Oct/Nov trips

the past few weeks have been rather busy. like what's new right? but the busyness here is nothing compared to being busy back in singapore. nothing really beats being busy in singapore. and i can already imagine how my hectic lifestyle will begin once i touch down in changi airport in january. but i'm sure it'll feel really good to be back home. back to my family, friends and to my church back home. and of course back to the singaporean food and suppers!! i'm so looking forward to prata! oh man..

ok so what's been up recently? lots of stuffs. just this week, i submitted my business case and the analysis. so that's one major load off my chest. but i've still got my business case presentation, internship presentation and company appreciation video to take care of. all due by the end of the this month. that's the academic side. during the last 2 weekends, i was out of town. i was on a cruise to riga on the previous weekend, while i was in oslo during the last weekend. so this weekend is rest and relax time for me.

riga is the capital of latvia and also the largest city in the baltic states. it's a simple city with an old and traditional feel to it. and while we were there, they were having a mass traditional dance in their streets to try to create a world record for the longest dance. apart from riga, one of the most fun part of this trip was the cruise itself. not that the cruise ship itself was extremely exciting, it was more of the crazy company and the interesting things that you learn about each other. ;) and the basic code of conduct is, whatever happens on the ship, stays on the ship.

oslo on the other hand, was a more beautiful place that really exceeded my expectations. i was told by friends that there wasn't much to see at oslo. but the city proved them, and my little expectations, wrong. my only disappointment was that i was unable to travel to see the breath-taking fjords which norway is famous for. i was really tempted to take the train to bergen and enjoy "one of the most beautiful train journey in the world", to quote wikitravel. but that would mean that i would take a 7 hour train ride from stockholm to oslo, and then another 7 hours to bergen. then spend 1 night there and take the 14 hour train ride all the way back to stockholm. 我屁股会开花! (my butt will blossom!) and i would be so dead @ work the next day after heading straight to work. if i had made my way to oslo earlier by a week or so, i would be able take the ferry cruise there. i guess this gives me another reason to come back to scandinavia. jag måste! (i must!)

and what's up next weekend? WATCH AN EPL MATCH LIVE @ OLD TRAFFORD! how can i travel half way around the world, living in the same time zone as UK and not watch an EPL match @ the very same stadium where they are playing?!?! but to actually get an EPL tix is NOOOO easy task man. as the flight tix were increasing, i decided to buy the flight tix without having any match tix. so i knew i had to get my hands on those tix for that weekend. i waited for man u to release the tix for sale to the public. but they were sold out even before it was released to the general public. i was like.. WHAT?!?! then i had this regret that i should have just signed up as a member for 33 pounds and bought the tix. so i resigned to either buy the tix from the tout on the day itself, or go to the countryside to see sheep (as proposed by my friend). but i'm so not going all the way to manchester to see sheeps! and then i found the official trading site for man u tix, of which i had to first join as a man u member. so, i ended up doing what i had to do in the first place. lesson no 1: when you know that's the right thing to do, DO IT! so now i tried to buy the tix from the site with way much lesser choices for seats and had to pay another 30 pounds extra (2 tix) for handling fees and tax. and i used paypal to made payment for my purchase. BAD CHOICE. the payment went through "successfully" on paypal, but it wasn't received by the other party and it wasn't deducted from my bank. after a million of email exchanges with paypal and the other party, of which paypal only gave automated email responses that tried to sound like a real person behind it, i finally got my money refunded. and then i made a purchase for another set of lousier seating tix, as my previous one disappeared (got bought away i guess), this time with my credit card direct. lesson no 2: if possible, avoid using payapl, PAYPAL SUCKS! but now, it's still not 100% confirm until i get my hands on the physical tix itself. i emailed the tix exchange again to double check with them if they will ensure that i will receive my tix by thursday or do i collect @ the stadium itself. *sigh* why do things have to be so complicated? then the motto of a gay site which i vaguely remember coming across, came to my mind, "because life's not straight". i seriously hope there won't be anymore surprises. oh and i've yet to settle my accommodation. *sigh* here we go again. like how my friends and i always say, "if life's not exciting enough, then it's ain't worth living now, isn't it?"

i have placed a map of the places i've been to (with links to related pics/vid) and the places i would like to visit (in question marks). you can check it out here.

Passions in life

for many of us, our lives seem to be one big mystery. we don't really know what we want, what we're going to do and we just take things as they come. but many a times, it's all about spending some time to reflect on such issues. all it takes is just to identify that little passion, liking, preference, inclination towards a certain activity or object and just keep working at it or towards it. and ultimately, it'll eventually lead you in a direction where you ought to be. do note that it might not be your intended path, nor to your liking initially, but life, or rather, God, has His ways of allowing everything to fall into place as it should be. and He never fails to amazes me.

ok so what's my life destiny? honestly, i really don't know. but what i do know is that my passion lies in people and music. these are the 2 things that make me tick. i enjoy working, interacting, relating, learning, teaching, communicating, imparting, sharing, serving and loving people. and i also enjoy listening, singing, playing and writing music. and with these 2 little passions that i have, i just work on it. why? simply because i enjoy doing it. so i serve in a cellgroup, serve in my zone, talk to people, hang out with friends, teach others, learn from others and just do whatever i can to help others and just share the love. love makes the world go round! and in music, i play the piano, trumpet, trombone, guitar, bass and i try to write songs. i just do what i have and what i can.

and in life, i really value relationships. relationships with my God, family, darling (love u dear! *muacks*), friends and people around me. and to hh aka t aka jh, thanx for being such a great friend to me too! ;) relationships are definitely under-rated by people. and we should all spend more time, effort & money investing into relationships & friendships.

and the past few days, i had a good time catching up with brando while he came over from vienna to visit and bunk in with me here in stockholm. and today i had a fun time out with my colleagues during our monthly company chill out nite. this time we went to do some simulated car racing, had some good spanish food for dinner and good beer while chilling out till we had to catch the last bus back. it's always worth it to chill out. and tmr i'll be on a cruise with some of my friends, 16 of us, to riga over the weekend. am looking forward to that.

ok, i shall upload my pics then. meanwhile, have a good weekend to one and all! ;)

Jaiku, Twitter or Plurk

microblogging has been around for quite some time now. as the name speaks for itself, it is a micro blog, usually limited to 140 characters. and from this site, you can actually find a list of over 200 microblogging services! it really amazes that people actually start a new microblogging site when there already exists hundreds of them.

personally for me, i currently use jaiku, twitter and plurk. (without having to sign up, you can click on the links to see how they're like.) facebook also has a microblogging feature, aka status update. but they aren't really a dedicated microblogging site, so i'll leave them out of the picture for now.

so what do i like about the 3 services and which of them would be my favourite? let me just list out some of my personal pros and cons of their services. if the features are common within the 3, then i'll leave them out.

jaiku:
pros 
- has channels that allows users to join and post within that channel
- has integration with IM like Gtalk, LiveJournal, MSN (using IMified.com) ..etc
- has facebook status update integration
- has mobile SMS integration
- has the ability to add icons to your post
- able to read rss feeds and post them
- proper organisation of comments

cons
- registration via invite

twitter:
pros
-  allows html style badge for transparent background
- detailed post search
- has the ability to set device updates on specific users
- has facebook status update integration
- public registration

cons:
- says that it supports IM, but it doesn't
- all replies to a specific post are not viewable as a whole
- no channels/groups

plurk:
pros
- funky and dynamic timeline interface with ajax updates
- ability to set settings for each post (privacy, language, comments)
- ease of view for different kinds of posts (all, your own, private, those you responded to)
- has colourful qualifiers
- has emoticons
- able to post images/videos
- has cliques function (similar to jaiku's channels)
- has very logical commenting view and organisation
- able to view all post from everywhere with filters (eg from various country .. etc)
- constantly updating and adding of new features
- public registration

cons
- IM support has been under servicing ever since i joined
- karma to "force" you to keep updating

as you can tell from the list, twitter would be my least favourite, and it is. i really like the features of plurk and it's extremely intuitive interface. it's really fun to use and it gives a very good overview of your posts aka plurks. so is plurk my favourite of the lot? well, not exactly. i really like it, but it doesn't make it to my if-i-really-have-to-choose-one-it's-you list. and that would be jaiku.

why? for the main reason that it has good integration with IM, SMS and facebook. with these features, i'm able to send/receive posts/updates without having to log into the jaiku page. i can do this via my gtalk (or gmail) and sms. this is really cool because it also means that my darling can "sms me for free". for my end, i can sms for free using singtel/starhub web sms services. but for her, there isn't any free web service sms from my provider. as such, she could use jaiku to do that. neat trick rite? ;)

after being acquired by google, jaiku has removed their limited invites. so if anyone would like to use jaiku, just let me know and i'll send you an invite. 

Life in Sweden

Here's an overview of my life in Sweden. My neighbourhood... ;)


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Europe Trip Compilation

So far, these are the places that i've visited this year. Those in question marks are the places i would like to cover by the end of this year. You can click on the places and there would be links to the photos/videos of the places i've been too.

Of course, if it were possible, i would like to cover more of Europe. I guess that gives me a good to come back here again. ;)


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summer of my life

it's been almost 4 weeks since darling left for singapore, but it felt like it has been 4 months already. sigh...

ok. it's been quite a long while since i did a post on my blog. and the excuse i give to my friends is that i'm more into microbloging & photo blogging recently. as you can obviously tell from my frequent updates on my facebooks. oh well, guess i should come back and do some traditional blogging. ;)

alright, so what has been up? summer is over and fall is here. but based on the weather, it seems like winter might be coming early. man, now i know why the swedes treasure their summer so much. the amount of heat and sun that they have is so rare. i'm already missing summer. let's talk abit about summer...

the 5 weeks of my summer has been the best 5 weeks ever! it was totally amazing. mainly it was the traveling around europe which was so fun, but ultimately it was having my darling together with me! if you haven't checked out my photos, please do! they are really fantastic. not that i'm a professional photographer, but the subject itself portrays its beauty. you would be more mesmerized if you were there at the places itself.

we started our journey on 15 july where we rendezvoused in rome. darling fly over to rome transiting @ bangkok & london from singapore, while i flew over from stockholm. when her mum knew about that, she kinda freaked out that the 1st trip she's ever done to europe is gng to be alone. :P but all went well. rome was a place where history came to life. the huge statues and architecture, like the colosseum and the roman forum, expounded its grandiose history. and people always say that the pizza and the pasta in italy is different, that they are much nicer. it's true! the charge their pizza by the weight and i LOVE their potato pizza. simple as it may sound, but it tastes great! and not forgetting their gelato, italian ice-cream. yummy... we spent 3.5 days and 3 nights in rome. sufficient time to cover most of the stuff in rome, then we headed to florence.

florence is a small and beautiful city. i was told by my friends that 1 day is enough to cover florence and pisa. and that's how long we stayed there. and really, that's enough. it's a simple, but bustilng place. and like rome, there were statues all over the city and buildings with elaborate designs from the renaissance era. lovely.

next, we headed to venice by train. going through terrains, mountains and tunnel. it was a rather serene, reflective and peaceful journey. upon reaching venice, it was love at first sight in that beautiful place. it's the only pedestrian city in the world with no vehicles on the island expect for boats. really amazing. we spent 3 days there exploring the place and visiting the neighbouring islands. it was a good time spent there, sufficient to cover all that we wanted to. we even managed to be part of a festival which had a massive firework display that lasted 45mins! those kind you would see during chinese new year, but MORE elaborate and fanciful. extremely impressive. we couldn't have been there at a better time.

after which, we flew to london to meet up with my family and we spent 5 days there. having gone there before, i was their official tour guide and brought them around. then we took an train which ran under the english channel to paris. i was actually hoping to have a nice view underwater. but it was just pitch black. :(

paris is beautiful place. my only gripe is the people. they have such bad attitude towards people who aren't well-versed in french. there were 2 incidents at 2 different restaurants where they were irritated and served so unwillingly just because we couldn't converse with them in french, so snobbish! apart from that, the rest of the trip was really pleasant.

after that, we flew back to stockholm and i brought my family around town.

the next day after my family left for singapore, darling and i flew off to berlin. we spent a night there and then we flew to athens. athens is really over-rated. i'm glad that i heeded ginnelle's advice and stayed only a day there and spent more time at the islands instead. the only thing that's impressive is the acropolis. and i really love the greek language, they just look so cool! ;)

and finally we reached our finally destination of our summer trip. somehow our entire itinerary seem to fit in so well. the places we went slowly built up, with each new place bringing greater fascination and insights. and to top it all, we ended with SANTORINI. if i had to describe santorini in a sentence, it would be "a heaven on earth." just these four words would do. my friends told me it was beautiful and i saw the photos, but all those still couldn't prepare me for what i was about to expect. it is really beautiful beyond description. the place was amazing, the people were down to earth and friendly, the food is good and i was there with my darling. WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE ASKED FOR? oh man... i literally left my heart there as i took the ferry back. that was my first trip to greece but that would definitely not by my last!

if you haven't seen my photos yet, my brethren i beseech you to go take a look. santorini is such a beautiful place. i'm missing it as i type. i had such a time of my life with my dearest darling there. sigh. i WILL definitely visit the other islands in greece with my darling again. i sompa!

Trevlig Sommar!

Ok. it's been awhile since i blogged and give an update on what's been going on. And i guess now is a good time as i'll be leaving for my europe summer trip tomorrow morning. and i'll be meeting my princess in rome! woohoo! ;)

so what's been up the last few months? well, for one, i turned a year older. argh.. yes i'm getting old. sigh... well some things are just inevitable in life. i really thank God for the love showered from my friends, family and of course my darling! and on that day, i was busy responding to all the emails, msn, wall post... etc. as you can see below...

really appreciate those who remembered, but for those who supposed to, but didn't... MAY YOU REPENT!!!

but i specially wana thank my zone leaders and Pastor for your love! and of course to the don and again my darling for helping with the vid! loved it totally! ;)

on top of it all, i got a prezzie and a card from my darling that's flown all the way from sg which i really wasn't expecting!! got this uber cool ring, which came with an uber cool stylo box from this brand BLiNG. as far as i know they have a shop in vivocity and they've got really nice rings there. and getting me big nice and heavy stylo rings can hardly go wrong. thanx dear! love u! *muacks* ;)

ok what else has been up? recently, the last trip i made was not around europe, but in sweden itself. it was a camping trip to the archipelegos! faz, seng and me went to utö over one of the weekends. it's really a nice place to camp, chill and even make new friends while camping. during the nite, it was really cold and quite uncomfortable to sleep, so i was sitting by the sea enjoying the scenery when a couple came to join me and offered me some cider while we chatted. swedish are really nice and friendly people. and thanx to the cider, it kinda helped me to go back to sleep. now i know why my dad drinks a can of tiger every night before he sleeps. ;)

check out my page for the pics...

apart from work and catching almost every other euro cup match, that's about what's been happening. but one of the main highlights of this year would be my summer vacation! how much better can it get to have a summer vacation every year! if only it was like this in singapore! i'm not just talking about school holidays, but summer vacation for the working adults as well. it's totally amazing.

ok so what's going to happen this summer? i'm basically going to 5 countries, Italy, UK, France, Germany and Greece. Greece baby! honestly, i really never imagined myself going on such a lengthy europe tour. at least not so soon in my life. to start of, it's never really been a culture among the people i associate it to travel so extensively. so i really thank God for such an opportunity! ;)

and the best part of it, i'll be traveling together with my princess!! my parents, sister and my cousin will be flying over to visit me and travel around europe as well. they'll be joining us from London - Stockholm. so my darling will be coming earlier and leaving later than them. actually as i type right now, my darling is on her flight over already! so i'll be seeing her real soon. ;)

Here's my itinerary for the next few weeks:

July
15 - 17: Rome
18: Florence & Pisa
19-20: Venice
21-24: London
25-30: Paris

Aug:
31-3: Stockholm
5: Berlin
6: Athens
7-10: Santorini
11: Athens
12: Berlin

i'll be posting updates on plurk, twitter, jaiku and facebook every now and then when i do get internet access. and when i link up with my parents in London, i'll try to upload the pictures if there's internet and if it's fast enough. my flight is at 7am and i'll have to take the 4am bus to the airport which is abt a 90min ride away.

so have a great summer! Trevlig Sommar as they would say in swedish.