Europe Trip 2007—Vienna

2:40am we were on a big fancy taxi cab from Vienna airport to our downtown hotel. The cab driver was pushing 140 km/hour on the airport freeway, passing every moving object. I quietly fashioned the seatbelt in the back seat and asked David to do the same. Not too long after we got to our hotel safely I passed out in a nice big bed.

In the sunny morning light, I found the room was really big; other than the bedroom area there was also an entrance area and living area. The hotel lobby had a library and reading room, the building itself was beautiful too. It used to be a Riding School. We left the hotel early to see the morning practice at the Spanish Riding School. No cameras were allowed at the practice, so I don’t have any photos for that, but the experience was nice—with gentle classic music, the dressed up riders rode their well trained horse for practice. For both horses and riders every movement was controlled, every motion had rules. I could watch it for hours.

Vienna, capital of music, it was classic, peaceful and friendly. Walking in its streets, crossing its bridges, I enjoyed the romantic atmosphere. If the Seine River in Paris is a beautiful lady, then Danube River in Vienna is a sheet of music.

Danube River

Another reason for me to love Vienna — Princes Sisi! I had seen the Princes Sisi movie when I was little and have been a fan of Sisi since. I had already visited Munich where Sisi was born and Vienna was the place where she lived after being married to the King of Austria. Vienna is the place to get to know more about the real Sisi—Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The real Sisi was really pretty too, although her personality wasn’t the same like descried in the move, still, I was glad that I was there, and that was the closest I could get to Princes Sisi.

Princes Sisi

There is something about Vienna connected to me, it is the only city that I’ve visited that let me feel that romance in the air. Is it Sisi? Is it music? Is it Danube? I don’t know.

Too bad we were only there for 4 days.

Europe Trip 2007—Paris

It was after 9pm when we landed at Charles De Gaulle airport, the famous airport looked old and dingy. We went to the window for the weekly transportation pass first, and then tried to figure out how to get our hotel. Thanks to our Japanese cell phone, we’d able to call the hotel for directions. With the help of the information window at the airport, the subway station and the local people on the bus, we found our hotel by 10:30pm. The room was small, but nice and comfortable.

Throughout all the sight-seeing, I liked the Louvre Museum and walking in streets of Paris the best. We spent 2 whole days in the Louvre and did lots of walking in Paris. Some times we needed to ask for directions and French people were helpful—they answered in French with hand signals, and that works. To see Paris’ Catacombs was my idea because I heard so much about it from the travel channel in the States. It was troublesome to find, the Catacombs’ entrance on the map in our travel book wasn’t right. I was every excited when we were finally going down the spiral staircase deeper underground. Then, a strange thing happened—as the staircase ended we started walking into a dingy short narrow tunnel leading to the catacombs. Within a minute of walking in the tunnel, I started to panic, the tunnel seems endless to me, the more I went forward, the more I felt trapped. I stopped David and told him that I couldn’t go any further and had to get out as soon as possible. I encouraged him to go ahead without me and went back to the entrance. The staff at the entrance was surprised to see me because the exit was at the other side of the tunnel.

“Did you see a ghost?” the staff teased with a smile.
“No.” I said, “Claustrophobic.” Everyone at the entrance laughed.

One of the staff carefully told me how to get to the exit a few blocks away to wait for David to come out and reminded me that the tour will take about 40 minutes. I easily found the exit. Again, the staff was very friendly and offered me a place to sit and we chatted with short English phrases. There was a skull on the table and I had been told it was real.

“Can I touch it?” I asked with a finger pointing at it.
“No.” staff answered.
“Can I hold it then?” I decided to keep myself amused while waiting.
“OK” was the replied.
“Really?” I placed both my hands around the skull, pretended to pick it up and check the staff’s facial expression at the same time.
“Yes, yes.” He nodded.
And then the staff happily helped me to take pictures of me holding the skull.

A week after, we took a red-eye flight to Vienna.

More Wishes:

• Check out more Museums in Paris.
• Come to Paris with my girlfriends for shopping only.

Europe Trip 2007—Munich

Last September David and I had a 3-week vacation in Europe. We visited Munich, Paris and Vienna. Each city has its charm and I enjoyed all of them.


Sept 18th, we arrived at Munich, where my dear friends Lingling and Mike invited us to stay with them. They have a beautiful apartment right in the center of the town. We were so lucky.


It was a few days before the Oktoberfest; this gave us time to check out the city. I had a list of places that I wanted to see---the city center, list of Churches, City Gates, Museums, the English Garden…although I didn’t get to see everything on my list, I enjoyed everything I did see, specially the English Garden. It is a very big park with a branch of the Isar River running through it. It was so peaceful and relaxing, I often forgot that we were still in a city. At the park, the most exciting part, I got to see the legendary Isar River Surfing!

Isar River Surfing

Oktoberfest

For me, Oktoberfest at the fairground was fun to watch, yes, I said watch—People watch, event watch and so on. If you are not much of a drinker, with 1 liter mugs, the party would only last 1 or 2 beers. Instead of drinking we enjoyed the crowd and food.

However, we could not come to Munich without having German beer, and at that time of the year, when there were beer gardens everywhere in Munich, we just had to give it a try. My German friends took us to the beer garden at the English Garden—with music, sunshine, trees, dear friends, great food and cold beer, life cannot be better.

A few days later, we left for Paris.

Personal Opinion:

• Munich locals are good looking and tall, but a bit cold and distant.
• German food is great for my stomach.
• Italian Oktoberfest crashers are fun to talk to without English.

Trip to Nagoya

It took me almost 24 hours to get to Centrair —Nagoya Airport (also called Central Japan International Airport)

My flight from Seattle to San Francisco was delayed; by delayed schedule, I would land at the San Francisco a few minutes after my connecting flight to Nagoya taking off. There were 7 other passengers (2 were connecting to Shanghai, 5 were connecting to Nagoya) in the same situation. After we took off from SeaTac, the crew member on board did their best to get us there on time and also contacted our connecting flies to hold a few minutes for us.

On this flight, I have meat all 7 other unlucky passengers for our seats were together. They were businessmen on their business trips and all of them are working for the same company as David. Since we were on the same boat, from that pint on, we became travel buddies.

As soon as we arrived at San Francisco, we took shuttle from Terminal 3 to International Terminal. Staff at the airport helped us to get there as fast as they can. After the shuttle ride, we ran about ½ mile to our gate. When we got to our gate, the gate was closed; we saw our plane pushing back…

Now what? We tried to catch up our breath as we walking back to the business lounge, thinking about changing tickets to whatever fights would get us to our destinations. At this time, someone received a test message from the United Airline to let us know that they can put us on the next fight to Tokyo then Nagoya. The fight will take off in about 1 hour 45 minutes.

By the time we got everyone’s new ticket, the fight was boarding. We got on it OK and the fight was smooth. But the story didn’t end here; at Narita (Tokyo Narita International Airport), we found out our luggage didn’t arrive with us. Luckily one of the guys speaks Japanese, so we were able to talk to airport people, fill out the lost luggage form and clear customs without our luggage. We had 2 ½ hours layover at Narita then finally made it to Nagoya.

Thanks for all the people who helped me on this not so easy trip. Because of them, I made it to Nagoya in one day; because of them I was able to call Daivd from San Francisco and Nagoya Airport (guys offered me to use their cell phones).

Things happening in our lives; I didn’t know my adventure started even before I get to Nagoya. It was frustrating yet fun. Yes, it was fun, when you are with kind hearted, positive happy people, the worse situation can be fun too.

P.S.:

• The other 2 guys who were connecting to Shanghai missed their fight too and detoured through Beijing.


• The guys who helped me also helped an elderly Japanese couple to catch a new fight with us.


• My luggage were delivered two days later. Some things in my bags were missing.

San Francisco Airport Terminal Map

Nagoya Subway

I have heard a lot about how efficient and precise Japanese Public Transportation System works. When I experienced it the first time this February, it impressed me far more than I imagined.

Found a video to share with you. Subway train comes very 1:30--2 minutes (smaller stations are 3-4 minutes) and they are almost 100% on time. I believe this video was not filmed at rush hour. At rush hour, the station can be very crowded but still in order in its own way. People are polite and follow the “rules” even when they are in a rush.

It’s a bit hard for non Japanese visitors to find out what are the “rules” from the beginning, but if you pay attention to what others are doing, you will learn quickly.

Nagoya Subway Map

Hard to Say Goodbye

Today, at 5pm, I was officially unemployed; my colleagues had a party for me. Everything turned out great. Not only everyone was so sweet to me as usual but also—I didn’t cry at the party! But when I got home reading the cards and opening gifts, tears came without invitation.

Forgot that I should open gifts at the party in this culture; in my culture, it is rude to open gifts in front of the gift giver. Hope everyone would forgive me for that. I was deeply touched by my colleagues’ kindness and deeply appreciated everything they have done for me. I’m already missing them!

I have a great adventure ahead of me; I’m sure that I will enjoy everyday, every experience from this point on, and at the same time, I’ll treasure everyone and everything in my past.

It is hard to say goodbye, but the world is so small now; my friends can visit my blog, my flickr or IM to my gmail any time they want. We are not that far apart, we are connected through our finger tips!

Cards & Gifts

Learning 2.0 is over?

I had a great time with learning 2.0 and sad when it is over. Among 27 things, there are a lot of them I’ll keep using and playing with.

My favorite exercise was Library Thing and this one I’ll use all the time. Every week’s exercises were well written and easy to follow, so I didn’t need much help. I followed instructions and learned new things each week. Everything worked out great for me.

I would love to see similar training opportunities as new library technologies emerge. To have fun and get paid for it, who wouldn’t want that? When will be the next training like this one? He, he, he…

Checkout this one, you may find somthing you like.

• Web 2.0 award winners for 2007
  

Podcasting

Podcast—according to Wikipedia, "A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. A podcast is a specific type of webcast which, like 'radio', can mean either the content itself or the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. "

I have tried podcast directories:

- Podcast.net
- Podcastalley.com
- Yahoo Podcasts

And add the RSS reed from NPR news podcast to my Bloglines account.

This is new to me; I have to learn more about it.

YouTube

I signed up for YouTube a while ago. So far I haven’t post any video on my account, but I have saved some videos under My Favorites—some funny videos; some travel videos; some cooking videos…I love it! When I have time, I’ll make some videos and share with others.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Pick a web 2.0 service that is new to you and give it a try? I’m on it!

I visited Web 2.0 Award Nominees and picked “Books” first, of course, but there are no winners in this category—“There were either not enough nominations or there was no clear leader to award winners in this category.” But I have a winner on my mind, right, you guessed—Librarything.com. Since I’ve already spent too much time on this web site, I moved on quickly to “Travel”, and guess what? There are no winners in this one too! However, I liked the Travbuddy.com from the list. The other one I liked Travelblog.org is not on the list.

“Video”--Dailymotion was the first and Youtube is the second? maybe because I’m a Youtube user…

“Start Page”—I use iGoogle for I already have a gmail account and do not want another set of user ID & password (Maybe this is what Google was counting on when I sign up for gmail account years ago.) I like it better than MyYahoo.

It was fun.

Google Lab

“Please note: These technologies are still in the beginning stages of development, so they may disappear without warning or perform erratically. If something's not working on this page, please come back and try it again later.”—Google Lab.

So, I play with some links and not really want to spend too much time here.

Google Reader—a site to read your RSS feeds. I like it better than Bloglines.
Google Trends—Why I want to “See what the world is searching for.”?
Google Mars— Detailed maps of Mars created by NASA. Cool!

OK, you got the idea about Google Lab.

Online Software

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is not new to me. I have been using it for drafting notes or save Docs for later as a e-mail attachment. It works out great --if I'm using computers other than my own, I don't need my flash drive. It is so much safer than a flash drive; I have lost 2 of them with my files on it and both times I haven't back up my files for a few days... More to this issue--every time I lost my flash drive, thinking about who took it will have my files, and that scares me.

I took a 5 credit class for MS Word in college, but for personal usage or most professional usage that knowledge is overkill. All the functions on Google Docs are all in MS Word too, but I bet a lot of us don't know how to check on your revisions history and I'm not talking about undo button. Google Docs made it easy to use better than MS Word in some cases. When you save the file, there are more file format options. I love the choice of saving it as PDF file.

Part I don't like-- No spell check? Am I missing something here? The Formatting Tool Bar doesn't have all the tools I need to get the work done quickly, often have to work around it. Other than that, it is a very good alternative Word Processor and Spreadsheets.

I tried Zoho too, and like it much better than Google’s. Zoho has a lot of more software you can choose from, and they worked very well. Zoho Writer is easier to use and it has more function to offer than Google Docs, so is Zoho Sheet. I may not give up on Google yet, but I’ll keep playing with Zoho.

My Search Engine

I had a good time create My Custom Search Engine. I have also put the search box on my Blog as you can see on top of this page. But when I started to use it, it’s not as good as I expected. I have it set to search only the web sites that I included and it searched OK, I’m kind of disappointed. So far, I haven’t seen a great search result yet, but I’m still playing with it. Maybe when I learn more, it will be better or at least let’s hope so.

Image Generators

I have tried You as a South Park Character, and You as a Simpsons Character, it was fun to create the characters as I like. But to save the image was really hard. I have followed instructions, it didn’t work, so I save the screen to word then print it, scan it, cut out the part I like then save it as an image. Did the homework—to put the images on my blog, but how about copyright issue? Is it OK to post them on my blog?

Wiki or Not

Wiki is computer users “open source” dream came true. It is easy to use, it is flexible just like you wished. Information on variety of Wiki in many languages are overwhelming, since anyone can add to it or change it, the information adds up and changing fast daily. You can download Wiki software for free, or you can use a service that hosts the Wiki for you. I like the idea of sharing information—when you share, you gain more!

However, open source has its own problems--Wiki admit its weak points: Disorganized, too open, not enough control, vandalism and spam…Most of us already know how to choose information from dependable sites, and Wiki sites in some cases, wouldn’t be a “dependable” information source for me. But small group Wiki has more control over their pages—they also control who can change and add to the web pages…they maybe a great source of information.

Library Thing

Wow, when I sign up for a Librarything account. Wow, when I learn more about the web site and how to use all the functions. O-my, this is great. I have always wanted to catalog my books at home (call me crazy), but I haven’t done anything yet. It would be a good hobby after I’m retired 20, 30 years from now I thought. He, he, guess what, with the help of this greatest web site ever created for crazy library lovers, I’m going to catalog my books this weekend!

Librarything is so easy to use, you will notice this when you sign up for an account. Type in your user name, your password, and you are in! No page long forms to fill out, no questions that you don’t want to answer, no required fields that if you missed, you cannot continue the sign up process.

Let me not to spoil all the fun you are going to experience, so this is all I’m going to comment on Librarything.

Book lovers, try it and have fun!

It is del.icio.us!

I first learned about del.icio.us was from KCLS Memo in 2006, I tried it and have been using it since. It made my life so much easier especially when I’m travel, I can set in an Internet Café anywhere in the world and still have my favorite web links together ready for me to use.

This is not just a collection of my favorite links as I used to save on my web browser, this in so much better than that! The best part?--I can look up other users’ tags on the same topic. The search can be much easier than search on Google sometime. You may not feel comfortable to share your photos, videos, blogs with online community, but sharing your favorite web links is not going to hurt anything right?

If you haven’t try del.icio.us yet, start it now, it is del.icio.us!

My Space

I don’t think I’m a MySpace person. Online socializing has never appeal to me. All my friends want me to sign up for IM, I said no thanks. Online, IM, I have not much to say because I call friends all the time.

I do e-mail a lot and liked e-mailing better than anything. The best part of e-mailing?—I don’t have to reply right here, right now, if it is not that important.

Yup, I'll cancel my account as soon as we finished up Learning 2.0!

RSS Feed? Are You Confused?

Understand how to use Bloglines took me some time. It’s not because it is hard to understand, it because I was too busy to read the post from betterdays. (Title: Using Bloglines or How To Keep Up With Dozens of Blogs Everyday) I have finally done my reading and finished my #7 & #8 Exercises. Bloglines can do some much. It will take me some time to try everything out.

If you are confused with RSS Feed or how to use Bloglines, make sure to checkout the Links from betterdays and preetamrai.com These two links are very easy to follow.

I have also tried RSS Search Tools. Only Feedster and Google Blogk Search let me search in Chinese. Bloglines Search Tool and Topix.net are not bad either. All Search Tools are easy to use, but I like Google Blog Search the best.

Another one called Technorati is the leading search tool and authority for blogs.

Good Luck.

Mashups?

Yupe, I have tried all those web sites:

• Spell with Flickr lets you spell anything from Flickr photos.
• Montagr creates photo mosaics from photos found on Flickr - all you have to do is change the tag in the top right corner.
• Flickr Color Pickr lets you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific color.
• Retrievr lets you find photos based on your sketching abilities.
• Trading Card Maker lets you create your own trading cards (many library staff already have...).
• Flickr Soduku.
• Flickr services page,
• Flickr Bits (this is not officially part of Flickr) web apps.
• -Incredible list of Flickr tools from Quick Online Tips.

I found Flickr Sodoku is very fun becaseu I'm a Sodoku fan already. Other web sites were fun but I'm not sure what I would use them for. Well, that's just me.