Reviving my wet handphone

It was a working day as usual, and I was driving to the office early in the morning at 7.30am. After finding a nice parking place, I turned over to the passenger seat to carry my bag, only to see a BIG puddle of water on the seat! *gasp* Then I realized that my bottle of 1-litre water was almost empty! The careless me must have forgotten to tighten the cap of the bottle the night before, and since the bottle was placed in my bag, it was major flood case. :(((

The seat was drenching wet, and there was a puddle of water in my bag. A PUDDLE. And all my stuffs inside were wet thoroughly, with my handphone being the most vulnerable of all. I was terrified and used whatever I could find to dry my handphone first (meaning tissues). After somewhat drying the phone, I tried to switch it on to find out whether it worked or not. Bad mistake. Being someone with electronics background, I should have known that electronic parts that are wet would get shorted when powered on. Anyway, the phone did start up and stayed on for merely 10 seconds, after which it shut down automatically. Then only it hit me that something inside must have shorted and drawn lots of power until the battery was drained.

The next thing I did was to drain all the water from my bag first, lest more things got unnecessarily wet. :( Before I left my car, I also wound down my window slightly so that the water would have an outlet to evaporize throughout the day, under the hot sun. After that, I gloomily walked to the office, hoping and praying that my dear Sony Ericsson phone would not fail on me.

Once I went back to the office, I searched for help online, be it in the form of internet surfing or through IM with close friends. One good friend of mine who works in the telecommunications line told me to disassemble the phone and use a hair dryer to blow dry it, then let it cool in the dry air-conditioned air before assembling it. That sounded pretty straightforward, only that I didn't know how to disassemble the phone! Another friend suggested putting the phone inside a bucket of rice because rice is apparently a very good dessicant. Being the impatient person that I was, I couldn't possibly do NOTHING for the whole working day until only after work when I could place the phone inside rice.

So, I decided to pursue with my first friend's suggestion, which was disassembling the phone! With the help of Bamboo and some online tutorials, I managed to disassemble the phone successfully! It is really not that hard, but you need the correct tools and the correct amount of energy to avoid spoiling the casing. So, here I present to you, the guide to disassembling the Sony Ericsson K530i handphone.

Tools required:

• Small flat screwdriver (2-3mm wide)
• Torx screwdriver
  

Sony Ericsson K530i

Back of phone

1. First of all, remove the outer casing from the back of my phone, followed by the battery and SIM card.

Remove cover, battery and SIM card

3. Next, remove the M2 (memory card) from its slot at the side.

M2 card

4. Using the small flat screwdriver, try to dislodge the clips at both sides of the speaker cover. Be careful to just pry at the sides of the cover and not the centre, for fear of breaking the case. Try to look for opening to insert the screwdriver and slowly but firmly angle it such that the clips are dislodged.

Dislodge the red speaker cover

5. Using the same method as above, dislodge the last piece of back cover using the screwdriver. Again, make sure you pry only at the sides.

Dislodge the small black cover at the back

6. Then, use the Torx screwdriver and unscrew all four screws that you could see at four corners of the phone. This would be an easy task.

Unscrewing the Torx screws

7. Now the last part of the disassembly is to separate the front casing with the rest of the phone. This will need patience and energy to do it, because I took many tries but only managed to dislodge one side of it. Perhaps I was just too fearful of breaking the case into pieces. :P Luckily Bamboo helped to save the day. :)

Separate the front cover from the rest of the phone

Tadaa! Phone successfully disassembled!

Front cover

Naked phone

Even though my steps are specific to the Sony Ericsson's K530i model, I'm pretty sure it would be applicable to most phones (except Iphones, flip phones, phones which are not one piece, etc).

As for my little mishap, I left my phone 'naked' for the rest of the day in the office, until I went back home in the evening. Then, I used the hair dryer and blew dry it. Afterwards, it was assembling the unit back into the original piece! In my opinion, assembling is much easier than disassembling, because not much brutal force is required, and there is less risk of breaking or scratching surfaces. :/

Now, the most exciting part is, did the phone still work after the flood it went through? Let us see... Powering it on now and after a few seconds...

My phone is alive! :)

2 messages received! Woohoo! My phone was revived! *relieved* Thank god there was nothing wrong with it. Now you know what you should do in case you meet with the same emergency situation like mine. :)

Tip: Before assembling the front cover back, make sure you clean the inside of the transparent part properly. Use non-static cloth or cellophane tape if you will, to make sure there's not even one speck of dust there. Else, you will face with my result. :( Look at my LCD screen, the dust you could see is actually trapped in between the casing and the LCD screen inside. And I'm too lazy to open up the whole thing again to wipe that off. :(

Sony Ericsson K530i

A Day in Zhangjiakou, Hebei

After the terrifying incident that happened the day before, I was mostly numb the whole night after that, with 'what-could-have-been' kept repeating in my mind. We all checked into a hotel at Zhangjiakou city, about 45 minutes from Wan Long ski resort that night. The next morning, Zhang Ti, Chao Jie and Brother Ma proceeded to go for their second round of skiing as agreed. The rest of us including Joanne and her hubby Mr Liew, stayed back in the city. Needless to say, I was too traumatized from the incident the day before to go up to the ski mountains again. My mom, too, said she had got enough of skiing, so we both planned to stay back in the city and asked Joanne and Liew to go ahead without us. Being the hospitable host that she was, she insisted to stay with us even though I knew she LOVED skiing!

Anyway, we started by taking a cab to the nearyby market in the morning. The temperature was about -14C, which was freezing! The streets in the morning looked cold and gloomy, probably because all the trees were leafless. Even the sunshine didn't really help much.

Cold and gloomy morning

The market in Zhangjiakou was really a busy one, even in the cold cold winter days! There were loads of different stalls selling mostly food and many stores selling winter clothings too.

Busy street at the market

Plenty of stalls selling dried foods such as these in the market. I had no idea what they were. :/

Dried food for the winter

According to my mom, apparently those dried foods and nuts were pretty cheap. She bought home some walnuts and almonds, and the picture below shows gingko as well.

Gingko and nuts

After a while of walking, we smelled something pungent from a distance. It couldn't be... oh but it was! The unmistakeable smell of the smelly tofu (Chau tau tu in Cantonese) was soon to catch up with our noses. I for one, had absolutely no desire to go near the store, but Liew kept convincing us to give it a try. Fine, so we all stood nearby while waiting for him to prepare. Luckily with the cold weather, the smell was not as strong as it would have been.

Smelly tofu (beancurd) in the making

And I did eat one, in case you're curious. Apparently if you eat without inhaling, then it didn't taste that bad. Well, I did exactly that and the tofu was not that bad. However, the aftertaste was nasty! Once I opened my mouth after I finished eating, my breath stunk! Eww... Not anymore for me, thank you.

witch eating smelly tofu

Some of the other stalls on the roadside include the roasted chestnut, also with its own pungent and familiar smell.

Roasted chestnuts

Another roadside stall we came across was this egg crepe, prepared by 2 lovely ladies. The crepe was rather plain but seeing it being cooked was definitely tempting. It's too bad that with the freezing weather, the crepe got cold after a couple of bites, and cold crepes were not nice at all. :(

Delicious crepe

Couldn't get enough of food eh? This was a roadside lok-lok stall with plenty of people standing and eating. The fiery pot of delicious skewers with the hot soup were enough to attract me to try it out. I only ate 2 skewers and honestly, they were pretty normal. I guess it was the experience of eating piping hot skewers in the cold cold weather that counts. :)

Street lok-lok

Nevertheless, when we met up with Zhang Ti in the evening, he told us that these lok-lok stalls were very unhygienic! Apparently the soup used to boil the skewers was recycled for a whole week before they're changed! *Eww* Luckily we didn't have any case of diarrhea after that.

Piping hot food

After eating enough of roadside stalls, we continued walking and exploring the market. Liew wanted to get a pair of pants because he tore his own pants during skiing, and at the most unflattering part too! :P He was wearing Zhang Ti's pants at that day, but after searching a few stores, he gave up the idea of purchasing because they didn't have his size. :/

Oh, look I spotted McDonald's!

McDonald's is really everywhere!

More of roadside stalls food to see! Starting with ping tang hulu:

Ping tang hulu

A variety of balls made of flour. I believe they're something like tang yuan, perhaps someone could help to translate the Chinese labels?

Tang yuen?

Even sugary bread, something like donuts but in an elongated and twisted shape:

Sugary long donuts

Bread with ham and egg, certainly didn't look too popular here:

Bread with ham and egg

Along the way, we were greeted with the incredible driving skills of Chinese men too. Look at the picture below, it was a major gridlock on the road! And bear in mind, it was NOT a parking lot. All the vehicles, big and small, were at a standstill. It's amazing how the drivers in China maneuvered their way out!

Major gridlock in traffic

Not only vehicles, even the people had their own people jam. Look at how packed the streets were!

Sea of people

Before long, we decided to look for a place to lunch. Since we were not familiar with the area, we just entered whatever shops that came to sight. Just like this one that we spotted from the outside.

Restaurant

Lo and behold, the restaurant, just like the streets was packed to the max! And it was extremely noisy too, which didn't work well with Joanne. Almost immediately, she turned around and asked us to go to another restaurant.

Crowded restaurant

Finally, we ended up at this place somewhere down the corner of the road. A very traditional and quaint shop, nestled in the middle of the busy streets.

Entrance to restaurant

The decorations of the restaurant were very pretty and charming. Definitely gave us a feeling of how restaurants in the olden days would be. Some of the shots captured around the restaurant:

Counter

Decorative roof

Spotted this ancient lamp and a couple of hulu or bottle gourds.

Hulu @ calabash

Traditional Chinese wine

The ingredients of every dish were actually laid out in the front of the shop. There were chefs working just to get ingredients ready, after which they would be cooked at the back of the shop.

Food!

Cute chefs at work

A shot of the startled waitress in a pretty uniform.

Whatcha looking at?

Our lunch for the day! As usual, fish was a must. The food here was pretty all right, nothing too memorable though.

Lunch

Except for this corn, and the dessert later on. The corn here was VERY different from the corn we have in Malaysia. This was salty and sticky, and each kernel was like one big piece of glutinous rice. It was definitely not something I like, even though Joanne enjoyed it very much.

Salty and sticky corn

And this sweet dessert was something cool! It looked and tasted a little like mango, but it's not mango at all! Apparently they used some kind of radish and created this dessert. Very refreshing because it's served cold, and not exceedingly sweet, too.

Sweet dessert

After lunch, we all went back to the hotel to wait for the rest of our group who were on their way back from skiing. Our journey back to Beijing took another 3 hours or more, and we reached there just in time for dinner. It was our last night in Beijing and Joanne brought us to a shop famous for Sichuan dishes. Some of the dishes we had that night:

Freshwater fish soup

Chicken cubes in dried chilli

Cold dish of vegetables

Spicy frog!

The Sichuan food was amazingly spicy and hot! It wasn't the normal spicy that we experience in Malaysian food, it was a numbing spiciness, rendering your lips and tongue to be lack of sensation. I couldn't handle most of the food there, and just ate mostly fried rice and vegetables. :/

So, that is all about my Beijing trip, finally! We left for the airport early the next morning, to catch the MAS flight back to KL. It was without a doubt one of the most memorable trips I've had so far, with lots of different culture, food and unforgettable experience for my keepsake. Beijing is definitely a lovely city with kind people. The only gripe was, as you could guess, that I couldn't read much of the Chinese words or speak them. But fear not! There are loads of information on the internet that could help you by if you're like me. :)

Till we meet again, Beijing!

My near death experience

It has finally come to blogging about the part of my Beijing trip that I have been putting off for a few weeks. This is mainly due to the phobia that I have developed after a particular incident that happened on this day. To date, it still gives me the shivers whenever I think about the unfortunate mishap that befall me. Let me start the story from the beginning. It was the New Year's day of 2009, and we woke up very early at 6am to get ourselves ready for our next adventure. We were all going skiing! Yes, snow-skiing in the mountains, to be exact. A group of 7 of us chartered a van to drive to the northern part of China. The journey would take about 4 hours so we had to make sure we started early. Halfway through the drive, we stopped by a secluded roadside store which sold food for passers-by. The store also had a public restroom next door which was ghastly! There were faeces in almost half of the toilet booths available, so you can imagine the smell they exuded. Yuck!

Anyway, we went back to the restaurant and apparently they sold food buffet style. We just had to pay RMB10 (RM5) per person and we could eat as much as we wanted. Of course, the food choices were very limited. My plate consisted of some mantou, rice, stir-fried beef, vegetables and some cold dishes. Oh, there was also a hard-boiled egg, which I ended up putting in my pocket to keep myself warm. :P Anyway, the food wasn't that bad, maybe because we were all hungry and cold.

RMB10 buffet meal

Moving on with our journey, we saw the magnificent Great Wall of China along the way. It was really amazing at how long this wall is! After hours of driving and I could still spot it. Anyway, our target was at Chong Li county, in the city of Zhangjiakou, north of Beijing. Being in the northern part only made the place colder than what Beijing was already experiencing. The average temperature at that time was -10C to -16C. *gasp*

Map of Hebei province

After a couple more of hours driving, we finally reached our destination at Wan Long Ski Resort in Chong Li County, Zhangjiakou city, Hebei province, China. It's apparently the most beautiful and comprehensive ski resort in China and it's also newly established, being only 3 years old. We were all very excited, but I was more nervous of the cold weather. Look at how I covered myself up, I must have worn numerous layers of clothes underneath, with mittens and a beanie too!

witch at Wan Long

Not long after, Joanne helped us register and get our passes for the day. There were many types of entry passes to be purchased, either 1-hour, 4-hour, 1-day, 1.5-days or longer. We all took the 4-hour passes as we're only beginners. After getting our passes clipped permanently to our jackets (this is to prevent transfer of passes among the skiers), we proceeded to get our equipment consisting of the skis and boots. Wearing the boots really required some skill because they were extremely hard and high, and securing the locks was no easy feat for beginners like me. What's more, walking in those boots was harder than it looked! Basically, your lower feet starting from below the knees up to your toes were all rigid within the boots, so you have to walk like marching, without bending your feet or your toes. Not comfortable at all. Anyway, soon we were all geared up and ready to ski!

Ladies who ski!

Look at all the different slopes that Wan Long ski resort has. I shudder just looking at how steep they were and how deadly this sport could be. Of course, we all started with the beginner's area, which was actually really flat compared to the slopes that you see on this picture below.

All the different slopes

Even though the sun was shining brightly, we were still freezing cold! But that soon changed once we started skiing, because we soon began to sweat. In fact, I thought I was wearing too thick, which didn't help my flexibility.

Beautiful snow

At the beginner's area, one had to ride up an escalator to go to the starting point, before one could ski down. Since it was my first time, I slipped and fell many times! Thank god for the soft snow, so it didn't really hurt when I fell. Only problem was whenever I fell, I had to wait for someone to help me get back up. It was not easy to grasp the skill of skiing because it was all so slippery! Whenever I tried to stand still, I would find myself gliding down without my control. And stopping was not easy too, if you didn't use enough force on your legs. Soon, Joanne saw that we were having a hard time to control ourselves and she engaged 2 instructors for my mom, Chao Jie and me. The instructors only taught us for one hour and fortunately, I learnt how to ski down the beginner's slope without falling anymore. However, my braking skills were still not very good. :(

After completing the brief training, I went up the escalator and skied down several times, only to notice that my mom, Chao Jie and Joanne were not there anymore. So I proceeded to walk back to the base station and saw my mom resting. She told me that Joanne and Chao Jie actually went up the lift to the slopes. I was surprised that they actually dared to go up because they were just beginners with not much practice. And the slopes did look deadly. Anyway, before long, I spotted them skiing down happily. They were telling me that the view from the top was breath-taking, and that it was not that hard to ski down the slopes. In our group, there was another guy called Zhang Ti (Joanne's friend) who's a professional skier and snow-boarder. He convinced me to try skiing down the slopes too, and that he had my back. Deep down, I did have a desire to try that, because it's not like I would go skiing often, and those lifts really looked exciting.

Minutes before my near-death experience

Lifts

After a few moments of pondering and more convincing from Zhang Ti, I decided to take the lift to go up. Bear in mind that my skill was really still questionable, because I didn't even have confidence of braking properly. Anyway, the ride up the slope took about 5 minutes, and then I was greeted by the most magnificent view of all. Everywhere was white and gorgeous under the sunlight. So we started to ski down from there, and in my first try, I couldn't brake properly and fell down. Only then, I realized that it was so MUCH harder to stand back up in the middle of the slopes. Back in the beginner's area, the area was still not steep so I could stand up and kept myself still. But in the steep slopes, I could hardly stand still without gliding away. It was really difficult. :( I told myself to keep trying, so in my second try, I skied down slowly at first, but because I "smartly" positioned my skis straight (instead of going zig-zag), I was gathering speed even before I could blink my eyes! The speed was accelerating as I went down, and I lost sight of Zhang Ti because I was just too fast. I started to panic and tried to brake by applying the skill I learnt. I was supposed to widen my legs to form the letter '8' in Chinese, but that didn't seem to work and I was just going faster and faster down the slopes! And horror of all horrors, I spotted two persons in front of me in a distance. Thinking of the worst that could happen, I screamed and shouted with all my lungs because I couldn't do anything else, hoping that they would hear me and give way. And just a few seconds later, I felt a big crash, I was somersaulting, my head hit the snow once and I was rolling down before finally stopping. It was true, I had indeed hit into one of the guys in my way.

When reality sank into my senses, I noticed that my firmly-buckled skis were flung off from my boots, and my beanie was flown away, but most importantly, I saw the guy I hit from a distance, crunching with pain. At that moment, my head still hurt with the fall, thank god it wasn't serious enough to be a concussion. My legs and toes were painful and numb. At one point, I thought I had actually broken my toes, because I couldn't feel them inside the boots! I was really worried. Soon, Zhang Ti came by, and asked me how I was. I was in a daze. The guards nearby came to my aid, and I was out of the skis and just wearing the boots. Zhang Ti asked me whether I could walk up back to the top to take the lift down, and I said no. So the guard called for a snow jetski and I was driven down. Needless to say, I became the attraction whenever the jetski passed by anyone, because they'd think that I must have met with some accident to have to come down with the motor. :(

Lift station

When I reached the base station, I was almost limping with the pain in my legs and my inner thigh. I told my mom all about it and she got so worried she almost blamed herself for letting me go up in the first place. Zhang Ti was telling me that I was going too fast that he couldn't even catch up with me. Apparently, I skied down the wrong way, for a beginner, that is. I should have skied down the zig-zag direction, so as to increase the resistance of my skis, and to reduce my speed. But I skied down straight, which was how one would ski to gain full speed! *sigh*

Later on, I found out that the two that I saw in my way were actually Chao Jie and Brother Ma, both also in the same van in the morning! Chao Jie told me she heard me screaming from far so she managed to avoid me in time, but Brother Ma was actually sitting down on the snow fixing his snow board and couldn't move in time. I hit the poor guy in the knees, and he couldn't even walk properly afterwards. :( Fortunately, all skiers who ski in Wan Long are covered with insurance, so Brother Ma was treated at the first-aid center there and was given a recommendation letter so that he could get further treatment from the local hospitals. I felt really bad for what happened, and for spoiling the skiing trip for him. :(( My mom felt terrible as well, because on one hand, she felt guilty for the mishap that happened to Brother Ma, and on the other hand, she kept thinking what if I was the one who was hit by other people. I could be the one ending up with a bad knee. After I came back from Beijing, I checked with Zhang Ti on how Brother Ma was doing and apparently he had to rest at home for at least 2 months! *gasp*

Anyway, the experience was really traumatizing for me. I kept on blaming myself for going up the lift even though I knew I didn't have the skill to ski down yet. But what's done's done, so there was no use crying over spilt milk. Brother Ma was such a dear and didn't even scold me or got angry at me for one bit. In fact, he was such a sport that on the next day, when Zhang Ti and Chao Jie wanted to ski for another 4 hours, he also followed them along, just to sit by the base station and watch. I really hope that he's doing well after a few months of rest now.

As for me, I had tremendous pain on both my legs and my inner thighs. I was given some medicine to rub on by the first-aiders. Thanks to the thick layer of clothes that I was wearing, I didn't suffer from any cuts. Later that night, I went back to our hotel room and massaged the bruises with chinese medicated oil. And look how they turned out to be the next morning! All red!

Bruised legs

That was not the worst! The bruises kept changing colours from red to green to black even and went back to red again. They took about 2 weeks to completely recover.

witch with bruises forcing a smile

Up to this day, whenever I recall the same incident in my head, I couldn't help but wonder, what would have happened to me if Brother Ma wasn't in my way. I mean, I was just in the early part of the slope and there was still a very LONG and STEEP way down. I could have continued skiing down out of control and hit into more victims, or worse, I could die. This was truly the most memorable experience of all in my whole trip to Beijing. Probably in my whole life.