7 Nights in Munich: (part 1) Sunday - Thursday.

This trip was on the card even before I had joined the company, an essential part of this project was to come to Munich to study from the brand owner, enough of the work part :) I have been looking forward and dreading this trip at the same time, simply because (respectively) I have not been to Munich before (in fact, first time to Germany) while on the other having to disappear for a week and leaving Gio in her 34th week all alone with Matt somehow worries me :)

The main theme of the whole trip was for us to spend a majority part of the day in a seminar, and together with some official evening engagement, simply meant we had little time to roam around Munich, but luckily some free time had also been slotted in to the timetable, what an insight by the organiser :)

 

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The flight took around ten hours, but it passes by quickly (when travelling with friends), the plane touches down just a little before eight on the Sunday evening, immigration was so efficient and quick so in no time I was standing outside in a very crisp night air, coming from an oven cranked on full (Bangkok) and now standing in a refrigerator (Munich), was a welcome refreshing (literally) change. After meeting up with our driver we were soon whisked off straight to dinner on Maximilianstrasse, the rain was light, the air was calm and there was no noise apart from a few conversations that come and fade into the night, could it have been anymore different than BKK? (No).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The first full day was Monday, full day in the office and together with the official welcome dinner in the evening meant the whole day, although was very productive, was over in a blink of an eye, just as well as jet lag was hitting all of us quite hard.

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Tuesday was pretty much the same as Monday, but after 5:30 was free time :), the group decision was to head for the centre of Munich, my camera was ready and fully charged :) Of course before I could touch the shutter button there were some mandatory shopping for Gio (lol), well with such a short (but Fort Knox expensive) list in hand the shopping was over in about half an hour, now to explore the city.

With population of around 1.4 million when compared to the Bangkok’s 10 million, the contrast was clear, walking around the city was such a joy to the extent that I was very late for our group dinner at Hofbrauhaus (I don’t think you can say you have visited Munich without coming to this place). A friend described it the best, Hofbrauhaus is like a calmer Oktoberfest but all year round :) The beer glasses were huge so were the meals :)


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Wednesday evening was another ‘less’ official dinner with our host, and what a wonderful place they have chosen. Luckily we arrived quite early, the small town where the restaurant sits was more than a postcard picture, and of course once again, I was late for dinner :)

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Thursday soon arrived, all the work stuff had wrapped up by the time the clock struck four, so once again we were off to the city centre, a friend and I decided to split from the group, bought a map and decided to have a wander around (the only shopping I had to do now was for Matt, and to be honest he would have been over the moon if I’d just brought him a piece of left over pizza, of course I didn’t :)

 
 
 

 
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I am leaving Friday and Saturday for the next post, Oktoberfest and a full day at BMW Welt, Museum and Deutsches Museum deserves another post :) (too many pics).

Going to miss it again.

Dear Michella,

I am so sorry, looks like I am going to miss my chance to see you again this month, by the time your mother laid down on the bed for her ultrasounds appointment I should still be in Munich.

Your mother gets quite cross when I pretend to mess around with the Ultrasounds machine thingy (of course the Dr. was not there), you have no idea how tempting it was each time not to fiddle with it. All the plastic knobs and switches, all positioned so perfectly as if you can control everything with just one hand while blindfolded.

Not to mention all the different ‘heads’ to deliver the ultrasounds, then there are these two beautiful screens, and even a printer, as soon a I see you the Dr. can give me your portrait in about 10 seconds. Oh don’t forget the gorgeous trackball, sitting there smiling, begging to be push around, honestly.

Dad :)

See you real soon :)

Dear Michella,

Well that is what your mother is going to call you, have no idea on the spelling myself but I am sure I am too far off with Michella :) Matthias is kissing you good night every night now, he also insists before going to bed for me to bring him 4 cups of water, one for me, Gio, himself and one for you, a kind of a water party before him going to bed.

Everything has been so hectic lately, with the new job, new school for your brother and so on, upon looking at the calendar I realised that I’ll be holding you in just over a month! Can not wait!!!

Your mother is on the coconut again, probably more than when she was doping the coconut the last time, really, really can not wait to hold you :)

Dad.

OH oooohhhh, WLW has issue with the new theme - solved.

After fixing the width of the main post area, and updated the theme on WLW, all seems to be working seamlessly once again… :)

Now what can I do to f*&# it all up again :)

I am happy, fixing the blog content width.

I am not sure when Blogger have updated the tools for us blogger users, but this ‘Add CSS’ is amazing. Now I can tweak the codes until the keyboard breaks ;) My old theme (main-wrapper and so on) was quite simple to take and educated guess at the CSS code (for its function) but on the other hand my old theme did not work so well with the new tools that Blogger was putting up, together with my fiddling with the old theme at the CSS level, meant the new Blogger’s tools were absolutely useless to me, and that was one of the main reason I have decided to change theme.

Anyway it was fun to start again, and now being able to use all of the tools at Blogger is very enjoyable. However the new CSS codes were very different, not so easy to take an educated guess. The main thing that I wanted to do was to fix the ‘main post’ width, so that when I decide to change the theme again, the format (layout of content) of each post would remain the same.

I came up naught upon searching the net, so decided to copy out all the CSS and use the search to find any key words that could help me to fix the ‘main post’ width, so here it is.

Putting the below code into the ‘Add CSS’ worked for me.

body .main-inner .Blog {
width: 800px;
}

The above would fix the main post width, but the content (the actual words and pictures’) sits under another CSS codes.

.post-body {
width: 750px;
}

The above have fixed my main content to 750px, so if I decided to change the theme again all I have to do is set the content width to 750px then all things should look the same, it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy, and I am truly am happy :)

OH oooohhhh, WLW has issue with the new theme.

Everything was going swimmingly until last night, the blog is coming together nicely with the new theme, a lot of tweaking needed (but isn’t that part of the fun?), anyway I was preparing to walk down the arduous road of going through every post just to check the format until I realised that WLW (my fav.) was a little strange.

The WYSWYG is the key for me with WLW(Windows Live Writer), but with this new theme the theme on WLW wasn’t exactly the same as the theme on the blog, the width of the WLW imported theme is a little narrower making the well laid post on WLW becoming a little messy when upload to the site.

I had this problem before between WLW and Windows Live Blog, and that was the reason why I jumped ship to Blogger so many years ago.

Back to basic…

For the past few months or so I have been wanting to use another template on this blog, the original template that I have been using started off as a basic off the shelf theme, then with the power of internet I began to add things to it. Wanted a 3 levels drop down menu (had that), wanted a page navigation (had that), wanted little icon on my internet browser tab (had that), wanted round corners (had that too), the list goes on and on (even the ‘comment’ module I had to use Disqus). It looked fine when the page was loaded, but if you ever looked at the code behind it, it would give you fevers, I call it my private Frankenstein, for it was truly, truly messy.

But I had to do it that way, because when I first started using Blogger, the amount of customisation was very limited, and pretty basic, besides I was having far too much fun researching and trying different things, the community of bloggers on the Internet are amazing!!!

So I wanted to start again, using one of Google’s free template, this would clear out all clutter that had accumulated. I miss my drop down menu very much, but I am hoping one day a kind Google employee would have time to come up and offer a drop down menu for us mortals, instead of me using the hack and slash method to get the drop down menu, or the page navigation :)

I am pretty happy with this simple look, but most of the posts’ layout have gone a little wonky, and here begin the long task of looking at all the posts to correct the wonky ones, lol. It was just like when I moved from WindowsLive to Blogger.

Here we go… :)

Dear Matt,

This wasn’t taken on your first day at Shrews., but it was the first day that you turned up with the proper school uniform (they have had supply problem).

:)

Betting on a long shot (cont.) – Making a U turn.

Now, only an hour later I am beginning to change my mind… Image stabilisation is the issue here. Without any research, I believe that all of Sony A-mount lenses do not have stabilisation, instead they rely on in body stabilisation, so if I use the A-mount lens with the LA-EA2 adapter on my Nex-5, I won’t have image stabilisation (the native E-mount lens for Nex has OSS (lens stabilisation)).

So the plan to use A-mount lens on my Nex-5 may not be such a good option after all, back to the drawing board, must remind self to buy a lottery this evening, lol.

Betting on a long shot :)

With the announcement of the new Sony SLT A77 the greed inside me have been stirring again, since the Nikon D90 was stolen I have been living (very happily) with Sony Nex-5, the aim have always been to move to full-frame after the Nex-5, I have no preference for the brand but the investment in the (future) lenses would ensure that I’ll have to stay in that brand’s eco-system until I win the lottery :)

So what have I been looking at, as of right now with the stagnation in the full-frame option, I have been looking at the mid range camera bodies, Nikon D7000, Canon 7D and the latest Sony SLT A77 and Nex-7, the plan was to stick a full-frame lens on one of these APS-C body.

Each of the body is in the range of between 1,400 USD to 1,800 USD (body only), a good Full Frame zoom lens will set me back another 1,000 to 2,000 USD. Putting the two together is a bit much, so I have to come up with an alternative solution.





 
Instead of focusing on the body, I have decided to look at the lens (Sony, Canon, Nikon) first, this will dictate my eco-system for the future. Canon seems to have a better range of lens follows by Nikon and then Sony.

Now my Nex-5 comes into play, I am leaning towards investing into a Sony’s full-frame lens because I can use it now with my Nex-5 (via the adapter LA-EA2), that would save me on getting a new interim body, all I have to wait now are for the reviews on how the LA-EA2 (with phase detection) performs (I am not too concern for the bulk it adds).

Rumours has it that the LA-EA2 will be around 300 USD, add this to the price of the FF lens may be the best solution for me at this time, but this of course is in hope that Sony will release a good FF body in the future, my preference have always been low noise in low light conditions, Nikon seems to have this cornered (low pixel density), let’s hope Sony has some tricks up its sleeves :)

Don’t even know if it is real.

I am a great fan of www.thechive.com, and I visit them daily, please don’t expect anything that will help you to increase your IQ or help you to solve your calculus problems, but if you are having a crap day and needed something to put a smirk on your face there is no place better, DAR, FLBP and DMA are just three key words that will become embedded in your brain, trust me… :)

Although I must say it is more orientated towards the male half of the population, for the ladies there is the www.theberry.com.

Anyway, came across this pic (look left) on the Chive… I swear this was one of the stage in the Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) long running saga :)

Just had to re-post it :)

Cheers.

Hello HK :) haven’t seen you in while.

The previous time I was in Hong Kong, Gio and I were still only dating :) I love the place, the city has so many characters with very different characteristics, all melted into one huge delicious pot of life stew (somehow that sounded quite disgusting :) ). This time round I travelled with a colleague who happened to be very familiar with Hong Kong, which made my life so much easier (although we got lost, but that was only after a few beers though :) )

Away from meetings we managed to have a walk around, so out came the camera :)

I just loved it, the composition of the buildings, the vibrant colours, and most importantly the vibes from the people, we asked a landlord, “what time will you close tonight”… “5 am”, short and swwwweeeeettttt, of course we didn’t make it to the last round :)