Happy Chinese New Year...

We did manage to utilize the rental car. We drove to Windsor on Sat Jan 28. It took about an hour to get there. We went into Eton and checked out the place where both Prince William and Harry went to school. We also visited the Windsor Castle. I think it's the official residence of the Queen. She wasn't home though. The castle was huge, but we were only allowed to visit a section of it. Pictures to come.

Happy Chinese New Years to everyone. On Sun Jan 29, we took the train into London to celebrate New Years. It was about a 45 minutes ride into central London. The streets in Chinatown, Leister Square and in Trafalgar Square were flooded with people. There were just as many westerners there as Asians. There were dragon dances, lion dances, Chinese opera, martial arts performances, firecracker and fire works display... When we were lining up for food at one of the restaurants (there were line ups in all the restaurants) we caught the lion dance right in front of us. It was going around to the restaurants to 'Capture the Green'. The 'Green' is usually a lettuce with a red pocket, tied to the front entrance of the restaurant. The lion is suppose to dance around and 'Capture' the lettuce in it's mouth, chew up the lettuce and spit some of the pieces out. (The lion dancer gets to keep the red pocket) I took some video clips of the lion dance on my new Sony Erickson w800i mobile. I'll try to post them.

I also bumped into Adrian in Trafalgar Square. He was part of my team in my Marketing class at UC. Apparently, he’s been here since September 2005 and is working in UK for year. What a small world…

In UK for how long?

We flew to London Heathrow on the evening of Jan 16. I was suppose to start work on Monday but I was still not feeling well. The company booked us into a little Inn called the GreyHound (1hr from Heathrow). It really sucks to be at an inn without a kitchen when I'm sick. I couldn't make anything to eat! Bo had to do food runs for me. Luckily, the company provided us with a car (for the time being) so Bo didn't really have to 'run' anywhere. It took a while for me to finally recover from my second flu. Initially we were only going to be in the UK for a week or two. After some personnel re-shuffling, and changes to the project specs, we may be staying for a few months. Arg, all our stuff are in Dublin and we've accumulated quite a collection. Now we're starting over and living out of our suitcases again.

We're currently working in Tring, a little town about 1hr drive to Greater London. There's nothing here in terms of entertainment, not even a bowling alley or a cinema. There's no sit down Chinese restaurants, but there are a few Chinese Take-Out places. We've been having alot of those lately. The company gave us till the end of Feb to find our own accommodations and transportation. Things are slowing falling into place, until we found out that the company has not gotten us our visa and they don't know how to get them. So now we are in la la land. Apparently, we need to go back to Canada to apply for one. We're finding out if we can get an Irish one for the time being. We'll see what happens. On top of that, my laptop, which I’m using for development, recently died on me. Luckily, it was still under warranty. We got it sent in and it *should* be fixed in a week. The company did provide me with a machine, but it only had 256MB RAM. It was extremely slow to develop on that machine. Especially when i'm running Windows XP, VS.NET, Server 2000, IE, ... and have lots of pages open. After pointing out the lack of memory, it finally got upgraded to 512MB RAM. I miss my laptop, it was *MUCH* faster! How frustrating!

Home Sweet Home

We went back to Canada on Dec 19. We first flew 3 hrs to Frankfurt and waited there for 4 hrs, then flew another 9 hrs to Calgary. While waiting at Frankfurt, we went to McDonalds in the airport and also there were a parent with his two kids (waiting for their flight to Calgary too) They had to wait 12 hrs to make their connection. He manage to entertain his kids by encouraging them to play the McDonalds Monopoly game by collecting stickers from people who ate at McDonalds. They managed to almost fill up the monopoly board. They were only missing one sticker for each property. They had many small prizes; they gave us a free cappuccino and ice cream cone sticker. With the remaining stickers, they covered up an entire medium pop cup and an entire coffee cup. The flight from Frankfurt to Calgary was 9 hrs, but it didn't feel that long, I slept quite a bit. We arrived in Calgary at around 5pm.

At first, I thought that I was going to stay in Calgary, but three weeks ago, I started a contract(same company as Bo) so now, I'm just coming back for Christmas. Bo will be staying for 2 weeks before heading back to Dublin to finish off his contract. I'll be staying for 3 weeks.

The first evening back, I was so excited to be home. Bo's parents came to pick us up from the airport, and dropped me off home, where Mom was waiting for me to arrive. We chatted for a bit, then she took me to T&T.

The next week was filled with having Dim Sum, lunch and dinner with family and friends. Then Bo caught the flu. I suspect that he got it from Geoff at Sandi's party. I've heard quite a few people from the party fell ill sometime afterwards. So we didn't go on any snowboarding trips. Then a few days later, I caught the flu from Bo. Arg. I was disappointed that I got sick. I didn't go anywhere for almost a week. Bo left Calgary on Jan 3rd, he's almost recovered by then. Luckily, I felt alot better during the last few days before I left, so I managed to meet up with a few friends. By the time I left, I was feeling alot better. But I felt quite sad, cause I didn't want to leave.

I left on Jan 11, on an 8pm flight and arrive the next day at Dublin at 5pm. My connection flight from London Heathrow was delayed for about an hour. I was so tired by then, I almost fell asleep on the chair. Apparently, the BMI plane had an oil leak so they had to get another plane ready.

What happen the next day was unbelievable, I got sick again with another flu. Had a fever for a few days and at one point, had a temperature of up to 39.9, I was HOT! We went to the Emergency and Accident at the hospital cause the clinics were closed at 9pm, but we left after not being seen for a few hours. Bo called the Alberta Health Link for information. Then he got me some Benylin for Flu 4, and I felt alot better after taking that. We were scheduled to fly to London (for work) on Sunday but I still felt horrible, so we changed our tickets to Monday instead...