Christmas 2006
20/12/06 14:46 Filed in: Christmas Letters
I seem to be getting better with my Christmas letter. Last year's letter was out on 21st December, this year's should beat it by 1 day!
Firstly, let's get over the boring bits: same job, same car, same address, same computer, same old me, except one year older. Since I took up photography, I've been using photos of Christmas trees I took instead of stock photos. Well, I've been a little busy this year, so the best effort I can come up with at short notice is a picture of our Christmas tree at home, taken late last night.
With that out of the way, this has been a year of Firsts (for me anyway). Read on...
For one thing, I travelled a lot less this year. Last year I travelled a lot, this year almost not at all, even though I still made 3 trips. However, it was all between June and September.
I went to Beijing, China (again) for about 4 days, went to Nice, France for 4 days, Seoul, South Korea for 3 days and Auckland, New Zealand for 1 day.
Life up till June had been quite typical: get up in the morning, go to work, go home. Spent money buying lots of things, ended up using almost none (the DVDs I have in my library but haven't watched should now be in the hundreds - but don't worry, I'm stocking up for when I retire).
I didn't get to go to the US this year for our January sales meeting, because of budget. I was quite glad in many ways because going to the US has become a pain in recent years, going through the airport security etc. Plus I really don't fancy freezing my butt off in Boston. Having said that, I don't get to wear the beautiful thick coat I bought last year in Boston and I don't get to collect my Qantas Club status, to keep my Gold status. 😔 The trade-off, according to the boss, is that maybe I get to go to the Consultants meeting later in the year, which I thought was to be in Germany. I said that if it's June, then I'll definitely be interested in going, so that I can attend the World Cup! More on that later.
In June, I went to Beijing. This is the second time I'm in Beijing. The first time was a couple of years ago, where I climbed the Great Wall (1000 steps to get up there!). This time around, I asked my driver (from the last visit) where he'd recommend that I go. He suggested that I visit the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace used to the Qing dynasty royal family's summer retreat. It is about 45 minutes drive from Beijing city. It is several hectares of land, has its own Royal theatre, palaces, its own lake, own mountain etc. The rest are just considered the 'garden'. Man, the Royal sure knows how to have a good time. The place is absolutely beautiful. For someone like me, not known for being a nature lover, I could actually appreciate the peaceful and tranquil surroundings with the birds singing and the cicadas chirping. My favourite place is the "The Pavilion of Perceiving the Spring". I sat under the willow trees, admiring the view around me and lost track of time. If you ever go to Beijing, I highly recommend this place.
Probably because of the World Cup, the Consultants meeting was postponed from June to August. So I found myself going to Nice, France. Nice was nice, and everybody had to put up with my Nice jokes, including my friend Denise. It would have been nice if she was "the niece" I have in Nice. OK, OK, I'll spare you. Then again, I had to go onto Seoul solely for business, after "meeting" a nice lady in Nice, and I don't know a single soul in Seoul. Yes, yes, I know.
To make matters worse, I went to Nice via Japan and Frankfurt. This reminded me of World War II, and John Cleese's "don't mention the war!" and the TV show 'Allo 'Allo and my "Ren, what are you doing?!" impressions. If you are interested, you can read about my adventures in Nice and Seoul by visiting this URL: http://journals.fotki.com/BevanT/nice_seoul_2006/
Here's a photo of the French Riviera:
and some of the other photos of Nice which I like:
Seoul was just work, work and work. I did have a very expensive Chinese dinner with the boss. Good thing he paid.
Auckland was such a fast trip, it almost felt like going to Melbourne! The whole place looked just like another Australian city. They must have hired the same builders. 🙂
View from the plane before landing in Auckland:
Another first: I had gout! Ouch! Twice in one year in fact! Double ouch! I now know why "Gout" rhymes with "Ouch"! It was funny because the first attack came about because I actually tried to eat healthy. So I thought eating tuna should be good for me, and I brought it for lunch for 2 weeks! I felt so stupid saying to the doctor "...but the funny thing, I am actually eating healthier food, like tuna!" and he just had this smile on his face, and handed me this sheet of paper showing causes for gout. Yep, tinned fish was on the list. Sigh.
Onto more pleasant things. I took photography classes for the first time in my life. It was fun! The first class I took, I really didn't know what to expect, but the class was 9am to 5pm and I had this big grin when I walked in the door. These are two from the first course, which is people photography:
The second class I took, it was on creative photography:
This is also the first time I crawled under the house and upgraded my network to a 1000 Mbps one. The old network was a 10 Mbps one installed back in 1993, so this is a 100 fold increase in speed. While the last time I paid someone to do it and only wired certain rooms, this time around, I wired up the whole house, including the dining room, lounge etc. And places where it doesn't have a wired outlet, they are covered by the latest wireless network technology. So if you ever visit my place, you will have no problem connecting to high speed internet. Of course, my rates are very reasonable. Coffees available upon request. 🙂 All the dust under the house did give me sinus problems, even though I was wearing a mask. It was as if I caught a very bad cold, and I left 2 days after to travel to Nice and Seoul, which wasn't very nice. OK, let's not start that again.
You might remember last year I said that I was "home alone" and thought of vacuuming the house in my underwear, much like Melanie Griffith did in the movie "Working Girl". Well, no, I didn't get to do it this year, but did one better! I bought a robot to do the vacuuming for me! It's officially called "Roomba", made by a company called iRobot, where its founders have robotics background from MIT, so it's got credibility. My friend calls it "Robbie the Robot". My dad calls it "Ah Bien" (as in the Taiwanese President Chen Shui Bien's nickname, but not because we like that guy, but because "Bien" means "flat" in Chinese, and Robbie is quite flat). MIT backgrounds. So there you go, a robot with both English and Chinese name. Robbie/Ah Bien is very clever. It knows where its Home Base is and when its battery is running low, it'll go back to re-charge. It plays an 'uh oh' tune when it gets stuck, and plays a happy tune when it docks at Home Base. I bought it 2 days ago, after a recommendation by my colleague's boyfriend. Now I have a new found hobby: vacuuming! In fact, I vacuum the house every day now. With my busy schedule, I even do it when I'm having dinner. This is how busy I am: Half way through eating dinner, I would remember that I'd better get started with the vacuuming, so I put down my chopsticks, pick up Robbie's remote control and press "Clean", put down the remote, pick up my chopsticks and continue eating. Proves that one can multi-task, it's simply a matter of scheduling. Robbie/Ah Bien is also programmable, so I have ordered a book from Amazon.com that'll teach me how to hack it. One of the chapters is how to give it a webcam and its own website, so maybe next year, you'll see videos of "Rob" at work. Housework was never this much fun! Another thing I realised with Robbie is that it doesn't need lights in a room when it's cleaning. To see "Roomba" at work, please visit http://www.roomba.com.au.
Finally, the coolest experience I've had, much cooler than having a robot that vacuums, is having internet access in a plane! I was flying Lufthansa from Tokyo to Frankfurt. All Lufthansa long haul flights have in flight broadband access. I was given 6 half-hour free access cards by the travel agent, making up for me not being able to fly Qantas (because it was too expensive and the boss didn't want to pay for it). Obviously, it's no fun just connecting to websites and browse web pages. I did one better - I used it to make phone calls to family and friends back home! I even called the boss on Skype to brag.
Everybody I called, said "where are you now?" "I don't know" "What do you mean you don't know? Are you in Frankfurt or Tokyo?" "Well, I'm about 35000 feet above north of Beijing, I think?" "What?! You are in a plane?" etc. It really was a very strange feeling talking in a plane, an experience totally new to me. The connection was very good. The only bad thing is that my bloody laptop's battery didn't last long, and being in economy class, I couldn't get it re-charged. But it was definitely very cool making the phone calls. I was so impressed that I am now a total fan of Skype, and bought a tiny Sony Vaio laptop with decent battery life, built-in camera and wi-fi connection, so that I can take it almost anywhere and use Skype to call Australia: BT phone home.
My sister May will be back for Christmas, she's got another year to go with her assignment to Manila. The rest of the family is well.
Finishing up this Christmas letter, I'd like to say that this is also a time to reflect and remember our friends.
To my friends who received some not-so-nice news regarding people close to you, I hope that you find comfort and peace this Christmas with your family.
To my friends who are away from their home and family this Christmas, don't forget to call home and stay safe.
To all of you, I wish you good health and a Merry Christmas.
Till we meet again...
Your friend,
Bevan
