November 23, 2009
It was two weeks since we got back from Egypt, a trip to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. Not exactly a relaxing holiday, which we know, as there are so much to see in Egypt! You know, civilisation started 5000 years ago there 
Good decision that we booked ourselves into a sea side resort at the end of our holiday for a bit of relaxation. It was wonderfully relaxing, facing the Red Sea, good, warm weather throughout. Here is a photo we took at Luxor Temple, which you can click onto to see the set of photos we have uploaded.
There are plenty more I want to write about our trip to Egypt, e.g. the inconvenient truth that we have been scammed by a shoe-shine guy, ripped off by some “government controlled” shops selling souvenirs in Cairo, met some lovely local and foreign people during our holiday etc. But I guess I just have to find myself some time to really sit down and write everything. Not the most pleasant holiday I must say, but I hope our experience will still encourage you to visit Egypt without having to go through much hassle or unpleasant experience.
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October 24, 2009
It finally comes the time when we will go ahead and redo our bathroom, after procratinating for at least two years now. Hey we have our reasons. You know, it’s a massive job, and we know very little knowledge about plumbing, home improvement stuff etc etc 
First of all, we want to replace our tiny storage electric boiler. The water pressure from this boiler is too low to power a shower, which is what we want. Then our bathroom is not big enough for a bath tub and a shower enclosure together. That means we need to remove the bath tub before we can fit in the shower enclosure. Because of the existing pipe works, we will also need the builder to do some boxing in. And since we are going to be doing so much work to our bathroom, we might as well replace our basin and WC with better ones…
We have just done a calculation. Including rough estimate of the labour cost, the whole thing is going to cost us around £5k! Afterall this figure is not that far off from the one given by the B&Q guy. Apart from the fact that B&Q’s materials will not be used, as recommended by any of the installer we asked. And the small detail that the labour cost is only about half the one quoted by B&Q! In fact this lower figure has even included the boiler, and its installation charge too!
We don’t yet know if the quality of work of this installer is satisfactory. We only know he sounds competent and honest. We found him from the Little Green Book. I can understand why people may feel more comfortable dealing with B&Q, as they are certainly a big company with presence almost everywhere in the UK. But the truth is they also outsource installation works to people like him anyway. So at the end of the day you will still need to trust these people that they will do a good job. Otherwise there will be nowhere to start, which was what happened to us Wish us luck, and oh latest news, W has just ordered a mirror, 70% off from Bathstore, to help do some damage control to our wallet
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October 10, 2009
It is this time of year when I find myself hooked to the X-Factor again! Yeah I know. But this year is a little different, as there is an act from Reading, in Danyl Johnson, that I can really support. In fact W has made our first phone vote just now. We both feel that he’s talented. So it’s not just blind support for someone local.
What is rather unfounded after today’s live performance was some of the judges kept attacking him for being over-confident, cocky and not likeable, despite a wonderful performance from him, and the last act to perform as well! Particularly coming from Louis, who put through an act in John & Edward who exhibits all the above attributes, barred the fact that they can’t sing! Come on, if they weren’t Irish, do you really think Louis would have put them this far? I very much doubt it. Louis is such hypocrit, and the other two judges obviously think Danyl is a huge threat, as he’s talented and is able to give a great stage performance. Other talented acts in comparison are good but just aren’t ready to give that kind performance yet. In a way it’s unfair to acts like Stacey, whom I like because of her personality, on top of her fabulous voice, but appeared to be struggling just to be on the stage. She reminds me of Phoebe in Friends, who I thought is just a fabricated character. So I find it funny, a bit surreal at the same time, to actually to see Stacey exhibiting the kind of qurkiness that Phoebe was acting
I fear that the twins might progress to next week, considering that their performance was actually not as bad I hoped it to be. I think the girl groups and Jamie are vulnerable this week. I hope the twins won’t stay at the expense of Jamie, as I trully think he can do better than his performance this week.
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September 24, 2009
When I first heard of this activity from my colleague I thought it’s going to involve shooting birds! Obviously I was wrong. It is actually one of those Olympic events where they shoot at flying clay discs. Silly me, but don’t you agree that the name is a little confusing, if you have not heard about it before?
Anyway just managed to catch on the second outing with my company’s social club last Saturday, organised by my colleague who is a member of the shooting club. Very fortunate we are. Particularly after finding out on the day that the shooting range is actually located inside an army camp. In another words without my colleague I think it will be vey difficult for me to get in and to be able to play with a shotgun.
So the place was very well guarded, with armed soldiers guarding the entrance into the campBeAns before we could lay our hands on the shotguns, we were warned about the fire power of these shotguns, as part of the health and safety briefing, as usual. When we carry the gun around the ground we were told that the gun should not be loaded. And we need to keep the shotgun in open position, so that others will feel safe around us. From then on I got quite stressed knowing that I’ll be using such a powerful weapon, of mass destruction from my point of view anyway, for the next two hours.
I felt slightly better after firing my first shot. The recoil from the gun was not as bad as I anticipated. And it was incredibly simple to operate the gun, although it does require some clever skills to effortlessly open up and reload the gun. The size 20 gun was however a bit too heavy for me (20 is the size of the cartridge). Towards the end, I was really struggling to hold up the gun with my left arm. I made such complete mess with my final few shots that it was embarrasing. Nevertheless overall the whole thing was more fun than I thought it would be. The coach was excellent, friendly and approachable. The weather turned out to be very good. And most of all I managed to hit some discs, although it was all down hill towards the end. But will I take up this sport, as one of my hobbies? Most probably not. Handling fire arms is just not something I find pleasure in…
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September 13, 2009
Social networking sites like Facebook are such commanding, in terms of their ability to capture eyeballs. Their appeal seems to lie in many Facebook users, and their friends, visit Facebook frequently, and religiously “contributing” posts as well, say everyday? It is definitely more “rewarding” for them to visit a portal like Facebook where they can find out what their friends are thinking/doing, than to visit their friends’ blogs or websites individually. Too time consuming, perhaps. For the owner of a blog like myself, it is definitely much easier to put in a one-liner on my Facebook’s wall than to blog, which requires more thoughts. It is a shame really. However what I write on my blog is more far reaching than what I put onto my Facebook. For example, people who are not my “friends” in Facebook will not be able to see what I wrote in Facebook, for privacy reason. At least search engines are not allowed to crawl Facebook’s contents. But anyone can search for what I’ve written on here. So it is rewarding to see what I’ve written can be of some use to anyone who finds it. I think that alone will keep me going, at least for the time being…
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