“I want to develop a reading habit.” my friend said when we were travelling back home, “Can you recommend me some books as a start?” I sent her a photo of my bookshelf and briefly described some of the books inside. Those consist of English and Chinese books. “Great,” she acknowledged, “but I don’t have time.” Regardless she spends over an hour taking public transport for work every day. This is a common excuse for many people who want to start a new project or develop a new habit. ...

11 years ago, I bought my first camera, Canon 60D. I brought my camera out in the first few months almost every day. Whenever possible, I picked my camera and shot anything I wanted. My first two photography projects were shooting graduation photos of mine and my friend. We had a great time playing with the camera. At that time, we didn’t know much about photography knowledge. DSLR had better specs than mobile phones, so we relied on it solely. ...

The lockdown finally comes to an end. Those previously restricted premises are now accessible to everyone. During the lockdown period, I learned to cook. Now I know how to make many different dishes and desserts, both Western and Eastern. I studied coffee with multiple brewing methods. Now I know how to make most of the coffee and espresso-based drinks offered by coffee shops and cafes. I learned self-haircut. Now I am happy with cutting my hair. I like to try different hairstyles and help my brother do haircuts too. ...

Making breakfast for my girlfriend has become my task every weekend. Over the quarter, I usually cook soba noodles or udon noodles with bonito soup. This is the best substitution for instant noodles. But it’s Christmas. it should be something different to surprise my girlfriend. This was my first attempt to make Egg Benedict. Egg Benedict is an American dish. Traditionally it was an English muffin topped with bacon, a pouched egg and hollandaise sauce. As I didn’t buy English muffins and bacon, I replaced them with bagels and smoked salmon. ...

The lockdown is coming to the final stage. Together with the economic downturn, many restaurants are gone. Many new restaurants are found. The city is now partially resumed. Even if you are willing to eat out, you will often find the meals become much more pricey. The meals are shrunk. In economics, it’s called shrinkflation. A few months ago, I went to a cafe for coffee beans. When I was queuing for checkout, I glanced at the meal order of a customer in front of me. 3 dishes of pasta with 3 drinks cost over $750. It didn’t make sense to me, given that some restaurants serve pasta with canned pasta sauce or, worse still, microwaved pasta. Why don’t I cook the same dish at home with a cost of perhaps 10 times less? ...

Last month, I wrote a blog post about taking professional exams. My goal was to pass 2 certifications, Professional Scrum Master (PSM) I and Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) I, at the end of the year. 18 days later, I completed the challenge. PSM and PSPO are the certificates offered by Scrum.org to validate the knowledge of the Scrum framework. The names are self-explanatory. PSM focuses on Scrum Masters who understand how to apply Scrum, and PSPO focuses on Product Owners who enable value creation and delivery. Both certifications consist of 3 levels. Level 1 covers the fundamental understanding. ...

Brewing coffee with Kompresso for 2 weeks, I enjoyed drinking this sweet espresso-like coffee. With a cheap Ikea milk frother, I sometimes made a caffè latte. However, the brewing process was over-complicated. I needed many tools to brew one cup of caffè latte. If I wanted to brew more, I had to clean all the tools and redo the same process, which is troublesome and time-consuming. An espresso machine was essential to simplify the brewing process. Therefore, I started searching for my ideal espresso machine. ...

Since I bought Kompresso in April, my major coffee drinks were made by Kompresso. With a cheap Ikea milk frother, I sometimes made a caffè latte. My office has been under an “A/B Team” policy since this year. When I was working from home, I used Kompresso. How about the week working at the office? Kompresso is small too, and it’s easy to make an espresso-like coffee. However, coffee residues are usually spread over the table during brewing. I hate making my working table dirty. Therefore, I decided not to drink Kompresso at the office. Instead, I brewed drip coffee. ...

Almost every coffeeholic wishes he could make of making a caffè Latte at home. However, it seems impossible to make it without the aid of an espresso machine. This was the question I faced a couple of days after I bought the Kompresso. Many products are claimed to froth the milk for Caffè Latte easily. The most famous one is Subminimal NanoFormer, which costs more than HKD 300. At that time, I was still unsure whether I would buy an espresso machine. If I bought one, the steam wand in the espresso machine would replace a milk frother. NanoFormer would then become a waste. ...

I had been drinking Nespresso for 9 years, but I hadn’t investigated what actually inside the capsule is. One day, I tore the capsule and weighed the content. The capsule consists of about 5 g of coffee. Nespresso suggests using one capsule to brew a shot of 40 mL espresso. The 1:8 ratio is inauthentic to espresso brewing. Increasing the dose to about 1:2 will cost us 4 capsules. This is much more expensive than buying speciality coffee beans. Nevertheless, Nespresso doesn’t mention the origin and roast date of the coffee beans. The capsules sold in markets in Hong Kong are usually stale. ...