried to blame it on the custom launcher I'm using.

 There's even a (blur) video on Youtube which demonstrates this problem:

Since it's more like a hardware problem, I think the only solution for this is to change phone. Hmm, 2 more years till contract ends.

*Update 29/01/2012
I've been trying out several other phones by Sony Ericsson, turns out that all touchscreens of SE phones are designed this way.

Models which I have tried includes:
Xperia Arc S
Xperia Neo V
Live with Walkman
Xperia Ray
Xperia Play

*Update 16/01/2013
I really like Sony phones because of walkman and its camera, frankly after using Sony for a while, these two are the only good thing they have. Their software and customization - in my opinion - can be said to be far from impressive. So with just a thin hope that they would rectify the edge touch issues,  I've been testing Sony's new models to check for it. They have sort of worked around the issue, the "dead zone" near the edge is reduced in the newer models, but it is still there, and I'm sure using it would irritate sooner or later.

The models I've tried are:
Xperia V
Xperia Ion
Xperia Arco S

The Xperia Z which is just announced recently at CES 2013 looks stunningly beautiful, I pray hard that the edge touch issue will finally be resolved in this model, and that the software doesn't suck as much. However, after trying out the many generations of Sony's phone, I have a hunch that I would be disappointed yet again.


*Update 11/02/2013
I made a diagram to illustrate what I mean on the inaccuracy in touch screen inputs near the edge.

As shown in the diagram, there is a "dead-zone" NEAR the edge where all touches are registered as input ON the edge. There is a small area near the dead-zone where touches calibrated to 'spread' the inputs. In newer 2012 xperia models, the dead zone is slightly smaller, but it is still significantly noticeable when you use the phone for daily usage. I really have no idea why would anyone design the touch screen to receive input this way, especially when other manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC and even BlackBerry have touch screens which receives input properly.

Squirrel!

I was in school and while walking through the car park, I was startled by a squirrel. For the record, I'm not scared of squirrels, it was behind a car, and it was moving fast.

Cute huh. They're actually everywhere hiding up in the trees. Might be plotting to take over the world with cuteness. I'm pretty sure cats are planning to take over the world as well.

What good does a government made up of cats do?

Nothing, but at least they're cute.

Shit falling from the sky

School has been extremely exciting. I dunno if you've played this game where there are shit falling from the sky and you control this matchstick man guiding him to avoid the shit. This game pretty much describes how my life is like right now, and I'm hit by shit all over. This semester is way tougher than I thought, my inability to meet deadlines is increasingly apparent. My severe lack of sleep is affecting my cognitive abilities, if I had any to start with.

There is simply too much work lying around to be done and too little time and concentration to complete them. I have started the semester in the worst possible way: by playing games. Even though I’ve quit that game, the time lost has already proven to be too much.

Project is a major pain in the ass, hiccups everywhere. A (I think) supposedly brilliant-and-practical idea is now retarded-and-wtf-is-this-shit. This point out another major flaw in my character: the inability to notice details. There were so many hints around which I neglected. The only option left now is the usually patch work; keep trying to patch problems here and there when we find them.

Because of my 6th module, I'm having the 好人 vs 坏人 identity crisis again. This points to another flaw in me: I really should stop talking the way I do. Very often, what I say is different from what I believe. The statements I make are cold, negative, and asshole. But sometimes, I secretly hope that what I say is not true. I deny myself. Before I know it, I begin to spread negativity like an aura. I learnt to doubt, instead of trust. Lacking the basic trust for people and even myself. I don’t even know which one is the true me: what I say? Or what I think I believe?

好人? 坏人? Which one am I?

Oh damn, this end up as an emo post again. Here's a totally random and unrelated picture of my desk with my new monitor to make this post look a bit more interesting.

Acer S221HL 21.5" LED Monitor - S$179 from Comex 2011