Thought out loud

On Saturday we left for our holiday in Singapore. We will travel from Switzerland first to Amsterdam, and after a few hours on to Singapore. This time we well be travelling with KLM. While checking in in Switzerland, we asked the clerk if we could sit next to each other, WITHOUT the aisle in between. The clerk replied with a smile, saying that as we have booked together (he can see this in his system), we should get seats next to each other. He’ll just double check to be sure. After a few clicks with his mouse, his professional smile vanished for a moment and he got that “oh-shit”-look on his face. It came out that we will not sit next to each other, but behind each other. in the middle of a three-seat row. That must be about the crappiest seat available. The clerk tried to re-arrange our seats, but there weren’t any two seats available next to each other. The only thing he could suggest was, that we tried at the Gate in Amsterdam. Good start for a 16-hour trip.

The flight itself was quite good, the plane (Boeing 747-400) was only half full. The food consisted of crackers and chocolate cookies. The Flight was only about 90 minutes, so no trouble with the food.

When we arrived at Schiphol, first thing that pleasantly surprised me was, that everything was so close. It took us only about 20 minutes to get to the gate where our next flight would leave from. So we sat at the gate reading some magazines, waiting for the counter to open, so we that could ask to change the seats. about 30 minutes before boarding should start, the counter opened. My Girlfriend went to explain our situation and to ask if we could change our seats. I must say, the ground-staff of the airport was trying very hard, and did everything they could…to ignore us. Only useful answer we got was: “Try your luck aboard the plane”. Well, thanks for that excellent service. When we boarded to our Boeing 777-200, we asked the people sitting in the seats around us, if they would swap with one of us. Of course, no one wants a middle seat, So we took the seats assigned to us and sat behind each other for the whole flight.

After Takeoff we were served some drinks and some smoked almonds. Yay, I absolutely love them. Unfortunately everyone around us liked them too, so I had to be happy with the little sachet we got . About an our later, supper was served. I had Chicken in a Dijon-mustard sauce, some Ebly-salad and some kind of sponge-cake with vanilla sauce for dessert. Considering that it basically was microwave-food, it was quite nice. Afterwards, we were served tea or coffee (very strong coffee). Too bad that I didn’t see that one could have had a digestif with that.

After that I watched a Movie on the Entertainment system. This was the first flight where the entertainment system was fully active, meaning that you could watch the movie you wanted, listen to music, play games (even multiplayer) and watch TV. While flipping through the movie library my smile grew broader and broader. There were surely about 60 Block-Busters available. Same with the CD-Library. And how many movies did I watch? ONE. After that I was so tired, that I started the new CD from Carla Bruni (filed under Easy Listening) and slowly fell asleep. Thinking of it, not many people can say that they were sang into sleep by the french First Lady .

But even “La premier Dame” cannot get you a good nights sleep if your in an economy-class seat in a full Aircraft. I woke up a few times during the flight. I believe once somewhere over Iran and once around Burma. Somewhere over Phuket they started to serve breakfast. I already looked forward to bread rolls, croissants, butter, jam and honey. I got Butter and bread roll right, but it was accompanied by some Fresh fruit slices (the Grapefruit made everything quite sour), some plain yogurt with sweet fruit compote on it and scrambled egg with Rösti. Sounds gorgeous? Rememer, we were 35′000 feet above ground, The only piece of kitchen equipment up there is a microwave. Unfortunately, the Rösti tasted just like that. The rest was quite nice considering, and it gave me a good start from a very bad night’s sleep.

We even arrived 30 minutes ahead of schedule in Singapore. Unfortunately, we lost this gain at the immigration checkpoint. Although they had all the counters open, the hall was packed with people. Once we got through the immigration check and bought our things at the duty-free shop, we headed for the baggage claim. Last time we went to Singapore, our little trolley-suitcase was damaged. The handle was broken. I asked my girlfriend if she remembered, she nodded, and our suitcase came along the conveyor. With a broken handle…. Exactly the same thing like last time. At least we already knew where to go and which form to fill out.

After filing the complaint, we left for the taxi-stand. When we left the airport building, we were immediately hit by a hot and humid wall. Even as it is the cool season now in Singapore,(temperatures between 22 and 28 Celsius), It gets quite humid when its raining. And wow, I’ve never seen such a rainfall before. It was pouring down like it was judgment-day. And from one second to the other, it stopped. Only to start again with the same intensity a few minutes later. This happened about 3 times on our 30 minute ride from the airport.

Now we unpacked the suitcase, had a something to eat and took a shower. I’m looking forward to my bed…

Written on Sunday, November 19th

I think we pissed someone off up there. This is the weather forecast for the next 3 Days.. Well thanks then.

For the next three weeks, I’ll be on Holiday in Singapore. We’ve been there already in 2005, and as my Girlfriend grew up there, I’m sure to see some “non-Mainstream-tourist” spots.

I’m really looking forward to this holiday, its the first real break this year, apart from Military service.

I’ll try to get some nice pictures and post them here and/or on Flickr.

Don’t worry if it gets quiet around here in the near future. I’ll try to post something now and then, but you know, when you’re on holiday, you tend to forget everything and just let it go….

This is a Test-Post using LiveWriter. Please ignore

My mobile Phone is starting do die. I’ve got a SE K800i and it suffers from a typical SonyEricsson illness, the Joystick starts to bitch around.

I looked at the iPhone, but in the end I decided against it, for three reasons.

1. I don’t like anything that is being hyped like the iPhone was
2. I have a very strong antipathy against iTunes
3. I don’t like the feel of the “virtual” keyboard

Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is a very Innovative product and Apple is always forcing the other manufacturers to bring innovations.And I have to admit, the iPhone is just plain cool.

Now I wonder when the first Android phone will hit the swiss market. T-Mobile announced the G1 for the US-Market. Now what about Europe?

Has anyone heard anything? Maybe someone has a chatty crystal orb…

I’ve noticed, that the news about car accidents involving novice drivers (usually teens) tend to increase again. It’s always sad to see, that a young life is brutally changed forever or even extinguished, just because one moron thinks he’s the hero and wants to show off to his girlfriend/beer-pals/*insertrandomfriend*. Often enough, the one that causes the accident survives relatively unharmed, whilst uninvolved people get heavily injured, are left disabled or even die. And almost always, speeding and/or alcohol are also involved.

I understand, that in autumn, the road conditions aren’t perfect. The sun is low, its foggy at night and in the early morning, and often there is damp foliage from trees on the road. Perfect conditions to overlook something or losing control of your car, even when driving carefully. I also understand that when you get your driving license, you don’t have the driving experience nor the routine. I’ve made my License about 6 years ago. I’m still gaining routine and sometimes get in tight situations.

In Switzerland, people who want to get a driving license, have to take various courses before taking the final exam. This includes a First aid course and a 6 lessons course on Traffic and Vehicles (Verkehrskundeunterricht). After that, you can take the written exam consisting of 50 multiple choice questions, where you need to get 36 questions right. The tricky thing is, that there can be multiple answers correct. If you think answer A is correct, but in reality B and C are correct, you have 3 negative points. This can add up very quickly.

After passing the written exam, you can finally take the practical exam. That is 45 minutes of driving with an instructor next to you. Usually you will have some city-traffic, Parking sideways (on a busy road of course) driving backwards, maneuvering and some Motorway driving. In addition to that, they ask you about what you see on the dashboard and what the different lights mean.

When I took the test, you got the driving license once you pass the practical exam. Nowadays, the freshly-baked drivers are obliged to take a second driving-safety course within one year of passing the final exam. And they are on probation for 3 years i believe. That means, NO speeding, a 0.0 policy on alcohol etc. Getting caught not following these rules ends in revocation of your license. Makes sense to me as the driving license is a status symbol for youngsters, and losing it seriously damages your reputation.

To enforce adhering to the speeding rule and driving reasonably, Ford has introduced MyKey, a system where parents can control the way their kids drive with dad’s car. The system uses information like max-speed or max-volume of the audio system saved on the ignition key.

Storing driver-specific Information on the ignition key is not new, but its the first time that this is used from a security point of view. I hope, that system works and that other car manufacturers will incorporate this into their cars.

If only one life could be saved with this, it was worth it, not?

Some of you may or may not have noticed that it got a bit quiet here lately. Sorry for that. For some reason, I lost the interest in blogging a bit. Maybe I’m somewhere between Phase three and four of the Blogger’s Lifecycle. Maybe I’ve just shifted my interests a bit. We geocached again, and I found new interest in photography.

Nevertheless I want to point out a newly-born swiss blog: The GeoBlog. It is a geography-game where you have to guess a location based on a small image provided. First, it was something running on eigent.li/ch. But lately, it grew so popular, that it deserved its own blog. So if you know a bit of switzerland, give it a try. There’s nothing to win (at least hasn’t been so far), but the warm and comfy feeling to have given the right guess