Category: Singapore

Fly away ..

Catching up on some blogging now at the Dynasty Lounge in Jakarta international airport before heading back to TPE.  Been on the road now for 8 days, KUL -> SIN -> CGK (Jakarta Airport code).  Glad to have missed the Typhoon up north but the weather down here has not been normal either.  Lots of rain in the early and late mornings.  In Malaysia, flash floods due to heavy rains is a real danger on the road.  Hills around the KL -> Ipoh -> Penang highway get washed away forcing the road crews to rebuild around the clock.  Making it harder is the fact that the soil around Malayia is soft redish sand/clay like substance.

It’s a lot of work traveling getting to know people and learning what’s going on.  Met a few really nice and smart people.  Impressed with the folks here in the Jakarta office.  Wish I had them.  Team and relationship building along with skills development are the driving forces now. 

What I haven’t figured out yet is that although it’s only 1.5 hours away from Singapore, Why is Jakarta an hour behind?  I’ll have to take a look at the map again.  I thought they’d be in the same window.

Jakarta is a city of 11 million people, sprawling megapolis and quite beautiful, even though areas of it area quite poor.  In between Manila/Makati City Philippines, and KL.  Food delicious and the people here are just so warm, friendly and welcoming.  Refreshing compared to Taiwan despite the Taiwanese reputation for being friendly people.  My colleagues took me to Hotel Borobudur Jakarta which is famous for its oxtail delicacies and boy, it didn’t disappoint.  I’d love to come back again soon.

Not-so-looking forward to a busy travel schedule the next 6 weeks.  I’ll be headed back to HK a couple of times, KL again, London, Singapore again.  In between I’ll have to find time to move.

Ouch.

Happy trails folks and be well!

SQ876

On the road this morning….transiting through S’pore Changi Airport via SQ.  Yes, Singapore Airline flight attendants are still the best.  Oh, and the flight isn’t so bad so far :).

Nice long weekend in the hotel doing nothing, watch TV, be frustrated with Godaddy and my SMF website install having problems with the MYSQL connection. socket error connection #2 :(.  Will check again back in Taipei.

B- and I had a big blowup and I think this one is the big one.  Such is life.

I hope Taipei’s weather will be better this week.  Can’t stand the rain.

En Route ….. still

I thought after thousands of miles of traveling I know pretty much most of the “finer print” stuff related to travel. I was mistaken. Apparently, under the code “G” for group, everyone under that code must travel together. So in my case, me and my wife with the plane tickets in that group needed to check-in and board together. We didnt’ know that until B- needed to stay back in Malaysia. I thought I’d just go ahead use the ticket and reschedule B-‘s portion. Bzzzt, thank you for playing. So spent the day scrambling to find tickets back to Taipei.

Thank God for JetStarAsia, which I think will really compete head to head with AirAsia operating out of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. It is now much cheaper to fly into and from Singapore Changi to destinations supported by ValueAir and JetStarAsia. So much so that there’s no need to fly into KLIA as the bus tickets from Singapore’s Golden Mile on Beach Road costs no more than US$7.50 to KL’s Puduraya. There’s about a dozen or so bus lines that do this trek and lots of people use it. You can save hundreds of dollars just by doing that if you’re willing to deal with the inconvenience of a 5-6 hour bus ride into KL. I am.

Having said that though, my trip last night was a real pain in the ass. Thought I was buying a Grassland bus from KL -> Singapore but found that it was really a ticket for Eltabina Ekspress. Well, the bus was okay, decent shape and not too full so I was able to lounge out for the bus ride down. It was getting to the Singapore’s customs that became a problem. I got stuck behind a bus load of Thai migrant workers. The individual time for custom’s to process them took about 5-7min each. I was standing in line for about 30+ minutes. Just enough time for my bus driver to leave me there at Singapore customs’s in Woodland. I was pissed needless to say.

Luckily there were plenty of taxi’s at 5am there and I was dropped off at the nearest MRT station. For SGD 2.90 I traveled from there to Changi Airport. One of the cheapest, cleanest, efficient and worry free trip one can take anywhere. Trip took about an hour with the two transfers along the way.

Now I’m banging away at one of the many free Internet terminals here…. can’t focus on the technical writing I need to do so I’ll just have to flush this day, relax and go with the flow. Next week will be a doozy — faced with having to move my office, apartment into a new place without B-‘s super efficient packing and cleaning skills. And having to finish some deliverables….

Thank God for coffee… I’ve fallen off the wagon. Oh well. Such is life.

BTW, based on the news reports, the New Orleans Katrina disaster seems totally off the wall. Is it worse than it reads? Tsunami devastation we’re talking about there? FEMA another disaster of a Federal Agency….

Laters,
=YC