I wanted to get a new diamond ring but given that my mum’s cancer relapsed, it is just….not the right time to do so.

I am playing with my camera and tried to cheer myself by taking the picture of my pink diamond ring. Well, the pictures are not great but they are the best I have taken of the ring because it is just so difficult to take a picture because it is so sparkly in real life. I could take white diamond pictures but never manage to get a decent shot of this pink diamond ring. Nope….I could not even remember the specifics of this diamond. I got it from my friend who had this diamond for a long, long time (I think it is 20 years laid forgotten in a safe). She sold me this diamond….I think, for a couple of hundred dollars. The four diamonds round the pink diamond are warm coloured diamonds I bought during a discount at one of the jewelry shops. The 2 brown diamonds are from…..cringe…ebay. The 2 green stones are demantoid. I called it my pink ribbon ring because the 4 diamonds surrounding the pink diamond makes it look as though it is a ribbon. There is no GIA certificate but I did show it to a gemologist and a couple of jewelry shops and they agreed that the pink diamond is ‘real’ and not irradiated and it is practically worthless because it has a lot of inclusions. Yeah….I know, it has inclusions and I could see them without using a lope but there are no black spots and in a strange way, those inclusions make the diamond even more sparkly. And this is probably the only pink diamond ring I could afford. And yes….I am very proud of this ring as I designed itself and I love the pale wash of colours. Most people…..complimented this ring as a very sparkly, unique….crystal ring. I am still waiting for the day for anyone to identify the ring as a diamond ring. My mum too love this ring and we ’share’ this ring between us.

Mum has a new chemo regime using Gemzar/Navelbine. I am afraid that in terms of side-effects, it is much worse than the first regime using Taxol/Carboplatin. During the chemo session, mum felt a burning sensation when navelbine is injected. The Gemzar drip has to be lengthened from 30 minutes to 1 hour as my mum finds it painful. Mum has serious joint pain which occurred on the second day after the first chemo cycle. Instead of getting better, it is getting worse each day. The only good news is that now with the ‘hernia cancer’ lump taken out, her CA-125 has dropped substantially. I have made it a point to pray at the Goddess of Mercy temple next to the hospital before each medical appointment. I certainly hope that this chemo regime would knock out all the cancer cells.

I wished there is a happy ending to my mum’s ovarian cancer. But it looked as though it may not be so. After a blissful 9 months of remission, her cancer may have returned. When the news of the possibility of recurrence was made known to my mother, she broke down in the oncologist’s office. Her CA-125 has been creeping up gradually from 12 to 18 to 28. The pathological results would be made known to us in a few hours time. It would give us the final ‘verdict’ whether my mum’s cancer had recurred.

Vera and I attended The Doll Affair 2008 held at the Suntec City. I had fallen in love with ball joint dolls ever since I came across them while surfing the internet. But they are really expensive!  I could buy several Blythe dolls if I am willing to fork out money to get one. Unfortunately, it is not really sold in Singapore and the thought that I have to order through the internet is quite complicated and I am not really sure whether I want to pay a large sum of money without even seeing the doll. I laid my eyes on a Volks SD doll at one of the shops but I am not really impressed by it.

The Doll Affair is certainly an eye-opener. For one thing, there are several girls and a number of guys who dressed themselves cosplay style (I always call them Gothic-Alice-in-Wonderland style). Not everyone looked nice in cosplay so I really applaud the courage of the girls/guys who dressed up.And several of them brought their ball joint dolls with them and it can be quite eerie when the owners started to introduce their dolls to one another like a proud mama or papa!

Vera and I have taken several photographs of the dolls at the event. The dolls do not belong to me (I wish) and belonged to their owners who has kindly allow the visitors to take the photos.

A Very Merry Christmas to All! Photos courtesy of my friend Vera.

I really got tired of my Hanlin V3 boring looks. And I decided to get a new ’skin’ for my Hanlin V3. I have to admit that the skin I have chosen is not that nice (it is a long story how I ended up with this particular skin). I am really tempted to add crystals at the back of the Hanlin V3 but I am too lazy and asking someone to paste the crystals is just too expensive. This would do till I get tired of the design and manage to design a skin I really want.

After deliberating for a long time, I got myself an e-book reader. It was between the Sony PRS-505 and Hanlin v3. Although I have not seen the Sony Sony PRS-505 before in real live, I have been drooling over the pictures of them. The only thing that is holding me is that it does not support Chinese (although there are hacks which could enable the Sony PRS-505  to view Chinese characters) and the fact that the battery is not removable and almost everything else is ‘proprietary’ to Sony. Since I managed to find a seller willing to sell me the device in Singapore (with warranty), I dug out all my remaining Ringgit from my last Malayia trip and buy a Hanlin V3. The transaction took place beneath a HDB flat somewhere in Marsiling. I felt as if I was doing something really illicit when I passed the money over to the seller in a white envelope. I was half-expecting some police officer to stopped us and asked us what we were doing.

The Box

I am really wowed by the Hanlin V3. The first time I saw it, I was taken aback by the size of the device although I knew the dimensions of the device. The ‘chassis’ is made of black plastic material – you know the sort of black plastic they use for those big calculators. Certainly in the looks department, it lost out to Sony with its graceful metal finish (which comes in different colours). But it also has its charm in a sort of retro way. And the black-calculator-finish is low maintenance – unless you use a pen-knife to carve your name on it, you are unlikely to scratch the chassis. Metal finish looks really high-tech and polished…but it tarnishes too….I learn it the hard way with my handphone. Ok, ok….I admit it, I am jealous how delicious Sony e-book reader looks. 

The size of the e-book reader is : 7.2″ x 4.7″ x 0.4″. Although I know the size from the specifications, I still get a shock when I saw the actual device. But after using it for a number of days, I know that I could never go back to my PDA days. It is just the right size to make reading comfortable. I know there are people who clamour for a 9 inch/A4 size screen but I think it would be far too big if you want to read for long because it is quite uncomfortable to hold a device which is the size of a A4 paper.

3 machines side-by-side. iPod Touch, Palm LifeDrive, Hanlin V3.

Hanlin v3 comes with a lot of freebies – including a leather case with magnetic clasp, AC power adaptor, ear buds, wrist leash, user manual, 1 GB Kingston SD card, SD card reader and a screw driver (in case you want to replace the battery).

I love the fact that reader could run on a Nokia battery which is cheap and easily available. Although technically, I would not need a spare battery since once charge is enough to last for a long time, it is good that if the battery dies/conk out, I can replace it easily.

I hate the leather casing (it comes free so I should not complain…..). The magnetic clasp looks weird because it goes ‘down’ instead of ‘up’. And having a magnetic clasp is really not a good idea because the magnet would lose its ‘strength’ to ‘stick’ after some time. I got a customized leather case for my Hanlin v3 – really good leather that would age looks even nicer when it starts to age.

Eat your heart out, all you Sony e-book reader owners. I actually wanted it in red leather but the artisan persuaded me to stick to ‘normal’ brown leather as the red leather would darken over time. I love roses so he carved roses on the cover and since I have bugged him about having a screaming red leather cover, he dyed one of the roses red. It is soooo nice….just like an antique diary. I may not have the nicest/coolest looking e-book reader but I have the nicest leather casing (stick my tongue out).

Hanlin v3 is really easy to use. To move your documents to the devicce, just plug the USB in and you can drop your documents to the device with no special software needed. Yes, although I am using Vista, I have no problem accessing the device as a removable drive and I could create folders and drag my documents to the device. I am so happy that Hanlin V3 supports native word document (but you must enlarge the font first). The document looks the best if you use the wol format but unfortunately, Vista does not support the wol format so I could not convert my documents to wol. But if the files are saved as text files, it still looks good on the screen. I downloaded one powerpoint slide to test – I can view the text but not the ‘background’ of the text which is good enough for me. You could also view the photos – if you don’t mind black-and-white photos.

Now the biggie…..how well the device reads Chinese characters. I downloaded a Chinese word document – the original word document is around 2 MB. It is in Chinese Simplified using SimSun font 10. The word document has 709 pages and 700,000 Chinese characters. I have been using my PDA for years to read e-book and word documents. For word documents, no PDA could read a word document which has more than 150 pages in the original word document. To my pleasant surprise, the device could read the entire document if I saved the file as RTF, txt. In its native form (word document), the font of the document on the device is too small and when I try to zoom it, it hangs. I could live with saving the files in txt files if it means that I do not need to ‘cut’ the document into several parts. Next, I copied another document which has both Traditional and Simplified Chinese in different Chinese fonts, Chinese characters unique to Catonese and Taiwanese and Japanese words. Hanlin v3 displays them beautifully. I am impressed!

 I could not test the battery life…since it is supposed to last for 1 month or so, I could only finish testing at the end of the month.

 The first time I ‘flip’ a page, I got a bad shock when I saw the ‘black’ screen. In fact, I called the seller up at midnight as I thought the device was spoilt. After looking at some Youtube videos of all the e-book readers, I know that this is ‘normal’. I have to say that the flip did bother me at first but now I am used to it.

I used a variety of SD cards. Yes, yes, yes! It supports SDHC cards. It could read 4GB and 8 GB SD cards – which means that I could save more documents with one SD card. This is really important to me as I have a collection of e-books and documents which is growing everyday. I don’t fancy carring several 1 or 2 GB SD cards around with me.

So did I make a right choice choosing Hanlin v3 over Sony PRS-505? I would say a tentative yes. It may look like a ugly duckling beside Sony PRS-505 but it has its strength. The fact that it has a removable battery and that the USB adaptor is not proprietary means that I could get a replacement if the need arises. It does not need any software and could read native word document and powerpoint (only the words) means that I could easily back up the office documents and read them easily. And of course, the fact that is supports multiple language means that I do not need to worry about hacking the device. Although I have not tested yet, Hanlin v3 supports a lot more formats than PRS-505. The onboard memory is also twice of that of a Sony PRS-505. However, the price is steep…at RM$1399 (which to be fair, comes with warranty and loads of freebies) compared to a Sony PRS-505 which you could buy for US$200 at eBay (excluding postage). However, if you chiefly reads English e-books and is confident of hacking to read the occasional Chinese e-book, Sony PRS-505 may be a good choice if you can get it at a reasonable price inclusive of postage (just remember, always check on the postage – sending things from US is expensive!).

You could contact Mr Hong from Malaysia if you are interested in getting Hanlin V3 – he is really nice and is very patient even though I called him at unearthly hours. He has answered my queries promptly and the after-sales service is excellent. Hanlin V3 cost RM$1399.

 E-mail - hpkeong@streamyx.com

I know it is late but I don’t have the time to upload the pictures for Halloween. Pictures courtesy of my friend Vera.

Photo taken by my friend Vera. She took a picture of her dolly with my 2 dollies.

Don’t you love the picture of the Hat Garden? The picture was taken by a very special lady I knew in Medhelp. When I saw this hadnmade bag, I knew I have to get it for her. Actually…..to tell the truth, I am not sure the final look of the bag that eventually arrived at her doorstep. I knew the lady has started her chemo using doxil - one of the side-effects of doxil is hand-foot syndrome. I don’t want the plastic handles to hurt her so I got the lady who made this remove remove it and replace them with cloth handles. I just hope the end result look nice!