巨星隕落

我想大家都知我指的是Steve Jobs，他去世後，連日來一大堆人吹捧他為天才甚至偉人，略嫌誇張。不過以他的星級魅力，稱他為巨星，絕對實至名歸。雖然我不欣賞他公司旗下大部份產品，但一部Apple][就已贏得我對他一份尊敬。今早踩單車我特地繞道到他家憑弔，街邊已放了防止泊車及禁止汽車駛入橫街的圍欄，相信周末場面會更墟冚。以前我們為蘋果日報寫矽谷手記專欄的日子，必定會寫這單大新聞。想不到今天竟然倒過來被蘋果日報記者採訪！

My Rodeway Inn Story

Most of you knew that I've recently participated in the Levi Leipheimer's King Ridge Gran Fondo, a biking event in Santa Rosa. Thank you all for your support and advices. What I'd like to share in this post though, is a little story about the motel I stayed at before the ride (Santa Rosa is 3 hours from where I live so I decided to stay at a motel nearby the night before instead of getting up at 3am in the morning to drive there from home :P) The budget (i.e., cheap) motel chain has very special meaning to me even though I've never stay in any Rodeway Inn before last weekend. The story went way back to 1990, the year I came to University of Texas for undergrad. My family has decided to allow/sponsor me to study in US a little bit less than a year before. When I got admitted to UT and decided to study there, it was only 2-3 months before the school started (Aug 1990) Almost no one in my family and circle of friends knew much about studying in US and we pretty much prepared the whole thing on our own, based on the info/suggestion from the foreign student office of UT. Regarding housing, I found out I had way passed the deadline to apply for domitory so that was out of the equation. Foreign student office recommended me to contact the Hong Kong Student association (HKSA) immediately for help with temporary accomodation (e.g., staying at one of fellow student's place) There was also a list of motels in case I couldn't get any help. That was the days before internet was popular. I had to write a letter and mailed to the address of the chairman of HKSA. I got no reply before I boarded my flight so I was prepared for Plan B (take a cab when I touchdown to the first motel on the list, Rodeway Inn Austin)

View Larger Map In fact, I've practiced what to say to the cab driver and the motel reception in my head many times on and before the flight!

So, how come I said earlier I've never stayed at Rodeway Inn? Well, it's all because of the curiosity of one gal named Angel (Hello if you read this) It turned out the chairman was out of town and never get to read the letter. His apartment was subletted out to another dude. Angel was his girlfriend and saw the letter lying around his apt, a few hours before I arrived. For some reason (sixth sense?), she thought it might be a good idea to open and read the letter in case it has any importance (maybe because it's addressed to HKSA) They decided to help but they didn't have a car so they called another dude (nicknamed 周昌) and 周昌 arrived literally seconds before I got off the plane and heading to the taxi stand! So instead of taking cab and staying at Rodeway, I was picked up by fellow HK student and stayed at their place. Not only did I save some money, but also I got a ton of advices from them. They were so kind to even take me around to look for long-term apartment. I'm still thankful to their help after all these years.