Thought out loud

Yep, that’s right. We’re currently on a week-long holiday in Bali. We wanted to escape the city and get some sun and beach. After getting some quotations from travel-agents, we decided to book directly via the Internet using Asiatravel.com for finding a hotel. You can get a good hotel at very reasonable prices.

First thing i’ve learned was, that the Hotel categories differ from what i’ve seen in europe. Here, you also get 5*****-Hotels which cost about  the same like in Europe, but you won’t just get a hotel, but a little village within the village. There are shops, hairdressers, clubs, etc. available. If you’re someone that doesn’t need the “Hilton-Experience” (like me), then a 3***-Hotel should be just right for you. We are now in the “Green Garden Hotel” and I am pleasantly surprised. The hotel as well as the rooms hold the promises the website and the flyer made. I’ll Post some pictures when I’m back at home.

At first, we were a bit surprised about the beach. It wasn’t the white beach that you could find in Phuket for example, but its a fine. It reminds me more of the Italian beaches on the Adria-side of the boot. Another thing that you get very often are flying merchants. They sell everything from Sarongs, necklaces, Jewelry, Fruit and many more. Some of the merchants will get annoying, by just sitting next to or in front of you, trying to make you pity them. Women that sell manicures will try to give you one nail for free. This is just a bait, don’t take it. Don’t even think of asking the price. Just stay firm and kindly decline for the first few days you’re here. If you’re new to that kind of business-making, try to go to one of the numerous markets. There you can try your luck at bargaining. The merchants here are experts in talking you in to anything, but they have one dis-advantage compared to the merchants on the beach. They have a small shop which they need to look after. So theoretically, they can’t follow you through the whole market.

I’ll give you the full story once I’m back in Singapore…

Written on Thursday, 30th October

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….

Its now almost a week since i’m back from the Open Air Gampel. I think, my recovery phase is now slowly over.

This year, as always, the program was packed with 1st choice acts. If I only had seen 2 of them, it would have been worth the money already. My personal headliners of this year were Die Fantastischen Vier, Fettes Brot, Stereo MC’s and of course Nightwish.

Apart from the Concerts, the framing program was as always… HUGE!. You had one bar after the other, and every one of them was crammed. The food was again very good and helped me avoid some headaches.

Lodging-wise I think we opened a new era. An era where you don’t have to change your clothes sitting. An era where you don’t breathe in the others neck or wake up looking in your (male) colleague’s face. This year, we had two tents capable of accommodating 6 people each and one pavillion. I have to say that we had just about enough space for the five of us.

Also, coming home on Monday had a lot of advantages. Not only that we didnt have to rush home after the last concert (Mando Diao by the way), we managed to get ourselves absolutely wrecked by 9.30pm. After another good nights sleep we slowly packed up and drove our car almost next to our tent. No more carrying around the bags, no more Shuttle-buses, just easy going. Also on the way home, we didn’t have a single traffic jam.

Like I already mentioned, partying on full throttle for 4 days won’t just go past you without leaving traces. I still feel that there is a lot in my body that isn’t exactly good for me and that should get out. Flashbacks when waking up in the middle of the night are just as common as being drunk after the first beer.

All in all I can say, it was a top-notch weekend, and you guys that came with me were great. Seeya next year.

Today I’ll get the last things for this years visit to the Open Air Gampel. Although we’re only three people going this year, I bet we’ll find some Friends soon

If you are interested to go there too, I have one 4-Day-Pass up for sale. One colleague had to cancel at the last minute. Now i’m stuck with one left-over ticket. So if you’re looking for one, just drop me a line.

We will leave tomorrow around lunch-time. After a short stop in Berne to pick up the “Kitchen”, we should arrive at Gampel around 5ish. Then we’ll build our tents and start calibrating for the weekend

Maybe i’ll see some of you there, would be nice meeting you. And if you are looking for a Ticket to the Open Air, just drop me a line.

Its now the 6th time I’ll be going to the Open Air Rock Festival in Gampel (VS). Until now, every Year was full of Music, fun, and of course, Lots of beeeeer. Last year we even had a Fondue. I can’t wait until I’m back in Wallis, enjoying the fantastic scenery and the good music. The atmosphere is just magnificent. Easy people everywhere, you get to know the people around you and just have a good time.

This year, we’re already 4 people who will be there definately. Hope the others will join us as well.

And now I just got the order-confirmation of the Tickets. YAY.

If someone of you is going to be there as well, please do drop me a line.

In the Widget-Bar you can see the countdown to the Open-Air. GoGoGo

Here is what happened the last few days of my WK.

On my way back to Bern I’ve met up with some other guys from the section. That made the train-ride a lot shorter and helped to find the way through Bern . OK, we were about 20 minutes late. But that didn’t disturb us too much, we had the car-keys . We then moved back to the encampment and slept the night through.

On Tuesday we went back to the usual schedule, only that it was shifted back 12 hours. That meant we got up at 5am. I won’t go in to deep detail on the schedules, as I have explained it before.

The sad highlights were, that the higher ranking officers were now inspecting our posts (as we were doing day-shifts, this happened more often now), and they were not entirely happy. Some guys didn’t have all their equipment with them (But who needs a raincoat in bright sunshine), or were smoking obviously (Well, that’s plain stupid).

When working during the day, sleeping in the dorm room in the basement suddenly lost its attractiveness since the sun shone outside. So i decided to take a nap on the roof of my truck. I should have known that the captain wouldn’t take that for such a good idea….. I then picked a other truck which wasn’t that visible.

After we finished our shift on the second day packed up all the material we got on the first day, and loaded it in to two trucks. The section then had their “easy evening” with barbecue and everything. The 4 Truck-Drivers (including me) left for geneva. One of the soldiers was missing and didn’t return his material. Soon we found out that he left some of the stuff at home and was on his way to pick that up. We were already about 1 hour late when he finally turned up, with just a belt. He already returned the rest of his stuff. Yipee!

After about 3 1/2 hours we arrived in Geneva. The two drivers with the stuff on their trucks went on to deliver the material to the Staff Sargeant. At this point I must make a big compliment to our “management”. The Spare-material was counted and bundled through the night and then returned to the arsenal on thursday morning.

At 2am in the morning we finally got to our beer, which our friends gave us. As drivers have to sleep at least 6 hours we slept with the sargeants. that way, there would be less noise when they get up at 5 in the morning. Unfortunately they didn’t know that we were there, so they switched on the ghetto-blaster to wake up at 4.30am. After shouting around a bit we got to sleep again.

At 8am I got up, had some breakfast (coffee & cigarette) and then left for the AMP to bring back the VW-Bus they left for me. About 1 1/2 hours later I arrived at the AMP. From there on, the program was the same like every year. Wash the car, clean the windows (and the VW-bus has a shit-load of windows :-/), vacuum-clean it and then check all the fluids (Windscreen-water, oil, cooling fluid, brake-, and servo-oil) and then, WAIT. For about 40 VW-Buses we had 2 vacuum-cleaners. Great, even more waiting.

At about 3pm everything was over, we got our pay and headed to the train-station. Another 3 hours later I could finally hold and kiss my girlfriend again….

Yep, im on my way home. Another WK done. As soon as i’ve taken my shower and slept a bit i wil update you what happened the last few days.

The last two days went everything but smooth. It seems obvious that during day-shifts the major will check our guards more often. It also seems obvious that you shouldnt smoke, at least not when about 3 cameras are watching you. We had quite some trouble with the upper guys. I’ll write about that when i have my keyboard. But hey, its almost over! Yay!!!