Get well soon, boss!

Sydney trip cancelled.

Strangely, I'm not sad or disappointed. I had been so stressed up about everything going on (at work, in the world (i.e. japan), in my life) that somehow I feel a little relieved. Not to mention that the trip was cancelled due to my boss being hospitalised. It came as a shock to us this morning, everyone in the office has been very concerned. Fingers crossed it's nothing serious but he's still in intensive care now. It is also a blessing in disguise that it's a few days away and I haven't book any tour or accomodation or even exchange my money yet.

Am I getting old or tired... I am wondering?!! I can't believe my travel urge isn't as strong anymore. I'm not looking forward to planning holidays, instead I just want to spend some time to chill, stay put and do nothing for a while.

8 more days

It's my first time to Australia, and also on business trip.

Believe it or not, I am not excited. My team mates are asking me if I'm looking forward, but honestly, no... I hope they're not thinking I'm saying that just to keep off their jealousy. But I really have no time to get excited. I feel exhausted on most days to really think about the trip. Though I have looked up at places I do want to get a glimpse of, but I don't have a lot of days to sightsee. I feel like taking it slow... but so much to accomplish. See the Australian animals, visit markets (compulsory!!) and blue mountains. I'm not even sure if I'm meeting up a friend or two whom are living there at the moment, things seem quite chaotic now. I have not even book the accomodation for my extended stay... how spontaneous is that?! :S

I also think that age is really catching up and my travel urges have slowly dissolved. I still like holidays but I get tired so much more easily, I need a longer time to recover from the jet lag and to adapt back to routine. I do feel sad when I leave home nowadys, and it's totally the opposite when I started travelling 8 years back.

I seriously need to get into the mood... And unfortunately, why do I always feel like falling sick just before a business trip?!!

Hello Aberdeen

I shall write a little summary of my trip to the UK, as it was a business trip, there wasn't much I did in Aberdeen really... In London, I met Angela, my BFF and we spent some good quality time together, I shall share about this later on.

Aberdeen, Scotland's 3rd most populous city, is truly scottish. I think I can really tell the Scottish architecture apart from the English, they are so different, it reminds me of Edinburgh, not quite but some resemblance. As Aberdeen is near the coast, many would expect it to be colder but it's not. In fact, the winter was quite mild when I was there, it was always about 6°C and only when it rained, it was a bit harsh. But otherwise, I quite enjoy the weather. Aberdeen is also well known as the Granite or Grey city as most buildings were made from granite, and thus a little grey. It is also increasingly becoming a popular place for business because of its reputation as the Oil Capital of Europe since the 1970s.

As I was staying near the office, everywhere I went was on foot, even to the shopping district which is not far away from our office. The shopping wasn't great but it was good enough for me, I found more good buys than I did in London where everyone was competing with you for the winter sale.

The working hours in Aberdeen is also much better than Singapore's, there they do 7 hours daily whereas we do 8.5 hours here (crazy!!). I should try to find a chance and land myself somewhere in the cold ;) My team is a bunch of easy-going people, and they did make my life easy over there :) My extended team too, everyone else in the Web Application team are quite fun-loving and I realised that on the Dinner & Dance night in Aberdeen.

Thanks to Gordon, he was very patient teaching me my very first Scottish dance, I think I almost stepped on his foot a few times... but I was quite a quick learner, in no time, I have memorized the steps and I was actually enjoying it! Also Kristy, whom has been a really great friend to hang out with, she took me on a daytrip to see New Slains Castle outside the city, and also with James (with his cutie pie, Rosa) to see Haddo House and have a lovely tea there.

My boss (from Singapore) left earlier to see his family and headed back to London and Singapore. It was a weird feeling, as I have always been an independent traveller, but once on business trip, I actually felt a little handicapped. LOL. But I got used to it pretty soon; solitude and Blackberry (fortunately with data plan) were my best companions. I also got to meet my boss (based in London) as he was in for 2 days.

Everyone had a great laugh with the durian sweets experiment. In fact, no one really liked it except for one lady whom said she actually enjoyed it. Most people spat it out in like 2 seconds. I felt a little guilty introducing them to something they didn't like... LOL. Hopefully I have compensated that with the other stuff I brought.

7 nights passed by in Aberdeen real fast, I was feeling reluctant to leave on the last day but I had to as I was going to see my best friend in London. But I felt so relieved to be out of the hotel (read about my complaint on the earlier post)!

Just in case you are wondering, the Aberdonians' English isn't anything like those in glasgow, I managed to understand them without much difficulty (unless they're drunk!). They don't have a very strong Scottish accent, fortunately ;)

Ridiculous service @ Park Inn Aberdeen

Below is the review I wrote for Park Inn, the hotel I stayed in Aberdeen (pardon all the grammatical errors as I wrote all these off my head and has no time to amend before sending it in).

Rubbish hotel

"The 1st night, everything seems perfect except for having a sandwich which said to have avocado (my favourite) in it but turned up without it! I was put up in the Business room for 7 nights (which appears like a normal room to me) but is an okay size for me since I was there alone. The location was great as it was near to my office.

I ordered room service a couple of times and they were pretty efficient, also the breakfast in bed was delivered on time - impressed with this one. But after one time of breakfast in bed, housekeeping never seems to replace another door hanger for me to request for other occasions. I didn't mind going down for breakfast as the food is always nice and warm, but there wasn't a varied menu for 7 days.

Not to mention that I am in a business room and complimentary water was not replenished on a daily basis. I don't mind if I have some water left on some days, but I am AMAZED at how terrible the housekeeping service is, they left my EMPTY BOTTLE there and never bring up a new one. On two occasions, I have to ring up for water to be delivered to the room. I have to say I have never been to a hotel that never replenishes drinking water - even if you have not drank the ones in the room, additional ones are always put in the room on a daily basis. Also complimentary tea bag, coffee or hot chocolate packet are not being replenished in the room. BUSINESS ROOM but crap service!! I have to also say once when I rang up reception, and was transferred to room service, no one actually picked up the phone!

I saw a sign that says put the stuff on the floor in the bathroom if you want them changed, so I left the towels and bath robe one of the days. To my HORROR, they hanged back the bath robe (without replacing a new one), though they did change my towels. I have to say I'm very pissed with such service. How can you not take it away for me??! I was presented with 2 bath robes when I checked in, they could have just taken the dirty one away, I do have another spare but instead they put back the dirty one for me. This sucks.

On the weekend (saturday morning) where I slept a little longer (about 9+am), I was awaken by noises of someone dragging the furnitures around. This is not good!!!

The worst experience is they never pick up my laundry. What's the point of having a checklist, laundry bag and drawer for laundry in the room when we actually have to bring it down (later the manager told me)?!! As laundry was not available during the weekend, I packed the stuff for it to be done on Monday as I was checking out on Tuesday. When I got back, it was to my DISBELIEF that the laundry bag is still there! I even left a note to say I have to get it back before I check out. Is the housekeeper blind or just didn't bother - what customer service is this?!! Even if we were to bring it down (we weren't told), someone cleaning the room would have spotted and if the service is that great, they would kindly bring it down. But no, instead, I came back to a room with dirty laundry, dirty bathrobe, empty water bottle and complimentary tea bags/coffee that wasn't replenished.

This is one of the worst stays I ever had, I would not recommend it. Maybe for 1 night if you're in town for business, but anything longer it is a nightmare. My boss wasn't impressed with them too. I don't need a reply to re-assure me of the bad service, please look into your lousy housekeeping, maybe you need to change/train your staff."

1st Business Class flight

5 years later...

I am coming back to United Kingdom again. How odd is that? I wonder how much has changed over the 5 years and how are the people I met 5 years ago. I am 2 hours away from Heathrow, sitting comfortably in my business class seat in a SQ flight. It was ages ago I flew with Singapore Airlines, that was to Bangkok. Since then, I never had the luxury to do it again, I always opt for the cheaper and better option and flew with many others. In the recent years of travelling in Asia, I can almost see most of my flights were with budget airlines, with a few exceptions like Silk Air, Cathay and Garuda.

Honestly, sitting in the business class makes me feel like an inpatient, I get served and I can order things while laying on the bed. The service was very personal, at least one of the stewardesses remember my name and I always get addressed politely; but not very efficient, I pressed the "assistance" button a couple of times, and I think they were having a break and I wasn't being attended to. The meals were in a few courses, and they really got me stuffed. I had a cocktail named Skyhigh which got me high and gave me a headache, then I managed a short nap. I didn't manage to get much sleep, as I'm still living in the Singapore daytime, it will be hard when I arrive and have to keep awake! The boss was sitting behind me...

My lack of sleep is however compensated by a couple of good movies which I wanted to watch! I managed 3 of them in the 14 hours:

Night at the museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

Still as entertaining as the first two episodes and bringing in more characters which came to live, it ends off with the night museum being open to public and the live characters telling the stories themselves. So cool!

Eat Pray Love

Oh... all the women should watch this! I really like how she went around the world to find herself back, which a lot of the women lack the courage to after leaving a relationship. It reminds me of friends whom jump into another one almost immediately. I suddenly feel I am doing the right thing!

The Social Network

I wanted to catch this, and now I did. It's not how I expected it, the whole plot was getting a wee bit boring focusing on the law suit against Mark Zuckerberg. I guess, it's more a reality-turned-movie thingy, so can't expect them to spice it up too much.

When I finally arrived at Heathrow after 14 hours, the sound of English accent made me smile. Scottish accent's all right but English's somehow more charming. I was greeted by a beautiful sunset in the shuttle bus to Terminal 5 where we had to transit to get to Aberdeen. It was lovely, so mesmerizing but I couldn't snap a picture!! After a short wait and a little browsing in the departure area, we went onboard BA heading to Aberdeen. I fell asleep on the 1.5 hours flight, I was knackered. By then, its was like 2am Singapore time, we had been travelling for almost 18-19 hours!

It feels like a dream, I think the reality will hit me when I get to London!

p.s: Those colored are written onboard my SQ flight.