2011 Christmas Letter
18/12/11 16:57 Filed in: Christmas Letters
Last year was about change. This year was about, um...hmm...how do I put it, nothing? Actually, it’s about networking and making new contacts.
For the first time in 7 years, my travel photo folder for the year has only 2 albums and both albums are from personal holidays, none of them from work.
I did not travel for work at all this year. Actually, I had a chance to go to Goa, India but India is not high on my list of preferred travel destinations. In fact, India is not on my list at all! So when given a chance to get out of it, I took it.
So that tells you about my work for the year.
We did our usual Hong Kong / Taipei trip in March, having figured out that the weather during that month was probably the best for visiting.
As all our relatives bar one lives on HK Island, we normally stayed in HK Island and our routine visit to HK would involve visiting relatives and shopping around those areas. This year was different: we stayed in Kowloon for a change. As a result, we ended up exploring Kowloon a bit as we had to walk to catch the subway over to HK Island. It was refreshing (for me anyway) in many ways. We caught up with our relatives over a couple of dinners. It was a lot of fun, lots of jokes especially if my cousin William was present. I’m looking forward to catching up with them again next year when we do the trip again.
Photos above: photo with Chris, the current Front Office Manager (left). I actually don’t remember what the round things are but they were delicious! Will have to go there again!
Our trip to Taipei was just as great! We have our usual meeting up with friends for dinners, which were always a pleasure. See below. We stayed at our favourite hotel and I thought last year’s stay was probably the most enjoyable, how could they possibly top that this year? This is what the General Manager did, delivered to our room - one each. Talk about a great surprise:
No, he didn’t send the food up to our room. We had those in a restaurant with friends. They look good, tasted great.
We took a short trip to Auckland in June, to again get our Frequent Flyers points. It was a “routine” visit to Auckland: got there, renting a car, going to our favourite restaurant in Parnell, hang around for a day, come home. Simple, right?
Not quite. Our rental car got hit on the front bumper during the night while parked in the parking station...and we didn’t get insurance for the car - never thinking it would get hit while PARKED!!
Then, on the morning of our departure, we checked out of the hotel at 3am, arrived at the airport to check in, only to find that the plane hasn’t even left Chile yet!
A bit of background to this: There was an volcanic ash cloud drifting from South America (due to volcanic explosion) towards Australia / New Zealand in June, which disrupted flights in Australia / New Zealand and South America.
So the night before, we checked and the airline said the flight is on scheduled. When we checked out of the hotel, the hotel staff checked the computer and said the flight is on scheduled. When we got to the airport, we were told the flight hasn’t been cancelled but just “delayed” - It hasn’t left Chile yet and it would take 14 hours to fly from Santiago to Auckland. Right. LAN Chile is one of the world’s most hopeless airline. But it was cheap to fly Business Class from Sydney to Auckland to get those extra Status Points for our Frequent Flyer status.
We were officially stranded in Auckland. Luckily, Air New Zealand had the good sense to fly at lower altitude and and so we ended up buying a ticket with them to come back to Sydney - one day later. Well, that was a lesson learnt - sort of. Oh yes, we got to know Auckland Airport extremely well.
We did have some fun and here are some photos:
Photos above: View from One Tree Hill (top), Assam Laksa at Angie’s Kitchen (left) and Filleto Di Carne at Di Mare Restaurant (right).
In other news, I finally took up Twitter. If you are on Twitter, feel free to follow @bevanting there. A friend told me it’s harder to get me to return her calls these days. I said she’d get a much faster response by tweeting me.
For those not familiar with Twitter, it is a very powerful social media tool. I’ve “met” or “spoken to” movie stars, authors, singers, and some very interesting people in the short time I’ve been on it. Can be quite “scary” but I’ve been careful.
If you don’t like to call the customer service line for many of the companies, try their twitter account. You often get better service and faster response from them.
Coming over to Oracle, I met up with a guy I met on my very first photography workshop. Unlike me, he makes lots of money and spent a lot of time shooting photos and gotten quite good. We’ve a few hi-key lighting shoots in the studio. It’s a lot of fun and Kate, the model, is beautiful and my favourite so far (I’ve only shot two models so far). She’s very professional and I just love those blue eyes. She’s the long-haired blonde.
My cousin Tara came to visit in February. The last time I saw her was about 27-29 years ago and we were both kids then. So happy to see her, just like the old times and we’re older.
Kismet the family cat continues to be cute. She’s now officially the most photographed member of the family. She’s quite an unusual cat, purrs easily and loudly, very affectionate (maybe that’s why she got pregnant in the first place!) and just makes us laugh. She’s also the only female willing to sleep with me...and leaves my bed in the middle of the night. I feel so cheap and used. She sleeps around though. But look at that face...
The music this year is a traditional Christmas carol sung by Andre Bocelli.
Have a safe and wonderful Christmas.
Your friend,
Bevan
