New Idiom "at one's earliest convenience"

Whenever I use "as soon as possible/you can", I somehow feel as if I force a counterpart to do something urgently.

For example, I write on an email, "Could you give me a reply asap?"
Then I feel I would say, "Reply already! Hurry up!"

Although it's just my own feeling, I've been wondering if there is more soft and polite way. Then I found "at one's earliest convenience."

I'm not sure how the difference is between them for native speakers, but I'm quite satisfied with finding this idiom. (^o^)

My apartment is also under repair.

A major renovation work on my apartment started at thee beginning of this month. It is repairing the exterior wall. It takes more than 4 months!! Too long!

The scaffoldings (?) has almost constructed.

It's the scene from the window of my room.

From another window.

Terrible. The workers are walking just in front of my window.

There was a nice white sofa and table in the common space on the 1st floor, but now, it has been removed and a messy construction work office is now there.

I can't believe that this situation continues until the beginning of June!!

It's only exterior wall renovation, but from outside, It is as if I live in a construction site.

My apartment viewed from outside

However, because the apartment will become clearer (I hope so), I should be patient. Also I thank the workers for their work during such very cold weather.

Having said that, 4 months is too long------!

My smartphone is under repair.

Yesterday evening, a touch panel of my smartphone suddenly started responding strange. I had to tap something repeatedly, and long-tap no longer worked. It was almost impossible to enter characters. Terrible. It's been only 15 months since I bought it.

I went to a cell phone shop to ask repair. A staff said it would take a week or even 2 weeks to complete the repair. Ugh!
And, although I have an insurance policy, it may cost. Why?!?!

The staff also asked me that if it's OK that the data I saved in the smartphone and the apps I installed will be all lost and the setting I configured on the phone will be reset.
Ugh...
I'm using cloud system for the important data, so, OK, I'll give up other data. OK, OK, I'll take time to install all the apps again and to configure the same setting after my phone comes back. The top priority is repairing is completed as soon as possible.

Then, after I came back home, I realized I didn't back up the bookmarks! Uh---! I know it's possible to associate bookmarks with a Gmail address, but I didn't do that for several reasons. I should have done...

Furthermore, one more bad thing.
Although I was able to have an alternative device that was the same model, the color of it is pink! I don't like pink. I don't like something girly. It would have been better if it had been light soft pastel pink, but it was shocking pink! Haha.

I already miss my smartphone!

Meteor fall!!

February 15th, 2013, a big meteor fell in Russia. Since them, TV news have been reporting about this event every day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Russian_meteor_event

The diameter of the meteor was about 17m. Huge! Over 1200 people were injured mainly by shock wave. Shock wave!?!? Scary!

Hurricane, typhoon, earthquake, tsunami... there are many natural disasters, and I realized there is one more natural disaster, meteor fall, which comes from way too far away.

In this accident, I found meteor fall is very very dangerous. Having said that though, I'm still skeptical about the theory of dinosaur extinction by a meteor.
I've been wondering if it's possible that an only 10km diameter meteor can wipe out most of species on the earth 12700km across.

My profile is the top 1% most viewed.

I don't use SNS so much. I don't use either Twitter or Facebook. I just write this blog and joined LinkedIn which is a business specific SNS.

Today, I received an email from LinkedIn that says my profile in LinkedIn is one of the top 1% most viewed profiles for 2012. Surprising!!

I'm wondering why???

"in advance" vs. "beforehand"

I checked the difference between "in advance" and "beforehand" on the Internet. I saw some sites where people discuss the difference. But they don't reach any conclusion. OK, even native speakers are not sure about the certain difference, I could not know and don't need to worry about it.

However, probably native speakers distinguish them unconsciously. That's the difference between a mother language and a 2nd language.
In Japanese language, there are many which I know those are different but I can't explain the difference.

By the way, I somehow feel recently that I've gotten quite good at my English conversation skills.
Too positive or over-optimistic? haha!