Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Counting down

Last week of my 3 months contract... Time passed so fast that 3 months seems like 3 weeks. Going back to work in an office environment. Having regular lunch hours. Gossip sessions to ease the occasional work tension. Waking up about 1.5 hour before working hours to take a bus to work. These will be things I might miss after this week.

Then there is the excitement of starting a new job. Supposed to be excited, but the feeling hasn't hit me yet. Is it because I am still busy at my current place or is it the many uncertainty of my new role without a local boss? Hmmm... Guess I will find out soon...


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Friday, March 30, 2012

Signed, sealed, emailed

Finally got my contract this afternoon. After going through and having a few questions emailed to the consultancy firm, it took me about 5minutes to print out the contract, signed and sealed my fate away.

It is funny how my life will change with just an email. Wish me luck :)


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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Just waiting...

Got a call of good news... Now just waiting for it be realized...


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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Off to Prague on day 5

So it is bye-bye Munich and hello Prague or Praha in local language.

Was also excited as it is my first cross country euro train ride! Only taken inter city trains in England and flights from Paris to Madrid. So it was a different experience. Excitement and a little nerve wrecking when all the train announcements and signages were in German and Czech! Other than that, it was a comfortable 5 hours plus ride, with comfy seats (guess it helps that it was not crowded so we had a cabin meant for 6 to ourselves) and nice view of the country side from munich to prague along the way. You can see the change in architectural designs of the 2 countries too.

The only negative thing is we will not have a chop on my passport to indicate my visit to Prague as they just conduct a simple check the passport on train but does not stamp it or there is no immigration checks at the station. Come to think of it, it's quite scary as you can just run across europe without any checks. Hmmm...

The hotel K+K hotel Fenix was easier to find this time and it was located at right smack at the main square and near the metro station. The only funny thing was it is also like a mini red light district! There are cabarets (according to guide books, the polite way to say strip clubs) just next to and opposite my hotel. So have to be careful not to come back too late! Otherwise, the hotel was way better than munich's regent hotel. More business hotel styled, more high tech, and more international tv programmes! No more just CNN as the only English channel, at least there is HBO!

Took a quick walk around the area as it was almost 5pm when we got settled down. We went to the mini Christmas market to soak in the atmosphere and bought our dinner from the street vendors. What else but more sausages! We had 2 different sausages, the Bavarian and the Czech. Also tried a cinnamon sugar coated dessert that my friend recommended me to try. It was nice. Will buy it again alternate days! Hahaha. Think I will put on weight for sure this trip!



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football fever on day 4

quite some time back, it was somehow decided that if i ever travel to a city that has a major football club, i will go visit the stadium.

so since i am in munich, how can i miss the chance to visit the biggest club in germany even though i am not a bayern munich fan.

the thing of seeing the stadium on pictures or television is always not such a big deal especially for a team you do not have much feelings about. but once you are there physically, you will just get impressed and get star-struck! hahaha!

learnt a lot more about the alliance area stadium, home to both Bayern Munich and FC 1860. something i find amazing that 2 teams of the city to share their home grounds which i never thought it will work (all the protest we have against doing so for Liverpool & Everton)

after spending more than half a day at the north of munich, we went back to the city to marienplatz again for a day view of the christmas market and went to a toy museum. walking around, we realised that H&M is really big in munich. there are like at least 4 or 5 H&M within 1 street!!!

since it is our last night in munich, we decided to have a real bavarian dinner and went in search of this local restaurant that is famous for their bavarian cuisine according the locals - Augustiner Sellar which is near our hotel. the place was bursting with non-stop crowd. the food was good except a little salty (yes... even for my standard since i have high tolerance for salt!). i had traditional pork knuckle with potato dumplings, while my sis took a mix plate that has everything from sausage, suckling pig, duck, pork knuckle with sauerkraut. we shared a beef consomme with liver dumpling. clear soup was great, but the liver dumpling was not to my liking. of course we couldnt leave munich - city for oktoberfest, without drinking beer. so we had our beer with our dinner to conclude our short little trip to munich...

time to sleep as i have an earlier train to prague...

being totally tourist in day 3

decided to get on those hop on/off tourist bus as it will bring us directly to some of the places that we are visiting.

so up the grayline blue bus and off we went for the grand circle which included the city center, which gave me some knowledge of some of the buildings or areas i walked past for the last 2 days. but my first hop off stop was BMW Welt and Museum. the unfortunate thing was we didnt know that the museum was closed for on monday! sigh, so we went to the gift shop, which i was supposed to help a friend get something. that too was not available. double sigh.

next stop was the olympic park built during the 1972 Munich summer olympic. the park was huge, but nothing much to see or excite us until we found the 27 seconds ride up to the olympic tower which is the highest point of munich you can get at 180+ metres. due to aesthetic view of the city, it is actually not allow to build anything above 100m. that explains the lack of high rise buildings for a major city in europe.

we went for the next stop to visit the english gardens. well, it is the biggest park area in munich, but the area that we went to (to note that it was a tourist stop on the map), it was really simply a not so well maintained park.

so when we got back to the city, we took the S-bahn (subway) to MarienPlatz, which is the main shopping district like our Orchard road and also the location for the Christmas market. it was crowded when we got there. seems like everyone got of work by 4pm as there were so many people on a weekday! we walked the whole stretch of the christmas markets, which were basically stalls repeating the christmas goodies sold. just to soak in the great atmosphere.

then we took the longest time to find hard rock cafe (yes, i still collect the pins from them) and decided to eat dinner there. don't think we are going to be tourists that are not used to the local food, coz we both decided to take the local options for dinner!

it was a long day and was really tired...

Monday, November 28, 2011

Day 2 is all about the castles

being a big disney fan, i had a goal to visit all 5 disneylands. but it was only recently like a year or so ago that i realised that the iconic sleeping beauty castle of disneyland was inspired by the Neuschwanstein Castle in Munich. So since i am in Munich, how can i not go visit?

booked the day tour before departing Singapore, so i guess i was all ready!

a little "do you know" nugget - the man behind the magnificent castles is King Ludwig II is known to build castles as his hobby! how cool is that?

so we started the tour with Linderhof Castle, which was a small castle that is more of his villa. it was hidden in the valley and you really only see it when you walked right towards it! the interior was definitely more reflective as a castle with its glamour and craftmanship.

then we had a quick stop at a village called oberammergau where we did some quick shopping for souvenirs and they were known for the mural painted houses, with the famous ones of fairytales painted houses like little red riding hood and hansel & gretel.

the last stop was the highlight of Neuschwanstein Castle. the first challenge was you need to either hike up 40mins through the slope or the take a bus or horse carriage. we decided on taking the bus up, which was a great decision as the bus stopped at the marienbrucke (Mary's bridge) which is a suspension bridge with a brilliant view of the castle. then we walked downwards to the castle. the guided tour also took us up 166 steps up and down before we took a long 40mins walk down to the meeting point again. glad that the view was worth it!

by the time we got back into the city, we were tired and most shops or restaurants were closed as it was a sunday. so we grabbed some roast crispy pork buns back to the hotel for dinner...

now, its time to rest for another great outing tmr....

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Guten Tag

means hello in german!

yes... first blog in munich, germany... internet access in my hotel room is very unstable. well, its complimentary, so cannot complain much.

its 12:35am now. spend the morning taking a walk in the city centre as we could check in to our hotel at 2pm. when we got in, we unpacked a little, was tired after the 12 hours flight and waiting that we took a nap through the evening! that's how i spent the first night at munich! hahahaha!. might as well, since we need to be up early for our day tour to the castles of Neuschwanstein and Linderhof.

anyway, weather has been great... touched down to 0 degrees cool air! but doesn't feel that cold as london last year. maybe coz it is not snowing. love the view of the fallen autumn leaves around... took this picture at the park, see the contrast of the colours of the green grass patch covered by different coloured fallen leaves... beautiful... till the next posting... auf wiedersehen (goodbye)

Friday, November 25, 2011

The start...

Blogging live at the SATS premier lounge is the start of my stylish travel of the year!

As previously blogged, was given some perks with HSBC Elite travel. So my trip started with a free limo pick-up to the airport! Woohoo! No need to call for cab, and it's free!

Now, it was also great that I get to use the lounge as my flight got delayed by 30mins... First experience for sis. But the snacks were not as good as SQ's lounge. Well, can't be choosy right?

Ok... Going to enjoy my free coke n kachang! Until the next posting...


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Location:T3 Departure Dr,Singapore,Singapore