Tour Italy 2008-2009

Em says we should visit all places in Italy before venturing out and so the theme for the Tour Year 2008-2009 will be “Viva l’Italia!”. We have started a few places and will be planning for more places to visit in Italy.

1. Lake Como (last week)

2. Cinque Terre (next week)

3. Barolo, where the king of wines is made (Sept)

4. Florence/Pisa (Oct or Nov)

5. Bergamo (Oct or Nov)

6. Verona, where Juliet’s house is (Oct or Nov)

7. Turin (Jan or Feb)

8. Region of Tuscany (Mar or Apr)

9. Sicily, Puglia, and Napoli (Aug Holidays)

Other suggestions are welcome!

Day Trip to Lake Como

Em says July cannot be so boring and so we went to Lake Como for a day. Train ride there is cheap (5 euros only) but the ferry transportation cost like 20 euros, need to plan better for next time to minimise usage of the ferries.

View from Castello di Vezio in Varenna

Varenna Town

Bellagio Town

Como Town

My labmates say I am so Chinese because…

…my pipette tips formation look like the Great Wall of China. Actually, I am so Singaporean, because I am just being kiasu, more is better.

What do you think?

Having mobile internet

Vodafone’s mobile internet for 1 week is only 2 euros, I see no reason why I should not subscribe especially with the N95 8GB I have.

Problem is, after I subscribed to mobile internet, I keep missing buses! I was too engrossed in reading CNN or Bloglines or ST forum or checking emails or watching youtube while at the same time listening to mp3. Unfortunately, this 2 euros a week plan do not allow you to connect to MSN or voip, else this whole setup will be even cooler!

N95 8GB with data plan really rocks. Its like what nokia says – its what computer have become

Boring July

This month will be boring because we are broke. No money = no travel, no shopping, no eating out, no ebay, no nothing!!!!

Thats why I always tell Em – In life, unfortunately, money is the most important thing. Nothing else matters because you get everything with money.

Family Love

On a routine basis, you usually don’t feel family love since you see each other everyday. I particularly felt family love when I was home for only 1 week after 1 year away.

• My dad bought “shao rou” at Suntech City (where prices are much much higher) and 2 BIG BIG packets of “hao jian” for me. My dad is thrifty and he usually don’t spend such money.
• My mum cooked loads of food the day I reached home. She also keeps buying different “brands” of roast duck (3 times I think) after I commented that “Dian Xiao Er @ Vivo Duck is perfect”. There was like alot of logans, lychees, watermelons, and durians ready for me when I was home.
• My bro (and dad) fetched me around (to and fro Vivo and many other places) several times when I was back.
• My sis crashed in my bedroom during my last 2 nights at home.
• Our family dog likes to play with me.
• My relatives (and Em’s family) came for a mini family gathering to send me off (with farewell ang pows of course).

Check out our family photo that we took recently when I was back…

The best 300 euros I’ve ever spent

I bought an aircon for the super hot summer here. It is SOOOooooooooooooooooo good with the aircon. Like what one of my labmates said, “It’s a different life”.

New Phone

Okie, this is old news but I still want to talk about it.

When I was back in SG, there was this singtel promotion (PC show) for HTC Touch Diamond. It was like the latest touch screen phone and so I HAD to get it (it was cheap anyway due to promotion). However, like most things, the phone looks good but sucks on the inside! This is my (and only mine) opinion after 3 days of use.

• WM6 was laggy, fucking laggy, like TAKES 1 minute to open up just the SMS screen. The auto-rotate function from portrait to landscape actually fucking HANGS the phone and I had to do a HARD RESET. I even thought I got a screwed up set.
• Touch FLO screen looks good but fucking irritating to send sms or even call without any keypad.
• LACK OF INTEGRATED mobile VOIP, this is the most fucked up thing since I use Pfingo to call home.
• Internet connection is fucking hard to configure. GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA keeps activating and I can’t seem to find a way to stop all these connection. I fucking just want to use WIFI.
• Phone heats up just after 30mins to 1hr of fucking use.
• Abso-fucking-lutely small storage space of 4GB, Garmin maps (SG/Europe/North America) already took up more or less 2GB of space. How to use as mp3 player? No expandable slot some more.

Anyhow, I was smart (and lucky) enough to sell the HTC Touch Diamond and use the money to buy a brand new Nokia N95-8GB. The good old Symbian OS in the N95-8GB works so perfectly for me. The only thing is the phone is slightly large, but hack it cos I usually wear large baggy jeans or carry a bag anyways.

• No lag. Though I used to complain how my N80IE lags, after using WM6, Symbian is like LAG-FREE. Trust me on this!
• Easy Internet configuration, VOIP integration, N-gage games, GPS, keypad, Nokia PC suite, customisable active standby shortcuts, and 3.5mm headphone jack makes this one of the BEST phone ever.
• 8GB space, not extremely huge but enough for current technology use for up to 1 year before a change of phone is needed. After minus-ing the GPS maps and other applications I still have at least 5GB for songs which is still okie/acceptable at current technology status.
• Finally, 5 MP camera! The quality of the pic is so good that for once I actually use the camera function of a phone (on all other camera phone I had, I didn’t bother taking any pictures at all).

Hmmm, so Em wants to get the iphone 3G, so maybe if its cheap enough and if its natively unlocked here in Italy, I might consider getting it and see if it is worth all the hype about iphone. But seriously, I still think the N95-8GB would still win, perhaps except the storage space.