July 2, 2009
It’s been a really long time since I last wrote a blog. As C said, it was a hectic holiday home. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a holiday, but simply a break full of commitments. It was so busy to the extent that I was only looking forward to the end of it to be back here in England so that I can live my ‘normal’ life again.
May be I expected the worst before I went back to Malaysia, so I was mentally more capable to deal with all the things that I had to do. I knew that this was no ‘holiday’. I almost feel relieved that this ‘holiday’ ended.
Anyway, the point of writing is to share a little of my experience of flying with Air Asia to Kuala Lumpur from London Stansted. I wasn’t expecting a lot as my family and friends flew with them before I did. So they said it was okay for a budget airline. On arrival at London Stansted, the check-in procedure was rather stress free. So that was a good sign. We made a mistake of not buying more baggage allowance, so with 15kg per person, we really struggled to fit all the things that we wanted to bring home. On calling to enquire if I could up my allowance the day before, I was told that this had to be done 48 hours before flying. So my only option was to pay at the counter or shed my baggage weight, of course I chose the latter! The customer service didn’t sound very friendly. He mumbled so softly that I had to ask him to speak up.
Boarding the plane was rather civil. In fact, the experience was much better than what we had with Easyjet or Ryanair. There was no such non-sense such as paying for a ‘priority boarding pass’. Only business class and those with children and special needs get priority. Others were boarded according to seat numbers. YES, you do get a seat number! And no need to run in order to get a prime seat. Also, they don’t make you fit your hand luggage into that steel frame and enforce you to check-in your hand luggage in order to squeeze extra pennies from your wallet. We also get to pool our luggage allowance instead of restricting to one bag a person and what not (like the Easyjet or Ryanair).
The seats were surprisingly spacious! In fact, C found it more spacious than conventional airlines and I noticed the space too. What I liked was that there were only two seats on each side with four in the middle column. So C and I could be on our own without having to trouble someone in order to go to the toilet etc. Service was okay. You cannot expect services like those in conventional airlines. Food was also not bad. We chose the Asian option because we know that they make better Malaysian food than they make pasta or other western dishes. The only drawback is that the meal portion was small and far and few. So I would advise everyone to bring their own fruits and snacks to top up.
We came across a few turbulence on our outward journey. We think that may be because the plane was smaller, we felt the bounce a lot more and it made us feel nauseous. The inbound journey was much better. Would I fly with them again? I think that depends on the cost savings. As London Stansted is sort of inconvenient to get to from where we live, we would really think twice to fly from there again as the hassle is really so much that it wouldn’t be worth it if the savings is not great. But for anyone within easy distance, I think it is a good option as Stansted is not as crowded and chaotic as Heathrow and Air Asia does provide good value.
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June 20, 2009
Have been back to Malaysia for three days now. Strangely this time I’m not feeling quite as hot as what I used to want to believe. Although it is still very hot, about 34 degree Celcius! I think I’m trying to condition myself to learn how to adapt back to the hot and humid weather, knowing that at some point in the future I will eventually move back to Malaysia. And surprisingly I’ve not been suffering from jet-lagged as well! Considering that the time difference between Malaysia and the UK is 7 hours!
It’s always good to be surrounded by family members (haven’t really met up with my local friends yet even after 3 days! :)). And new family members too, as my brothers and sister all have children/babies now. But I must admit that I’m not very good in coping with all these family affairs. I still feel that it is very time consuming. And our family is not that big either, with no relatives living in our home town! Thank god.
Since we are only going to be in Malaysia for 2 weeks, we make sure that most of our time is spent with our family. It’s always good to catch up with friends too. But unfortunately we have to prioritise. And we have a wedding to attend in Singapore as well! Goodness. What a hectic trip. Hardly feel like we are coming back for holiday!
Tomorrow we are going to Langkawi, via Penang. Only for two nights. When people talk about Langkawi, surely it’s about seaside, relaxation, holiday etc. But we are going there for business as well. So it’s probably not quite as enjoyable as one would like to think. Nevertheless I think it should still be quite interesting, considering that we are such young looking couple, meeting up with hoteliers and tour operators who must be thinking what on earth are these two kids doing here! 
That’s the downside of trying to get a lot of things done within a short amount time. But I’ll try to enjoy it the best I can. Afterall there’s no reason why we should not get the most out of any circumstances.
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June 8, 2009
Took a day off to the Queen’s Club in London to watch the Aegon Championships today. It used to be called Stella Artois Championships. Anyway it was the first time I went to the Queen’s Club in West Kensington. The venue is much smaller than Wimbledon. But I think there are more ground courts sitting areas for people to comfortably sit down and watch tennis. Particularly when there is good weather like we had today. It was a wonderful day out.
To be honest, I may be more a football fan than tennis, but I think I enjoy watching tennis like this better than watching football game in a stadium. To be able to get so close to the players, and feel all the actions going on in the court. Very enjoyable. I mean it will be difficult to beat the atmosphere in a stadium if the fans did turn up, and start singing and cheering. But it is so much more relaxing watching tournament tennis, where you can watch tennis the whole day, in the accompany of very civil audience. The atmosphere is certainly very different. And you don’t always have to spend all the time watching tennis. You can have a break and have drinks with your family or friends outdoor or in the dining area.
We’ll miss Wimbledon this year. So maybe we’ll find more people there next year. Meanwhile, it’s back to work again tomorrow.
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June 4, 2009
It’s been quite a hectic month. Travelled with my family, in a group of 7, to Scandinavia and Poland. Travelling up and down London for work, and meeting up with friends as well…
So am really looking forward to this weekend, to indulge myself a bit of “relaxation” It’s spring time and I’ve just planted some sunflower seeds my colleague gave me last year to four small pots this evening. I’m determined to grow some strong, healthy sunflowers this year as last year all the sunflowers I planted all died, except one. And that sunflower wasn’t flowering that well either. Just the one flower to show for. Very disappointing.
I’m all excited this year as well as I’m finally using compost from our compost bin, for the first time, to grow stuff. Not using a lot though as a lot of the stuff I put into our compost bin have not fully composted yet. A mistake on my part for not having read up on how to start a compost bin. I was too naive to think that I can just throw in organic stuff and they will decompose quickly. I mean they will still decompose, but not at the rate I was hoping for (like a wormery). I hope I have not killed some of the native earthworms, which I put in whenever I found them in my garden :p Well because the organic stuff, mostly left over vegetables and fruits, I put into the compost bin may be a bit too acidic for the earthworms.
Anyway, my sunflower seeds should be germinating as we speak now. Need to make some rooms in my little backyard to accommodate the sunflowers soon
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May 3, 2009
Connecting our home to the O2 ADSL broadband service seems unbelievably easy! After we had a fresh BT line installed to our premise, we placed an order with O2 to become their home broadband customer, as it is much cheaper to use their service when we are already their existing customer through their mobile phone service, at about £9 a month for their Premium service. We then received a couple of text messages, telling us that our line will be activated in six days time, and we will receive the broadband modem cum wireless router package two days before the activation date.
As promised, the package arrived in the evening of the delivery date (hence not with Royal Mail). Three days later, when I finally got the time to install everything, it was painless, almost perfect, and everything just works. Amazing. Including setting up our laptop to connect to the wireless router. This is how home products or services should be, user friendly. And we are also entitled a copy of the McAfee security software!
On the broadband speed, we should be getting up to 20Mbps for the downlink. Tried peer-to-peer and FTP downloads, but seems that we are not even close to that “magic” number. Think we can at most hit 8Mbps. Anyway it does not feel that normal web browsing is that much quicker either than my previous 2Mbps connection, although it IS quicker. To be honest we are not too fussed on this as we are not hard core users of broadband, and we seldom download large movie files etc But had it not been the initial 3 months free offer, I think we probably would have phoned in to “downgrade” from their Premium service, as their Standard service can provide up to 8Mbps too.
All in all, we are very pleased with O2’s service so far. And we are also using their mobile broadband service, for our laptop, when we are on the move. Hope they are able to keep this up.
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