Paris-London Trip - Final

After the day 9th, there is not much place that we visit, because most of the time we are travelling.

On the day 10th morning, we went to shopping at the Regent Street because my wife need to help her brother in law to buy Burberry for her sister. Then we went to purchase the fish-and-chip at the restaurant recommended by the local tour guide. Once again, for someone like me that can't differential the fresh fish and frozen fish, I can only say that fish is nice. We took the Eurostar from London at St. Pancras station to go back to Paris.

We reached Paris around 6pm, after having some fast food and bought some water and a box of strawberry, we went to the hotel near the airport. My wife is still worry because of the volcano ashes, all the flights have been cancelled for few days. As usual, I just told her that, she should be happy cause we can have an extended honeymoon.

When we reach the train station at hotel area, it is around 7pm++. There is not much bus going to the hotel and we waited until around 8.30pm, we manage to get our bus to the hotel. Thanks to the bus driver for giving us a free trip.

On the next day, day 11th, we went back to Paris area to do the shopping at the Galleries Lafayette, the luxury shopping mall that sell all the luxury brands. My wife promise to buy a LV purse for her colleague, and when we reached the LV store, suddenly I just want to stop purchase those items. Why?

It is not because of the price, if you follow those brands, you will find that the price at Paris is almost same but there is one advantage, which is you will get 12% discount back from the sales tax VAT (Value Added Tax), and the end, it is actually much cheaper than Bolehland.

Suddenly I just felt that I'm like being cheated by the brand, because 99% of the customer in the shop is Asian especially Chinese. People will told you that Parisian do not know how to speech English, but in this shop, they can speech Mandarin with you.

Well, feeling being cheated and the kiansu spirit always contra each other. At the end, my wife bought the purse for her colleague and me bought a purse for her. She actually doesn't want me to waste the money, but still I prefer she to have one.

When my wife still worry whether our flight still cancel or not, and as I said, I'm the luckiest man in the world, the flight from Paris finally re-open tomorrow. We finally took the flight according to our schedule and back to Bolehland. When we purchase the ticket, we actually only plan to take 10 days and luckily the agent told me that the return ticket for that date is expensive and she propose us to take the flight two days after that, and that make us the luckiest passengers.

Ok, that's all for the trip. 

My wife, she is so sweet.

Paris-London Trip - Day 9

We’ve booked a local tour for the Day 9^th.

On the early morning, we went to the Victoria station to wait for our tour bus. Although I preferred to do free-and-easy tour instead of taking local tour, but due to the time limit, I took a local day tour to outside of London.

The first stop of the day tour is at the Bath.

The Roman Bath

   Bath is a very nice place, I really love that place. Because our tour is come with the entrance ticket to the Roman Bath, so we spent most of the time in the museum and too bad we didn’t have much time walking around the town. So, my advice is that, it is much better walking on the town area than go to see those historical items, unless you are history maniac.

One of the remarkable buildings at Bath is the Royal Crescent. From the name, you will know, that is for rich people. I wish I can stay there.

After leaving the beautiful Bath, we went to the second tourist spot, the Salisbury Cathedral. The Salisbury Cathedral is a very huge and elegant cathedral, and what make this cathedral so famous is because of a document, the Magna Carta. It is the first written document that limit the King’s power and get his hand off the money.

The Salisbury Cathedral

The solar clock

Nothing much on the building itself, except there is a world’s oldest working clock and the Baptismal Font.

The Baptismal Font

After leaving the Salisbury, we went to the last destination, the Stonehedge. It is a prehistoric monument and until today no one knows what is it exactly used for, and how it was built. Some said, it is used for buried, some said it is a calendar and some said it is the astronomy observatory.

The Stonehedge

 

We reached back to the London around 7pm, after working around the town, we went back again to the hotel.

Paris-London Trip - Day 8

Ok, I know I've stopped my posing about this for some time. So, today I just want to finish it.

We wake up early in the morning and went to walk around London streets on day 8th.

 The first stop is at the Bank of England.

The Bank of England

One of the main economies of England is her financial services, and London is one of the world’s largest financial centers and she is the world’s greatest exchange market with $1.36 trillion USD in 2007. If you wonder how much is $1.36 trillion is. You can write it as $1,360,000,000,000. If you change all the money into gold, with the gold price of $37.5 USD/g, you will get about 36,200 tonnes of gold, which about 1880m3 of gold. If you still can’t imagine how much that is, let say, you put a 1 meter by 1 meter gold bar on the ground, and you will see an 1880 meter height gold bar. So, how high is 1880m? it is about 4 times higher than our Bolehland twin tower.

Ok, I’m enough with that :p

The next stop is the St. Paul Cathedral. According to the dictionary, cathedral is church which contains the bishop’s throne. I’m not Christian, so, I’m not sure what is the different between a church with bishop and a church without bishop. Anyway, it’s the place where Prince Charles and Lady Diana get married.

The St. Paul Cathedral

 We went to the Tower of London area, but we didn’t go in, due to time and also the entrance fees. Tower of London is just beside the River Thames. And next to the Tower of London is one of the most famous bridges, the Tower Bridge, which always mistakenly known as the London Bridge. We waiting there for a while, hope to see the bridge open. However, luck is not on our side that day. Because there is not schedule on the opening of the bridge, so, it’s really much depending on your luck. According to the statistic, the bridge will open once per day and rising time is around 3-5 minutes. So, you can spend one whole day sitting beside the river and wait for the luck to come, if you have plenty of time.

2 pieces of Tower Bridge photo

After the Tower Bridge, we went to some place that I really want to go. The Greenwich. Sound familiar? Do you remember the Greenwich Mean Time, GMT? I’ve studied that when I’m in secondary school. The 0° longitude is crossing the Royal Observatory, which defined the time.

The Royal Observatory 

Greenwich Park is a very huge and beautiful park. If you really have time, you must sit on the green grass and enjoy the scenery.

On the way back, we walk on the River Thames and there are lots of bridges along the River Thames.

We finally visit the last place for today, the British Museum. We arrived slightly late, most of the exhibition halls are closed and we only manage to visit the main hall before we back to hotel.

This is the London Bridge

The British Museum

StarCraft II

Girl, please bear with us for few more days :p

无题

北纬二十六度十三分十二点二十秒,
东经五十度三十分四十点九十秒,
离家六千里路.

Hard-working

Before I start to write anything, I would like to say, “thanks god, it’s Friday”.

I have been stays at this desert for almost 3 weeks. I miss everything at the Bolehland; the rain, the foods, the weather, and my wife. But work is still work, no matter you like it or not, when you took the salary you have to complete your due diligence.

I’m used to be a workaholic. When I first join my current company, I was so busy until I admitted to the hospital because of appendix (I’m not sure whether these two are related or not, anyway, I always make it an excuse when I want to say I’m busy :p). However, I still dare not say I’m hard-working.

Ok, let us look at the definition from Oxford about hard-working. Oxford dictionary said that hard-working is tending to work with energy and commitment. Lots of people fulfill the first condition, working with energy, but very less people do work with commitment.

If you work in the construction site, you will see lots of general worker. Are they hard-working? I believe no, they just work hard to earn their food. I never look down on these people because sometime I feel like I’m part of them.

Last few years, when my company doing few projects at Bolehland, I used to work until very late, 2-3am, sometime over night, and I never off my mobile phone. Last year Chinese New Year eve, I went to one of my project side to help the operator to activate back the PLC after the power failure. So, I believe I’m a failure.

Talking about successful, how you define success?

Running to the work site after the CNY eve dinner definitely is not success. Working late also not success. Cancel my trip to stay back to finish the project is also not success.

I know few people which I considered success. Write very nice email, using those funny funny words like escalator, lift, etc in his email to express how hard-working he is, although he never misses the 6PM bell. Take emergency leave to go to South Africa to watch world cup, although there is a submission to close in the next day. Repeating saying “I don’t know” in his work and never learn.

You might think I try to promote myself using this blog, or try to condemn someone to promote myself. Seriously speaking, I will get nothing from this post, and I may end up with a warning letter if someone wants to be funny with me.

Then what for I wrote this?

I wrote what I saw and heard, which I believe is truth and nothing but the truth. I want to tell how stupid I’m, how unfair is this world, and how unbalance I’m. But somehow, I have completed my due diligence, my obligation as a worker; I own nothing to this society. Although there is no fairness in this world, which I believe is truth, but we can create our own fairness. Only those losers will complain the unfair and do nothing about it.

The next thing I want to learn in my life is to be fair to my family. Once I done that, I can only use the word hard-working, because I can fulfill the second condition of commitment, to the company, to myself and to my family.

最美的文字

有人问我这世间最美的文字是什么。瞬间我脑里浮现的是你的名字。

Abu Dhabi

Burj Khalifa

Now waiting at the Abu Dhabi airport for the flight going to Bahrain. Not much excited about.

Have been stay at Abu Dhabi for a week and everyday having fast food for my meal :s Now I start to vomit once I heard the word fast food.

Went to Dubai again last Friday with my colleagues. Nothing much at Dubai also but this time we tried to use their new transport, the metro. Expensive is the only word I can think of as compare to Bolehland. Service is so so like Bolehland.

We also went to pub at the most happening street, the Jumeira Road. When we at the front door of the pub area, we felt like at the heaven. Our eyes never tired with the girls pass by us. However, happiness is always very short cause we are not allow to go in to the pub due to no reservation :(

So when went to have a drink at stupid bar listen to arab song and see some stupid peoples throw the plate onto the floor.

Before we go back to Abu Dhabi, we went to have our dinner at a very famous restaurant. Heard the rumour said that this is the restaurant where Satan Hussein having dinner with France president.

Basically is a grill fish. I'm not fish lover and I can't differentiate between a frozen fish and swimming fish. Anyway the fish is quite nice.

5kg fish, please don't ask me the name of the fish

Will need to come to Abu Dhabi again in another 2 months time, but now I need to go back to Bahrain to start my control works. Will be busy soon.

N97 mini VS X6

Before I continue, I just want to clarify that this blog is not about mobile phone review and it is also not free commercial advertisement for Nokia. I don’t call it a review because I only start to use this phone since last 3 days, although I know I’m a genius :p but I still not a specialist in writing those technical blogs.

Ok, why I bought me and my wife a new phone?

I have been using S.E. K610i since around 4 years ago, and I bought it together with my buddy, Nic. It is a good phone, but recently, it start giving some problems. Mine phone start to hang once a while and my wife’s phone sometime the volume is too low. So, I start searching the net for a new phone since last month.

Other than the mentioned reasons, two very strong “excuses” for me to acquire a new phone.

First, I need a phone that has wifi. Ya, I think if you know me, then you will know I will get myself online whenever I can. From PSP to pocket PC, I try to get myself to net whenever I received the wireless signal.

Second, I need a GPS. I always get lost in the city, so I really need to get myself a GPS, although I already have a beautiful live GPS with me :p

So, I start to do the study. Symbian, Android, iPhone, Meomo, …

iPhone is definitely out of my list. Not because I don’t like iPhone, it’s expensive in the first place and a personal reason that lead me away from considering this phone.

I don’t like Blackberry, so it is out.

Now only left Symbian and Android phones.

Ok, I know Symbian is dying. No doubt that Symbian^1 is old and Symbian^3 is still in the lab. But when you look at the market, Symbian is still dominating the market of mobile OS. I hope by introducing the Symbian^3, it wouldn’t end like PalmOS.

I like Android although I haven’t uses it before. I got confident with Google. But, when talking about Android, the first thing come out from my mind is HTC. I never doubt of Google capability, but I doubt the name of HTC. It reminds me of O2 and dopod. I just hope HTC will not end like these two brands.

Other than the bad history of HTC, the price also stops me from looking at it. Then the second brand come out from my mind is S.E.

I was used to be the S.E. supporter. When that time Nokia is screwed up with its stupid phones, S.E. shows us hopes, that why I bought K610i. But today, S.E. didn’t continue to develop its phones. All the high end models are either using Android or Symbian. Xperial X10 is huge, nice hardware but using Android 1.6 -.- and the price is stoping all the poor man like me to think to own it. X10 mini is too small, X8 is still in the lab. Satio & Viva is expensive in the first place, and why I want to get a S.E. phone that use Nokia’s OS? If Symbian is originated for Nokia and it don’t perform well in Nokia, how can it perform better in S.E.? So, S.E. is out.

Samsung i5700 is another choice. Running on Android 2.1 with 800Mhz CPU and it is only cost around RM1100 (AP set), it should be a good choice. Too bad, the phone is a mid range phone with lousy camera that do not come with flash. Galaxy S is too expensive. So, that’s end of my consideration of getting a Samsung.

Now left Nokia. I choose N97 mini for myself and X6 for my wife, since she sent me an email with a big cross on the N97 :p

I was thinking getting myself a X6, but after that I changed my mind and get a N97 because it suit more to an old working guy. X6 is more suitable for teenage.

Thanks to Nic for helping me to get the phones and I accidentally poisoned him to get the X10. He is confirmed a rich man.

Once I power up my N97, I happy that I make a good choice. The keyboard is just awesome. The interface is OK, the respond is acceptable for an old man, and stability is ok although I make it hang for few times.

X6 touch screen is much better and sensitive than N97. I love its touch screen. When those days, people call a resistive screen a touch screen, now they should call the resistive screen a “press” screen and the term touch screen should reserved for capacitive screen. When my wife saw my N97 stylus, she is so happy to ask me to give it to her. Then I told her too bad that she can’t use the stylus because the screen is designed for human hand. Poor wife :p, now she need to learn how to use the phone in the teenage way.

So, both phones are good. N97 mini is convenience with the keyboard, the UI is ok. X6 got a very nice touch screen and bigger internal memory. Both come with a very sharp camera with flash. A little bit slow with the slow CPU speed, but overall it is acceptable. So get a N97 if you want to look pro and matured, and get X6 if you want to feel or look young.

The OS is quite complicated if you want to use the full power of the phone and it will hang when doing complicated tasks. Well, totally acceptable by me, even an i7 will hang with Win7, not to say an old OS with low speed gadget.