MLai - Reflecting my Life

A lot has been happening in the last week - change of internet providers, voip, getting glasses, work and photos. This weekend, just got back from a wedding - had another one yesterday. So it really has been a long week, and possibly this week might be a quieter one I hope. I was working on these yesterday and just thought I’d put them up. These photos were taken in Evry and Lisses in France - the birthplace of Parkour. The traceur in it is Rhys James - a parkour practitioner here in Sydney, who I consider one of the best practictioners here in Sydney. check out http://www.sydneyparkour.com/ and http://www.parkour.asn.au/ for more information.

Written by Milton Lai

Second day back at work and this problem arose and as I should’ve been doing a whole lot more of this, I thought it was time to get back into it. So the reception computer, which had phone software running on it - meaning external calls may have not been able to come in into reception, would not show the desktop after logging in.

Task manager was able to run using Ctrl-Alt-Del and if you check the services a whole heap were missing - namely explorer. I attempted to run explorer.exe, but it gave me an error saying that Windows cannot find explorer.exe which was a bit strange, because I could actually see it inside the windows directory. I renamed explorer.exe to explorer2.exe and explorer.exe was recreated immediately. It would also not run, but explorer2.exe would open up an explorer window.
After a short google, I found my way to http://pctechnow.blogspot.com/2008/08/cant-find-explorerexe-when-run-from.html which sums up what I have been describing.

It talks about removing the explorer.exe registry key from [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options]. Make sure you back up your registry first before deleting anything. We noticed that inside the folder, there was a key which was a debugger which ran a wuauclt.exe from a non-standard location. The file actually didn’t exist, well it did, as a virus, but was removed by symantec and so actually wasn’t there. So during startup, it would try to load this debugger, but nothing was found, and all error messages were suppressed and so nothing else continued to load. So symantec removed the trojan, but left the machine in a state where nothing would work. Most people end up reformatting or doing a repair install, but I have to say to give this a try first, especially if you notice that there is something strange alongside the explorer key.

Written by Milton Lai

The last leg of my trip was in Japan. Headed into Akihabara, the technology town, and Shibuya, the youth fashion town. Japan was humid as anything when I was there. Akihabara - nice place if I lived there, too many 7 story stores of just technology. Then there were the alley ways where both sides were lined with tiny little shops which sold everything. Prices were average, nothing special, then again, I can’t say I was after anything. They sold a larger variety of gear than they do in Sydney thats for sure. I didn’t end up buying anything. Shibuya was full of kids shopping. Fashion wasn’t really my thing, but I had been told to go there. Nothing that special apart from shopping, but I don’t think Japanese fashion is really my thing. Not really liking guys with handbags and purses.. It was a really tough day, just because it felt like I had been up over a day, so anytime I sat down, I would fall asleep. Not the best thing to do when you are in a country where you don’t know where you are going.

So I haven’t experienced jetlag before, but I have now. Its been a relatively short week, because I’d fall asleep quite early and wake up at a reasonable hour. Left work a bit earlier - just so I wouldn’t need to drive so late in the day. Since I’ve been back, its been pretty hectic trying to get all the images sorted. I’ve cut 5000 or so images down to about 800 reasonable photos. I think I’ve just got too many shots of churches and what not, places which I barely remember, places which look the same everywhere. I’ll have some photos to show soon, give it about a week.

So the week was slow to begin with, since the boss didn’t want to put me under too much pressure too soon. Just a small project to get me going again. I’m off my original project for another month or so, just to reduce more frequent releases and so hopefully everything settles down a bit. Weekend, slept a whole heap, caught up with friends and slept some more, and there was a post-wedding shoot as well on the saturday morning. The day turned out to be lovely and hot..

Written by Milton Lai

Currently sitting at Heathrow airport awaiting for this board to tell me which gate to go to for my flight to helsinki. I’m not too sure what all the fuss is about when people say its a terrible airport. I think things ran quite smoothly. So with the past 3 or 4 days, I’ve travelled from Brusells to London.

Brussels was our last day of the trip together - hostel was quite good, reception / common room / computers locks out from 1 to 4 in the afternoon which is a bit annoying. Brussels was somewhat different to the other towns we were in in Belgium. It just seemed a whole lot busier. The squares here were quite nice, the churches look amazing. Beers, mussels, vietnamese food and waffles was the diet for the last day. In my opinion, Belgium seems like a boring town - maybe because we weren’t at the best hostels who knew where we needed to go to have a good time. It was relaxing and quiet. Then again, sunday, monday and tuesday aren’t really party days.

I left for London on the Eurostar from Brussels. It was a pretty quick journey. I found my way pretty easily to my counsins place. Turned up, tried calling, but he was in a meeting - so was then… homeless for another 5 hours or so. I asked around for lockers or a place to store my bag for a few hours - everyone turned me down in the area - found my way to Victoria station where there are lockers - most major train stations will have a place to leave your bags. Went for a walk to Westminster, the Clock Tower, the Parliament and the London Eye. For dinner - thai food - properly cooked rice for the first time in 6 weeks… Next day - travelled out to London Tower before walking all the way back along the river thames and checking out the Tate Museum and Shakespeare Globe. I saw St Paul’s Cathedral, but it was closed by the time I got there. Dinner - steak - medium-rare came out a bit rare for my liking. Walked around Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Convent Garden after dinner.

Yesterday I headed off to the national gallery before Buckingham Palace and did the tour for the 14 or so rooms they have open to the public. The one way system is a bit stupid. You end up about 700 metres or so at the other end of the palace at the end of it - 600 or so metres of checking out the garden, a bit ridiculous, especially since I didn’t take any photos of the front of the palace before I went in.. so I had to walk all the way back. Then had lunch before walking up regents st and then walking up and down oxford st. Dinner - Vietnamese place - with a decent serving of food. The weather wasn’t too good for the first time here in London. I escaped the weather by going into the museums and what not.

This morning - tired as anything - packed everything last night. My gate just appeared so I should head off. Next stop helsinki - stop over for about 2 hours - then flight into tokyo - 12 hour stop over - i calculated id be awake and walking around tokyo during normal hours of the day there, but my body will think its midnight to 6am…

Written by Milton Lai

So 2 nights have passed and I’m currently at Nick’s friends place in Sint Niklaas. Lovely place - apparently the biggest square in Belgium. When we arrived, it was the first day in the whole of summer where it was sunny and nice enough weather to have dinner outside and breakfast outside. Today and yesterday have been the same. We headed to Gent the first night to have a few drinks and check out the area - beautiful area around the canals and quite a few churches. Yesterday we walked around Brugge which was smaller and quite cosy, but kind of similar to Gent. Antwerp was considerably bigger and close to the river that flows into belgium. Massive shopping street there as well. Had many beers, most have been very nice,  one was horribly sweet. It doesn’t help if there are just a list of beers and I’m supposed to try them all. Chocolates - only had a handful, but we still have Brussels tomorrow - so there should be a lot more of them there. Waffles is on the list for tomorrow.

It’s been really good staying in a house - a proper bed and a proper shower. Also there is no worrying about taking all my precious belongings and can leave them in the room and know they will be safe. This last leg of the trip I havn’t taken too many photos - but I hope London will be amazing. Definately Cambridge will be awesome with all the parkour pics. Not long now till I have to go home. Not wanting to go home so soon, but I’m sure that’d always happen. So tomorrow is in Brussels, then the 3rd I’ll head into London, 4th will be for the attractions - I hope one day is enough, 5th in Cambridge, 6th I head home!

Written by Milton Lai