Peng Chau is one of HK islands and besides living here for about 8.5 years, I never made it there. I even did not make it there when I used to live in Discovery Bay, which was literally a stone’s throw away.

Feeling starved of outdoors, I woke up early today and made it to Peng Chau. Weather wasn’t that good due to haze all over and low visibility but at least it was sunny. The trip was nice which included a quick hike to island’s Finger Hill.

Couldn’t do the usual island-style seafood lunch there as I didn’t like any restaurant with proper sea view.

Pictures of the trip are posted at my photo gallery. Enjoy.

This is my 2nd Chinese New Year in last 8 years since I moved to Hong Kong that I actually didn’t get out of this great city, so I managed to get around and take some pictures today. There was a special fireworks show organized by Hong Kong government at the harbor to celebrate this event which I watched from Convention Center in Wanchai.

It was quite an experience (it has to be, it is most expensive fireworks show in the world!). The pictures of the show are posted at my photo gallery. Direct link to pictures is here.

OK, first they overrode my mobile device’s browser identity with that of their proxy server’s (their proxy server runs on Windows XP!) and I had a tough time explaining to their IT support staff over phone and in person what was breaking all mobile web sites like Gmail, Yahoo! Mobile and MSN Mobile. They never understood me, they did not want to, and never fixed it. I had to use various tweaks and tricks to get around.

This time they, the great minds at Smartone-Vodafone (HK), are even more creative. They have come up with the idea today that why not insert their ads on top and bottom of each page users visit via their paid GPRS/3G data services!

I was shocked today when I went to inbox of my Google-hosted personal email (see screenshots) on my mobile device’s browser and there was a huge ad on top of each page, taking about 20% of space with top banner only. I first thought my Windows mobile device might have been infected with ad-ware but soon realized that it was another act of same great minds when I was redirected to their Smartone IN! Bookmarks page on clicking the ad.

What the x#@*! Can you imagine that you are paying an ISP for internet and the ISP inserts its ads on all the pages you visit? Unimaginable, scary, unacceptable.

I called their customer service hotline to complain and I was told: “we have improved our system and that is why you see those ads for better browsing experience”. I was literally “NO!, you have destroyed the whole experience, not improved it!”. I was further told that changes are system wide and they can’t disable ads for a particular account…

For now, the only choice I have is to switch to another operator. I didn’t want to, but these great minds have forced me to.

Update (December 12th, 2007)

Dear Irfan

Thank you for your valuable comment.

Your feedback was greatly appreciated, we have immediately reflected to
our related department for review and further improvement. Moreover, we
will update you at once if there is any change. Please be assured that
SmarTone-Vodafone aims to provide quality service for our customers. We
apologize for any inconveniences caused to you.

Should there be any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at our
24-hour data services hotline 2880 2622 or send email to us again. We
would be delighted to offer our sincere help.

Best Regards
Customers Division

Got this response from Smartone-Vodafone after I visited their shop, talked to their customer service on phone and emailed them. I even forwarded the complaint to some of their managers whose emails I could dig from Google.

Whatever action they take to remedy this, I hope they take into consideration real needs of their customers and usability of web pages on small screens. Not a decision which is inspired by profits or need of promoting a particular service (bookmarks in this case).

For now, I am going wait till end of year to see. At the very least I am expecting them to provide an option to customers if they want to see these useful banners or not.

Update (December 15, 2007)

Dear Irfan

Thank you for your enquiry.

The toolbar is provided to customer for better browsing experience with quick access of RSS or Podcast feed, bookmarking interesting web page and share with others easily. This toolbar will only appear on the top and bottom of the web page you visited, it doesn’t occupy any of your handset screen at all, once you scroll up or down, the web page shown on your handset screen will be the same as the original.

We regret that option for disabling the toolbar is not available at the moment, but we will keep on collecting customers’ feedback on our service for review and service development in the future.

Smartone-Vodafone sent me above reply in response to my query that if and when they can disable the banners for my account. As you can see, there is no chance for that to happen. In fact, they think that those banners do not occupy any space on my tiny little screen!

Hopelessly, I have switched to another telecom company. I prefer to pay my hard-earned $$$ to someone who understands their customers and works to improve user experience. From Dec 18th, I won’t have to see these ugly red banners. Nor any mobile websites will break due to wrong identity of my mobile browser being sent by Smartone-Vodafone proxy server.

I will be in the loop to see how long will it take Smartone-Vodafone to backtrack from this bad decision. I believe they will, but I want to know at what cost.

Once in a while everyone takes a picture which they love so much. Add to it the problem that

Hong Kong (where I live) has rare few days in a year when sky is so clear. Hence this picture which I took from my balcony has become one of my favorite. It sits beautifully as my desktop wallpaper on all PCs I use.

Oh, and before I forget to mention, I have just installed Polaroid Picture plug-in for Windows Live Write for composing posts, and Thumbnail Viewer plug-in on my WordPress blog which makes it easy to share this picture with you. Just click on the picture!