MLai - Reflecting my Life

So its 10:18pm and the sun has just set - the sky is still blue. Last night - got home at… 6 am. I saw the sunrise as I boarded the train… Something about a Bermuda Triangle. Not too sure what it was. Today was spent walking around the city - found me a Timbuk2 supplier here and bought a couple accessories for my bag. Of course, not colour matching, but its a whole lot better than paying the $50US for shipping to Aus!

The went through the 2 main streets of shopping - Stroget and an adjacent street (hopefully I’ll think or look up the name later). Its a really long stretch of road, and it always seems like no one is at work. The streets are crowded all the way till about 7pm.

Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to Hillerod to check out Frederiksborg Castle. So that’ll be early in the morning, head back here to pack and sort out a few trip details, and then out to a football game FC Copenhagen vs Cliftonville.

Written by Milton Lai

Slept at about 3am last night. Possibly because of the time difference. Woke up at about 8 am, and again at 9 am, and finally at 10 am. I’m currently in a town called Allerod. Its a 10 minute bike ride to the station, and about 20+ minutes to get into the city. Had a tour from Olivia - since Nick had to complete some application forms for internships. There was a huge loop which took about 6 hours. So places I’ll hopefully upload pictures for: Town Hall, Nytorv Square and the Court Building, Christiansborg, Stroget, Nyhavn port, Amalienborg Palace, Opera House, Marble Church, The Little Mermaid, King’s Garden, Rount Tower and declined entry to Rosenborg Castle - because it was 10 minutes to closing time. There was just so much colour in the buildings - all pastel like colours - just beautiful. It’s so much nicer than the grey and brown in Sydney. Many spots I know Vince would be jealous about for formal wedding shots.

Just had dinner with the whole family here, and tonight will be a very long night - for Nick’s birthday.

Written by Milton Lai

So I’m now in the comfort of a home. I’ve showered, and wide awake. I had a brief stroll through the main town, and my first meal was…. asian buffet. So after the hour long wait, we headed off for dinner on the metro - which ran really smoothly. Then we walked down Stroget where it was kilometers of shops. The buildngs look amazing, and I hope to get some good photos tomorrow of the town. It is such a relaxed town. I’ll end up heading into town tomorrow and check out a couple castles as well.

I’ll let you know how everything goes.

Written by Milton Lai

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8:51 am 28/07/08 +9

Landed in Tokyo a little while ago now. I’ve just been walking around the airport, checking out the shops to see what hilarious things I could buy / take photos of. I found it. I’ll upload an image when I get the chance. I even bought it.

I was amazed that at counters, the people count the money 3 times before handing it back to you, and when you pay, you are supposed to place the money on a tray. The place is spotlessly clean. It’s amazing. The travellators power down when not being used as well, which I’m not sure if Sydney does this. Most people at the airport speak english which is great, but of course, if its just slightly more complicated theres no chance.

Currently I look up and there are kangaroos, wallabies, wombats and an australian flag being posted on the TV. I’ve no idea whats going on there. It seems to be Australian wildlife.

The 4 hour wait hasn’t been that long, especially since I’m now trying to get the internet working on my machine. I just found out my multicard reader isn’t working, so I’m now using the D70 as my reader.

Written by Milton Lai

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6:19 pm 28/07/08 +1

Landed in Danmark and it process of collecting my bags through to exiting took about 10 minutes. At the moment, hanging out at Burger King. Yes, fast food, what would I ever do without it – apart from lose the weight it has given me. I’m waiting for Nick, since it seems he is late. He’s still on the train abuot 20 minutes away. The airport here is pretty organised and modern. Lack of security it seems. If there was nothing to declare, you can walk straight out! It’s extremely hot here. This plane ride wasn’t so bad, even though it was a smaller plane. I’m just can’t wait to get out of this airport! I guess theres just a bit too much english around to have me feel as though I’m not lost.

I better just get all my stuff together and make sure I haven’t lost anything. I’ll write soon!

Written by Milton Lai

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4:00 pm 28/07/08 +3

Helsinki. I’ve got just over an hour here, but the airport seems quite small, or the fact that everything is in Euros is putting me off from buying anything. Everything just looks really expensive. I also don’t want to be running around the stores taking photographs of the items – in case they start thinking I’m some kind of thief. This airport is a lot more industrial than Tokyo. The flight, was with Finair… it was bumpy. For 10 hours, I’m not feeling the greatest coming off that plane. One short leg left to go. I’m not sure how I’m going to cope on my way back into Sydney. At the moment, its about 11pm in Sydney, and I’m wide awake. I’ve slept quite a bit and watched 21 and Jumper, two movies which I haven’t had the chance to watch when they came out.

On my itinerary, it said there should be power on my seats, and there was – under the seat, but when I plugged anything in – the light would go off, but no charge was produced. I wanted to watch the Office!

So far, the battery on my EeePC was lasted quite a while. I would say over an hour and its currently sitting at 60% charge. Its been working hard as well, so I’m quite impressed.

Little while to go now until I land – and then I’ve no idea whats installed for me. I’ll be at Nick’s Uncles’ place whilst in Danmark. 1^st of August, we’ll be on a flight to Athens. Until then, his girlfriend is there and his birthday is on the 30^th, so some partying is to be had.

Written by Milton Lai

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8:29pm 27/07/08 +10

I think I got here WAY too early. It’s 20:30 and my flight is at 21:55. I’ve been wandering around for a little while now. I’m writing this on my EeePC, only because I found myself a powerpoint.

So I’ve had a BBQ today at my sisters, which was quite enjoyable with all the cousins. The food was great as usual. It was followed by some discussion over the contents of my bag. Basically, I kept thinking I packed too much. So I pretty much emptied my bag out and I was told that I wouldn’t be able to attach my 2 sleeping mats to the side of my pack, so I “had” to put one of the mats INSIDE the backpack. It’s unbelievable really since my pack was full, and I could see no way of squeezing that thing in. Someone we managed it, and I’m just in a bit of shock to think its actually all in there.

So after that, I was a little bit more comfortable with my luggage. We headed off to the airport via work, since I had to drop off my laptop so that the boys at work could get my mac sorted out. The iSight is not detected and also my battery is lasting abuot 30 minutes. The status of the battery is set to “Check Battery”.

And now I’m here. Sitting at the gate opposite of my actual gate, waiting for the time to tick pass. Good thing there are television screens everywhere. I might end up grabbing a coffee soon.Quite a few people are starting to pile in now. For my first trip, I guess it still hasn’t hit yet until I land in Tokyo. I mean, I have been on planes before, so whats happening now, isn’t too much of a shock, but I’m sure it will hit me soon. I guess my main concern is that I have forgotten things, but theres a first time for everything.

In 10 hours or so, I’ll be in Tokyo and then a 4 hour wait until the next flight to Helsinki. Then a wait of just over an hour for my connecting flight to Copenhagen, and then I hope Nick will be on the otherside to actually pick me up.

I’ll most probably write again, before I arrive. I do hope to be writing as much as I can, so both to remember it all, and also to make sure theres a story alongside all my pictures.

Written by Milton Lai

This is my first trip out of Australia, and I guess I now understand why packing takes so long, and why people tell you to grab everything you “need” and through half of it away. I keep having the feeling I’ve over packed, but my bag can still fit a little bit more in it.
I’m about to head off to my sisters for a BBQ, before the airport. I THINK I’ve got everything. I’ll write a run down of things I’ve packed when I’m on the plane. First time traveller - nervous as anything.

I’ll end up writing once a day, but I might not post it up until I get internet access. I’ll end up putting up photos when I get back, since I don’t think upload full size images is such a good idea. First stop Tokyo, then Helsinki and then Copenhagen!

Written by Milton Lai

Just a quick update whilst I’m at work. Just a recap of what has happened over the last week. On the Tuesday - a friend at work took me to Australia’s Next Top Model Final at Luna Park. Not much of a fan - it was an excuse to get over the whole of the previous week. The audience just consisted of women - all dressed up - in heels and makeup. I had tissues falling out of my pockets from the flu. Thursday I had lunch with a few mates at Tsukasa on Crown St. Nice little place - the food wasn’t so bad either.

After that - it was more planning for my trip. The cities have now been decided and the time in which we are staying in them. I had been trying to use google calendars to plan the trip - but it got a bit messy - especially since my mate doesnt really see the benefit of doing it that way - so instead - back to using excel spreadsheets.

So the list of cities / towns / islands / destinations are Copenhagen, Athens, Santorini, Myconos, Bari, Naples, Pompeii, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Genoa, Nice, Marsielle, Lyon, Bern, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Den Hagg, Amsterdam, London.
Now that is a LOT of places to get to in 6 weeks. Up until Paris - everything is pretty much booked. I didn’t want to really lock ourselves into anything - but its Summer over there and so I guess its safer that we have somewhere to sleep than at a bus shelter.

I might put up a schedule of where I’ll be and when - since it’ll jog my memory later on so I can at least write about it.

One of the main reasons I want to travel is photography. I guess I’ve spent a long time deciding exactly what I want to do - especially in terms of backups of my photos. The cheapest and most reassuring way is to back up all the cards onto harddrives. Now I am also a bit iffy about using internet cafe computers to do this. I’m worried about viruses killing my drives once I plug them in and also key loggers which can really be created by anyone and easily run on systems which arent very well secured. So I decided to buy an Eee PC. The cheapest one I could find - 4G - at $328. I’ve installed XP on it - which took about 48 hours to copy just the contents off my SD card onto the HD during the installation. But its all installed now and running very well. It’s less than a kilo and fits into my daypack quite easily, and I guess now, I can copy all the photos over and can SEE them appearing on the external HD’s (I’m bringing 2 with me, one for my pack and another in Nick’s pack). It also means that I will be able to more comfortable with logging into sites and blogs without the worry of people tracking my details (it still is possible though).

Also purchased over the weekend, a GorillaPOD - the DSLR zoom one - it holds the extra weight - although I still think I might need to purchase a pistol head or ball head for it - since as well as it grips - if i need to readjust the frame - its a huge nuisance. I believe I’ve got most of my camera gear sorted, and the rest is really just clothes.

Last night - had my first Salsa lesson @ http://www.ilatindance.com/. It was very intimidating in the beginning, but everyone there is really friendly and willing to learn - so its a bit harder to look like a fool (then again, I was concentrating quite hard on getting the steps right). Overall it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it to be. So quite possibly there might be more lessons in the future - I was just amazed at the talent of some of the people there.

Wedding on Saturday - I havn’t had one in a while - so it’ll be something to look forward to.

Long couple weeks ahead, because my boss wants to push for, and so do the users, another version of the app, before I head overseas. Its very possible to get it done - just a bit worried at testing.

Need to pick up the camera a bit more! since it seems theres a lot more writing than usual!

Written by Milton Lai