Any which way but home...

Haynes motor museum

2009-08-17T12:37:00.002+01:00

When I had my b'day (magical age of 35... 50% of my expected lifespan gone!), my dad was visiting me in P'head. We decided to go to the Haynes Motor museum. I'd never been there, and he certainly hasn't seen it either. It's near the Air Fleet Arms Museum in Yeovilton (also a very impressive museum). I decided to play with my phone, running google maps as satnav whilst going there. Due to sunshine, the glare pretty much obscured my view of the display, so on the way up there, I had to pull over to double check the route. as it turned out we were still on route, so we continued. It took us about an hour to get there going via Street. On teh way back I had it calculate a route again, but this time it chose another route for some reason. It took us over one way dirt roads in the middle of nowhere!!! It took us quite a bit longer to get to the motorway, where there was another performance of the most popular activity "old-english queueing on the motorway". And like with every damn queue in thsi country, it was caused by nothing. That' sright, nothing at all. well, basically that means incompetency of drivers, who like hitting their brakes really hard, especially when it starts raining (seems like in the UK people get really scared to drive these days when they drive their ginormous 4x4 and a drizzle starts).
Anyway, the museum was quite interesting, though really quite limited when it comes to providing some explanations. It started off interesting with some of replicas of the very first combustion engine powered cars ever made, followed by "the red room", which was basically a hall with only red sports cars. Ferrari's lambo's, MG's, morgans, mazerati's, etc etc. They had a special exhibition for the mini.
All in all the collection was really very impressive indeed!
There was one downside I think. The museum was basically a couple of sheds filled with cars. There were some motorcycles, but there was no explanation of anything at all, except for the signs that identified the cars (including some history associated to them). there was no clear path that showed you how cars evolved, no explanations how a combustion engine works, or how gear boxes work. None of that at all, and to be honest, I think those are really quite essential for a decent museum.

Of course I made some photos, so here are a couple:

1930's Cadillac powered by a V16 engine

Closeup of a Lincoln Zephyr

Closeup of morgan's bonnet (3-wheeled Morgan, can't remember the name of it...)

As life continues...

2009-07-17T23:19:00.004+01:00

Well, nothing bad, just doing one of my highly irregular updates.
Plenty stuff happening lately. Where do I begin?

Been working on a second pond in my garden. Almost finished. Need to do some electrics but the weather turned from 35 degrees sunshine to 15 degrees rain, so bit stuffed.
Once done I'll post some piccies. It's not the only bit that's changing in my garden. Been planting some trees etc and well be dressing up the garden unit thing a bit more.

Work's been busy, always busy. Still need to think hard about what the hell these guyus say when they talk to me. They speak english, but still I don't understand a word they say most of the time. Guess Airbsu made me too straight forward. Anyway, I'm changing projects monday. Gonna do some work on 787 (been working on Gulfstream for the passed year), of which everyone says I'll never get out of, but I made a deal with my manager that this would be just to fill the next week or two. I'm supposed to do some work on another project (of which I cannot get into details just yet), but that new project takes my fancy big time, especially as it may open up some doors for me...

I'm also thinking about selling my Celica. Again? yes, no, yes, no, I know, yes, no... I mean, you know. I want something else as toy. The bird's been doing fine, but I was thinking going yankee style: hot rod! Well, though I could get a ford anglia or pop, I wa sthinking going more affordable: Beetle! Yes, there are beetle hot rods. Roof chops, lowerings, big bad rears, the lot. Seems quite popular. How about power? Well, replace the standard 1300 engine for a 2500 engine and we're in business! 200 whopping horsies under the hood, or in the case of a beetle, under the trunk! My welding skills are pretty non existend though so I might go convertible on that one.
For those who don't know hot rods, have a look at this:

and this:

Yep, quite radical.

Dad's coming next week to give me gifts heheh. Mostly will be life stock from the good 'ol N of L (=NL=Netherlands=Holland for those brain farts out there that can barely read...)

Well, Swine flu is supposed to have hit the 50k people in the UK. Guess I'll be safe though, because unlike my brother I'm not a pig. I've been accused of being a big fat cat though, and a silly rabbit. And even crazy dutchman! Since those don't fall under the term "human" or K-pork, I guess I should be safe. ANyway, with my blood consisting of Indonesian curry, alcohol, and other non-organic crap, I have no fear of infection.

Read a book recently (actually I always read books). This one a friend from work lend me: Chicken run. An autobiography kind of book from a vietnam vet, chopper pilot. Good book, can recommend it. I was gonna make a point with this and I forgot
Oh, I remember! It contained a quote from some yank who's name I forgot. the quote was taken from Time magazine in '66 and in basic terms the guy said that America does not intend, nor plan to police the world now or in the future, ever. Well, guess that's one for the books...
Speaking of Vietnam, that's a place I'd love to visit some time. Like the Top gear guys: buy a 5 quid bike and drive from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi or Halong, but I'd do the 1000 mile trip actually by bike rather than by train like those whimps from top queer.
Speaking of hols, I'm going to Taiwan again, finally. Has been a while so am looking forward to that plenty much!

Another thing related to that is camera stuff! I need a new lens. Want a short zoom range thingy. Got stupid and changed my 17-40 for a macro. Stu-pid! Now I don't have a wide angle. Asked some forums. One only gave responses "buy 24-105" which is a grand in GBP! So I went to another forum, and after explaining I do NOT want to hear "24-105" (In fact I specifically said I will NOT buy that lens, I have not got that money and do not want to even hear a hint towards that lens), guess what one brainfart said "forget anything else, you got a 5D so buy the 24-105". That idiot must be nuked. The fucker is such an illiterate moron, in fact I wonder why I still speak if him. he must die most horrid.
Some people actually answered my question though. They suggested 24-85 for that extra wide angle and to have a small light lens. Another option is the Tamron 28-75. Bit tight on the range, but optically superiour to that 24-85. Also heard about 28-105 which is similar to the 24-85, bt I heard optically its poor, so that must mean the 24-85 isn't brilliant either. Then I heard the 28-135 IS is also an option and should be better than the 24-85. Is it better than the 28-75 though?

Jump topic just a little. Wnat to share another pic with u lot:

Its a pic of one of the most picc'ed places in Bath: Bridge street. I gues sthe name says it all...

I'll leave it with that for now. Time to sleep of the ethanol I absorbed earlier.
Nite!!

Black day on Dutch Queen's day

2009-04-30T18:51:00.003+01:00

Today was a black day for Holland.
Normally the 30th of April is a day of joy and celebration as we celebrate the coming of age of our beloved Queen.
Today that joyful day came to a bitter end when a 38 year old man drove his car straight through the crowd and fencing in an attempt to ram the bus containing the Dutch Royal family was driving passed.
At the time I am writing this, the casualties comprise 4 dead and 21 wounded, of which 7 critical.

According to news reports the man (native dutch) was supposed to have been fired by the security agency he worked for, something rather unlikely as there is currently a shortage of security personnel in Holland. The man also recently received a letter from his landlord, informing him he would be evicted if he did not pay his rent by the 1st of May. Such letters are usually headed "In name of the Queen".
According to the same news reports, the man was not known with the police so didn't have a criminal record. He was also not intoxicated (stoned, high, drunk), nor did he seem not-sane. So currently people believe the man was well aware what he was doing, and seemed to have done so deliberately.

Personally I am shocked and disgusted by this tragic event! My thoughts go out to the families affected by this horrible day.
In Holland the Royal family is considered a symbol for all that is good, decent, and honourable. They are a true model for society, and generally they are loved by all.
Having killed 4 people deliberately and severely injured many others, the man deserves the most severe penalty in Holland (which is life imprisonment). Furthermore, since this is considered an attack on the Royal house, I hope they find a hidden law remaining from the last world war, that states any person attacking the royal house must be shot, as this man deserves nothing less!

Stuff

2009-03-25T21:11:00.002Z

It has been quite a while since the last time I wrote something here.
My work is keeping me rather busy. Last week was my 1st anniversary with GE. Nothing special of course, but it did give me some things to reflect on.
One of those things is that I'm still not used to the way people communicate where I work now. It seems less straight forward, so regularly I need top have lengthy discussions, and even arguments before we find out that actually we are on the same page. Having been there for a year now, it seems that is still happening.

On the good side, we actually got a bonus this year! That's quite something since I haven't had any form of bonus for 5 years, despite exemplary performance prior to GE. I decided to use it to o somewhere far away again ^_^.
Actually, I also was planning to buy a new lens. Unfortunately car issues prevented me from doing so. My Nissan had a rubbing brake, and the garage established that the piston almost fell out of the caliper! Having damaged the brake disc, this meant replacing discs and pads on the front as well, on top of the brake caliper that needed to be replaced, totaling a bill of 330 GBP (I decided to do an oil change as well while I was at it, but at over 40GBP I won't be doing that again!).
Then I decided to start using my Celica again. Having been too lazy in selling it (and thank god for that because with my luck with cars I need at least one if not more backup cars!!!). In any case, it had been standing still for 5 months or so, so had to jump start it. Then I wanted to do the brakes on that one, but decided to first check the coolant. And as expected the garage in Sneyd park that I used to use, had not replaced the coolant like I asked them at the time! The coolant was rust brown and muddy, so I spend a whole day flushing the whole engine, cooling system, and cabin heat system! Then, after spending 12 hours on the internet trying to find out if Halfords' advanced coolant (red) was compatible with Toyota's 4 life coolant (also red) I managed to restore the cooling system to normal operation. As a side note, the engine never over heated on me (touch wood). Then I followed with an oil change which turned out to be quite necessary!
The weekend after I decided to change the brakes myself. I got some parts from ebay to find that the front pads did not fit. I thought this was a fault of the seller. But not so. turns out the celica can have another set of pads (I;m talking non-GT4 Celicas here, which would otherwise make 3 different sets). So after a trip to halfords, I tried the new pads, and guess what: no fit! So what the hell is going on???
I did some research (again 12 hours minimum behind a crappy pc) and found the right brake pads. They're not celica's though... Turns out my Celica has twin pot calipers like an MR2, and MR2 pads would fit perfectly!
I've ordered new pads on ebay and am waiting for those to come in. Hopefully this weekend I can complete the work on my Celica. Then I get it in for an MOT check before the current one runs out. If it passes without too many issues (Im still expecting 100-200 GBP to get it road worthy, which hopefully I can do myself.).
If it does pass, I will start modding it slightly. Nothing too flashy. A standard Celica spoiler (they're small and subtle), and some light changes internally (again nothing flashy, just brightening things up). And maybe this summer I will have the dent in the back repaired! It does need a grill n front of the radiator. Originally it doesn't have anything there, but I think it is wise to put some aluminium mesh in front of it. It'll look good too!

hold on... I ran out of beer. be right back...

Back...

Last weekend I finally received new print paper. It took a long time to get, as I ordered it at the beginning of January, but last week it finally arrived. The paper is at 330gsm extremely thick, and at 30 meters rather long! Needless to say it does not fit the spindles on my printers. However, a stanley knife can easily cut off A3+ pieces. The paper is very bright and glossy and seems to partner very well with my Lyson Daylight Darkroom ink set. I printed out this picture of a bald head eagle (which I took in Holland last x-mas). And wow! simply stunning! the print I have in a warm tint, and is slightly darker than the pic you see here, but boy, am I blown away! You know, sometimes I'm even amazing myself!

Hopefully soon I can make some time to post more of my images of last winter...

Something sad now. Today I received an email from one of my respected ex-colleagues Martin, from Airbus. he was so kind to inform me of something very sad. One of our mutual colleagues, Leigh, has passed away over the weekend. Apparently Leigh had a severe asthma attack from which he did not recover. Leigh has been a great colleague. Always eager to help, and a social friend. He also tried to help me get a position with Airbus China in Tianjin. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and I wish them lots of strength in these tough times. Rest easy my friend.

Your details are on the internet...

2008-11-09T21:54:00.002Z

Dear all,

It's unbelievable, after all those events where governmental departments and banks are loosing more and more private details, you would imagine they get it right for once, wouldn't you?
No...
No such luck.
Recently someone somehow managed to get hold of passport details of just about everyone on the planet! Yeah, everyone. Didn't believe it myself, until I checked it out personally.

This website provides details of just about everyone on the planet.
Try if your details are on the website too. I found mine!
I have already notified the owner of the website and informed him this is a breach of my privacy, and if he doesn't remove my details within 24hrs, he will have to defend himself in court.
I'm truly furious!

Hacked

2008-10-25T11:44:00.001+01:00

Recently I found my number 1 favourite website Sushicam got hacked.
I've been following Sushicam for many many years and always enjoyed the posts. This last hack wiped out over 2 years worth of posts. Some of it can still be salvaged, but like most things that get destroyed, it will never be like it was. Jeff is going through the hard process of rescuing the lost data. At least he still has all the photos he took (obviously they are not stored only on the website).
I never understood such behaviour. WHat use is it to hack into someone's website and totally destroying it? I don't get it... If it was to gain money or wealth, at least it is understandable (though I would still find it unacceptable), but just breaking things that are not yours, purely because you can, that just doesn't make any sense at all! It's pure vandalism, and there is nothing for anyone to gain from it.
It's a real shame that people have grabbed the internet to continue their pathetic criminal activities. Unfortunately several countries in the EU (and maybe outside the EU as well), now want to invest in internet connections in Africa as well. They think that internet is a primary need! Don't they realise that a large portion of internet crime originates from that very continent? ow more stupid can you get? What happened to food and water? what happened to schooling and education? Don't they need that more? Why spend my money on something that is a luxury? Why spend money so that even more criminals can hack into websites to destroy them, or steal from you???

No mr prime minister, you can NOT have my tax money to invest in internet in a continent where it will support criminal activities.
Considering that I have been victim of fraud on average twice per year for the last 3-4 years, I think a better investment would be to take that money and invest it in police, and health care in our own country.

Rude behaviour

2008-10-20T13:45:00.003+01:00

Recently I read an article in the electronic news paper from Radio Nieuws Wereldomroep, a Dutch news service meant for those abroad.

The article was talking about shame for fellow Dutch people abroad. The person who wrote the article was talking about how she saw dozens of Dutch families returning from their holiday in France, visiting a restaurant where they cut queues, leave their children running around screaming and demolishing the place without correcting them on their behaviour, and how those people produce more decibels wherever they are, without any consideration for other people in their vicinity.

It's an interesting article, because I can kind of relate to the story. However, the story seems to limit itself to behaviour of Dutch people abroad, specifically tourists. And quite frankly, it seems that all foreigners abroad behave rudely on holiday. We all have seen the shows on the English tourists, but the Dutch and Germans are just as bad when it comes to holidays.

In the story the writer seems to indicate that expats generally adapt themselves to their environment. Although I am an expat myself, and have been living in the UK for over 8 years to date, I am not so sure if I consider myself "adapted". The Brits still can get on my nerves from time to time, and I still swear quite badly on occasion. But when I return home to visit my friends and family, I find how rude Dutch people can actually be.

I admit that I surely have adopted some "proper old-English decency" over the years, but most of the differences between how I behave now compared to when I first came to England, I'd like to write down to "growing up".

As such, I would have to say that from my personal point of view, the Dutch in Holland have regressed in their decency. Where, from my point of view, the Dutch used to be just direct and blunt, they now appear rude, intolerant and disrespectful! People no longer walk to each other to ask a question, instead the question has to be shouted from the rooftops! Why is this necessary? Is it really necessary for the rest of the world to know what person A wants to ask person B? My parents raised me to walk up to the person and ask, in an acceptable level of decibels person B my questions. If people are now just too lazy to walk up to the other, why not just pick up your flashy mobile phone and call your counterpart at the other side of the room to ask your question? That way at least I will not be bothered!

Another point is interruptions. Whenever I am having a conversation with someone, it being on the phone or in person, I expect people not to interrupt me or the other person. What's more, is that I expect that the other person does not interrupt his/her conversation to have a discussion with someone else! My brother can be quite bad with this.

Similarly I do not appreciate it when I am in the middle of a story, and the other person interrupts me and starts telling his/her own story. This has happened at work as well, and I am pretty hard on those who do so. Again, this is something I was taught by my parents and I will definitely teach my kids the same!

Another thing I do not appreciate is starting off any response with a very loud mouth when the person feels indignant about what I say or do. As if the number of produced decibels is a measure of success in winning the argument! To give you an example: once I was at home, MY home, standing over the toilet, emptying my bladder, when my brother barged into the bathroom shouting on the top of his lungs "You are disgusting! You should sit down when you pee!!!". We are talking 105 dB here! So I tell him very strictly that he should not act so indignant, and moreover, it is my F-ing house and I do what I want in my own home!!! Now what did he do wrong here? He should have come to me afterwards and suggest that sitting down on the toilet would be a better way of peeing for those and those reasons. Then I would say, fair enough, I will consider that. Now his argument is out of the window because he did not respect the fact it was my own home, and of course, he used decibels to win the argument rather than logical reasoning. Remember David and Goliath? Same thing…

However, I notice it everywhere now. People prefer to communicate in decibels and try to dominate a conversation. People shout, swear and horn in when driving. A few years ago, people even had the rudeness not to let anyone step out of the train, and rushed inside to get a seat! Well, think again idiots! If the passengers leaving don't get a chance to get out, you don't get to have a seat!

By all means, I'm not claiming to be a saint. Far from it! I still have my own quirks and still can spit out some rude language, mostly in traffic. And readers of my blog will undoubtedly know I can react rather indignant, if not outraged with particular situations.

But I think that when the Dutch population can actually learn some decent behaviour from ME, I think it is time to get worried…

Something totally different now:
An interesting discovery has been made recently in the Indian ocean. It appears that an Arabic shipwreck has been found on the bottom of the sea, containing the most valuable marine "treasure" ever. In fact, the quotation marks can be removed because the treasure actually contains many thousands of gold and silver coins, priceless Chinese ceramics and jade artefacts, etc etc.

This article form the BBC gives some more insights in the discovery. As you can see form the pics, the finds are rather astonishing. They also prove that there was trade between the Chinese Tang dynasty, and the middle east way before people originally thought.

Creative

2008-09-12T22:03:00.005+01:00

As you will all see now, I have updated my website slightly It's far from perfect, but it will do for now.
At some point I hope I can have the header image rotate through other images. That would be cool.
Content and layout stayed pretty much the same. Until I find some really flashy gadgets to have 3D animations for cycling through links etc, i think this will be just fine.

More creative news: I am in the process of making a photo book of some of my images. Sounds difficult? Well, actually it's not.
There are many online providers that allow you to download a software package for generating your personal photo book.
Some providers are better than others. At the moment I am working on a book using Blurb . The package is actually very extensive, and I suspect quality is good from what I saw online. Price isn't bad at all, but varies depending on what you want.
However, I will use Blurb purely for proof printing. Because I found another provider called Asuka . These guys are real pro's! They allow you to work in either sRGB or Adobe RGB. They work very simple, as they give you a basic template for Photoshop, and that's it. Creativity is up to you. This also has a drawback, e.g. when you don't HAVE creativity... In this case, Blurb is a better option because the amount of templates is quite staggering. There is some flexibility for creativity in Blurb if you want to use your own templates, but it involves tricking the software package. Very simple and low risk, but maybe not the neatest solution...
Once I finished my Blurb book to satisfaction, I will create one using Asuka. Now Asuka is actually for professionals. They expect you to work as a professional photographer and ask for proof. Well, i don't have any, but I managed to convince them I am, so they allowed me to register (yep, only "pro's" can register successful with these guys). However, I have to say, from their services so far, I am well impressed! After successful registration, I got discount vouchers for my first books. Now, you should know that you will be needing these vouchers as their prices are rather steep, and I mean, inflation stimulating steep! After 50% discount, a 40 page book will still cost as much as 45-50 GBP depending on the finishing. Now the finishing is amazing. Pages can be laminated or varnished. Although the laminated pages look impressive, they also feel a bit tacky. It's like the laminate provides protection in case your book is sexually arousing if you know what I mean...

Anyway, it will be a slow process at the moment, and I will keep you posted on progress...

Old friends reunited

2008-08-18T12:49:00.000+01:00

This post is a little late, but better late than never I say (just don't say that when it involves your mrs…).
Last July I decided to celebrate my birthday in Holland for a change. I wrote to just about every person I knew in NL, inviting them to join us. XY knew a decent place, Strand aan de Maas (SadM). It's a temporary beach resort of some sort. Quite nice actually. The weather gods were in my favour that weekend, and the rain managed to stay away until I left for england again. I also wanted to invite my brother and his gf, but they were doing a 1-month hike through scotland.
It turned out that all of R'dam was celebrating my b'day (some 500.000+ people), because the city was packed with festivities and music. There were even trucks driving around in a parade, with too volumpuous and too scarcely dressed women (and men…). Turned out that summer carnaval was on at the same time I had my b'day.
The first one that arrived, was Ferry. Ferry and I go way back, from when I was 13 years old (21 holymoly years ago!!!). We hadn't seen each other ever since I left for England. So that was about 8 years now. Ferry got married in the mean time. Since his wife had left for a weekend in some sort of spa, he decided to misbehave, and what better than to attend my b'day, eh?
Next was Marcel. Mars is a good friend from Haarlem. A very loyal guy. He's visited me in the UK twice now, but he hasn't seen my house yet. He better hurry, because soon I will be selling my house! (yes Mars, that's a hint!)
Next was Rohin. Rohin is an Indian guy, whom Ferry and I shared classes with. He hadn't changed a bit! It was a long time since we last met. Probably the last time was when we finished school, so that must have been about 14 years or so now!
After that, Lucas showed up. Luc and I know each other from Airbus. We started at the same time. Luc went back last year, and now bought a house in Haarlem. He know has to face the same misery I have for the past 2 years…
Finally, Mireille shows up. Ferry and I shared classes with her too, that was back in the HAVO, so last time I saw her was, what? 18 years ago??? She's become somewhat of a biker mouse now.
The last one to show up was Donny. He was late because he had a prior engagement that evening. Taz had to work, so she didn't come along. Donny and I last saw each other in May, so not too long ago.
Some people had their misunderstandings over the past year or so, but those were worked out and attributed to miscommunications, so friends are and remain friends!

We decided to have a meal at SadM as well. This wasn't as easy as cake as it turned out. We couldn't have food at the beach part of the terrace, so we went inside and sat down at some tables, only to be told that they didn't serve food inside either. So we went outside again. Turns out they only serve food in the covered part of the terrace. So we sat down and realised they gave us only 2 menus for 8 people. So we robbed 6 tables from their menus and had a good look. When we got to ordering, we were informed that with every order we had to pay immediately. Well, that pretty much deprived them from their chance of a tip…
The food came quickly though, and it was good! It was nice to eat a typical dutch pub meal: chicken satay with chips! Hehehe…
After having dined, we sat out on the beach again, and enjoyed a few more drinks.

Then we got the idea to go to a bar/dancing, a rather push place near de Meent. Ofcourse like typical fascist Holland, the girls all got in without any problems, regardless of what they were, or were not, wearing… But when I got to get in, I was grabbed roughly, and then nearly beat up and thrown into the canals for not wearing "appropriate clothing". Well, that really pissed me off, and after providing the bouncers with some rather exotic terms, I nearly decided to just go home. Luckily my friends persuaded to not let this ruin my evening. We decided to go to Plan-C in De Oude Haven instead. Always good. Weather was still good, so after playing a dog with a too small bladder finding a nice tree called (help me out guys, I forgot the name of that place we didn't get in. I'd liove to advertise for them!) off we went, only 5 minutes walk more.
Nearing Plan-C, their employees were handing out free drink vouchers. So we sat down on the terrace and ordered our free drinks, only to hear the waiter say that the vouchers are only for inside (which ofcourse demands an entrance fee). Since this was not written anywhere on the vouchers, nor were we informed verbally, I was rather assertive and informed the water kindly though no-noncense style that legally he had to provide us with our free drinks. Unfortunately his manager said we could get our free drinks, and drink them outside, but we still had to collect them inside (still: entrance fee). SO no good. We decided to just pay for our free drinks.
As you can see: nothing is ever for free…
Anyway, we wholeheartedly enjoyed our drinks.
Ferry even made me laugh that all the beer squirted out of my nose and ears! I haven't laughed that well in decades! I guess it was all the stress and tensions of recent months/years releasing themselves. I laughed so hard I cried! Oh joy! At least I am glad that this is how I release my stress (unlike others who use a brick and a window, or plant steel bars in heads…)

All in all it was a brilliant time, and we promised not to wait this long until next time we meet.
I am glad I still have such loyal friends, and I feel truly blessed by being their friend.

G8 Vomit

2008-07-15T22:14:00.000+01:00

Yesterday started the G8 summit in Japan, where the world leaders come together with their private business jets, driving limousines through the centre of Hokkaido during rush hours, to discuss global warming, fuel prices and reduction of the carbon footprint, where they kick-start the meeting over a 6 course lunch. They will also discuss the world food crisis, food wastage and hunger in Africa over an 18 course dinner.

By the way, for those who didn't know, Bush's private jet is Airfarce 1, which is a full sized 747-100 (no, not the more efficient -400 version), but Gordon surpasses him by flying a fully restored Vulcan nuclear interceptor!

In the mean time, governments worry about obesity under house pets. So better stop feeding your goldfish so much food!

In the mean time, the Dutch government raises taxes and increases financial pressure on the population under the motivation of relieving the lower incomes. Also, they decided to abandon support for single women with children under the age of 5, in an attempt to get those single mothers to go back to school or get a job. Maybe they think that as a result those single mothers will abandon their babies at donor institutes, so these medical facilities don't need to clone embryos for spare parts for people that get lung cancer from smoking, or loose a liver due to excessive drinking.

It all makes sense...

Disgrace

2008-04-17T21:50:00.002+01:00

We have all seen the news, and the stories on the olympic torch.
I'd like to just say I totally disagree with these actions!!! It's disgraceful and tasteless!
Although I am interested in China and it's culture, I do disagree with their politics from time to time. So too with the Tibet and Taiwan issues.
However, this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7347821.stm
shows us how bad things have become.
The article tells how a DISABLED WOMAN carrying the torch for the paralympics, got beat up by a pro-Tibet protester!!!
It is one thing to protest against China's actions in Tibet, but the attack on the most important sporting event in the world is just outrageous!
People actually try to steal the olympic torch from decent honest athletes! In this particular article a disabled woman was hit by one of those disgusting creatures. How can you talk about oppression, when you yourself attack a disabled woman!
Be ashamed! Be very, very ashamed!

Let everyone know that I cannot support any pro-tibetan protesters any longer until they have PROPERLY apologized and atoned for their despicable behavior!
Also, I think the guy who hit the woman in this article, should be hang on the highest tree, split into fours, beheaded and burned in a pile of poo!

Let the olympics be held, let it be a joyous occasion, and let us all come together as good and fair sportsmen. This is what the olympics is about: uniting people form all corners of the world, with all kinds of religions and cultures. This one event binds us all together. Lets not destroy this last bit of common good we have left in this world...

As if this is not enough, British police is clearly not up to speed with the law.
In the UK it is the law that the police is not allowed to take any action in ANY shape or form against people filming or photographing in public. Increasing numbers of amateur photographers and professionals alike are being threatened, searched, and even robbed of their equipment by police, because of "suspicious behaviour" (read: making a photograph with an SLR type camera). Although their suspicion is understandable with the current threats of terrorists and pedophiles, there is still something called "the law" and the police is supposed to UPHOLD the law,not BREAK it.

More in this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7351252.stm

A new beginning

2008-03-21T18:48:00.002Z

Last week was my first week at GE.
I started off by arriving too early! I arrived at 8, normal starting time,or so I thought... Turns out all starters normally begin at 10! This was actually in the letter, so I felt a little silly...
The lady from HR who picked me up was dutch, like me. Though she has been in England a little longer than I have I suspect. She had a little difficulties speaking dutch, just like I have. Nothing major, but enough for us to switch to english when it came to going through the official stuff...
Later my, I believe resource manager, picked me up. Friendly chap. He also interviewed me at the time. He introduced me to the team I am working with now. The first person I met was James. James and I know eachother from a long time ago when I was still working on extension retraction for the A380. So it was nice to see a familiar face. Later on I spotted Nick, who also used to work for Airbus (IMA team).
All my new teammembers are all very nice and helpful. A real social bunch of chaps! I feel quite welcome with these guys! They are all very relaxet, social and they apply rules quite flexible, which I appreciate!

Ofcourse the first day there were some issues with getting a PC, and email, but next morning I was able to email again! Having said that, they use the latest version of outlook, and I have not yet been able to get my old address book imported. I may have to start emailing myself contact cards from home... Manually is not an option, because as always with Microscum, the printout of my address book, only shows the alias of the person, rather than the actual email address, so all my Airbus addresses are useless!!!

The week was also a bit rocky, because my "reliable" toyota, is in the garage. 2 weeks now!!!! They can't find the parts easily because it is an import... So that car is out the door once it is done...
Anyway, as a result I was forced to borrow Chris' Cinquecento, and drive Berit to and from work every day. Bless them!!!

I'm alreay looking for something better. I hope I can afford something in the 2500 GBP class. I was considering quite a range of different cars; Mercedes A-class, Nissan Almera, Peugeot 406, maybe Passat again, Audi A3, VW Bora. But no more japs! (other than the Nissan perhaps). These cars are all quite different from what I previously was looking for (a sports car), but then again, now I am commuting quite a bit, so sensibility asks for a 1.0 l diesel... hehehe. Ok, no speed or acceleration, but will do 100000000000000000000000000000 miles to the gallon!!!

Elvis has left the building!

2008-03-14T19:32:00.002Z

D-day has arrived.
Today was my last day working for Airbus.
The past week was very hectic. I was working my ass off to sort out the last bits of work, and prepare data for hand over.
Then on tuesday afternoon, I was told I had to go to Toulouse to do some testing with the supplier.
So I was struggling sorting out my trip. Actually it was quite a horrible day when I went over. As always I had to get up before 5 to get the flight to TLS, then I was waiting for the supplier to arrive. He didn't listen to my instructions and was at the wrong gate after getting lost. It took quite a while and lots of misunderstandings before we found each other. Anyway, we could finally do some testing. We tested on 2 aircraft, but the schedule was soo busy, that we hardly had time for lunch, and didn't even have dinner! Both "meals" comprised a sandwich from the wall, stuffed down our throats in 5 minutes time.
All in all it took until midnight to perform all the testing we needed to do.
Luckily I was able to fly back on the Corvette. The corvette is a small business plane with about 8 seats. It flies from TLS to Bristol in the morning. Since I wanted to be back in Filton in the morning because of the shit load of work I still had to do, I was very happy I managed to get a spot on the Corvette. It turns out that usually it is only for executives, and Airbus UK people usually don't get to fly it.

Today was hectic as well. I had soo much to finish off and hand over, and all these people kept walking bye to say hi and goodbye etc (well, they had to have an excuse to get some cakes that I brought in, heheh...).
Of course there was the traditional goodbye speech, card, etc.
Its funny, it's like it hasn't sunk into me yet. I'm looking forward to starting my new job, But I am also sad to leave Airbus.
It's been my home for 7,5 years, and I will miss all my colleagues a lot:
The crazy talks with Mark G, always reminding me of "german helmets".
The adventures Andy and I have had in Belgium and in Toulouse: Going to obscure dodgy clubs in Brussels, chasing phantom turtlers in hotels, observing Messier's finest climbing onto landing gears in rather arousing positions...
The conversations I had with Mark B over a cup of coffee,
The chats with Martin H about cars and DIY (He mentored me in my first year at Airbus)
And all the others of course.

I will miss that place, and all its people. I wish them all the best, and I hope we will meet again!

Go-Large please...

2008-02-12T22:31:00.000Z

Last week I decided I wanted a professional Large Format printer. Having looked at Ebay, the cheap contender would be the Epson Pro 4000. Any other options would be too nw and therefore unaffordable. An advantage (yes, I call it an advantage, because I can clean it and others cannot, so I can drop the price and get a bargain!), is that some amateurs don't use the printer often enough, with the resukt that the print hads get clogged. Heads won't get clogged as quickly when you constantly use this particular printer, but if it sits still for a while, the heads get blogged up pretty good. The printer is basically the bigger brother of the Epson 2100. However, it is comparing a dingy with a mammoth tanker!
Anyway, i found one on the internet, with all its flaws described. Seeing that others were going for over 400, an dthis just started at 1 GBP, but had the blogged heads in the description, I decided to put in an offer and the guy accepted.
Problem; The guy lives in London. Well, only 2 hours drive from Bristol, right? Wrng! The guy lives just north of Canary Warf, so an extra hour through the city!
Still doable. However, the guy works hard and therefore late. So in teh end I ended up there around 23:00! I had to borrow a friend's satnav (don't bother going to london without unless you know the way at heart!). I called my friend to tell her I would be back very late (or early) so I would drop the satnav off in the morning. In the end I was back home at 3 am in the morning. My friend panicked as she needed the satnav for her relocation to Ipswich. I promised to have it back in time, so after a few hours sleep I get up, and go to her house... She wasn't there... So I call her, and she says she is waking up. So I ask her where the hell her car is, and she says taht she is with her boyfriend. Apparently she stayed the night there. Interestingly, she didn't have a boyfriend!!! Well, now she does apparently... I was a little pissed off because she made me come over and it seemed all for nothing. The whole thing (lack of sleep) left me with a splitting headache. As it turned out, she came back at 8 and she left at around 8.30, so not totally wasted...

Back to the printer... I was looking for cleaning fluid to clean the heads; isopropyl alcohol... Used for cleaning electronics amongst others. This stuff is very strong but also very neutral. It seems to be chemically neutral, meaning it won't affect paint too much, and certainly not electronics. Ideal for cleaning printer heads. Apparently you are supposed to be able to get it at any chemist... Except that you can't! Chemists just don't seem to have the stuff at all! Screwed!! until I found a flask of lens cleaner. I was thinking lens cleaner-printer cleaner-lens cleaner- printer cleaner... Lenses have coatings... coatings are sensitive... so any lens cleaners have to be neutral as hell... So should do the trick... After that murmering of the mind I spotted the back; "caution: contains isopropyl alcohol!"... Well... need I say more...? So I went to Jessops and bought all their lens cleaning fluid (2 flasks... so not that much...)

Anyways, I'll be cleaning my printer soon and afterwards I will try some 17" high panoramas!!!

Illni and viri

2008-01-08T18:00:00.000Z

What does that mean? Well, illni is plural for illness, and same for viri (coming from virus).
It seems tobe a world wide epidemic. Maybe another terrorist attack from Al-Qaeda; Give people the flu or teh common cold! Maybe they will cough themselves to death!!!
Starnge though. They tried anthrax withhout success... Well, i guess common cold does work, but doubt many people will die because of it...
Anyway. I too have been struck by teh common cold. I don't think I mentioned it in my previous post, but a few days before x-mas, I managed to get knocked of my socket by the common cold. Took until after new years eve to recover (I'm still coughing). So, I couldn't go home, was ill, and had no friends in a 500 mile radius to help me out!!!
Well, THAT year is now over. New year, new chances.
Its funny though that this time everyone is hit so hard by the common cold and flu. Just about every colleague and friend had it or is in the process of having it. It's also interesting that it going abroad as well!
At least I can say I spend the whole x-mas holiday horizontal, hot and sweaty! Unfortunately not in the right way...!!!

End of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

2007-12-31T17:27:00.000Z

2007 has only got a few hours of life left in it. Some of my friends reflected on their year, and some of them seemed to have had a very good year. I wish I could say the same. Unfortunately 2007 has not exactly been my favorite year. It had its moments, but not many.

Good things:
* A380 into service! Definite positive milestone. It has been a challenging project, and I am glad I was able to do my share to this behemoth of a project. No doubt many will remember the occasion for a long time to come.
* New car. Sounds strange but it has been the most reliable car I have had here in england. Ofcourse it is japanese. Its fast, its furious, and strangely, it's also the oldest of all cars I have had so far! hahaha!!! I guess they just don't make cars like they used to, heheh.
* Re-acquainted myself with some friends long lost, back in Holland.
* My dad's retirement. The man deserves it!

Bad things:
* Lost some friends. Always sad.
* The prospect of having to sell my house.
* Constant DIY
* On the last week of 2007 I managed to get the first cold I had in a decade! And with a vengeance!!!!
* ... >>censored for legal reasons<<
* ... >>censored for legal reasons<<
* ... >>censored for legal reasons<<
* ... >>censored for legal reasons<<
* ... >>censored for legal reasons<<

Most, if not all the bad things are all stress related. Stress that affects me personally (so not "high work loads" or "challenging deadlines". Those don't cause me stress, they just make me work harder...)
Well, in a few hours time the record will be wiped clean, and at least half, if not all of the bad things of 2007 will be solved in 2008. I have no doubts about that!
2007 may have been a very bad year for Tigers (I'm not the only tiger who had a bad 2007), but 2008 has got a very promising view! And I think all Tigers can expect a very prosperous 2008.

In any case, 2007 is now done and dusted. After midnight I will sleep soundly with the thought that 2008 has begun, and new chances await me!

Finally, I'd like to wish all my friends and family, and colleagues all the best for the new year!

Black 'n white mayhem

2007-12-28T17:51:00.000Z

Another update...
Seems like my updates always come in groups rather than one every week or every two weeks or so.
This time I have included some B&W pics. 2 are of my idiot brother, the rest is pretty much travel related.
Since I make my photos in RAW, it gives me more control over the conversion process. Sometimes I do set the camera to B&W, but if you only take RAW, this is pretty much useless, as the RAW image will take literally the RAW data from the camera, uncompressed and unprocessed. This means that when you upload the image to your PC, all the settings you used, will have been discarded. A little annoying, which is why I prefer to make JPEGs with the RAW. Especially since I prefer a minimum amount of post processing, this method gives me the option of choosing an unprocessed JPEG or a RAW that I then process in Photoshop.
Anyway, enjoy these new entries...

progress...

2007-12-26T12:29:00.000Z

Well, actually it was earlier this month that I made the progress.
I worked hard on my house and downstairs is finally getting close to being finished!
Below are some pics of what it now looks like... What an improvement compaired to what it was before!!! There is actually harmony in there!

I have to say, I made some small additions since these photos were taken. I added 2 cupboards in the dining room. I still need to do some doors for the cupboards, and I also need to do teh skirting boards, but that shouldn't take more than a few days.

However, it will have to wait because I managed to get my first cold in 7 years!!! Boy, I forgot how much I hated having a cold...

High speed chase

2007-10-23T20:21:00.000+01:00

Tonight I was caught in a high speed chase, and I lived to tell the tale!!!

I was driving home on the M5 after having done some last minute shopping after work, when suddenly I was taken over by an old Ford Escort. For a fraction of a second I was thinking :boy, he's anxious to get home", when a second later there were 6 police cars in high pursuit chasing this guy! Then 30 seconds another 3 or 4 police cars followed. Interesting was the mix of cars the police used. It wasn't just the blue/yellow marked cars, but also quite a few civilian cars with sirens and lights.
From their pursuit pattern you could see they were preparing for a standard box-block. And that is also how they caught him. As it happens they caught him next to the exit I usually use to get off the motor way.
I don't understand these guys (speeders). I know they have something going on otherwise they wouldn't run from the police, but seriously, you don't enter th emotor way! It's a free ticket go to jail! Entering the motor way will make it so easy for the police to grab you. They can call in a helicopter to track the offender, and they can easily block off the motor way. Th epolice usually tries to captur ethe speeder very safely. What they do is, they try to get one car behind the offender, one car in front and one car (or two, depending where on which lane the guy is). They drive really close so the guy has no exit, and then they slow to a stop. Works like a charm. Getting someone in front is the difficult part though...

Something completely different (though in some twisted way remotely related to idiots, like most subjects, heheh), I read an article about women in Holland. Apparently women in Holland are not very ambitious, but they are very satisfied about their life, unlike other European countries. On average women in Holland give a 7.8 (out of 10) to their life, but on average only 37% thinks a career is important. The survey was done by 2 women's magazines. One is for house wifes, the other for feminists. And ofcourse the numbers vary between the two magazins. The chief editor of the feminist magazin said in an interview that she considers such women "brain farts"! She was actually slacking off her own readers!!!!! How dumb is that??
Interesting is that teh dutch government seems to have its mind set on equalising th eposition of the woman compared to the man in business life and career wise. Strange that they didn't realise that only 37% of the women actually cares about such plans. So Feminist editors don't care about their own readers, and the government doesn't know what their people want (which is actually pretty much standard for any modern government...)

Space, the final frontier....

2007-10-02T21:09:00.000+01:00

A mate of mine pointed me to these photos. Needles to say (for those who know me) they are not mine, so all credits go to the original photographer (That's NASA I guess...). However, I found them rather beautifull, and thought I should share them with the world...

Belgium for sale on eBay

2007-09-21T17:01:00.000+01:00

On auction site Ebay Belgium has been for sale for a while. Ex journalist Gerrit Six is responsible for the joke. He offered his country for sale, with the notification that the item concerned a kingdom in 3 parts. In addition tthe sellerr stated that Belgium could also be bought as a whole, but that this was not recommended, and that the product was accompanied with a state debt of 300 billion dollars!
Six opened the auction with a bid of 1 euro, but very quickly itt turned out bidders considered belgium more valuable. After a bid of 10 million euros the administration of eBay decided that the jjoke had taken long enough and put an end to the auction.

Old car new car

2007-09-01T08:54:00.000+01:00

I sold my Passat...
I was a bit sad to get rid of it as I put blood, sweat and tears in that car. But on teh other hand, it was giving me problems on a regular basis.
I now decided to buy something that was classified as very reliable.
I have been looking around for:
Nissans: Primera, very reliable, very dull...
Mazda 323: interesting car, very reliable, nice shape, but most of them are horribly light green metallic! And most of them have fairly small engines (or too big...)
Honda Prelude: Old coupe, very sporty, not too powerfull though if you get a 2.0i, but the bigger engines are often used as boy racers.

My first viewing was on thursday. I went to a small village south of Bath to look at a Honda Prelude. It had been taken off the road so no tax, but it had a full year MOT, and full service history.
Then I found out that the owner had bene driving it for less than 10 miles in 2 years time. Literally just to go to the garage to get it services, with the last service nearly a year ago. It had been standing outside, so it had a bit of rust. Actually, it was pretty stupid of the previous owner to not drive it. Now all the seals have dried and rotten away. A car needs to be used to stay lubricated. Standing still for 2 years has pretty much killed it.

The second viewing I had was of another Prelude, near Portishead. It was a bit older, but in perfect condition! Paintwork perfect, interior a bit old and slightly worn, but the car is 12 years old! Mechanically it looked and sounded good. Service history log is complete, but it seemed like a copy. Price is very good though!
Chris wants to look it over first though.

The third one I looked at was a mazda 323 2.0 V6. That was quite an interesting trip! I drove to Stroud, but on the motorway, when I wanted to take the exit to Stroud, the police just blocked it, and I saw a car being consumed in a sea of fire! I was about 50m away when I drove past it, but I could still feel the heat inside the car! There were a few younger guys (and girls) sitting nearby, one of them crying: obviously the driver upset about loosing the car. Strangely there didn't seemed to have been an accident. It was a Fort Ka, but there was no sign of another car being involved. Maybe the engine blew or something...
When I got to Stroud I couldn't find the place where I was supposed to meet the owner of the Mazda. He had to find me at some point!
The car was fair. Maintenance had been done by "a mate" and the guy had zero receipts. The car itself was in an ok state cosmetically. Outside was as to be expected for a 10 year old car used daily. The inside was absolutely perfect. However, technically there were quite a few issues. Airco had to be recharged, there was a rather large oil leak due to a head gasket not being replaced properly. The engine sounded rough, and the drive itself was no more than OK.

I decided I wanted to go for the Prelude, and I already told the guy. But Chris wants to look it over first before a definite "yes". the guy might be a bit upset about that, though I hope not. He should be fine if I do buy it though. If Chris advices me not to buy, then the guy could get dangerous I fear...

Lets wait and see...

Asta la Vista baby!

2007-08-27T12:18:00.000+01:00

Quite literally I can say! A few months ago I got a new PC with Windows Vista.
It occasionally crashed with a blue screen of death, but not too often. Just bugs as with all new products.
Until at some point I started getting the message "graphics driver stopped responding and recovered successfully". The message appeared more and more frequent, until I got to the point I had to start up my PC in safe mode, otherwise it wouldn't start. After some searching on the internet, it turns out this is a major problem that affects both NVIDIA users and ATI users alike! Not only that, it is a problem since the beginning of VIsta!! Some people claim it's a hardware problem, some it's a software issue. Some people said they fixed the problem by returning their graphics card, which was found to be faulty. New driver versions don't seem to solve the issue so far. Other people seemed to find a solution in removing on eof their 2 RAM chips. Yet others found solutions in UNDERclocking their hardware...
Recently my graphics card died I think, because I did a complete reinstall, with Vista, and the problem still occured. Then I installed XP, but it could no longer finish teh installation, and my PC kept restarting.
To ensure it wasn't my motherboard, I tried it on my old PC, and sure enough, it was dead!
So basically Vista killed a perfectly good graphics card!
What I think happens, is that Vista tries to drive graphics cards beyond their specifications, resulting in some sort of overload.
Some people will think that's bollucks, but lets face it: those same people use SOFTWARE to overclock their PC. The fact that some people need to UNDER clock their hardware to get a stable system, seem sto indicate that indeed Vista drives it beyond specs (underclock plus overdrive=normal operating levels roughly...)
So, I'm gonna sell my Vista disk. Interestingly Microsoft plans to stop support for XP soon as well (because of Vista). Well, I think they will see a massive migration of people switching from Microsoft, to Apple and Linux etc...

Good luck Microsoft, lawsuits are forming and you are in for the ride of your life!

As a follow up, I bought a new graphics card from Novatech. I bought a Sapphire 2600XT. The guys at Novatech suggested me to upgrade my PSU to something "branded" so they sold me a Jeantech PSU of 450Watt. Turns out the PSU is only 425 Watt, which is a massive 5 Watts more than my current PSU (420 Watts)! Not only that, I installed it, and after letting my PC run nominally for a while (no gaming, jut switched on...), it decided to overheat and turn off my PC. I doubl checked by reinstalling my own PSU, and it started just fine.
So I'll be returning that PSU to tehm tomorrow, and ask them for a generic "unbranded" 600Watt PSU for half the price of this "branded" PSU...

This reminds me I need to return my LCD as well (aria.co.uk) because it is sometimes starting up with a foggy white screen. I need to turn it off and on again for it to display properly. So it goes back and I want a different one. Maybe I'll try to get a slightly bigger one for slightly more money...

It's worse...

2007-07-31T22:24:00.000+01:00

Yeah, very disappointing... Had my birthday thursday last week... Well, you could have fooled me!
In total there were about 5 people that actually congratulated me on that day, none of which are family!!!!!!!!
Some people had a fair excuse though: My brother was on holiday in Norway and didn't have reception with his phone, and Chris next door had to go to the hospital as his father was taken in (luckily nothing too serious).
Then again, maybe the others also have a good excuse: they don't care...!
Even my dad forgot!!! He called me the next day, and started talking liek it was a normal day. Of course I was grumpy like hell, and he noticed this. I didn't say anything though. Later in teh evening he called again, as he finally realised he forgot something!

Well, I say bullocks to all! Guess there IS only me myself and I on this planet...

planning

2007-07-21T22:06:00.000+01:00

Some good things: The electrician came by, and approved my handywork in the bath room. He was quite impressed he said.
Not so fortunate on the other hand, is that I have bene struck by a light flu. That's teh result of 10-12 hours a day's work, and then DIY when I get home. So unlike my plans, I was unable to do anything significant today, and most likely I won't be able to do anything tomorrow either. That sucks doggy dick!
I hope I can at least prepare the bathroom, so I can start plastering during the week. Then paint by the end of the week, and in the weekend start tiling. Having said that, I do need to order a bath first, and place it, together with the plumbing!
I'm not planning to tile underneith the bath tub!

Well, better get some sleep, so I can actually do something useful tomorrow... Maybe I can sell some more stuff on eBay.

It's time...

2007-06-19T21:47:00.000+01:00

I need a change... Lots is happening and my future is a little uncertain at the moment. I'm praying to absolutely every deity I can think of, and I'm even sacrificing small goats to obtain some positive results.
I'm trying to get to China through the company.
I dearly hope my application will be successful. Lately I have been feeling tired, very tired. Stress at work is eating away at me, the one week holiday was definitely not enough! I need a change
I'm feel stretched thin, like too little butter over too much bread. I need a change.

I discovered "hyves", a dutch community web thingy, that allows you to find old friends long gone, and new ones. Its mostly dutch (although the interface is english ofcourse). I found friends I tried to stay in touch with, but due to lack of recent email addresses have not been able to. That has changed now.
The world around my friends is changing. They are all getting married or already married. SOem are having children. Yet here I am...
I need a change...

revamped face

2007-06-17T12:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I decided to revamp my blog a bit.
I started looking around for templates to use with blogger. I found loads of them, but they weren't all that brilliant. I found one that looked good, so I grabbed it, and hereby thanks to the guys that made it. I tweaked it a lot and it doesn't look that much like the original.
I also will need to adjust the header still. Although I like the pic etc, I don't like the frame around it that much and I need to figure out how I can create my own frame around a box or column or whatever.
Actually I'd like to work more with flash, as I really like what you can do with it. Unfortunately I have two left hands when it comes to programming and related stuff, so not sure if I will able to pull anything off...
Some links in this template I still need to address as they point to things from the original designer. Well, I guess he won't mind for the moment as the site he uses to explain how to use blogs, plus he gets some credits as well, etc.
Another thing is I would like to add some pics to the side of the text, or mix them decently with text. Not sure how to do that yet.

Someone I know uses MS word to edit his website. The guy is into art. He made a few semi abstract paintings, some better than others, and he has made "paintings" using tin cans and bottle caps as well. Very creative! But honestly, his website leaves much to desire. I don't want to tell him what to do though. It's his web site and he should do with it what he wants. Interestingly he says he doesn't like painting or any of that art stuff he is doing. He just does it to obtain the result. Kind of a necessary evil he says...
That reminds me, I still haven't told Donny on what to do with his website. He has a good basic design, but for a pro photographer he really needs to be more selective as to what he puts on his portfolio.

I may post more later. I think today I'll do some photo editing and putting up those pics on flickr.

kitchen is operational!

2006-12-08T23:33:00.000Z

Yes! I can cook!!! Last week the crogi guy came around to istall my gas hob. For those who don't know what corgi is, it is a national organisation that monitors and controls the correct installation of anything related to gas. Considering the risks involved in gas, ENgland wanted to make sure that gas applications are installed by those who are qualified. So if you use a corgi registered engineer, not only are you ensured that all goes by the building regulations, but also will the guy perform to a minimum set standard, which means you get quality for your money.
The guy that installed my gas hob was a nice guy. Seemed to know his stuff and was generally friendly. I can recommend him.
And after less than an hour my gas hob was operational. I installed the oven myself, as well as some cabinets.
This time I managed to upload some pics of the construction of my kitchen...

Original state of the kitchen.

After removing the old tiles, rewiring and plastering.

Finished plastering and painting the kitchen.

The floor is tiled and sockets are fitted.

Erected some cabinets.

Gas hob fitted on the solid oak wood work top, which was oiled with Danish oil.

Done! Oven and hob fitted, cabinets fitted. Kitchen is operational!

Steffen: look at the worktop. Solid oak from Ikea, oiled with Danish oil! What do you mean dark?!? Dark my ass! Listen to your brother!

...and some more DIY...

2006-11-18T22:33:00.000Z

Well, it seems like all I do is work sleep and do DIY...
I've been doing lots of work on my house, and I finally seem some light at the end of the tunnel. Well, for my kitchen anyway.
Monday I need to call a gas engineer to fit piping for gas and connect my gas hob. Tomorrow I will re-fit some electrical sockets and connector boxes in the kitchen, and hopefully I can also fit the work top.
Earlier in the week I bought a solid wooden oak work top from Ikea (really cheap those guys!!!). I have been oiling it, and although I am not quite finished yet, I did manage to get about 3 layers on it so far (on the bottom. two on the top side). one more coat on the bottom tomorrow and then at the end of the day I can install my work top as well (^_^)
once the gas hob is fitted, I can put the oven and the fridge in teh kitchen and it is done!!! Well, except for the extractor fan, but that will come in due time.
So basically, if I get my kitchen operational next weekend (hopefully), I can concentrate on the bedrooms. Luckily they don't need that much work. I need to replace the broken floor boards and after that I need to sand the floor, paint the walls and wax the floor. Laborous but should take much less time than the kitchen. Maybe I can even get the bedrooms ready by x-mas! that would be great because then i can get the living room cleared up and empty, and I can perhaps spend some time in the holidays to restore the fireplace and pt down a new floor. Ideally I can do that before the holiday as well, but lts face it, that is just not realistic.

house plans

2006-10-23T22:20:00.000+01:00

thanks guys...
there is really a lot I need to do on my house and when you look at the total picture it can become pretty depressing! Especially when you start thinking building regulations (and you know some of the house is not up to spec).
Well, basically the extension of the house is not really up to spec, but I cannot change that unless I spend another 10k GBP or so, so for the moment I decided to live with it and just make the best of it. I had to rewire some of the kitchen electrics, and I still need to finish that. Hopefully I can finish that tomorrow, and then finish plastering the wall (finally!!!). Once I finished plastering, I need to go over it again with sanding filler of some sort, so I can smooth the whole wall. After that seal it with some PVA/water mixture, and then I can finally paint it (by then it is weekend). So far I think I spend some 300 GBP on DIY materials alone (so no tools etc). I hope one coat of paint will be enough because the plaster needs to dry for 3 days (making it thursday), then the sealer takes one day (on friday) so saturday painting, and hopefully that is just one coat. On sunday start tiling the floor if things go my way, otherwise a second coat of paint and start tiling on monday evening. Hopefully by the weekend after that (2 weeks from now) I can start placing cabinets in the kitchen. Only base cabinets so not too hard. I also hope the wiring for the cooker is in good shape. I need to check that before I hardwire the oven in. The circuit breaker continuously popped each time I flipped it back on. However, I think this was because of a burned out socket box. I took it off, and it was blackened on the live connection, and the earth lead also broke off. The socket was not rated for the cooker so I think it just burned through. Maybe it couldn't cope with the electrical load. However, it also contained a resident called Reggie the 3rd, my 8 legged friend of several cm's in diameter. Anyway, I am surprised he survived there, especially with a short circuiting socket!!! Well, now Reggie has left the building and so did the dodgy socket. SO fingers crossed.
I am also working on one of the bedrooms. My friend (and now also neighbour) convinced me to restore the fireplace in that room (every room has a fireplace that has been sealed by the previous owner) and to restore the floor. This isn't too difficult. I need to replace a few floor boards, and then sand the whole thing and wax it. Will look good, and with a good fireplace front, it will be even better. ALthough I won't decorate the room english style I have to say, because I really don't like that, I prefer oriental style. Howevre, a wooden floor and fireplace is not too bad, as longas I keep itsimple. Plus those features will increase the value of my house with some 10k! (and cost me only a couple of 100 GBP).
The second bedroom will get the same treatment. The ground floor I will put a bamboo floor on. I told Chris he could get lost with his original floor, even if it is in good condition! My house, my floor, my design. One thing though, downstairs I will do the same as Chris if posisble: there are two fireplaces downstair. One I will keep as fireplace (after removing the gas heater in one of them), the other I will put a wood burner in. Those wood burners are very efficient as they make the house really warm, and cheap fuel (wood). Together with the bamboo floor and my chinese scrolls etc it will look lovely!!! can't wait to finish it!!!

House....

2006-10-21T20:08:00.000+01:00

some of you may wonder why I haven't been very active online the last month or so. Well, that is partly because of work, but mostly because I moved house. And now I have to both live in my new house as well as fix it up! I have no kitchen, and all the rooms need a lot of work! The worst is the kitchen, but fixing the floor in my bedrooms is a close second, followed by the window sill I need to make (and imagine that the wall is 135 years old, so it is as straight as the tower of pisa!)
Today I couldn't do much. I wanted to do the window sill but I need more wood. First I need wood to mount the sill on, then I can place the wood internal to the window sill, then I can work off the gaps on the outer sides. Its a nightmare job... I can't continue the wok in the kitchen because the plaster needs to dry, which will take about a week from now. SO friday I will put a layer of plaster sealer, then saturday I can paint the kitchen, and on sunday I can tile the kitchen. Then every evening I might be able to install one kitchen unit, so in 2 weeks from now, realistically, I will have my kitchen ready (but not the extractor fan).
Anyway, I will keep you guys posted on the progress of my house...

time time time

2006-09-04T21:50:00.000+01:00

More has happened...

I'm still working on buying my house. My rather "brilliant" mortgage lender decided to value my house including the garage that was supposed to come with the house. However, I made an offer excluding the garage so they should have left it out of the valuation. Then I got to hear I would get the garage anyway, which brought joy to my life. That joy was short lived when I found out that the reason why I get it is because there are no owner papers of the garage (well, no deeds anyway). So that was pretty much a dead bird... Now my solicitor told me the mortgage lender had to agree with the current situation (no garage). Honestly they should have done so before. Now they waisted a lot of time and money unnecessarily. If the sale falls through due to the inaptness of the mortgage company I will claim back the costs I had because of them wrongly valuating the house. Well, not only will I claim back those costs, I will also claim back the potential profit I could have made on the house (but then again, if I could have made the profit they would not have withdrawn the mortgage offer).
As with everything in this fcuked up country I have to wait.... AGAIN!
Well, as long as I can move in on the 15th, because I need the time to create a kitchen (well, half a kitchen anyway). If it is later it will have to be delayed until after I come back from holiday. I do not want to buy a house the day before I go on holiday and have EVERYTHING to sort out. So the 15th is my deadline, and otherwise it will be the 15th of october.

That leads me to the third part: holiday... God I need one!!!!
I'm planning to go to Taiwan again. Not to see Tina though, not this time.
Will see some others though... I look forward to some time to relax. 3 weeks left...

Ah, recently MSN works so shite that I am thinking of blowing up microsoft and all that is related to it!!! Let Apple dominate the market for a while (read: forever!).

In 3 weeks minus a few days my good friend Chris is getting married. I'm looking forward to attending their wedding. I'd love to make some pics of them!
I will very much enjoy that actually.

Ok, enough for now. I'm pissed off, so will go out and beat up some gabbers or something...

Finally an update!

2006-05-29T21:48:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's been a while, but here is another update, finally!

A lot has happened since my last update. My superiours want to promote me in the next few months or so.
Mean time I am also looking to buy a house. Yep, my first step into the world of mortgages!

I've recently Acquired a Canon EOS 5D. I hope I'll be able to use it soon-ishly... Though with buying a house there will be few trips abroad I think.

Today I decided to print some photos I made during the last few times I went to Taiwan (I still have some stuff to write about those trips). A few months back I got myself an Epson R1800. from reviews I could see too little difference between the R1800 and R2400, although the extra grey cartridge would make the prints a bit closer to spot on I guess. Well, at least I won't have to switch cartridges when I decide to print on Matt paper, as the R1800 has a photo black and a matt black permanently installed.
The first prints I made a month or two ago, were just slightly off. I just couldn't get them right. People suggested to buy a calibrator for my monitor (iMac G5 LCD screen). I almost did, until today... After making some pretty brilliant prints, I decided to try one cross process print again. It is a photo of the peace park in Taipei just before dusk. It looks pretty surreal in cross processing. Teh frist time I had a green colour cast, although it was fairly close to the screen. This tiem I tried again, thinking I can always give one away. To my surprice after not having used the printer a week or 6-8, the print turned out to be spot on compared to the screen!!! I was overjoyed! So that saved me another 150 GBP worth of calibration tools... (I KNEW my eye sight wasn't that bad yet...)
Anyway, I have included some of the photos I printed for you guys to enjoy. Pay attention to the cross processed pics, I'm quite proud of those, even if I say so myself...

Taxi speeding by on the nightly streets of Taipei...

Taipei story house...

Bus in Taipei

Gate on Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall square at dusk.

Palm trees in Taipei

Black & White roof top on Green Island

Black & White Lantern on the coast of Taiwan

Mud pool...

That's all for now folks...

Changes

2006-04-02T21:05:00.000+01:00

Things are going well recently. When I say "well" ofcourse I actually mean "not disastrous...".
Soon I will have my hasselblad body (YES, finally!!!).
And more over: I am planning to leave England (but hush hush, my boss is not allowed to know yet). I've had enough of the place. It just isn't for me...
It's a shame really because the work is actually quite good. I mean, where else in the world do you get the opportunity to develop the newest aircraft, besides Boeing that is...?
I managed to get hold of an Epson R1800 printer. I'm still working out how to get good prints out of it though. A friend of mine, Jeff, send me some special Japan exclusive print paper. One type is Epson Crispia, which (so far) is only available in Japan, but I heard rumours that the same paper will be released here in the UK soon (only 1,5 year late, like usual with any products to be released in the UK, if they are released at all... One other reason to leave this not-only-god- forsaken place). He also send me some Fujifilm super photo grade print paper. A hefty 320gsm paper, with glossy coating. sweeeet....
Actually it turns out the Crispia is giving way better results on the R1800 (although I do have some finger troubles when it comes to color management), but I will tell all about that later.
Jeff also send me some Fujifilm Fortia SP 120 roll film! The stuff is absolutely wonderful!!! I tried some last year and I love it! Time for Fuji to release it in Europe as well!!! I stocked up for the stuff because it is getting harder to get in Japan as well.

My older 2100 printer will be converted to B&W using the Lyson Daylight Darkroom kit for my Mac. I'm keen to see results on that, but it may be a while before I can print because I have to put the printer on the other side of the room (they're both A3+ printers and pretty big. Can't put both on my nightstand...)

This summer I'll be getting my hands on an Epson V750 flatbed/film scanner. I've read some pretty darn good reviews of the V700, so I have high hopes for the V750.
All these developments make me want to stick to good'ol film photography (Large Format and Medium Format. I have a good digital for 35mm)

Soon I'll be going on holiday as well. 2 more weeks until I see Tina again in Taiwan. Can't wait! You don't know how much I need a holiday. I thought I would manage after a nice Christmas break, but I'm about to collapse into a bloody pulp !!!(you want to pick me up? Try a spatula!)

My friend Donny and his Wife Taz are in the Caribbean. Don has his diving license (standard diving, I think up to 30m deep, can't recall what the basic license is called). Good for him! I'm sure he'll see some fancy things under water, and I hope to see some great underwater shots!

My mate Chris is getting married this summer, or is it autumn? Anyway, we've all seen this coming for some time now, and I wonder if he is getting nervous...
To be honest I doubt it. He and Berit are nuts about each other and they are a perfect match if there is such a thing. I think "anxious" is a better word for it...

Some carp also keeps happening ofcourse. My headphone died... Why is this bad you think? Well, I can't have voice conversations now with Tina and my friends abroad! That's what's wrong with that!
Also my joystick seemed to have died after a 3 year period of intense use. No, I am not talking about the organic one, I'm talking about one of those devices for the PC! Suddenly yesterday it stopped working. If I would reinsert a new battery (it is wireless) it would light up briefly and then nothing. I think there is a problem with the part that provides the communication with the PC (again, wireless). Else it has held up pretty amazingly good I have to say! Too bad that this stupid wireless feature has given in... Again, why is this bad? Because I can't play with my fcuking flightsim that's what!!!!!

Anyway, time for bed...

Memoirs

2006-02-12T00:23:00.000Z

One word: Wow...

This evening I saw memoirs of a Geisha, and I was genuinely impressed. Upon the first announcements of memoirs I had high hopes. Those hopes diminished a little when I learned that the film was spoken in English, the main female actors were Chinese and the whole film was in fact a Hollywood production.
Some people told me that the English was poor and sometimes totally ununderstandable.
I can assure you, this is not the case. Maybe it is that I am not a native English speaker, but never did I not follow what was being said, and in fact, I was surprised about the standard of English considering that most actors I know of only non-English spoken films.

Having seen the film now, I can genuinely say I was impressed.
Honestly, I thought Ken was one of the most impressive actors in the film. He played in Last Samurai, where he also performed impressively. I understand that he has a theater background. That probably explains why I get the impression that his charisma is comparable with that of Patrick Steward (most people know him from Star Trek as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard). Patrick also has a theater background and is a very charismatic man, just like Ken. I'll be looking out for some other films featuring him.
I can't wait to get the DVD of memoirs. It'll rank in my top ten!
I won't spoil the surprise for people who are still to see it, so in a month or two I may update this post with what I thought of some of the scenes, as well as the ending. Suffice to say the ending pleased me.

Here

is the official website of Memoirs. I'd post some images, but I guess you can view them here just as well.

World of the apple

2006-02-01T20:23:00.000Z

Late last year Apple brought out a new program called "Aperture". A new photo editing/management program. It manages photos almost in a classical darkroom method. The User Interface is extremely fancy and smooth, and options are well sorted.

However....

Not all is perfect in the land of perfection (yes, that's right...). The program has been released way too early. The program is full of bugs and loose ends. It is unstable, incomplete and the requirements are way too high! Also it seems like the program is running too slow (I guess this depends on your point of view). It turns out that the program can be compared with a Beta release of a very promising package. It supports...Well.. Nothing really. Spend 2000+ GBP on an Apple system, and buy this program. Then find out that your graphics card is actually not sufficient, so the program won't even install. And even if you manage to fool it into installing, it won't run if your computer does not meet the specs. You have to know how to fool the program into thinking it CAN run. After some serious searching I managed to get it working on my Mac. However, I did loose some of my faith in Apple due to this program. The program says it runs on iMac G5 1.8 GHz (Amongst others), with at least 1GB RAM (I have 2GB). But... It didn't install or run... My graphics card was not sufficient. What do you mean not sufficient??? I got a bloody iMac G5 1.8 GHz with 2GB RAM,specs say it is sufficient, why can't I run??? Ahh, well, that is because you don't have one of the graphics cards that is listed on the minimum requirements list. Not listed??? So fucking what??? An iMac does not have an interchangeable graphics card. It is integrated into the system. No way you can upgrade that! So why do they list this iMac? Well, I can only think of one reason... daftness... By law you could sew them because this is misleading advertisement. What is worse is that the program doesn't even run or install. Why can't I just make up my own mind? So what if my specs are not sufficient, that's my choice isn't it? Why make the program so that it disables startup and installation when you don't meet the specs? They stated it on paper, that should be the end of it. My choice if I want to run it on a lesser computer.
That's not all. Then they came out with the announcement that a new standard would come out that would support the newer intel based apples (yes, they can't run the program yet), in march. And customers who bought this program can exchange their discs for a new version, IF THEY PAY 49 US$!!!!! WTF????????
Well, I think people have been throwing with lawsuits because they now changed their tones. Everyone can download the updates for free. SO most people have calmed down.
Actually so have I, because I managed to get it running on my iMac, finally...

So is it really that slow? Well, let me ask you this: DO you have a PC and/or a Mac? If you have a PC, then you know how programs run, especially the latest fanciest programs and games. They don't run smooth. Generally they are over designed for the current hardware platforms. Well, same here. The program runs, and actually reasonably fast. I mean, it is not like photoshop, but it doesn't annoy me (yet). It is a tat slow, but hey, FS2004 on my PC is way slower, and my system is really not that slow! However, I can imagine that professionals would be annoyed with the slowness, especially when they are used to lightning fast reactions in photoshop.

So what does it do? Well, actually too much to mention. I suggest you just go to Apple's website to check that out. I did have a look at some features. For example, the loupe works better than I expected. Also the amount of adjustments and the type of adjustments is quite good. What is less good is that after I went into preferences and adjusted the background colour, later on I could no longer get into preferences. Also some of the button combinations for the viewer aren't logical. Some button combinations work, but others don't. There doesn't seem to be any logic behind that. It's also missing some RAW file adjustments that I would liked to have seen, like vignetting control and other lens corrections.
Also it is not possible to drag an image onto the "lightbox" just like that. From this perspective Adobe Lightroom works a lot better.
Having said that. Adobe lightroom seems to be missing many many functions that Apple Aperture does have! Sure RAW adjustments are much better under Adobe, but for the rest I think you can just do way more with Aperture then with Lightroom. However, Lightroom is still at Beta (and thus freely available), so it still has a lot of opportunities to develop into something powerful.

The madness continues...

2005-12-13T18:10:00.000Z

Well, still sorting out my car accident. The insurance told me the value was estimated on 505 GBP, which ofcourse I laughed at. I told them I insured it for 3000GBP, that's what I pay premium for and that is what I want. They said it was because the mileage was high, and I said again that was bullshit because I do only 7000 per year and the total is 69.000. They said that it was 169.000!!! And I said that is not correct. They can check my MOT certificate, which I submitted to them as well. (MOT is a road worthiness test in England, similar to APK in Holland). I told them they probably had a breakdown of communications because the garage confirmed to me a mileage of 69000-something miles, 100.000 less... They probably try to screw me like all insurances do these days.

Another poibt: I bought a new car! Yep, with the concept of public transportation not having reached the realms of once-great-britain, each individual has his or her own car. Actually this was confirmed by statistics. Apparently there are 26 million cars in England. With a population of 52 million, that makes one car per two people. Now, you may ask "so what?", well, consider that if you are younger than 18 you are not allowed to drive your own car, and consider there are a couple of grannies and granpas that don't drive, I think you will come close to about 1 car per person full stop!
Anyway, I'm deviating... I bought a Volkswagen Passat. A little old, from 1997, and quite high mileage (118k, but it's a volkswagen passat! Plus for the first 90k it was a company car and serviced regularly. The second owner did not have much service history, which was a shame, but they are servicing it for me now. I told them I don't want the service light blinking (and I don't mean cutting the wire!). Friday I will pick it up.
One more thing. Ofcourse the insurance I was quoted was ludricously high again, so I will change companies as soon as my accident has been finalised.
Actually it is quite luxurious, with CD changer and everything. Nice interiour. Anyway, here are some pics of it, judge by yourself...

The front...

The side...

The inside...

I'm picking it up friday.

Some people may have heard about the oil refinery that went up in smoke in england. And guess what... it is yet another show of British moronics... The fire brigade was not allowed to use foam in teh beginning because of "the environmental effects on the ground water". Of course it doesn't matter that water spreads the oil, thereby increasing the ground surface that is affected by the oil, and letting it burn up is of course totally acceptable. Ofcourse that has no effect on the environment! I mean, the gulf war effect never happened, and global warming does not exist, and hardly anyone drives in england anyway, so the effect is nil!
By the way, late in teh morning they got the go-ahead to use foam (water does not really extinguish oil fires, it jsut spreads it...)

England does not recycle!

2005-12-05T20:05:00.000Z

Many countries have extensive recycling schemes.
In Holland many super markets have huge bins for glass, plastic, tin cans, and paper.
When you buy any electronic goods (washing machine, fridge, microwave, etc), you pay an environmental tax that pays for the environmental destruction of your purchase after it breaks down. Larger waste, gardening trash, or construction left overs you can usually dump at the city council waste disposal services. Depending on the nature of the waste you may be required to pay a fee for the environmental breakdown of your waist.
In Japan recycling goes as far as different types of waste on different days (collected by waste collection services), almost 5 days a week! Even in the Mac Donalds you have 6 different trash cans for different waste!
From America we know it is the biggest polutor of the planet, followed by China and India (but yes, the US of A is still number one!). At least we know that they are the worst polutors, and they don't pretend to recycle.
Unlike the Brits... Brittain does not recycle!
In their defence, most people don't realise it themselves. However, the BBC has uncovered a scam that although us consumers recycle and sort all the waste, down the line some companies just throw everything back together and ship it off to Indonesia where it ends on a wast belte! You can read the full story here:

No recycling

It is a shame that there are actually people around that don't shy away from such practices. But then again, it falls completely in line with britain with it's hustsling scum and smooth talking con artists.
These people should be ashamed of themselves!

Good luck, bad luck...

2005-12-04T19:46:00.000Z

Well, the boiler is finally fixed...
Last Monday the carpenter came by. Really nice guy. Very helpful and got the job done quick and well. Then ofcourse it was waiting for that crook of a plumber.
He showed up on Tuesday I think it was. In the evening. He didn't call before, despite what the landlord told him. The landlord wants to ditch him I think.
Ofcourse he didn't fix it immediately. He said some microswitches were broken. He said he rigged it so that we would have heating, but not hot water. What a brain fart! We have portable heaters now! We need hot water! Anyway, on Wednesday, completely to my surprise he comes back and fixes the whole unit. We now have both hot water and heating again.

However...

It's like it is disaster time! On Tuesday my colleague's car got hit by a police car! My colleague thought he was in the right, and I think the police thought so too. As it turned out later, he found out that Bristol city council had changed the linings on the road that week, without providing any messages or signs that the traffic situation had changed. Bristol city council is very good in messing up traffic. I think they do it on purpose, because I cannot believe they are this incompetent...
Anyway, Wednesday it was my turn. I leave the car park on site, drive through an exit between two hangars, and on the left and right there are cars parked all over the place. On my right hand site there are also cars parked illegally on yellow areas, which are reserved for lorries. Ofcourse because cars are parked there illegally, the lorry was standing on the left lane of the road, next to the cars. SO basically my whole vision on that sight was blocked. It was physically impossible to see anything coming from that side of the street. As it happens that is my right side. I could only see traffic coming if I had x-ray vision, which by the way I don't...
So I carefully nudge the front of my car past the lorry, hoping someone would see me and have the brains to realize I can't see him and therefore take the appropriate action ("appropriate" in this case meaning braking or evading as a minimum). But apparently British drivers are so obsessed about their right of way that this guy actually pushes the throttle and slams straight into my car, spinning it 45 degrees from it's original heading! Thereby writing off my car completely! My whole right front wing was disintegrated, my front bumper was simply ripped off, radiator and other internal organs exposed. I could amazingly start my engine, but there was no way I could get it into gear. Apparently he hit me hard enough to knock the engine out of alignment! Now you should know that although I should have given right of way to this guy, I first need to be able to see that someone is actually coming. Secondly, if he hadn't been "skidding for a long distance before hitting rover" as one of my witnesses stated, my car probably would not have been damaged that badly. He was obviously going faster than the 20 mile/hr speed limit enforced there.
I'm still working out the details. My car has to be taken to a garage (I gave them the address, but apparently that was a different department and ofcourse my insurance company does not communicate internally, like a real British inefficient company). I can only hope for a courtesy car (though that remains to be seen, after all I pay insurance for it, so I deserve one and therefore I won't get one). Well... Mean time I am car-less. I hope I get my money quickly so I can buy a new car (not that I will get much...)

Boiler fixed?

2005-11-30T07:47:00.000Z

Woohahahaha!!!! Got it fixed??? You got to be the funniest at home!
Honestly my landlord is a decent bloke. But his builders are the worst cowboys you can get!
Yesterday a carpenter came over to cut up the kitchen work top. This was a decent guy. Nice chap, did his work. Even preferred to do his work BEFORE getting the coffee I offered.
After that I called the landlord to say it was done and the plumber could come over. So I don't hear from the landlord until the end of the day, when he returns my calls. He asked me if this plumber had called me back, and I said "are you kidding me? ofcourse he hasn't!". So the landlord gets pissed off as well, and decides to give him a bullocking and have him call me back. A few minutes later he calls back and tells me he left a message on his phone to call me back, which by the way he still hasn't. The landlord stated that he should be able to come around this morning or at least today as a minimum. Ofcourse he won't. I know this guy longer than today...
He is doing the same thing he did when we had a leak. Show up a couple of times. Spend 5 minutes looking around, and leave without having done a bloody thing. And charging for each time he shows up. He is just conning the landlord, and my flatmate and I suffer the consequences.
I can see coming that he shows up tomorrow (not today), look at the, now accessible, boiler, say that he needs parts (or needs to replace the whole damn unit), and comes back a week later to finish the job. Easy money...!
Mean time my flatmate run the risk of being poisoned by carbon monoxide, or worse, having a gas leak that could blow up the whole building!
Another thing that points to this guy being a crook, is that he claims he checked the gas installation when he was working on the leak (ofcourse I asked a copy of the certificate, which should be next to the boiler, but I haven't received it yet). Now I wonder how he can check the boiler, when he can't even access it!!!!

Maybe my flatmate is right. Maybe it is best to get your own house. That way you are boss of what happens in and around the house, and you can fire builders at will, any time you want.

Life threat...

2005-11-26T22:32:00.000Z

Sounds serious? well, it probably is... Last thursday someone actually theratened to kill me.
For the last 1,5 to 2 weeks Lucas and I have been living without heating and sporadically hot water. The boiler had broken (and still is...). Last post I referred to the brain fart that "checked" the boiler. As I got to hear from my landlord, who by the I met and turns out to be a very reasonable guy, he first sends someone to check if the unit was just not incorrectly used, before he sends an expensive mechanic.
Anyway. The builder was supposed to come over on tuesday morning. Needless to say if you know england that the builder showed up on thursday evening. He comes in, walks to the cupboard, looks at the boiler and says that he can't do anything. It is completely build in and he can't access it. He also says that if you "press the button the red light will go out"... Like we haven't done that! I said we did do that every 5 seconds without success and he sais I have to press the button (is this guy deaf or just wants to play dumb???) Though this was actually true, he has been here before and knows the situation. This builder was soo uncaring and arrogant! He said a carpenter had to come to cut up the kitchen and he was not gonna do that. So I tried calling the landlord, who suddenly was not available. Then I call sidekick steve, the "maintenance manager" of the landlord. This wanker is supposed to manage all the maintenance on all the landlord's properties. I try to explain that we didn't have any hot water or heater. He didn't want to understand. I tried explaining for ages and ages (because I wanted it fixed then and there), then I tell him "it's the unit that provide hot water and central heating!", and he still was saying "I don't unederstand can you be a bit clear". SO I get furious and ask him where the hell he was when they were handing out brains, called him a fucking moron and hung up on him. The builder left. My guess is that steve called the builder to check what was broke and what the technical term was and the difference between a heater and a boiler. He obviously didn't know himselve otherwise he would have called me back immediately. Instead he calls me back 5 minutes later on a different mobile phone, and forgets to hide his number, thereby confirming he was indeed absent when they were handing out brains. This guy started swearing, even MY ears were flapping! (and I'm not impressed easily when it comes to swearing) And he said he would kill me if I would take such a tone with him again. He said he was not some cunt (which by the way he actually is, as he proved himself earlier and during that phone call). He asked me if I was listening. I told him I was listening extremely carefully. I asked him again if he was threatening me, and he said yes (he is even dumb enough to admit even that!) I asked again if he was really sure, that he would kill me next time. So I told him thanks and that I heard enough. I told him if he so much as points a funger at me, or threatens me ever again, I would report him to the police and I hung up.
a few minutes later I finally got in contact with the landlord and discussed the whole issue. I told him that this behaviour is unacceptable and I could report this guy to the police for this. To my surprise the landlord said that it may be better if I did just that (something I think is really quite silly...). ANyway, the landlord was also furious and had words with sidekick steve. he took him off our case. He said he couldn't fire him just like that, but steve was no longer allowed to have any dealings with our flat whatsoever.
The next day the landlord shows up himself with some portable heaters. Again we discuss steve, and other issues over a cup of coffee. The landlord explained how much both steve and the builders are a pain in the rear end.
Now all we have to do is wait for a carpenter to cut up the kitchen, the builder to come around and fix the bloody boiler, and we are good to go again. This will probably take up another 2 weeks or so.
Oh, extra piece of information: It has been 2 degrees during the day, freezing at night... nice...

British engineering

2005-11-22T17:10:00.000Z

The British did a marvelous job in engineering some 2 centuries ago.
The voctorian age where engineering ruled, was an age of technical progress and scientific ingenuity. Kingdom Brunel is only one of the famous names of engineers, who's work is well known in the industry.
Steam engines developed at the speed computers do now.
Britain ruled the industrial revolution!

...To bad they stuck to those ages...

Nowadays British engineering can be considered the laughing stock of the industry. Rover just went bankrupt. Not even the Chinese wanted them!!! Jaguar, Aston Martin, TVR, Bentley... All famous names, famous BRITISH names...None anymore British than you or me...

Houses are still build largely from wood! Heating by default is night-storage-heating (a process where cheap electricity at night, heats up bricks, that subsequently release their heat during the day, when no one is at home because they work!).

My water heater broke down (thank god that someone had the idea to put gas central heating in my place... and insulate it as well....). Although I still have hot water, I do not have any heating.
Unfortunately for me it has been freezing in bristol for the last week. yet we haven't been without heating since last thursday. On friday the landlord said someone would come in on saturday. Needless to say no one did... (Famous english "I am lazy and don't give a shit" syndrom). I called the landlord on monday morning and said no one came around. He asked if his side kick hadn't called (another lazy wanker). Ofcourse he didn't! That would mean he would do his job, an dthat is really not possible in ENgland. God forbid you do your job! And it would even be blasphemy if you do it quick, efficient, good and cheap!!! That is just plain heresy!
SO someone would come in on monday evening. Miraculously this "engineer" did come in, not even that, he actually came on time!!!! (normally with an apointment in england add 30-60 minutes for a more realistic time frame).
So this guys starts to play with the buttons. Asks for a manual (which we don't have). Asks us 5 times where the thermostat is, on which we 5 times reply the same answer: there is no thermostat, you have to adjust the temperature using the dials on the heater (direct control, no temperature feedback loops). Basically he did all my flatmate and I had already thought of. Then he gave up and said that he had to get a gas engineer to come in.
Relaly you don't need a "gas engineer" for such a job, just someone that can fix heaters. I bet this guy just came in to stall.
My expectations are that not today, but maybe tomorrow someone comes in, by which I would already have bought a portable heater, and deducted that from my monthly rent (obviously). It will probably be fixed in 2 months time, guessing by how they treated the water leakage that went on for months last time...

It's sad that a once great empire has now been reduced to a third world country, by people that are rather lazy than tired...

Quotes...

2005-10-28T21:23:00.000+01:00

Well, I've been hearing some good lines lately, so I thought I share some with the world...

Homer Simpson:
>> If it takes efford, it is not worth doing...
>> Alcohol: the cause of, and solution to all of live's problems
>> In a world gone mad, only a lunatic is truly insane
>> Trying is the first step towards failure
>> No beer, no couch, no TV.... I am so alone...

Ofcourse there are more... These are from "Serenity"...

Operative [seeing a whole fleet of Reaver ships coming at him]: "Will someone just fire!!!"

Jayne Cobb: "Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight, or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin paid; mostly only when I'm gettin paid?"

Dr. Simon Tam [in the middle of a fire fight]: "In all that time on the ship... I've always regretted... not being with you."
Kaylee Frye: "With me? You mean to say...... as in.... sex?"
Dr. Simon Tam: "Yes..."
Kaylee Frye: "To Hell with this. I'm gonna live!"

Kaylee Frye [to Simon who wasn't on the mission that the captain and others just got back from]: "Are you ok? "
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: "Is HE ok???"

Hoban 'Wash' Washburn: "...This is gonna get pretty interesting..."
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: "Define "interesting"..."
Hoban 'Wash' Washburn: [deadpan] "Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die...?"

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds [Over the ship's intercom]: "This is the captain speaking. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight... turbulence... and then explode..."

Jayne Cobb: "We're gonna explode??? I don't wanna explode!"

The Operative [to Mal]: "You are fooling yourself, Captain. Nothing is what it seems. You are not the plucky hero, the Alliance is not an evil empire, and this is not the grand arena."
Inara Serra [Pointing to a bomb she has lit]: "And that's not incense."

Hoban 'Wash' Washburn [about to crash the ship]: "I am a leaf on the wind - watch how I soar."

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds [shouting down into the vault]: "We're coming down to empty the vault now!"
Vault Guard [calling back up]: "You'll have to give me your authorization password!"
[Jayne fires a burst from his automatic rifle]
Vault Guard: "...Okay!"

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: "Do you want to run this ship?"
Jayne Cobb: "Yes!"
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds [caught off guard]: "Well... you can't..."

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: "Dear Buddha, I would like a pony and a plastic rocket."

Hoban 'Wash' Washburn: "Can we start with the part where Jayne gets beat up by a 90 pound girl? Because that's *never* getting old."

The Operative: "Do you know what your sin is?"
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: "Hell, I'm a fan of all seven... but right now, I'm gonna have to go with wrath."

Zoë Warren: "How much ammo we got left?"
Jayne Cobb: "Three full mags, and my swinging cod!"

Some quotes from Star Wars:

Obi Wan [seeing Anakin jump off a speeder at dazzling heights]: "Damn it! I hate it when he does that..."

Obi-Wan [just caught by anakin with a speeder]: "What took you so long?"
Anakin: "Well, you know, Master, I couldn't find a speeder that I really liked..."

Darth Vader: "leave them to me. I will deal with them myself"

Darth Vader: "You have failed me for the last time admiral..."

Bar customer [notices Obi-Wan arriving at the bar]: "You wanna buy some death sticks?"
Obi-Wan [using a Jedi mind trick]: "You don't want to sell me death sticks."
Bar customer: "I don't want to sell you death sticks."
Obi-Wan: "You want to go home and rethink your life."
Bar customer: "I want to go home and rethink my life."

Obi-Wan: "I was beginning to wonder if you'd got my message."
Anakin: "I retransmitted it to Coruscant, just as you'd requested, Master... Then we decided to come and rescue you."
Obi-Wan [looks at his handcuffed hands]: "Good job!"

Obi-Wan [to Anakin]: "Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me..."

[R2-D2 is pulling C-3PO's head back towards his body]
C-3PO: "This is such a drag..."

[In the speeder, while chasing the assassin]
Obi-Wan: "You know I don't like it when you do that."
Anakin: "Sorry, master. I forgot that you don't like flying."
Obi-Wan: "I don't mind flying, but what you're doing is suicide...!"

[With head stuck on a battle droid's body]
C-3PO: "DIE, Jedi dogs!!!.... Oh... what did I say? "

Anakin: "You call this a diplomatic solution?"
Padme: "No, I call it an aggressive negotiation."

Finally some images

2005-10-23T20:02:00.000+01:00

Well, I finally found some time to rework my images, so here they are...

Here is a wet leaf. I took this photo in Taipei ZOO. Some plants were continuously irrigated by some water jets that were spraying a mist of water particles onto the plants. I saw the glittering in the sun and thought it make a good shot, and I am not disappointed.

This photo has some history (the subject that is...). It is a memorial shrine in Tarokko Gorge in Hualien county Taiwan. The Tarokko Gorge is a very popular attraction, and if you visit it you can see why. It is indeed a lovely place. One of the reasons Tarokko is so well known, is because some 50 years ago, the Taiwanese build the central cross country highway. That led them through the gorge. It sadly cost the lives of 500 workers to build the highway in the gorge. They build this temple to remember their sacrifice. The temple had to be rebuild several times afterwards due to land slides and earth quakes.

This is a bridge that ran next to the memorial temple. I thought it was pretty interesting. It led to a tunnel where you could take a food path to the temple, but that was off limits due to the risk of falling rocks, something not uncommon.

At the end of the tour through Tarokko Gorge we arrived here. Whilst most of the tourists in our group went buying souvenirs and having coffee, I walked up the steep stairs to visit the buddhist temple. They were just restoring the damage done by one of the typhoons that had hit the area not too long ago. Little did they know that the same evening another typhoon, force 3, would sweep the land...
The temple featured this golden buddha statue. There was also a nice pagoda of which I also took some photos. I may show that one some other time.

This photo is of a fishing boat on Green Island, another popular tourist location in Taiwan. Green Island is very small and it is best to book your trip well in advance. ALthough they fly on Green Island, they use VFR, so if the weather is slightly off, you can count on all flights being cancelled. There is still a boat though. We took the boat on the way up, which was in the middle of a small typhoon, so you can imagine that almost everyone on board got pretty ill. Luckily I kept everything in. Tina insisted on taking a flight back.

Taipei 101, for now the tallest building in the world, shaped like a bamboo tree.
The photo you see here is the interior of this little orifice of 500+ meters. It is part of the construction that keeps a counter weight suspended in mid air. Several hydraulic dampers dampen the movement of this massive ball, that acts as a buffer for any movements caused by earth quakes and typhoons. A clever gadget if you tell me...

Martyr's shrine. This place is a huge shrine where they honour those that gave their lives during the endless wars over the past millenia. It is mostly oriented to those who gave their lives in their fight against communism and the second world war. The guard change is quite impressive and always managed to get a crowd of people attending. The soldiers twist and whirl their rifles in a well practised routine. If you are visiting, note the yellow/brown stripes on the pavement, worn by army boots marching every day multiple times per day. SInce the guards have to stand still perfectly in the blistering heat, they have awhole crew that waters them, dabs their sweaty foreheads, tug their uniforms, etc etc.

I think this is a little memorial that was constructed for the women that lost their husbands during the construction of the central cross island highway in Tarokko Gorge. I don't know the exact details because we didn't really have the time to stop and have a look.

Taipei MRT at peak hours...

"...yeah, I'm gonna have to work late darling, so don't wait up for me."

The railing on Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall.

I can't remember the name of the shopping mall where I took this shot. The mall is huge though! It contains a cinema as well where we watched Deuce Bigalow does Amsterdam. They have stuff for everyone. Mind you, it is not as crazy as Ximen Ding, a shopping mall Japan style, fashion shopping!

The mountains of Hualien County. Actually quite impressive! The landscape in Taiwan can be really gorgeous. The day we took this train from Taipei to Hualien was gorgeous as you can see. Too bad that many a factory poluted the view as well as teh environment. When you want to go swimming on the coast of Taiwan, make sure you check if you can. Treacherous currents and dubious sea creatures are not the only dangers that lure in the water.

I want one!!!

2005-10-17T13:17:00.000+01:00

Ok, I have decided...In the past few years I managed to gather quite a few cameras, mostly film.However, Canon recently introduced their EOS 5D. I know, another next generation camera, and why would I upgrade my 10D when I have a Large Format Camera, which should beat any digital SLR in image quality. I considered this and weighed it up against the benefits of having a 5D.And boy, am I sold!!! A 13MP camera with 2,5" LCD screen, improved ergonomics, spot metering and B&W images! Woah, I finally have my reason to upgrade my 10D.I'll sell the 10D, the EOS 1N, the EOS 1V and the Shen Hao with panoramic back. I'll also sell my Tokina F2.6 28-70mm That should get me enough money to buy this new EOS 5D. I might sell my 17-40 f4 as well and replace it with the new 24-105 f4 IS as the 5D also is a full frame sensor camera! I think 24mm on a full frame sensor is good enough for me.

Well, x-mas is approach as well, but before that there is Sinterklaas! I need to get my dad to buy me some pepernoten and spekulaas and marsepein!
I already booked my flight for x-mas. Tina is about to do the same. Now what we need to do is to find some places we can stay. I probably will not bring any photo equipment and I have to be economical with my luggage as well if we are to stay over with, well, everyone...

I want to do mor epeople photography. Flickr showed me some really good shots of some ladies, so I got an apetite to broaden my field of subjects (currently limited to landscape and related subjects)

Two typhoons and an earthquake...

2005-10-12T12:26:00.000+01:00

Well, I managed to survive 2 typhoons and 1 earthquake in Taiwan...

The first Typhoon reached us when we were in Taitung. We were planning to first go to Orchid Island and then to Green Island. Although we managed to fly into Taitung, we couldn't fly on to Orchid Island due to the weather. The Typhoon had hit Taiwan and they only fly VFR to those islands, so no luck there.
At first we were stuck in Taitung so we went to the hotel we were to use later that weekend. We got the Honeymoon suite, but believe me, if that was the honeymoon suite, I don't want to know what the cheapest suite was in that place. The weather was miserable and it seemed like we couldn't go anywhere. Tina got really upset about it. After making some calls we found out that there were still boats to Green Island. Green Island is only about 55 minutes away by boat so that wouldn't be too bad. Tina was a little afraid that the sea was rough so she took some motion sickness tablets. Although I have a bit more sea legs (maybe because of my time with the sea scouts, or perhaps due to my flying experience), I decided to take some as well; after all there was a typhoon at large (though it was just a small one...).
The man that sorted our trip was very kind and helpful. He picked us up from the harbour (we were a bit early) and he gave us the motion sickness tablets.
After a while we were lead to the boat. There were 3 small but powerful ferries rocking on the calm waves in the protected harbour.
After we got on board and all passengers were loaded up, we set sail for Green Island.
When we left the protective shelter of the harbour, we hit the ocean with full force. The boat was rocking like a play toy in hands of the gods! Waves were big and rough. As it happened we had to sail into the wind and into the waves, making the trip extra rough. During the first 5 or 10 minutes, everyone on board went "ohh", and "Ahhh", and "Woo!" as it seemed like a rollercoaster. After those 10 minutes the expressions diminished somewhat and it became a little quieter. After 20 minutes the first people started to make those horrible sounds of throwing up. Ofcourse this affects other people who are desperately trying to keep their lunch inside, and hear the hurling of others didn't really help. Tina got sick as well.
Although I didn't feel too good either, I did manage to keep everything inside, despite having to throw away Tina's recycled lunch, which I really didn't want to see or smell. I guess those high G exercises during my PPL times did pay off...
A few other guys seemed to get through the ordeal without fouling the boat as well.
I have to say, I admire the little stubby sailor that was handing out the bags to dump your recycled lunch in. He seemed totally unaffected by all of it. Then again, he probably had been doing the job for quite a few years...
When we got to the Island Tina said that she was going to take a flight back. She didn't care about how long she had to wait for the weather to clear or how much it would cost, but she rather died than go through that ordeal again. The next morning the weather had cleared up completely and the lady at our hotel said that the boat back should be much better than when we came, because the sea was completely calm. Plus we would be moving with the waves this time. But Tina still insisted with the flight, which is fine with me because I love flying and I got to add a new plane to my list of planes I travelled on!

The second typhoon hit us on the last night we were in Hualien, a popular destination, known for its marble exploitations. Although the first typhoon was nothing more than a serious storm, this second typhoon was the real thing! It was strength 3, so "just " a medium sized typhoon, but it was still the business! The winds started picking up early in the evening and the typhoon hit us at full force around 2 or 3 o'clock at night. As it happened the typhoon hit Hualien dead on and the centre passed over us. Tina suggested to take a train earlier in the morning but I told her that the centre would have already passed by then, so a later train would actually improve out chances of getting one (the trains are subject to delays when a typhoon hits). She wanted to leave at 7 in the morning (originally the train would go at 11) but at that time things would probably be worse. I told her if she wanted to prevent being stuck there the next morning we would have to leave at that very moment. We didn't and the next day the trains were delayed until 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. During the night the winds picked up quite a bit, and the whole building was rocking on the force of the typhoon. For me this was quite a new experience, quite interesting actually.
At some point the electricity failed and the emergency lights came on. Ofcourse they ran out of power soon as well, leaving us in total darkness, but worse: without TV as well!!! Anyway, the next morning we noticed power was still out. As it happened the whole town was without electricity and it took 12 hours, until 2 in the afternoon, before power was restored. With Taiwanese temperatures and humidity that isn't exactly comfortable as there is no airco either...
At 3 in the afternoon we finally got our train and managed to get to Taipei in one piece, and we didn't even have to stand up for 4 hours!

The earthquake went like this: We were in Taipei and I was sitting on the side of the bed, watching some TV, whilst Tina was lying on bed reading something I believe. At some point Tina jumps up and excitedly calls out "did you feel that???" I asked "feel what?". "There was an earthquake!" She replied. I asked her when and she said "just now!". Well, me and my fat ass didn't feel a thing, so I guess it wasn't that strong.

Anyway, At least I can say that I have experienced and survived 2 typhoons and one earthquake...

My trip...

2005-09-28T05:14:00.000+01:00

Well, since I am at it anyway, I might as well add a few other stories.

The day I left was extremely stressful. I left on friday the 16th in the afternoon, right after work (we finish at 13.00 on friday, but I could leave at 12...). I had a lot of work to finish that day and I was stressing to get it done in time.
My boss was also leaving that day and I should be there to say goodbye to him I think. Luckily they held the goodbye ceremony before I had to leave. I thought that was fair enough. However, I didn't join into getting pissed and clubbing the night before. The secretary told me I have no excuse. My excuse is I had to pack that night and since I hadn't had a chance to do that before (I had been working until 23.00 each night that week), I said that was teh only time available. She said it was a poor excuse. I told her the other option was not to sleep at all and she said that was perfectly acceptable. Well, that's when I walked off. I guess some people are just too narrow minded to understand someone else's position...

Anyway, at some point Linda walked up to me (a collague) and she asked if I shouldn't go to heathrow. I told her my flight was at 6 so I was leaving at 12 to get a bus at 1. She then said that I better leave now (it was 10 in the morning) because they were holding protest blockades on the M4 to heathrow. Ofcourse! just my fuckin luck! So I started calling some people to ask about the situation on the road. The AA (breakdown/traffic info services) told me a little about the blockades in wales on the M4 but didn't know if it would come between Bristol and Heathrow. So I searched for a phone number of the police in Bristol/Avon. Hahaha! ofcourse the first 100 hits are all useless!!! I finally decided to call a small town office just outside bath and they were very informative. They said that the blockade shouldn't leave Wales. They then told me to contact Avon constabulary headoffice for more details. So I did, and guess what... I get a Bristolian cop on the phone (yes, he was from headoffice) and he didn't know anything. He said the police never knows anything about traffic information... Can you believe that???? In any other country the police is numero uno to know about traffic situations, especially when there are protests against fuel prices, blocking major motorways! But no, not in england. In despair I tried to get to one more road service: the RAC. Their website was as good as any other: crap, however, I did manage to find a traffic information number. It is an 0900 number so my company ofcourse blocked it. So I had to make a 1GBP/minute call with my mobile. The service is actually quite good and I got to hear exactly what I wanted to know, and I could stick to my original plan.

So, I left at 12.00, arrived at 12.20, leaving me 5 minutes for last preparations. Luckily this time I hadn't forgotten anything. I was waiting for the taxi and when it was 5 minutes late I called the taxi service. Since Friday is the worst day for driving in Bristol I figured I would be late for my bus as well...ofcourse... Luckily he arrive 3 seconds later and dropped me off with about 5-10 minutes to spare. The bus arrived in time, so I had 3 hours before departure.
I checked in at 1st class (which they themselves suggested to speed up the checking in process). The most funny thing happened. I thought I was over weight with my luggage, both cabin and check in luggage. At home I was using all my tricks to be able to bring everything I wanted to take with me, and to stay within limits of teh luggage allowance. Actually Cathay Pacific is quite inconsistant with this. They have a huge list of things you can take nxt to a maximum sized one-piece cabin luggage of up to 7 kg. Apparently you can take in addition to that, a laptop up to 4 kg, a briefcase up to 4 kg, some personal affects, a coat, diapers, baby food, a baby seat a camera binoculars... in total I think 20 kgs or more... So I called them because I wanted to put my photo gear in a photo backpack, but that would exceed 7kg. They said that was not allowed, because of the weight for one piece luggage. Not a surprise. Then I told them that I could take all taht stuff with me if I used multiple smaller bags to spread the weight and they again said no, I could take only one bag. I told tehm about what their website said and they said that the list meant only one of those items in addition to my one piece luggage of 7 kg. This is not what their website says.
Anyway, I managed to be clever and use just my shoulder bag to pack 10kg of photo equipment in (lenses are heavy...) and a very small backpack with some drinks, snacks and reading material.
I estimated my check in luggage at 22-23 kg, using the scales of my flatmate.

When I came to check in, they never weighed my cabin luggage and my check-in luggage was weighed at 11,5 kg!!! I think there was something wrong with their scales. Anyway, I'm not complaining. I know it is definitely not 11 kg, much heavier.

Then after check in, I waited a while, got some greasy shit for dinner, which was actually quite nice. I made some photos (with which you have to be very careful about in London these days...). Then I boarded my plane when it was time. Later I found out that I had formatted the card in my camera and so I lost all these photos... How stupid can you be...
Following that we were stuck at the gate for more than half an hour. When we finally taxied out, we had to taxi for at least 30-40 minutes or so: rush hours at heathrow.

The flight was ok, although the quality of the monitors wasn't exactly stunning. But at least I had my own in-flight entertainment console. I chatted a bit with my fellow passengers. Then we got an anouncement of the stewardess, requesting a qualified doctor. I though, oh, hell there goes my connection to Taiwan... We were already 1 hour late when we left heathrow, which meant I had zero minutes between landing in Hong Kong and take off with the connecting flight (connection time was exactly 1 hour). The stewardess assured me the plane would wait for transferring passengers.
After that anouncement my hope sank to my feet. If a doctor was required it must be serious. If someone dies or is critically ill, the plane should land at the next available airport, which would result in another 3 hour delay or so. Luckily that never happened, so apparently they found their doctor and solved the problem.

When we landed I had about 5 minutes to get to the connecting flight, so I ran up and down stairs and corridors, and luckily for me the had only just started checking in for the connecting flight.
This was an A330 by the way. Sounded a little big for such a trip, bu I don't mind, that is yet another airplane I can put on my list (I managed to get 2 more during my stay in Taiwan) of airplanes flown. This A330 was obviously configured for asians as I had zero leg space. That flight was quite uncomfortable, and by the time I realised they had switched on the in-flight entertainment, we had only 20 minutes left. And all the programs they had on were very interesting actually! All about culture in Taiwan, south east asia, okinawa, etc, very interesting and all at the same time...

When I landed and turned on my phone, I got a text message from Tina that she was a little late and if I could wait a few minutes. She was stuck in traffic because of moon festival that weekend. Well, not being able to speak or udnerstand any chinese, where was I supposed to go on my own? Anyway, a few minutes turned out to be almost 45 minutes before she arrived. Hmm, all in all actually not that great a flight...

More to follow...

Yes! Another update!

2005-09-28T05:02:00.000+01:00

First and foremost an appology to the people that have been hoping for an update.
Unfortunately I have been soo busy with work that I have had very little time to attend to my blog. Now I'm on holiday I have some time to make some new posts again.
A lot has happened these few months. Tina visited me for 5 weeks last summer. Now I am in Taiwan, visiting her for 3 weeks.
Actually I am very glad to have a real holiday again. Work has been a nightmare, so it's good to have a break of things.

The fat lady swings...

2005-05-04T22:29:00.000+01:00

Well, it finally happened: First Flight!
It was a wonderful day, a slight breeze cooled an otherwise blazing hot day (for a late april morning). The sun was shining, not a cloud on the horizon. A perfect day for flight...

Ok, I am a little late. First Flight occured last wednesday (27th April 2005). The event was largely publisised. Actually I think that was a great risk. What if things didn't go as planned? But they did, and even I king of sceptics was amazed! I work on Landing Gear Systems of teh A380 so I am pretty knowledgeable about what has been going on with the design of A380. And until the aircraft actually lifted its Nose Landing Gear off the runway, committing itself to flight, everyone was holding his or her breath. 4 hours later the lady wiggled her tail again and after a flyby passing over the runway at low altitude, it came in to land.
Both take off and landing were the best I have ever witnessed. And I am not exaggerating!

Ofcourse I got some images of the aircraft.

The aircraft is moving on its own for the first time!

Close up on it's nose...

"Foxtrot-Whisky Whisky Oscar Whisky, you are cleared for take off."
F-WWOW, also known as WOW... (yep, pun intended...)

A good image of the climb out of the fat bird. Note the
corvette that escorted the plane during it's first flight.

All systems go, gears up!

Time to head back...

And a smooth landing

April moon

2005-04-10T13:32:00.000+01:00

Hmm, I really should make an efford to updating my blog more regularly. That way I can make the posts smaller.
Lot's is happening these days, not all good though I'm afraid... WIthin the next 2 weeks the aircraft I have been working on, the A380 will take to the skies for the first time. I'm sure everyone will be holding their breath as it is quite a landmark in aviation history.
However good Airbus may be, Boeing managed to secure their position in the market once more. Apparently their 777ER (extended range) has taken to the skies. Though it is not exactly a brand new aircraft, it does have one huge feature over all airbus aircraft: Range. It is now the longest range aircraft in the world, beating the A340-500 with barely a couple of thousand miles. One slight problem I think they made, is that the 777ER has a longer range than their new dreamliner, the 787. The 787 has a smaller range than even the A340-500 I believe.

These days I find myself watching Manga more and more. Manga is really not a good term. I should say Japanese animations. They can actually be quite good you know? I'm following a series called Ghost in the Shell. So far so good. There is a longer storyline in there but most episodes are standalones. I like the music though. My favorite however, is Noir. It is about a girl who suffers from amnesia and she discovers that she is really good in one thing: killing! She goes out in search of her own background. That series also has good some real good music. Too bad that these animations tend to be pretty expensive.
Tina gave me an animation before. It is called "Castle in the sky". It is from a fairly famous animation writer/producer. He also produced an animation called "Spirited away"

April has arrived, with the dubious weather it tends to bring. Sunshine and rain simultaneously! At least the weather is slowly improving and I can take out my cameras again. Recently I bought an Olympus OM1-N, probably one of the smallest SLRs around. The size is not my main concern though, it's the quality. Apparently it is optically of very high quality and mechanically it is pretty good too. WHat I liek about this camera is that it is fully mechanical! No more messing around with batteries! Ok, I admit it does use a battery, but only for the light meter. It works fully without batteries though (except lightmeter ofcourse).

This is the Camera I bought. Well... Almost anyway. I have an f1.4 50mm lens on it while this one has an f1.8. I like it a lot! I already bought extender tubes for it so I can do some macro photography.

I also bought a Bronica S2A recently. It's a 6x6 camera. I lik ethat one too as it is very rigid, but it is very VERY noisy when you press teh shutter release. It is like a bomb explodes! So when you photograph models warn them in advance. I'm keeping an eye out for a Mamiya TLR C33. These are supposed to be very very quiet (no mirror slapping around) and it has a build in bellows for close-ups

Bronica S2A. I will need to order the extension tube as well. I saw it for sale and it was pretty cheap, so gotta have it! I'm not gonna build on this set though. I want a 50mm lens (it came with a 75mm and a 100mm f2.8 and 2 magazines) for landscape, and that's it really. I'm mainly gonna use it for landscape. The mamiya I could buy if I can get it very very cheap. Won't spend more than 30GBP on it though. One thing I want for the Bronica though, is a winding crank. It only has a knob and that just isn't very comfortable to me.

The mamiya...

Now it's time for some pics I think. These have been taken with my Canon 10D, not with any of my new all mechanical analogue kit. I first need a GOOD scanner for that.

This girl was aware that I was making this picture because she was walking pretty fast down the hill. Could she have been afraid? Doesn't make sense though. Who would be intimidated by a 6'4" (1.90m) 15 stone (95 kg) dutch guy carrying cameras around his neck with telelenses that exceed his own height?

A window... yes, a win-dow...

Well... I gues they're leaves arend they...?

Another lodge... Actually the area I live in is pretty nice. Many fancy-pants houses WOrth only a few million pound sterling... In fact, teh area is soo posh that we actually have our own dedicated police patrols 24/7. While I was making these images a police car pulled up from behind and the constable inside asked me what I was doing (apparently observation and awareness weren't his best subjects during training as I was quite obviously pointing my huge zooms in all directions and had about 3 cameras on my neck!). So I gave him an answer that matched teh intelligence of his question: "Oh, I'm observing houses and police patrols sir. I'm planning a big burglary operation and I need to know teh details of the houses, What their owners do, if and what alarms are installed, you know the usual...". He looked at me like ... Then I said That I was making some close ups of plants and features and I showed him the pics I had on my 10D. That seemed to satisfy him and he drove off again...

One of many flower close ups I made. I don't have extension tubes for my canon. I might buy some cheap tubes (no optics inside so what can go wrong???)

A typical english phonebooth. And no, it is not the tardis. The tardis is green! I actually quite like what I did with this image. B&W with a red phone booth... Thank you adobe!

Close up of a daffodil. Not too bad I guess... I think this is one of the few flowers that I know the name of (well, in english anyway)

Well, I'll have to keep it at that for now. Lets pray I will make some more updates to my blog in the future...

It's about time!

2005-03-13T17:34:00.000Z

I really need to make an appology. I haven't updated my weblog since December (as you surely will have noticed). Unfortunately with the holidays taking 2 weeks, and after that work picking up rapidly, I haven't had much time to do any blogging whatsoever. Today I have a very lazy day, so I thought it was time to create a new post.
Work is very stressful, and will be for another 2 or 3 weeks. the A380 is about to take off at the end of the month and I need to make sure teh paperwork convinces the top level engineers and the authorities the aircraft is actually fit for flight.

Last x-mas I spend in Holland, visiting my family and friends. After reading the news every day in the morning over a cup of coffee (strong, black, 2 sugar ^_^), I was expecting I wouldn't enjoy being back in the country. However, nothing could have been further from the truth. Having been away for a whole year, I realised again how much better things are in good old Holland. Things are so much easier to obtain, people are friendlier. You actually get customer service when you go shoppinG! I forgot about that completely. Normally in Bristol I enter a shop, look around (the shops being so small and so lacking of stock I often spend no more than 5 minutes in them).
I remember going to a huge book store called Donner in Rotterdam. They have soo much. They have all the Brittish magazines, PLUS many american magazines, German magazines, sometimes even french!!! I decided to pick up some of the newer magazines on digital photography. When I left I remembered there were two major dutch photography magazines and at the time I left they merged as they pretty much covered the same subjects in a very similar style. I picked up this magazine, remembering how it lacked in advertisement and was cramped with actual articles! And guess what... It still is... As I said I also picked up some of the newer magazins on digital photography. I expected something similar as the british magazines, but again, it was filled with actually useful information! Ofcourse there are advertisements in there, how else would they be able to publish??? There was one magazine, fairly small, but about the best info I had ever seen! It is called 'Digitales' and is, obviously, about digital photography. It appears about 4 or 5 times per month, and it seems to be published by a photography school. It has a fairly lengthy section on equipment listing, which for me they can do without. Unless I happened to have picked the one, I think they should stick by publishing such a list once per year, after photokina in germany. Other than that it actually had very useful information in it. And lot sof it! Despite it's A5 size, it is a fairly bulky magazine, and it saved me from 4 hours of boredom on Schiphol Airport while I was waiting to check in.

I also got my best x-mas present ever (though I paid for it myself): a 70-200mm f2.8 USM IS L zoom lens from Canon. What a gem!!! needless to say I tried it out. Having Tina over from Taiwan I had to play tourist in my own country, which also meant lots of photo opportunities. I made many many pics, of which I will only show you some...

I think this photo came out pretty well. I was visiting a friend of mine and while he and his wife were out of the room, I made this close up shot of these tea lights.

This was a fairly common view during the holidays. We went to a couple of Zoo's This photo was made in Diergaarde Blijdorp, a fairly victorian-style zoo. there were a surprisingly amount of animals outside though! We had been to Arnhems Burgers zoo, which is many times bigger and more enjoyable for both viewer and animal than Rotterdam's Blijdorp. But in Arnhem most animals were hybernating or were in the stables. The weather was better when we went to Rotterdam too. Most animals displayed as much energy as this Tiger.

Actually I'm not too sure if this is an austridge I photographed in Rotterdam or its smaller cousin in Arnhem. Both animals are very arrogant and cocky! You don't want to stand near these 'birds'.

Playing a tourist, obviously I needed to visit the Euro Tower in Rotterdam. The whole day had been splendid with miles of visibility. We were a bit hesitant to go because it would be dark by the time we would get there. We decided to do it despite the freezing cold. And we were rewarded by a beautiful nightly sight of city lights. Tina was becoming an icecream as the wind was blowing rather hard and being used to 20 degrees at night, she really was suffering. Luckily the tower went all the way up, which is done by an enclosed elevator, and the sight was amazing. I took an interesting 360 dgree shot of the town, but that one is so unconventional I suggest you look it up in my album on flickr.

Believe it or not, but this little gritter was classified as a prarie dog... If they called it a guinea pig I would have believed it as well...

Komodo Dragon. Blijdorp had quite a few of those, big ones too! Don't want an argument with this guy...

Blijdorp is known for its collection of reptiles

What's a zoo without baboons...

Pretty colors...

Hmm, where did I go again?

Can you believe it? The trains actually have nicer signs than teh aircraft do! Please not this is not standard practise in Holland...

A quick stop at the observation terras. Quick in this case means 2 hours... Had a lot of time to kill...

Well, guess that is enough for the first post in the new year...

"extreme engineering"

2004-12-23T20:26:00.000Z

beer tree, originally uploaded by ksporry.

This week was a revelation of engineering feats. Three items revealed themselves to the world, in a most unique way. The first one is this Christmas tree. It is not just a Christmas tree, it's a gigantic Christmas tree. Over 12 meters high. 'So, big deal' I hear you thinking, except... that this tree is not just a tree... It was made of beer crates! In the city of Delft students from the faculty of civil engineering, designed and build this monstrosity of a christmas tree, made of crates for beer bottles (beer bottles in Holland usually come in crates of 24 bottles). This ofcourse is only possible in Delft, where the students run the daily affairs of life...

The tree was build from about 15.000 crates of beer in 50 layers, with a height of 12 meters (ca. 40ft). It was even fitted with lights! Unfortunatly it was broken down on wednesday. Here's one more shot of the tree...

Another feat of engineering, which actually dwarfed the Christmas tree, is the recentlyy opened Millau Bridge in France. This is bridge is supposed to be the highest bridge in the world, with 343 meters surpassing even the Eiffel Tower! The bridge spans the valley of the River Tarn, a 2.5 km wide gorge dividing two plateaux in France's rugged Massif Central region. The largest pylon is 343 metres high- taller than the Eiffel Tower. The bridge has cost 390 million euros ($517m) to build. Drivers will pay a 4.9 euro toll to use it. For more information have a look at the website of the BBC where I got some of these pictures:

BBC News

What surprises me, is that this bridge is not a suspension bridge. With this size and height, they might have preffered a slightly different construction... Oh well, I'm only an aeronautical engineer. Don't know anything about bridges, just aircraft...

Wait, I haven't finished yet...! Last week, the good people of Holland were shaken up by a Boeing 747 maunoeuvring itself through the canals of Amsterdam! The enormous aircraft made it's way from Schiphol Airport to Lelystad Airport. Did it take a wrong turn when it received it's taxi instructions? Or was it an emergency landing on The Dam? No, it was actually fairly simple. The 747 is the oldest 747 KLM had in its posession. The 747 is one of the oldest generation. In fact, it is one of the oldest 747's that was actually converted to have the extended top deck! The massive aircraft was donated by the KLM to the Auerospace museum on Lelystad Airport, where they have all kinds of aircraft, ranging from the Fokker spin to, well, this 747... and some of those planes still fly! They transported the 747 by boat through the canals of Amsterdam and manoeuvred it to Flevopolder, where the lats bit was done over land. Apparently this operation was cheaper than flying it over from Schiphol to Lelystad. Actually I wonder if that is true. First of all I doubt that Lelystad Airport can actually receive 747's, secondly I doubt the flight worthiness of this particular aircraft. I suppose that does make the statement true from a certain point of view: I'm sure it is more expensive to enlarge the runway on Lelystad Airport to cater for 747's and getting this aircraft flightworthy surely isn't cheap either. Anyway, here are some pics of the operation. Enjoy!

One more thing. Tomorrow I'll be flying to Holland to spend the holidays with my friends and family. So I won't be updating this website for 2 weeks. But when I'm back I'm sure I've got some new stories and photos to show you.
For now I wish you all a merry christmas and all the best for the new year!

Relocation, relocation

2004-12-19T21:39:00.000Z

Sorry for not posting for a while. I have been in the middle of a relocation. Last week I started and this weekend I finally finished! What a nightmare! I was once again reminded of the horror of moving house. Though I don't have a whole house worth of stufff to move, I do have a lot of junk!
Earlier tonight I was talking to my (now previous) landlord. As expected my flatmate Chris, f*cked up my rent calculations, claiming to know better what I paid than my bank does. I keep waiving the bills, receipts and statemnets under his nose, but no luck. So I had to clear things up with the landlord. He wants to write us a big fat cheque for the deposite and the money he now owes me (I paid half a months rent too much, which he is now giving back). I also would like to recalculate whatever he plans to pay back because he seems to have deducted 100GBP for 3 days rent and I don 't believe that is right. Chris seems to think so, but to be honest, Chris likes to think complex and needlessly difficuult so he could easily miss things.
Anyway, I'm gonna need the money because this morning my PC packed up! The processor just died on me (the pc still turns on, but nothing happens due to a lack of processing power, or actually, due to the non existing processing...), so I have to try and get a P4 2.4 GHz processor cheaply or get really disappointed as I will have to buy as a minimum a new motherboard, processor and memory! I also want to replace my monitor for an LCD. My monitor is still great but it just takes up way too much space.

Ok, I hope to do another post later this week before I leave for the holidays.

Japan Food Festival

2004-12-08T21:14:00.000Z

I mentioned before that I've been to another Japan Festival, so let me tell you about that.

It was a glorious day. We arrived by bus on Victoria station and walked to the. Unfortunately British efficiency popped his head up here. We needed some day tickets and Tina had to get a discount card for the coming week. She ordered it in advance so it was just a matter of picking that one up. We arrived in the main hall of teh station, and as couuld be expected, it was crowding with people. The train ticket desks were absolutely packed, with queues running through 3 halls! We weren't looking forward to waiting hours in a bloody queue, so when we saw a fairly short queue we jumped into that one. It was for reservations, so that was good. After half an hour it was finally our turn. So I immediatelt do my story and the guy says I should go to the next hall for day tickets with the underground. Ofcourse, half an hour waisted. So we walked to the next hall, but no signs whatsoever. Now I have lived in Bristol for 4 years so you would guess that I would be able to spot where we need to go. Wrong! I couldn't find any evidence of an office where to collect subway tickets. Thus we asked about 5 shops around, and finally were told we should go downstairs into the underground itself. So we did. First I walked up to the automatic machines, but they stated that day tickets were only valid from 10.00 to 16.00. That was not what I wanted, so we had to stand another 30 minutes in yet another queue. We got our tickets for the day (the guy was helpfull luckily). We asked where we could collect reservations and we had to go upstairs again. Andd ofcourse: another queue awaited us, but not before we had another half an hour of searching before we found the place. There we gave them the reservation of Tina, and they gave us the week ticket. Leavin gthe station we noticed that the dates were all wrong. the reservation date was for monday to wednesday but the ticket said saturday to monday! So we went back because I could have sworn teh dates were stated on the reservation. the guy told me to point it out, and unfortunately they were not. The guy was still kind enough to change it over. he said that the reservations are open ended. you had to specify the dates you wanted otherwise they assume "from today". Luckily he was kind enough to exchange it for a ticket with the right dates.

After what turned out to be quite a ride on the underground, we ended up somewhere on the second ring of London. the station was only about 5-10 minutes walk to th evenue, and the weather was absolutely fabulous. The area was very very nice. Beautiful houses, quiet, clean.

So when we got there we bought some tickets. Thank god it was outside as well! They couldn't have picked a better day. It was some 25 degrees. Tina even wanted to get a sunbrella (my english word for a "parasol"). First we walked a bit around the stands. Most of them were food stands, with all kinds of Japanese food. Considering the weather I decided not to try the sushi. How can the fish be fresh when with this kinnd of weather?!?

We walked to the end of the field, where they had some demonstrations in Kyudo. Kyudo is the art of Japanese archery. there are multiple forms for it (horse back archery is one of them). The sport is a lot more traditional than modern archery. The participants use traditional Japanese long bows and wear traditional clothing. Unlike modern archery, where it is best to concentrate then pull the string, aim and let go in one breath, as you often can't hold the bow aimed for too long. Kyudo demands a lot more of the mind and body as you are expected to do all the handling in a slow and controlled manner, showing discipline and control.
Each time an archerer had to shoot the rest would sit down, with only the one selected standing and doing his thing. Below are some pictures of the Kyudo session.

Next we walked around a bit more and stopped by a huge party tent where they performed a tea ceremony. Before the ceremony an old lady explained the ritual in rough lines, basically telling us teh steps she would be performing. After that she performed the ceremony. They could have done that a bit better I think. I know the tea ceremony is a special ritual, and is commonly used to either entertain respected guests or to express someone's affection for the other participant.
However, here we could only see them perform the ceremony without any explanation of what was going on and why it was done that way. A bit of a shame, but I guess you can write many books about the ritual. I'm sure it isn't easy to explain.

Following that we went to a cooking demonstration. that was very entertaining, and the cook made it look so easy! I was really surprised with th eefficiency and the skill she performed the recipes. I asked her later where I could get some of the traditional equipment. She said I should be able to find a sushi rice bowl without much efford here in england. Though I did manage to get onen at one of the local asian supermarkets quite cheaply, it isn't particularly high quality. So I will kepe my eyes open for a better one. However, she told me that the omelet pan (japanese use a copper coated, square pan for the omelets) I would probably not be able to find in the UK. She got it from Japan directly. I still ahve some of her recipes, and shame on be for not having tried them yet. I wanted to watch the other cooking programs as well (I am a great fan of cooking asian dishes), but Tina had enough and wanted to see something else.
I have to say, the lady looked quite young. I would have guessed here around my age (as it happens she looks very much like one of the dutch girls working here at Airbus, and she is a few years younger than I am), so I was surprised to find that not only did she have a daughter, her daughter turned 13 that same day!

So we walked around a bit more. Watched some kimonos. At some point we watched some Taiko. Taiko is Japanese style drums. it is very rythmic and harmonous. It sounds very energetic and dynamic. They had 2 groups. One group was, what appeared to me as a group of beginners., mostly older women and one man. There can be quite a bit of shouting when Taiko is being played. It is part of the performance. The second group was a group of young ladies, and they were a lot more dynamic! They played with such enthusiasm! I made a couple of photographs but they didn't turn out well, so I left them off. At two of them you can see one of the girls looking straight at me, she cought me straight in the act!

After a while Tina had seen enough as she started making sarcastic "Domo, Arregatou, Gomen nasai" comments, so we called it a day.
All in all it was a great day, and it stimulated me more into going to Japan some day...

Japan week Cardiff

2004-11-30T19:45:00.000Z

japan week cardiff, originally uploaded by ksporry.

Last weekend I went to a Japan festival in Cardiff, South Wales. the drive is actually quite a nice one. Nice landscape and not too busy. When I got there, it turned out to be fairly small scale. There were a few stands with Calligraphy, writing, painting. Some origami and wrapping. There was a stand with some cooking books and a stand with bento meals.
They had some demonstrations, most of which I missed. I only got to see a kimono show. Nice, but not exactly thrilling. There are some music performances and movie displays spread over Cardiff Bay. the whole event lasts 2 weeks, with the most interesting stuff last sunday.
The photo on top is a group photo of all the models that showed their kimonos. The photo below is one of the young girls showing her kimono.
I was a little surprised there were no men posing. Afterall, there are also kimonos for men.
The younger participants were quite shy, which was kind of cute to be honest.
I have the feeling that they could make so much more of such festivals. For some reason most asian festivals are rather...amateuristic... I went to one in London, which was good. I'll discuss that one in a future post.

young girl kimono, originally uploaded by ksporry.

Job creation

2004-11-29T22:06:00.000Z

The world is in a depression, we all see the effects. Unemployemncy rocketting sky high, and governments trying to be clever by trying to stimulate buying power by taking away the money from those who need it most.
Holland has reached a historical low since the 80's. But other countries could actually be off worse. Though Holland has an official unemploymency rate of 10% (which is actually quite significant), Japan has a mere 5%, a figure that seems to be constant with a healthy economy. Japan seems to have a significant hidding unemploymency. Not that strange if you have some 130 odd million people living and working together on a relatively small area. It seems like Japan creates jobs just to keep people employed, and you really don't need to be good to be promoted to office chief. It's like an army: plenty of corporals around.
England is pretty good at it too, mostly with bureacratic functions.. If they need to create more jobs, they just create some procedures and an extra department to deal with it. Ofcourse this alll mmakes money flow like water, because the extra bureaucracy brings aling delays, many, many delays. And if it can take longer, that would be even better! Imagine an IT department taking 2 montths to change someone's details in Outlook, an action that probably takes 2 minutes of someone's time... Or better yet, something that could have been fully automated!
France isn't much better though. the french excel in creating rubbish! In my profession Ii deal with plenty of french and french products. My company (surprise surprise, 80% french), manages to contract french software companies that create software tools worth some 100.000 GBP a piece, that do not do the job, and after delivering the product, it doesn't work (ofcourse), partly because it isn't finished (ofcourse), and then say they won't provide support for their product (agaiin ofcourse).
China is good at it too though. During my holiday in Shanghai I witnessed many cases of job creation. trafffic attendant is prpobably the most popular one. Each junction has 4 corners, right? (for a simple cross junction that is, two for a T-junction). In Shanghai they manage to put a traffic attendant on every single corner of the street. There are many many youngg boys handing out commercial cards. They do it so agressively that it seems like the more cards they hand out, the more they get paid! Then there are the street cleaners, who by the way only operate in areas of esteme.
In the post office there is actually a guy that wil guide people to a till, any till... There will be one person tthat takes your mail, pass it on to the next, who will put a stamp on it, another to put it in a bag, etc etc.
If you can think of something that could possibly be implemented as a job, no matter how remote, China probably thought of it before you did.

Job creation excercise, originally uploaded by ksporry.

Buddha in the 3rd millenium

2004-11-22T22:11:00.000Z

Buddha in the 3rd millenium, originally uploaded by ksporry.

This photo was taken in Taiwan in a place called Tainan, just north of Kaosiung. The place is famous for it' s many temples, and when I say many, I mean many!. It has 3 huge temples, two of which are constantly competing for the title of "biggest temple of South East Asia". Well, I have to say, they are mighty impressive.
I can't think of a better picture to summarise Taiwan: Where new meets old! It is amazing how the Taiwanese manage to combine tradtitions with modern society. You can literally find an ancient temple next to the newest skyscraper in Taipei.

Reflections...

2004-11-19T22:39:00.000Z

Today I saw an interesting film 'A river runs through it', with Brad Pitt. The story is basically about two brothers who grow up in Montana and have a passion for fly-fishing. One leaves to study english literature, the other stays behind (and gets into gambling and drinking). Though probably classified as a drama, it isn't really dramatic. It is quite striking though, the peace and calmness the film radiates. The film is set in gorgeous nature.

Why do I mention this? It makes me realise how much I like travelling. I want to see soo much more than I have done so far. I've had it with Europe for a while. I want to go to Japan, partly thanks to Jeff, who started sushicam many a year ago (www.sushicam.com). China would be interesting, but not Shanghai. I've been there, but the city doesn't appeal to me very much. Taiwan is also an option. I like Taiwan. Nice people, nice food.

There is another reason why I like travelling and it is probably a very unimaginable reason.
It reminds me who I am, and where I come from, where my home really is. I might not be there now, and it may be a sh!thole sometimes, but it is home, and there is only one home...
So why don't I just go home? That's because you don't realise what you miss until you miss it, even if the place you live in now, is many times better. I didn't know how fast to get away from Holland, but I do miss it now. And remember when you were a child, that you didn't always go to Mc Donalds, or got candy. And when you did, it was the greatest thing ever! That is how it feels to go home. The sweetness of coming home... There is nothing quite like it.
I haven't been home for almost a year now. When I do get home, it will be exactly a year ago. And that while it is only 100GBP away... So why don't I go home more often? Because I like travelling...to places I haven't seen before...

The first step into a larger world...

2004-11-07T20:38:00.000Z

It finally came in last friday. After an exhausting week of testing, stress, sweat, tears and blood, it finally came! My first Macintosh... My iMac G5 20"...
And I love it! I have to say, after 15 years of MS Windows it is quite a change in operation, and I have to unlearn what I have learned. But I made my first step into a larger world. I do need to get some virusware and spamware stuff. Not that Mac is so sensitive to the stuff, but always better safe than sorry...
I'm planning to purchase an iPod from Taiwan, as it is some 45 quit cheaper than in extortionate UK. I also need to buy one of those JBL Creature II sound systems. It may not be the best in the market sound wise, but my stereo can deal with that when I want REAL good sound, plus the white version nicely fits the design of my iMac. I was tthinking about getting an iSight as well, again the design has a large impact. Don't get me wrong I don't concentrate on looks, in fact I often don't bother because quality is more important, but the iSight is top notch and the JBL set isn't bad either. So I think some new gadgets are on the way. Expensive? yes, but since I found out I have 1000GBP more to spend this week than normal (actually it will be over 2000 by december), I think I am entitled to spoil myself a littlle bit.

Soon I should be getting my Adobe Creative Suite in the mail and then I really can get started! Hopefully then I will beb abl eto put some pics up as well. I have quite a few GB of images to convert, post, print and process, so I will be a busy bee this week...

Thatt reminds me, when I tried installing Canon digital solution disk v5, which did work on my PC, it didn't want to install file viewer utility. Don't ask why, I do not have the answer. So what I did, was look for some support from Canon. Since I bought my camera in the UK and registered it there (the disk came with the camera), it made only sense... I typed in my querry and it came up with a whol elist of similar issues. Except that none of them were similar enough to be of any help. So I submitted my questions to Canon, only to not receive any notification. So today I tried again, so far still no confirmation of receipt. If I don't have any initial answers by monday, i will start calling them and demanding some support.
I heard that Canon UK is pretty poor, and I believe I'm starting to experiience it now myself.

In fact, a lot of support and service is equal to non-existent here in England. They're just not into it it seems...
Canon Holland is good though! Last timme I had a question (which was also the first time), I bought a flash (540EZ). But the companyy I bought it from only included an unreadable german copy of the manuual, so I called Canon and I got a verry friendly chap on the line. he told me to fax or email the receipt and warranty certificate. .So I scan it in, and I attach a question if the guy could send me some info and brochures on related products. About a week later I receive my manuual, accompanied with 2 books, worth 50GBP!!! One was 'The Lens Works' and another was about photography using EOS equipment. I was well impressed so I send him another email thanking him for his help and the service he provided.
Anyway, we'll see what will happen.

Stay tuned for the next episode of "Any whichh way but home..."

depressing sunday

2004-10-31T20:51:00.000Z

Sundays, I hate sundays. Most others probably like sundays, because it is still weekend. I hate sundays, I've always hated sundays.

Sunday is boring. There are only a couple things you do on sunday: recover from a hangover (bye-bye-sunday), doing nothing at all (very common), watching the grand prix while you know Schumacher wins it anyway, checking your emails and checking them again an hour later, you do your choirs (how depressing is that?!? always "laundry this", "cleaning house that").
There was a time in my life when sundays were good though. I would be flying model aircraft. That was fun, until the thick-headed Dutch bullshit government decided that silent, unpowered model gliders were more annoying and environmentally unfriendly than the power-boosted mopets and scooters revving their little sowing-machine-like-engines at 150 decibels!
Then there is the next door neighbour ofcourse. Despite living in a very Christian village he always felt it necessary to start doing DIY at 8 am on a sunday morning, the heiden! Ofcourse it wasn't cutting the hedge with scissors, but rather drilling the walls and hammering them down!

There is another good reason to not like sundays: The next day will be monday and the first working day of the week! When I was a kid, that would be interesting because I actually loved going to school. I had really nice classmates in Arnhem, but when we moved away, well... you can imagine something.

Ofcourse if you like gardening I suggest you stick to sundays. Ideal for gardeners!

well, winter time has set in. The clock went back an hour last night. It meant an hour extra sleep. very useful for bristol's drunkards. Not so much for me though as I spend it awake, so I didn't get that much sleep.

Right tomorrow back to work again! Let's hit the sack. teh sooner I go to sleep the sooner sunday belongs to the past...

Museums and sightseeing…

2004-10-28T09:59:00.000+01:00

From reading several travel guides, one would think there is enough to see in Shanghai to fill 3 weeks in Shanghai alone. Well, it really isn’t that impressive. Unless you literally want to follow what the book tells you, you can see the most important stuff well in a week’s time and do some ordinary shopping as well.
Shanghai has a couple of museums, of which I have seen only one I must admit. The Shanghai Museum on People Square is quite good. They have a good collection of artefacts and they have it nicely attired. I believe they’ve done the place up a couple of years ago. Well, now it is definitely worth going. The price is fairly cheap, only 30 Yuan. However, if you want to get the most of it I suggest you get an audio guide, which costs about 60 Yuan I believe. The audio guide is needed, because despite their interesting collection and their nice layout, the artefacts do not have much of a description. They all have a sign that states: ‘this a vase’, or ‘this is a painting’. If you are lucky they display the era from which it descended. Very disappointing as it makes the museum a lot less interesting. In case you are wondering, it doesn’t help being able to read Chinese, as both Chinese and English are displayed.
If you want to see everything properly you really should spend 2 half- days, as it is indeed that extensive.
Having said that, the best collection you can probably find in Taipei, Taiwan. When Chiang Kai Shek and his followers were chased out of China, they brought along as much of the Chinese heritage as they could possibly carry, to prevent it from being smashed by the communists. The museum in Taipei is quite a bit bigger than the Shanghai museum, and I will certainly want to go there a second time. Especially since I have only seen about a third or so the last time I went there.

ancient wine vessel, originally uploaded by ksporry.

buddha in large numbers, originally uploaded by ksporry.

Hangzhou is a lot better! Hangzhou is fairly touristy and at the west lake in Hangzhou always attracts a lot of people. On one of the peninsulas has a nice little museum with some fairly interesting artefacts. Although the museum is not even nearly as big as the Shanghai museum and the artefacts are not always as interesting, it does have some interesting pointers. First of all, what definitely makes this museum better than the Shanghai museum, is the fact that they have displays everywhere! Each artefact has an explanation of what it is, where and when it is from, what it was used for, etc etc. And every so many displays they provide you with a little story about the further developments made in a particular era. Very interesting, and it is even in English! They also discuss some of the more recent history of China, like the rise of the communists, Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang, the Japanese occupation, the cultural revolution, etc etc. definitely worth seeing. One drawback though, is that you can walk through the museum pretty quickly.
Having said that, There is so much to see in Hangzhou/west lake, that you won’t miss too much. Most of the buildings and sightseeing highlights are reconstructions and restorations. Very few is left from the original buildings, which is a bit of a shame, but it is still nice to see. Again, if you want to see Hangzhou, I suggest you take 2 full days to see the west lake area properly, maybe even more, because many of the attractions close around 17.00. You also need to be fairly fit as the area is surrounded with hills, and there are some steep stairs to climb!
One interesting little shop on the main peninsula, is part of the seal stone engravers society. A society that was dedicated to, yes, you can guess: engraving seal stones. They use an ancient way of script for seal stones, nowadays known as, again not very surprising: seal script. They have a very interesting collection of seal stones, in all shapes and sizes, but also a lot more that is related to Chinese calligraphy, like brushes, ink stones, ink tablets, etc etc. Note though that they don’t bargain like Old Town. The price on the item is what you get to pay, take it or leave it! If you really want to get something interesting I would suggest to go for it here, as they do have some unique items. Otherwise you can get many seal stones a lot cheaper in Old Town.
If you do have the opportunity, go there during spring, when the lotuses are blossoming. That should give quite a spectacular sight on the lake as there are many fields of lotuses. When I was there, all you could see is the green leaves on stalks of about 2 meters high. Interesting, but not exactly breathtaking.

Gate Shanghai, originally uploaded by ksporry.

Shanghai has several other attractions that are worth going to.
There is the Oriental Pearl Tower, which is a modern shaped TV/Radio Tower of some 400 odd meters tall. You can go up to 360 meters in the futuristic, rocket shaped tower. There are 3 balls you can visit, although I didn’t see any elevators or stairs going to the first ball. The second ball at some 260 meters high is regarded as one of the more interesting points of view, especially considering Shanghai’s haziness. Also it is a lot cheaper than doing the whole thing. I paid the extortionate sum of 100 Yuan to get to the top, which does allow you to visit the second ball as well. It is interesting, but no more than that.
Alternatively you could go to the Jinmao Tower. At 88 stories one of the highest buildings in Asia, which has now been surpassed by Taiwan’s Taipei-101 tower. The Tower is designed with a typical Chinese building architecture in mind. Strangely the Taiwanese kind of copied the style for their Taipei-101, which is now the tallest building in the world. Personally I like the Jinmao tower better than Taipei-101. It has a more interesting design (I will put some photos up later for comparison).
The Jinmao tower is cheaper than the Oriental Pearl Tower at only 70 or 80 Yuan, and it does bring you quite a bit higher than the Oriental Pearl Tower. If you can see the rest of the city remains to be seen though…
When you travel to the Pudong district (e.g. to visit the oriental pearl tower), you could choose to take the pedestrian tunnel. At 30 Yuan it is 15 times as expensive as walking to Henan Road station and taking a 2 Yuan subway, but it is actually quite interesting, and lets face it, 30Yuan is only 2 GBP. Hardly worth a second thought unless your middle name is Scrooge.
I already discussed Old Town with its bazaars. There is more than bazaars though. You can go to the Yuyuan gardens, which again has an entry fee, but is worth the money. It is quite sizable and you spend more time than you would initially expect. The buildings are intriguing and original. A lot of it is restored but it looks nice. Unfortunately when I came, most of the buildings had closed doors. Each building has a small description of what the room represents and what it what it was used for.

Some things are more worth going to in the evening, when it is dark. Like Nanjing road, which is the biggest shopping street in Asia. It actually has a small ‘train’ running along the street! During the day it is no more than most other shopping streets, but at night it looks like the light strip in Las Vegas! Quite impressive I have to admit. Some things are not directly touristy and obvious. At some point I went to visit a friend and her parents. She picked me up and accompanied me to her parents for dinner. Along the way we walked past some rather old building blocks. Smaller houses between the tall flats. Between the ancient rows of houses were tiny little narrow alleys. And they were pitch black! Occasionally you could see a light up in the distance, but generally it was just plain dark. It is amazing people could actually walk through those alleys without stumbling over the rubbish! It was an intriguing sight and I actually felt myself drawn to those ancient alleys between the old houses that surrounded them. Ofcourse wisdom, and my friend as well, told me I better didn’t. In these cases it is wise to have a guide with you. To be honest, I doubt anything would have happened to me if I would have dived into such an alley. Shanghai is really not that criminal.

Hmm, it seems like I have created my longest post so far. SO I better leave it at this. More next time…

Prices and haggling in Shanghai….

2004-10-22T07:47:00.000+01:00

I am still amazed about the truth in what the Lonely Planet guide of Shanghai stated.
Haggling is indeed one of the things you have to perform on the streets of Shanghai. Though modern department stores will laugh at you, you can make deals with less rigid stores, like the Huanlong department store opposite Shanghai Central Railway station (not to confuse with Guanlong).
However, if you go to Old Town, you have-to haggle. In fact, they will be insulted if you don’t.
The thing is, when they see a western guy, they will immediately zoom in on him/her. If you have a Chinese companion, they will ignore that person. Also they will double their prices for westerners.
Haggling can be quite tricky if you haven’t done so before. Prices you see may be cheap , especially for the place you come from (e.g. the UK), but you have to remember that for them, those prices are extortionate! You shouldn’t just think ‘what would I like to pay for that?’. You actually have to think ‘If I was Chinese, with an average Chinese salary, what would I want to pay for that?’ Take that number and then offer the retailer 50% of the price you want to pay for it. Effectively you will probably have to offer 10% of the listed price. They will decline but immediately give you 30% reduction. Increase your price just a little bit, only a few yuan, say 5 yuan (depending on the product). They will drop their prices even more, and so on and so forth. You will probably end up paying 30-35% of the listed price. Sometimes, after their first reduction they won’t go lower. Be prepared to walk away. Go to the next shop (that will most likely sell the exact same item). They will almost certainly follow you decreasing their price with every step you make, and they will probably meet your price. Sometimes they won’t but that is the risk. Then again, I’m sure you can get the item in another shop.
Also remember that as long as they decrease their price, they make a profit. And you have to be really hard. Don’t give in to sweet sad looks, they probably still rip you off. You have to haggle for every single penny/yuan/cent, seriously! Also keep in mind that you always have to stay friendly during the whole process. Keep smiling even if they don’t meet your price. Be polite, and don’t insult them, because gone your bargain will be…
Whenever you are interested in an object, and you try to haggle for it, scrutinise the object. Even if it looks good. Try to find every single defect or deficiency and point it out. It will get you another discount extra. Even if the defect seems to be only in your head (like, one chopstick is less shiny than the other, things like that).
When you look at wooden objects, make sure you know something about the wood characteristics, or have someone that knows something about it. You don’t have to be an expert, but even an amateur can distinguish between lacquered pine and mahogany! This is important, because they will claim everything is mahogany. You can notice the difference between high quality hard wood (like mahogany, oak, etc) and pine and other soft woods. First of all, a softwood dents easily. Ofcourse you can’t just try to dent the product and see how easy that is. But you can feel it from the texture. Often softwoods are also a lot lighter (because of the lesser density of the wood), and with hard woods you can distinguish line patterns of the wood much better. You can also see that often, even if it is real mahogany, the object is lacquered, just look for drips and drops. If there is a texture, the paint will be lighter on the higher parts and darker in the lower parts. Anyway, you get the picture…

In the normal shops they don’t always accept credit cards, like the Huanlong department store, near the station. These are small shops in one big building, a bit like a mall. None of these shops accept electronic payments, simply because the facilities have never been installed in the building. You can get good prices there for brand new products, but normally they don’t give you a Tax receipt. If you Do require such a receipt, the price will go up. Reason for this is because they have to buy Tax coupons from the tax office. Obviously this costs them money, which they will reflect in the price. Since these shops are not really market shops like you find on the streets, you can’t haggle, like in Old Town.
If you do more business, you may be able to get some reduction, but in fairness, it won’t be much, and the price you pay, will be good anyway. I did some business buying and selling some camera lenses there, and generally they are like regular camera shops in Holland: They will give you a good deal if you buy something from them, and if you buy more, you can negotiate a nice price, but we are talking pennies here, so don’t push it too much. Also note that you won’t get a warranty with any electronics you buy from this place. But really, if you live on the other side of the world, there is probably little you can do anyway if it breaks down.
Modern department stores, like No. 1 Department store on Nanjing Road (the biggest shopping street in Asia, stretching over 1,5-2 miles…!) will have modern prices: the same as at home. They will provide you with all the (tax) receipts.

More to come soon…

Winters in England are cold.... and wet!

2004-10-20T07:55:00.000+01:00

Well, just to have a break in my stories about Shanghai.
Winter has set in here in the UK. Ofcourse I noticed this on the evening I landed at Heathrow. It was bitterly cold. In honesty I have to admit that the temperature today isn’t too bad really. But it is wet! Its been raining all night and all morning. I was surprised to find it brought up some nostalgic feelings. It kind of makes me homesick to a time a and place in my youth. At the time I was living in Arnhem and I had a very good childhood there (with some exceptions ofcourse). That combined with the photos I see of trees changing colours. You may wonder why I said ‘photos’ rather than the real thing. That’s because the weather in England doesn’t really allow an opportunity to watch autumns colours unfortunately.
I remember when in Arnhem there was a big park just north of the central station. We always had excursions to this park with the school, especially in the autumn. We would be picking up leaves and all kinds of tree seeds, like acorns, beechnuts, chestnuts, etc. We would examine them back in school.
I remember there was a little waterfall in the park, and you could walk underneath it, and it was small enough to cross through on the top, without fear of being swept away.
Back then it could rain just like it is now. Only back then we would still get real winters in Holland, unlike nowadays. In Arnhem we would even get snow! Knee high! (ofcourse I was only 10 back then, so knee high back then is now ankle high…) We could ride our snow sledges from the dykes or some of the few hills we have in Holland. Normally we first would get snow in winter, and later we would get ice. Sometimes, if they didn’t put any salt on the streets, the snow would freeze up and one of the neighbours would tie all the sledges to the towing hook of his car and tow us through the streets in the area. The joy we had…
First snow fall was always amazing. My brother and I would be playing outside and you could smell the snow building up in the clouds, and suddenly at the end of the afternoon, just after twilight, big fat snow flakes would tumble down from the skies. My brother and I would immediately grab our shovels and start asking people if we could clear their paths for them (for a small fee ofcourse). You may think why as it just started. But within half an hour there would be 10 cm of snow! So if we start early, we can come back an hour later and do it again for them, again for a small fee ofcourse ^_-
It makes me somewhat homesick thinking back to those days. I will make sure to go back during Christmas and New years eve. Though I might spend new years eve with friends. It is more convenient if I have to go back to the UK the next day. Last year we actually got to see some snow when we were on the train back to the airport. That was quite a delight! And the atmosphere was soo nice in Holland, during those festivities. I hope that recent government plans to cut budget on, well, everything, haven’t made people too bitter.Recently I found some photos made in Japan, showing the golden temple covered in snow. It was absolutely gorgeous! This is why I would very much like to go there. At least Japan still knows real seasons!

...part 2: Taxi's

2004-10-17T13:05:00.000+01:00

Taxis in Shanghai, a bit of an experience. There are taxis in abundance in Shanghai, wherever you are there will be dozens of Taxis driving around. Now normally in England I would never think about getting a taxi, because it is just too damn expensive. A 5 minute ride in the UK costs you around 5 GBP! Not in Shanghai though. On average a 10-15 minute ride would cost around 10-15 Yuan, 3 yuan more after 23:00. 15 Yuan on average equals 1 GBP. In fact, at some point I started to get worried when a ride became 17 Yuan! (Which is still peanuts...).
Taxi's are quite easy to identify. They are all Volkswagen Santana's, it being the Santana 2000 or otherwise, so the shape is very distinct. The colours you can recognise quickly as well. They are always bi-coloured, with silver and aqua blue, or dark red. Sometimes with yellow or another colour. Personally I have never heard of a Volkswagen Santana before, and I doubt they actually exist outside China.
The taxis all have white covers over the seating. This could be to spare the original cover, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with last year's SARS epidemic.
The taxi drivers, like everyone else, speak shanghainese. It is useful to have your destination written in Chinese, because they are bount to not understand you when you pronounce where you need to go.
The taxi drivers can be a bit rude though. The first time I took a axi, I only had 100 Yuan bill son me and the guy didn't have any change so he got totally upset and nervous because he had to change. So the moral here is to always make sure you have smaller with you when you take a taxi. Later on I discovered by the way that not all taxi drivers care that much...
Despite that, the taxi drivers are surprisingly honest I have to say. The meter is always set to 0 (you should check before you actually get in). However, they don't always follow your instructions, which means sometimes they take the long road, and they don't always let you off where you want to. Because of 'the rules'. Funny enough at some point I started giving the driver instructions where to go...

More next time...

Shanghai...where east meets west...part 1

2004-10-14T16:43:00.000+01:00

Well, I got back from Shanghai. I'll be telling about my Shanghai experience in a series of posts, this being the first one. ALthough I could summarise it in a sentence: Read the Lonely Planet guide of Shanghai, 2004 print. It is spot on, to the letter!

My trip started and ended with the aircraft I actually helped design myself: the A340-600. I was quite exhilarated when I found out I got to fly an aircraft I helped design myself. Unfortunately, I let myself get blinded by that. Buy did I get a cold shower...
The A340-600 is supposed to have an in-flight entertainment system that is top notch. Too bad it is optional. I was flying with China Eastern and they apparently cut drastically on the in-flight entertainment. There were only a few LCD monitors in the centre row. What's worse, is that the programs played on it were mostly chinese. Nothing wrong with that, except that most programs didn't have subtitles. Plus the quality of the recording was soo bad (they must have bought some dirt cheap VCD copies from Shanghai Old Town, because I never saw something as bad as that), I couldn't even read the subtitles when they were there.
On the way back it was worse though. They played some chinese celebrity interview show, over and over again. Ofcourse again no subtitles. And it lasted for 6 hours!!! So at some point I asked the stewardess if she could change it, maybe put some movies on. She immediately did so and appologised for it (They are very polite and correct I have to say, no complaints about the service I got!). Again the films were poor quality. In fact, they showed some American movies, which were dubbed in chinese ofcourse, and then subtitled in english, very very poor english... It was almost funny!

You can notice though that they are a budget airliner, as beside the in-flight entertainment, they also cut costs on food. You get 2 meals and twice you get a drink, that's it, nothing more. Though you can grab drinks yourself during the whole flight, as they have trays with water and juices standing ready for the thirsty ones.

What was funny though was that on the way to Shanghai, I talked to one of the stewardesses and I asked her how the company (China Eastern) liked the aircraft. I told her I helped design the aircraft. That is... I tried to tell her. She couldn't understand english very well. Now I know I have an accent, but it really is not that bad! She constantly looked at me questioningly "what the hell is this guys saying???" And she would ask me to say it again a bit slower and she vrought her ear closer as if it was really noisy and she could hear me well. Finally a passenger walked up to us and started translating what I said to her.
No... it wasn't noisy...

Victory!

2004-10-11T21:17:00.000+01:00

Yes! I didn't know it was possible, but wonders do still exist! I can retrieve all my data from my presumed lost E-drive. I have my photos back!!! I am currently recovering all files and directories and I will back them up this evening. Then I will continue to recover all other files before I format the harddrive again. But before I do that I will make the harddrive an external one.
I'll keep you posted, first recovery operation!

Disaster struck!

2004-09-23T18:45:00.000+01:00

It was bound to happen... My PC crashed... It happened during an update of Windows XP (SP2 was the update). I ended up reinstalling XP, but to my surprise, XP no longer recognised my E-drive. Now you should know that I have 3 physical harddrives, each un partitioned. After the crash I could still use all 3 harddrives, but after the reinstallation XP no longer could see anything on my E-drive. It considered the drive 'unformatted' and asked me if I wanted to format it. Knowing ofcourse that during the installation I didn't do anything to it, and therefore assuming all data was still there intact, I said 'no'. Strangely XP never asked me if I wanted the E partition reset, neither did it tell me it would do so. Nonetheless I lost my E-drive. I am still trying to recover the data on it but I think it is a loss. It annoys me a lot as it contains a lot of photos, some of which I hadn't backed up yet. I didn't consider backing it up necessary as it was a separate drive and XP should have left it alone... 'should have'... but it didn't... *sigh*
Surprisingly support does answer my emails, but ofcourse after giving them a full detailed description of what happened, up to every single click, in chronological order, including information on what kind of windows CD I used etc, they still come back with a reply like I am a moron! They asked me if I used a recovery disk, because those disks format every harddrive on your system. That was all they said... So basically they hadn't read my email, so I asked them to cut the crap and just get to the point. I told them I'm not a moron as I gave them every single piece of info they would ever need or even not need! (short of my Credit card details ofcourse) I asked them if they could just tell me how to fix the problem and not try to hold me off with useless questions that they already have the answer of.
We'll see what happens...

Mean time, I still need to learn how to make something of my weblog. I want to insert pictures and add menus etc. If there is anyone that can give me some advice, hints or tips I would be very grateful!

Some good news: My holiday is only 1, well... actually only half a day away. On sunday I am going to Shanghai, China! I can't wait! I'm sure I can make some lovely photos there.

Mean time I found a very good blog: java-jive.blogspot.com
The images are amazing!!! When I find out how, I will add that one to my links section...

Closer to freedom...

2004-09-16T23:34:00.000+01:00

Well, the week's almost over. Tomorrow the weekend will start, can't wait! LAst week has been most exhausting. At work I found out that some data had to be delivered to the supplier. An initial quick calculation showed that I wouldn't be able to produce the required info before the end of the month, as it would normally take a month, but surprsingly I managed to get most data togetehr in a day! Sometimes I'm even amazing myself!!! Though the work isn't finished yet, I have good hopes of rounding off my tasks before I go on holiday.

Ahh, sweet holiday... Just a bit more than a week and I'll be off to Shanghai. 2 weeks of nice food, and sightseeing. I can't wait!!! I still need to sort out some stuff this weekend though.

I managed to sell one of my guitars last tuesday. The guy came round to buy a Les Paul for his 11 year old son. He himself plays quite well, so he knew his stuff. He tried it out and I think it was actually adequate. Then he saw my other guitar, which I was also selling, and he tried that, just for fun. And he was sold immediately. He loved that guitar, and rightly so! I was actually quite sad to sell it as I loved that guitar as well. I was hoping I could sell the Les Paul, but in the end he paid more for the Yamaha (not a standard one, but custom made!). Though I shouldn't complain, I do miss it. I don't play very often, but that guitar was sweeeet... I liked it way better than teh Les Paul. Well, in the end it was just more practical. I mean, I will need the money and I can't take it with me when I want to move to Shanghai. I have a lot of junk to get rid of, so I should just let it go I guess. After all, to me it is more important to go to Shanghai than to keep a guitar I hardly play...

Soon I will try to post some pics, but first I have to figure out how to go about that best...

Where to start...?

2004-09-13T17:46:00.000+01:00

Ok, this is my very first blog, so please be gentle...
For a while now I have wanted to create a Weblog, and I think this service allows me to do so. I wish I found out about this 4 years ago, when I started working in England!
During those 4 years a lot has happened that I would have like to share with you. Tough luck I guess, but it is possible that I still come up with some of the "adventures" I had.

Today I realised that I really need a holiday, and I mean REALLY really, because when I left I started making that sound Islamic women always make when they celebrate something. Come to think of it... it does sound rather much like my phone on my desk at work...
Well, 13 days left, and I'll be in Shanghai! Just for holiday this time, but I do plan to go there permanently. I'd love to work and live there for a few years.

I hope those typhoons and hurricanes are gonna stop sometime soon. Taiwan is still being pestered by one, and Southern China is suffering as well, not to mention Japan... Shanghai isn't suffering too much, but there's plenty of rain at the moment. It better be gone when I get there!!!

Well, it isn't much for my first entry, but I'm still reading up on all the tricks I can do with this weblog (sorry, I'm a bit of a website/weblog virgin...), more importantly, I'm hungry and I'm gonna get some food!