snow's on the ground, but not snowing; clear skies, not too cold temps.. it's turned out to be a lovely xmas indeed.

 

been catching up with some good friends last coupla days.. (missed you all!)  and just picked up my bro and sis-in-law, gonna have turkey dinner shortly.  such a contrast to last year's lonely xmas!

 

wishing you all the best for the holidays.

 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten,
and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow

 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white

 

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white

 

hmm, the song 'one of these things doesn't below' comes to mind.. lol

 

been busy, on the road, so no time to blog til now.  one over-riding sore point that's gonna piss me off til the time i get back to gva: i forgot my camera battery charger!!!!  fuck and a half!!

 

otherwise, i pretty much rememberd to pack everything i wanted to.  so i'v been using my camera phone, which is woefully inadequate..

 

geneva>berlin was pretty uneventful.  only thing was that it was the first time i traveled with checked baggage in a long time, was almost unsure of what to do at the airport! lol  flew easyjet this leg, so limited baggage capacity (1x20kg) and i was overweight by 4.7kg.  the counter girl was nice and said it was 4kg, but still i tried to take some stuff out of the outer zipper (some magazines and papers) to put in my carry-on.  but of course that didn't budge the scale at all (if anything it made my suitcase weigh a bit more for some reason!)  i was like 'oh, guess that's not enuf.'  she laughed and said 'of course! that's not 4 kg!' to which i sheepishly replied 'ok, i'll pay.'  didn't cost a lot, since a lot of ppl go over their low low limit, but it this little 'surcharge' turned out to be the same as the airfare, so that kinda sucked.

 

berlin was nice.  went during a weekday, so didn't feel that it was a super happening place that everyone says that it is.  i'm sure there was something happening but i was only there for about 12 hrs and didn't have time to really explore much.  did see the major sights from either the train or walking all around the city centre at nite.

 

next day, started my arduous journey home.  orig flight plan: berlin>frankfurt>toronto>edmonton.  why, u ask?  it's a lot cheaper than the london>edmonton direct flight.  on the way back tho i'll be going edmonton>london.  but anyhow, that itinerary never came to be, because the flight out of berlin was almost an hr late (first time with lufthansa and was not impressed) so i missed my connecting flight to toronto.  after some confusion, finally found the humongous queue for the ticketing counter.  they automatically rerouted me on air india to chicago, then united from chicago to edmonton.  would have arrived a couple hrs later than orig planned.  not that i'm that paranoid about airline safety records and such, and normally i'd be somewhat interested in trying out another country's airline if nothing more than to see what kinda food they serve on the plane.  but i was just wanting to get home as quickly and painlessly as possible, and that does not, cannot, include a stopover in the US.

 

so good thing that i had the foresight to jot down, while waiting in line, all the other alternatives that i could propose to the ticketing agent.  i asked him if going frankfurt>calgary was possible, he said it'd be very close but he worked his magic.  had to boogy over to air canada to get a boarding pass, but encountered a 'oops, you're too late' and a heapful of attitude, to which i countered with the nastiest looks i could muster (had been getting lots of practice in geneva) as well as a caustic, attitude-laden tone with a dash of fury and condescending disbelief (yay, i finally get to deal with ppl in english again), i was able to get on the flight.  in the end i arrived almost an hour before my original itinerary via toronto.  not bad!  and my bags arrived too, to my surprise.  lufthansa got my respect back.

 

and since i had some time to kill waiting for my parents to pick me up, i naturally walked over to the tim horton's to get a double double. :D  i'v since knocked off a few more items off my 'to do' list on the left, maybe i'll update the list a bit later.

 

so that's one trip.  next, was to san francisco, with my mom, not even 36 hours after i landed.  so basically i had enuf time to reset my clock (lack of sleep before flight + couldn't sleep much on flight + 15 hrs sleep as soon as i got home = no more jet lag) and re-pack and head off to the airport again.

 

i liked SF.  been before once, just for a day, on my way back from my ski trip to taho with my friends from the bay area - was a little hkust reunion back in 2002.  this time, had a good 4 days to check the place out, and all the hobos and crazies aside, i loved it.  i'd always said that nyc and sf are the two places in the us that i can see myself living in if i were to ever live south of the border.

 

the weather cooperated.. was sunny, but also very cold and windy.  i was expecting slightly warmer temps but rain.  just as well, i prefer sunshine, but just wished i'd packed thicker clothes!  saw pretty much all the touristy stuff there is to see (even took my mom to mission - the mexican area, quite dodgy), but i still refuse to do the alcatrez tour.  to me it was enuf to see it from shore.

 

last day, did a day tour to yosemite.  wasn't quite convinced that it was worth all the fuss before getting there, but once there it really was quite special.  part of my aprehension was the fear of all the tourists, but it was surprisingly empty!  the trees on the valley floor were all coated by a generous dumping of snow, and white snow on dark evergreen contrast with a golden backdrop of the sunsetting light shining on the cliffs, that was really beautiful.  damn my uncharged camera!!

 

on the way back, another flight ordeal.  was supposed to fly sf>denver>edmonton (again, direct was too expensive! haha)  but as u may have heard, denver got snowed in, bad!  good thing they closed the airport b4 the plane took off, but too bad they did so after we were all loaded onto the plane and started taxiing onto the runway.  so we waited, then were taxied back to the terminal and were told to stay put.  an agent came on and told everyone that all the flights were full.  i asked about going up north to canada, she said all flights were full.  a lie i know of course.  so when the captain said that we'd have to stay inside the plane for another hour at least, i did the 'i don't have a cell phone i need to make a phone call' excuse to leave the plane, worked my magic and got ourselves booked on our way home via vancouver.  so me and my mom walked off the plane with a planeload of ppl looking.. tho we weren't the first, a few others made arrangements on the phone on the plane before walking off.  but one final snag - as we were about to board on the yvr>yeg flight, the agent asked for our tickets.  'what ticket? they just gave us the boarding passes!'  turns out united rebooked us (as per my request) but forgot to issue us tickets!  didn't even occur to me that since the last leg would be on air canada and not united, that they (united) would have to give us tickets so that air canada would get paid.

 

in the end, whoever was on the other end of the phone with the gate agent waived us onboard - they flew us for free, and they'll figure out the united deal later.  which makes sense, since there were 2 empty seats on the plane with our names, and it's only an 1.5 hr flight, and instead of trying to figure it out only to, possibly, eventually with us on a later flight, why not NOT piss us off and just fly us out?  very sensical, but for some reason, airline agents that you deal with directly never ever seem to possess such common sense.  yes, i'm fully aware that they have rules to follow, blah blah blah, but still that only excuses them of their annoyances to a certain extent.

 

ok, so that's it, travels ended, for now.  still intend on trekking down to calgary and banff, weather and time permitting.  the more things i cross off my 'to do' list, the more i want to put on!! hahaha

 

i might decide to u/l the camera phone sucky photos, i might not.  we'll see.

 

if anyone in alberta reading this has a charger for a canon powershot s400 willing to lend to me, call me!!!

 

oh and ps, i procured, via ebay, a sim card for use while i'm here ($29 for sim + $50 credit.  sweet!)   so i have a local number to reach me at.  not publishing it here of course, email me for it, or else check on my plaxo.com contact details.

 

will try to blog something before the 25th, but in case not, have a very merry christmas, my dear readers!

 

last time i had an entry with a similar title, i was on my way to geneva via LA.  this time, i'm on my way back to edmonton via berlin.

 

yeah it's 5am and i'm not done packing yet.  it takes me no time at all to pack my backpack for my 'taxi-fare' trips (flights cost less than a taxi ride, so me hopping around on my recent trips is like taking a cab to check out another part of this humongo and incredibly diverse city called 'europe') but to strategically pack my suitcase, takes me forever.  problem is that it's mostly full of souvenirs (ie breakable, or at least the packaging is) but i'm taking hardly any clothes (ie no padding for said damageable goods) since i intend on bringing back yet more clothes from back home on my way back to geneva.

 

but being up late tonite is good anyway, to help with the jet-lag.  the experience from my shift-work stint at EPCOR sure comes in handy in getting my body to sleep when i want it to.  side effect tho is that my body also seems to fall asleep when i don't want it to.  not so good when i have meetings (like earlier today).

 

don't really have time to get a full 'nigth's' rest either, cuz still have a bit more souvenir hunting 'tomorrow' (as in when i wake up) before i catch my late-pm flight..  then berlin for a nite, then my long long many-stopover flight back home.

 

haven't been home in 14 months.  been too long.

 

the astute amongst you would have surely noticed my list of things to do while i'm back home.  feel free to make suggestions to add to the list!

 

haven't posted in a while.. been very busy at work. :)  again, i have no qualms about blogging at work because i'm not paid!  and not to toot my own horn, but seriously, i (and i'm not the only one to say this) don't know how they could have pulled this off without me.  weird how they relied so much on an intern, working part-time at that!  so they got the professional services of this seasoned conference organizer for gratis, so yeah, blogging during work, no moral discordance whatsoever.

 

guess i'll start out my updates by finishing off my travel reports, but will keep them short.

 

barcelona:
went with my friend hsien, met up with my friend pol there, so i was being a sociable traveler for once.  spent almost 3 full days there too, so that's something else that's dif from my recent trips.  very nice city, quite compact and densely populated, which i like.  food was great, had a lot of different stuff, as evidenced by my pix!  by the ocean, with a beach close to city centre, and with the pyrenes not too far away, could be another place that i 'wouldn't mind' living in.  too bad i don't speak catalan.

 

strasbourg:
was really just a tour of xmas market in dif cities.  figured i should check out what all the fuss is about with these xmas markets since i didn't check out any (aside from the sad, sad market in geneva).  meant for it to be a day trip, but by the time i got back to basel from strasbourg (having checked out bern and basel earlier in the day), there were no more trains back to geneva, so the next day i did the 'day pass' again (on sale for decmeber) and did a huge detour back home, via interlaken (the last major swiss tourist place i hadn't been to up until then) and the scenic 'golden pass panorama' train ride back to montreux, knocking off another xmas market.

 

lyon:
very famous fête des lumières in lyon, not even 2 hrs from geneva.  my friend serguei from paris offered his friend's flat in central lyon, so i couldn't refuse. haha  was raining pretty hard tho, and plus me having missed the train and arriving 4+ hrs later than i had previously planned, i missed most of the festivities, or just plain didn't want to stand in the rain with my umbrella trying to look over the other people's umbrellas.  ah well.  had a very nice dinner at my friend's friend's friend's place, then went clubbing til late afterwards.  lyon's a nice city, not big at all, but big enuf to live comfortably.  apparently the gastronomy capital of france, so the next time will have to check out the food.  and there will be a next time, because the ticket stamping machine was broken and the train was packed so the conductor didn’t check for tix, so i still have a valid ticket. :)