September 2005 - Posts
Finally, after 14 hours of flight, we have finally touched down at Seattle Airport. Legs are really aching… We were given one copy of the immigration card to fill in. All three of us require more than one copy. We keep filling in the card wrongly, and laughing at each other!! Hee hee…
Anyway, when we touched down, at the custom, the officer told us that we fill in the wrong card, because Singapore is in the Visa Waiver Program.
After feeling in the card, the officer who attended to me, was very nice. He just asked me the purpose of the visit, and I told him I came to attend a summit. Then he asked me did I bring any fruits, which I answered Prunes, and I'm true :) Microlau had a bit of problem though. I guess the officer is a bit pissed by the fact that we filled in the wrong card.
That was only the first part of the custom. We went to collect our luggage, and head toward the "checking bag" part. That part was smooth for the four of us, and we just handed in the declaration form and whizzed through. The interesting part is we have to put our luggage at another conveyer belt, and take a train to the main terminal. There, we collect our luggage again, and exit the airport. Wei Meng says its because the airport is too big.
As we stepped out of the airport, we are greeted with very cool weather. Rather, it is cold to me especially when I'm not used to it. This is the first time the sun is sooooo welcomed.
At the exit, we went around looking for transport. The van service that Wei Meng took didn't pass by downtown Seattle. The information counter recommended us to take a limo instead! Wow! Never in my life seen a limo, but to be in one! :)
Microlau and Wei Meng at the back seat
I'm in front
That's the car at Westin Seattle
View of Westin Seattle
Checked-in to Seattle, and I liked the room. I have a nice view of Space-Needle from my room, though an office building is blocking the otherwise nice view of downtown Seattle.
Left view of my room
Right view of my room
Took a shower, and met up with Bernard Oh, a fellow Singaporean MVP, and Phua Chui Kiang (Phua C.K.), a Malaysian MVP. Then we went around exploring Seattle. At first, I wore the Maroon MVP shirt over my white long-sleeve shirt, but later I took off my Maroon shirt as I got used to the coolness. I love the weather here.
Below are some of the interesting stuff in town.
Giant Christmas tree?
Tow truck with American flag!
A clock out of no where in the streets.
Steep road at Seattle. Looks like GTA huh?
Pikes Market in the night.
We wanted to eat seafood at night, but it was difficult something to eat after 7:15 pm. We end up eating Terriyaki Chicken / Pork. As I have my dinner, I was observing the streets. All sorts of funny people started roaming the streets. We went to buy water and some food to stock up just in case we are hungry.
Reached back at the hotel at 9pm, and as Microlau was setting up the Internet connection for his laptop, I fell asleep.
Now is 12:28 am, or 9:28 am Seattle Time. I can't remember when I started sleeping on the second part of the journey. Looked out of the plane window, saw a faint light at the tip of the plane's wing. So I decided to stay awake, and see if I can capture the sunrise later.
Two guys sleeping beside me, tired from all the laughing. Can you believe it? All three of us was so hot, not because the air-conditioning wasn't working, but because of the laughter?
Anyway, since I'm awake, I might as well blog about the journey.
Four of us (Wei Meng, Icelava, Microlau and myself) met at Changi Terminal 1 at 11 am today. So we did the usual stuff of checking-in our luggage. We were lucky for the flight from Singapore to Taipei, as we were upgraded to Ever-green deluxe class. So for the first four hours of the journey, we have bigger seats, and personal entertainment system.
Check-in took a long time. A few people behind the queue actually walk to the counter to see what was going on. After what seems to be 30 minutes of waiting time, finally we are given out boarding pass. Microlau had to go back home as he left my USD money at home. Wei Meng did some shopping. Icelava went to meet his friend. So I entertained myself with my camera, but didn't get any interesting shots.
When we are boarding our plane, the airline pulled icelava aside. Suspected terrorist? Not really. When we check-in the luggage, the admin girl tag his luggage to arrive at Taipei instead of Seattle. Shucks, there goes his chance to claim travel insurance.
The plane that we are boarding
Take-off was uneventful, which was what we wanted. Icelava, who couldn't sleep last night, not sure because of excitement or because his harddisk used for backing up failed, immediately dose off.
Icelava sleeping, and shy Wei Meng dodged the camera
All of us took the personal entertainment system for granted, until Microlau found out that economy class does not have one! So none of us switched on our laptops, preserving the battery for the second part of the journey, to relieve us from boredom!
My eyes was hurting 3 hours into the flight. I guess my eyes can't get used to the cabin pressure. They didn't have eye drops, but thank God that one of the stewardess knows how to help. She gave me ice wrapped in wet tissue inside a glove, and taught me how to massage my eyes with it. It really help to relieve the pain.
Us making the transfer
For the flight from Taipei to Seattle, Icelava was separated from us, so Wei Meng, Microlau and I was sitting together at the back of the plane. The plane wasn't cool, but our laughing really make us feel hot! Even when the plane took off, and the air-conditioning started, we still feel hot from the laughter!
After dinner, the cabin was darken. I couldn't really sleep comfortably. There isn't much space to move about. My camera made the situation worse, as I have to "hug" it to sleep. I think I only managed to get a few hours of sleep. So the three of us decided to check-in as late as possible, hoping that we can be upgraded :). Icelava won't be joining us on our flight home, so we will be missing him.
Something really never fails to amaze me. I always thought that the engines are fixed to the plane in a rigid manner. When the plane takes off or lands, the engines on the wing always never seems to shake. And yet, the engines doesn't fall off. I mean if the wing is vibrating, I can still understand, but if the engine vibrates in a left right manner??
Well, the sun has already risen, and I can't really see the sun from my window. I guess I'm facing the west. Microlau finally managed to get some sleep, so I couldn't bear to wake him up in order to go to the gents. Wanted to drink some more tomato juice, but guess I better wait until he wakes up… Time to grab more sleep...
Yesterday, I was super excited about today, especially after knocking off from work in the afternoon. Excitement builds up by the minute as I will be on my first long-haul flight to USA, and my first visit to Microsoft Redmond. I'll be attending Global MVP summit, and meeting lots of talented people there! And armed with my Nikon D70, I hope my lousy photography skills will capture nice moments to share with you all :)
Good bye Singapore! Hello Seattle!
Some videos / webcast to get up to speed with the technology.
A 15 minute video creating a workflow
A series of webcasts on workflow foundation
Announcement of Windows Workflow Foundation at PDC 2005 via Channel 9
I bought this book a year or two back, wanting to read it before I tie the knot with my future wife. It's about God's purposes for marriage, written by Robert & Angeline Tucker.
Last month, in Today newspaper, there were lots of discussion about marriage, divorce, co-habitation. I didn't read all the discussions, but most of them don't seem to enjoy their marriage. There was an article in newspaper about just paying a few dollars and couple can get a divorce as easy as a snap of the fingers.
Many of you know that I'm preparing for marriage next year. I was actually looking forward to sharing my life with my wife, and wanting God to work out the marriage and give glory to His name. So even though my schedule was busy, I finally pick up the book and started reading.
Lots of couples in my church testify that this book has been a tremendous blessing in their marriage. This is very important as my pastors will not divorce couples, but help them work out their marriage, because if they divorce, they can't remarry, as remarry == adultry. People can quote the Bible, saying God allows divorce, but they don't realise that the context that God said so is for those engaged to each other, and have not got married. That is also why every couple that are planning to get married must go through marriage preparation class, in order to understand the true purpose of marriage in God's perspective.
I'll be sharing some of my thoughts as I read the book to give you a different perspective of marriage. I'm quite sure the authors won't mind me quoting from the book. Even though I haven't gone through it, and many of you would probably tell me "wait until you go through it", I hope this would be a blessing in your marriage as well, and I hope the entries that follows will serves as reminders that the Holy Spirit will bring into my remembrance when the storm brews.
Another beta software from Microsoft. Microsoft Max is a peer-to-peer photosharing application where you create albums and invite your friends to view them. Your friends will then download the album from you into their copy of Microsoft Max. It is built based on Win-FX. I just put in four photos, and it generate a very nice mantle view.
Click on each photo will zoom in with a nice transition. I believe Project Max demonstrates the power of Win-FX.
Max Homepage
Max Blog
SharePoint 12 is using lots of features from asp.net 2.0. Things like authentication provider model, webparts 2.0, personalisation, master pages, just to name a few that are announced in
Arpan Shah's blog. As I didn't attend PDC build, I won't try to say more than what other blogs have said, just in case I break my NDA. But from what is already announced, I think SharePoint can soon be deployed in an environment without AD... Going to try out some stuff with my fellow Council Member of SgDotNet and MVP,
microlau. Hopefully something fruitful will come out of this experiments.
Concluding part for the four part series to Allowing entire team to edit a document together. Hope you find this series useful.
Please provide comments / suggestions / critism. :)
Yesterday night, icelava and I were at Boat Quay, MacDonald, going through SGDN's practical sesssion on Pair Programming. Icelava compiled our experience in this report.
Interested in learning something, but looking for someone to learn with you? Well, you can start your own practical session too :)
Now for the consolidating changes part. Check it out
here.
I've downloaded it even though it is in beta. But didn't regret it. :) It now has a cooler UI, and the best thing is, it now has a rss feed reader that can combine a few feeds into one! I used to have lots of small klipfolios (more than 40), but now, I have only 20! All grouped nicely together!
There are a few things that I prefer the 2.6, but I have feedback to them. Hee hee...
Anyway, download it here. Note, if you are a 2.6 klipfolio user, migration isn't at smooth as you might think it will be...
A lot of sneak peeks, into Office 12 has been released the past week. I'm sure some of you are excited, and want to lay your hands on it. Well, here might be a chance! Nominate yourself to be a beta tester today! The invite ID is PDCOffice. More information at Microsoft Beta.
Source: Blink, Unofficial Micrsoft Invite IDs
Part 2 of "Allowing entire team to edit a document together" series is out. I didn't plan for part 3, but though I have not covered the consolidating changes part, it is already too long. So, please check out part 2
here and let me know if any clarification is required.
If you have subscribe to my blog via rss or atom, please update your rss reader to get the feed from http://feeds.feedburner.com/KitKai. Feedburner provides me with the ability to monitor how many people (which I believe is very little) are reading my blog and which topic they are interested in. Don't worry, nothing personal is collected, just browsers, rss readers (except klipfolio) are collected.
Thanks!
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