Hello Tokyo!

Tokyo gave us a warm welcome - 34 to 36 degree celsius daily for the last 3 weeks! It's hard to avoid the sun here. Such a drastic difference from Hamburg. Luckily, we had a one week in Singapore to "acclimatize".

City is vibrant and well connected. Didn't seem to have changed much from the last time we had visited eight years ago. But people seemed to have. There were less thick make up (maybe the look is now "nude") and weird dressings.

Brothers sleep the same way in cab to apartment; apartment interiors; food grilled with "fish griller"; parks, shrines, areas of interest around apartment.

Foods here are expensive but extremely tasty. Corn is sweet like sugar cane, grapes taste like jelly with bubble gum grape flavour......list goes on!

We were informed that our location is highly desirable (Azabu Juban). Heard that it's sought after by celebrities (tv station nearby?) due to accessibility, green, foods, etc....Nothing to complain about the location and apartment though - it's serviced, comfortable and safe. Think there are also many Singaporeans here since the embassy is across the road.

Fireworks are a regular weekly affair. Here is Samba Festival at Asakusa (the famous temple) area and the annual Azabu Juban Summer Festival. It was extremely crowded outside the apartment.

Final week in Hamburg

After one and a half years, we are leaving Hamburg - fond memories, friends, food, travels and the beautiful city.

Went fishing with Martin and Paul in the villages. Caught nothing. This form of fishing is called "ground fishing". We try to catch pikes/perches by using a ball of "scent" to attract fishes to our lure.

Pictures of fun in Hamburg.

With Juergen and Steffen at the best fish and chips in town (no, out of town); Neighbours playing together; Greg and Nic in taxi leaving hamburg (sad expressions - it was heartwarming to see our neighbours gather and bid us farewell); Greg crying at the airport departing Sin (to Tokyo). Notice their hair disappeared in Sin (not my doing).

Nicholas eats anything

Nicholas is my idol. Unlike Gregory, he eats any thing that you give to him, enjoys variety, and as much as possible, feeds himself. Until last month, Gregory was still being fed by us. And Nicholas was already eating on his own since! With hands and sometimes a spoon.

I have tried lemon, curry, wasabi...with him...he tries, face changes, then comes back to me for more....
Here, he tries grapefruit.

Helsinki Jul 12

Probably the last European trip this year before moving off from Hamburg, on a two day stopover in Helsinki from Tokyo.

I think its a small city. Spent one day in the city and day-trip to Suomenlinna island. Overall, very pleasant (great weather), lots of nature and nicely designed interiors (shopping malls).

Observation no.1: whenever there's an outdoor space, there's people enjoying the sun.

Observation no.2: whenever there's a statue, there's a bird standing on the head.

London Jun 12

Decided on a last minute trip to London with family. Managed to redeem their tickets with frequent flier miles.

Overall, was a great weekend. Not too much walking (but carrying Nicholas in his stroller up and down the Underground was good exercise); had authentic and tasty Thai, Japanese and Chinese foods.

Random photos:

"Spidey" at Tower Bridge.

London Eye

Big Ben

Nic running on grass patch outside Westminister Abbey.

Not your typical Brits.

Portebello market on Saturday.

Damn bird sure know how to choose where to make droppings - on a 300 million year old fossilized wood exhibit outside Natural History Museum.

Gregory's favourite site in London - The Natural History Museum with fascinating exhibits. One of my favourites too (plus it's free!)

Exhibits in the museum. I think the monster outside the glass is scarier...what do you think?

Nicholas outside St Paul's Cathedral.

Recent Trips

Finally, some time to blog besides work and travels.

Party at Greg's kindergarten; picnic with friends; who's taller?; playing outside with neighbours.




Nice areas around Hamburg.
Top row - Blankenese
Bottom row - Zoo (Hagenbecks Tierpark)





Weekend in Copenhagen. Charming. Unfortunately, it was the wrong weekend because it was cold and windy.





Fortunately, there were many muesums with fantastic exhibits.







Malmo, Sweden is nearby. Another charming little city with nice parks and interesting architecture.





Munich is impressive and full of world class sites. From churches to castles, museums to parks.





Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Hohenschwangau (Castles) and interiors





Around the castles and a nearby town called Füssen. A little gem on its own that should not be missed.





Weekend trip to Luneberg. Only an hour from Hamburg and full of historical buildings.






Recent trip to Dublin. Downtown area is an open air museum. Trinity College is Ireland's oldest university (1592).




Brazen Head is Ireland's oldest pub. Guinness here tastes different but better than other parts of the world. Was also at Tom Petty's concert at the O2 area. Great atmosphere.

Haircuts

A haircut costs at least 11 Euros each. An electric hair trimmer costs 9.90 Euros each.

Before

An hour later.

Took only 10 min to trim one head. Not bad...looks good too...

Both at one years old. Left: Nicholas. Right: Gregory when he was one years old.
Compared to Nicholas now, he was smaller (lighter) but much more mischevious (as you can tell from the face).

Vienna

Vienna is like Berlin to me - huge, buildings with a particular style (Baroque?), large "gates" with roman columns and large sculptures everywhere.

While I enjoy visiting churches and seeing how it looks like from the inside, and that there are beautiful churches here, I haven't fallen in love with Vienna the way I had with many other European cities. Maybe because it's so big and I find it hard to enjoy the "journey" while stressed with trying to "conquer" as many sites as possible. I like cities where I could see everything in a or two day so that I could take my time to spend more quality time on each site, visit musuems, dine well and interact with people. In such large cities, I often leave feeling "incomplete" because I could not "complete" all that I want to see without sacrificing time for dining and interactions. For instance, I had not seen Klimt's collection at the musuem. Only many posters reminding me to go to the musuem to see it.

From Top Left: Stephansdom (St Stephen's Cathedrale), inside, pillar, inside St Michael.

Sofia

Sofia is charming. Although people in Bulgaria are reputed to have income levels similar to their neighours in Romania, Sofia looks much more developed in terms of infrastructure and feels dynamic while comfortable to live in. Dining out is ridiculously inexpensive too. Near the city centre, I had a wonderful risotto with veal and some specialty mushrooms, a soup, and a cappucino in a pleasant restaurant for only 7 Euros. Compared to what I had in Bucharest, it was half the price with double the quality!

From top left: The huge St.Alexander Nevski cathedral, entrance, inside
From bottom let: The extremely small Boyana church, since the 14th century and its inside.

From top left: Banya Bashi Mosque, its insides, statue of Sofia, museum, and opera house.
From bottom left: Sofia Synagogue (One of the largest synagogues in Europe) and its insides

Freezing in Bucharest

Was in Bucharest the week when the crazy snow storms hit. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Ukraine were badly hit. Fortunately, I was in Bucharest a day after the closure of the roads due to snow blocks.

Romania is a country with much natural resources. However, many of their residents do not feel that they are rich. Reminds me much of Indonesia. Even the products in grocery stores are more similar to those in Jakarta than those in other European countries.

Here, we have the Parliament Palace, entirely built by Romanians with all materials from Romania (woods, marbles, stones, crystals, etc). A place built by a previous communist dictator who was subsequently removed and executed. Could just imagine his access to resources.

Huge and empty place now where halls and rooms are rented out for functions and event. Bottom left shows a motif on tiles that is commonly repeated and is the layout of the entire palace.


Throughout Bucharest, there are many other sites that look Russian.

For instance, the top left building looks like one of the Seven Sisters (see Moscow Oct 11) and the one in Poland (see Poland Dec 11). Then there is an arc d'triomphe too. Bottom right is the statue of the first person in Europe (and Romanian) who designed the engine of jet plane. The airport is also named after him (Henri Coandă)

Then, there are some impressive churches. In the evening, I had chanced upon a nice looking church with a "friendly" man beckoning me in. It had a glass wall fronting it, hence, I was unsure if it was a church or a restaurant. A gentlemen was also going in and translated that it was a Eastern Orthodox Church.

Interesting. What is Eastern Orthodox Church? Just like those in Russia, the insides are usually dark. There are paintings of numerous saints and the place will be heavily incensed. Each service holds only tens of people, which has a small seat that is against a wall. However, in the picture, we see a large one with a gold altar, probably because it's one of the larger/central/more important ones. Compared to a Catholic or Christian church that is often bright and accomodates hundreds in a service, an Easter Orthodox one is very "temple-like". I read it up and found that they also consider themselves a "Catholic" (Universal) Church. In fact, all were the same church until the 11th Century when the Roman Catholic Church broke away(East West Schism) and the Protestants from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th Century.

Birthdays

Both Nicholas and Gregory have their birthdays in Feb, 4 days apart. Makes more sense to have one celebration for both (that was the plan!).

But poor Nic was sick on his birthday on Tues.

(Nic with runny nose)

So we went out on Saturday. It was rather warm (light snow only)

(Greg outside house)

To Alster Lake, which was frozen,

(Greg is unhappy to be out, as usual)

Along with the hundreds of thousands of Hamburger.

(on the frozen lake)

Then we went to search for a birthday gift at the mall

(Greg in mask. Finally, he chose a telescope instead of a pirate sword, a lego set, a starwars light sabre and a remote control car)

And evening celebrations with junk foods.

(Amazing how much fries he can eat!)

Shopping in Dubai

Dubai is much bigger than I thought. On the map, it looked like a few sections with many sites within the same areas. But I had not seen the scale! Hence, it could be pretty far from one site to another. Fortunately, there are inexpensive cabs and easy to use subways.

In the middle of the desert what else can one expect? Just lots of sand!
From top left: In the desert and doing sand dune bashing. Terrible experience. Worse than sea-sickness. Another case of "pay money to torture oneself"; Gregory on bike; so dry that a ship is stranded on land? (no, that's part of Dubai Museum); Gregory at beach (no photos allowed); dinner in bedouin tent in middle of desert.

Of course, there are lots of man-made stuff:
From top left:
Iconic building (didn't go in, must make dining appointment in advance); tallest building in the world (didn't go in too, must take shutter bus); inside a mall next to our hotel; Gold Souk; Dubai Creek; Ski slopes in the mall!; Inside Mall of Emirates; Nicholas loves spicy foods.

Back to the main topic - Shopping. Pretty amazing. Some bargains we had:
An italian made leather jacket for ladies - USD25
A motorbike leather jacket for men - USD60
A 16 megapixel camera with 4gb sdcard and HD video - USD90
A 7" made in china tablet - USD90
A branded laptop trolley bag - USD55
etc, etc from sales at boutiques, malls, factory outlets.....

Really the best shopping we had come across. Unfortunately (no, fortunately), Dubai is not nearer.

Updates

New designs for the new year.

Feedback is that less and less has been written (true, I had been lazy) and that I could have used more words.

Then, while I had been fortunate to travel frequently and photos were nice, there were few descriptions and comments.

Finally, posts were infrequent and there were little motivations to check frequently. Perhaps, there could be hints of upcoming posts to look forward to.

So coming up next week: Shopping in Dubai (UAE), freezing in Bucharest (Romania) and worshipping in Sofia (Bulgaria).

Angry Bird

Greg is a fan of angry bird. Do you see the resemblance?