Christmas and New Years Eve vacation plan

here for information the details of my Christmas and New Year's Eve vacation:
24th to 25th December: Elgin (Chicago) with Robert and Jennifer.
25th evening: flight from Chicago to Baltimore (flight United 340)
25th to 27th: Hostelling International, Washington DC
27th to 29th: Washington International Student Center, Washington DC
29th to 30th: Lofstel, loft hostel, Philadelphia
30th December to 2nd of January: visiting Barbara at Long Island
2nd to 4th: H.I. Boston Downtown hostel, Boston
4t to 6th: Visiting Manolo in NY
6th: flight New York JFK to Chicago (flight Delta 5083), then train to LaFayette
7th of January: back to work.

Have all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Thanks again to
Barbara and Manolo, Bob and Jenny for the comming hospitality, I look
forward to meet you.

Las Vegas 21-25.11.2007

Over the Thanksgiving festivities, Michal and I went to Las Vegas. We Stayed in Fremont street but at evening we went always to the main street – to gable of course (came with free drinks), for definitively amusing comedian shows (Vinnie Favorit and the “Bulldog of Comedy”) or to have a look at the clubs visited by rich & famous. Vegas was fun. We had red rental car to go to the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon and to the close mountains.

LaFayette, Indiana

International Sport Center has a sauna, pool, soccer and baseball courts and is open 24/7. I managed to go there three times so far to do some work out. My preferite fast food is instead Taco Bell. I slowly but surely get to know the roads of the town and also spend less time in exploring Wallmarts. Such enourmous stores have electric mini scooters for senior citizens to go around the shop. Although they are slow, they must defenetively be fun to ride...
The picture with the house in the first blog entry about America shows the rented car I use to go around.

Google maps instead shows the house from above:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=Lafayette,+IN,+United+States+of+America&ie=UTF8&ll=40.378875,-86.880101&spn=0.000469,0.001168&t=k&z=20&om=1

The picture shows another areal view of a new neighboorhood.

The kitchen of the house was finally inaugurated: pasta of course.

Chicago 10-11.11.2007

Visited Michal in Elgin, close to Chicago. We went downtown during the day and out during the evening to a place that was half saloon half disco.

United States of America

I arrived in LaFayette, IN, US. It is nice here, everybody is friendly
and the assignment is absolutely interesting. On this first weekend,
I'll go to visit a friend in Chicago. The picture shows the house I stay in.

The harbour of Singapore

Its harbour is the pillar of the economy of Singapore. It is the world's
busiest transshipment port and handles half of the world's annual supply
of crude oil. To this topic I suggest following lecture:
- "port of Singapore" on wikipedia
- "Malaccamax" on wikipedia
- "the kra canal", http://www.thaipro.com/thailand_00/109_kra_canal.htm

Work and near future.

I finished my assignment here in Singapore two days ago. I am fully
satisfied with the outcome. It was really an interesting assignment and
I have learned a lot. Now I 'll work 5 days at the assembly line. I
started today and it is really interesting. It reminds me when I was a
child and loved to play Lego: take this part, attach it there. Take that
part and put it there. However, we do not have to assemble piece by
piece since most parts are already assembled in modules. And the pieces
to assemble are of different kinds: motors, cables of any kind,
electronics, tubes, keyboard, monitor, sensors... Really interesting! It
takes much more time to build the whole machine than with Lego and has a
much higher value. So I have to watch out not to break anything. I am
glad to have the opportunity to do some hands-on work, since it is a
good alternation to the work in the office and it helps getting the
bigger picture over what happens within the company.

My forth and last three-month assignment will be in Lafayette, Indiana,
US. I'll stay there from early November to end of February. I look
forward to the period in the US. However, it is supposed to be really
cold in Indiana during the Winter.

I signed a contract with my company to go on working for them after
January. I'll work in Zurich at the same place where I had my second
stage and I really look forward to it.

Enjoying Singapore

Singapore is definitively a place I'd like to come back. I am a little
bit sad to leave soon. When I am out, I often have the feeling to be on
vacation. This because of the heat, the sea and because I often eat at
restaurants. Everybody I met was really nice.

Pulau Bintan, Indonesia, 15.10.2007

Getting to Pulau Bintan takes 55 minutes by boat from Singapore. The northern part of the Island belongs to a group of resorts owned and targetting almost exclusively Singaporeans. The beach we have been during our day trip was really nice.

Pulau Ubin, 14.10.2007

Pulau Ubin is a small island in the north east of Singapore. Most of the
it is a forest and bikes can be rented to make a tour. There is a little
natural park with some nice paths and view points.

Mamma e Papa, 13-20.10.2007

My parents came to see me. They said the enjoyed it so much that they
will come back even once I will no longer be here. They have been on a
three-day trip to Melacca and KL as well. The picture shows them on
Pulau Ubin, with the Johor Bahru Strait and Malaysia as background. A
hedge prevents people from swimming over the border.

Jakarta, Indonesia, 5-7.10.2007

Weekend trip to Indonesia, where I did some sightseeing. Some entries to
museums cost less than 0.05 Euro. The city is more easy going than
Singapore. The youth likes to take it easy and seems to enjoy it self. I
liked their smiles.
The first elections in Indonesia were held less than 10 years ago.

Langkawi, Malaysia, 16-23.9.2007

We then went to Langkawi for some holiday at the beach. It was really
nice. Since it was low season and fasting month, there were not many
other tourists. So it was as much the more relaxing. We went go-karting,
snorkeling and diving, but not horseriding (because of Fatimahs
leaders). The dive was really nice, there were tons of different fishes.
The hotel had the longest pool of Malaysia and two slides.

Kuala Lumpur, 15-16.9.2007

With Letizia we went to Kuala Lumpur. We did some sightseeing, shopping
and went to the movies. We enjoyed it.

Letizia! 12-24.9.2007

Letizia came to visit me! I took one week leave from work to go to
vacation with her. I am so happy she came.

Johor Bahru, Malaysia 25.8.2007

On the way back from Melacca I stopped in Johor Bahru (JB). JB lays at
the strait that divides Malaysia from Singapore. I had the opportunity
to listen to a free concert, with songs from soundtracks of scary movies.

Melaka, Malaysia 25.8.2007

Weekend trip to Malaysia. There were Chinese celebrations of the hungry
ghost festival during the day. I visited the historic places of Malacca
(Portuguese and Dutch buildings) and stayed there for the night.

Mobile phone number in Singapore

I have now a new sim card. To send me sms please use my Singaporean mobile phone number. I've set up a local swiss and a local italian telephone number which you can call as well and who redirect for free to my mobile phone number here. You'll find these numbers on my homepage (www. MYLASTNAME .it/fabio)

Small world

It does not seems to me that Singapore is that different from Europe. I did not had any cultural shock so far and do not suppose to get one.

Restricted area

Last Sunday I wanted to do some trekking and to reach the lakes in the middle of Singapore, which consist of a deep forest. However, the path was not marked and I walked in the wrong direction. For approximatively one hour. When I finally got to a street I looked back to where I came from. Apparentely I got into a restricted area reserved for the army, designed by the sign on the side of the street (picture pending).

Going out in Singapore

Singapore has many places where to go out. Drinks are expensive, but the same people here like them a lot. Beer is consumed in Jugs. Since taxis are not so expensive, they are used to change bup/club during the evening. I've also been at the movies to see the Simpson film.

Use of mobile phone in the office

Differently to Swiss offices, the mobile phone ring tones in the Singaporean office are loud and mostly consist of music. During meetings, the phones are not turned out and calls are answered. However, I still keep mine silent.

Food in Singapore

<<FoodCourt.JPG>> In Singapore there is a big variety of places where to eat. The simplest are food courts (picture). A food court is an open space within a building with tables and seats and different little stands with different food: some are Indian, other Chinese, Malay or Korean, and some are western. I try not to eat western and often eat Indian. The see cucumber (a dried one: see picture) is seen as a delicacy by some ethic groups of the Island. At the moment I mostly eat Indian food or Chinese dumplings or some noodle soup. There is often a big quantity of fresh juices to choose from. The portions are smaller than in Europe. <<DrySeaCucumbers.JPG>>

Torch with integrated television and radio

<<TvRadioTorch.JPG>> Mustafa Center is a shopping center in Singapore open all day and night. It is in little India. Compared to the financial district, which has brand new big skyscraper and is almost deserted at evenings, little India has smaller, older buildings and is crowded with people. That's the reason why during the first days I felt much more at home there.

In Mustafa center there was an interesting article: a torch with integrated television (see picture). Maybe for those who do not want to miss the soccer game when they go out for camping?

The company in Singapore

The people in the office are really friendly. I'm going to work here for
three months and was assigned a 'buddy' to whom I can ask whatever I
need to know in order to settle down. The way of working is not much
different to Europe and everybody speaks English (it is the first
language kids are thought at school). There are some swiss employees as
well, with whom I celebrated the Swiss national day on 1st of August.
Both them and the local employees are friendly. I have a desk in a big
office which is shared by a lot by other employees.
The way to the office from the hotel is long. I do not need to wear any
suit nor tie in order to go to work.

Singapore

The hotel the company booked for me is at walking distance to china town
and little india. During the first days, little india was the place
where I felt most at home, because compared to the sky-screapers of
other areas, it is more similar to the placed I used to live so far. The
air temperature is really high. At all times, even late. The hotel is
great and has a big pool and a gym.

Rescue Diver Curse

Within PADI, Rescue Diver is a course where divers are thought to rescue
other divers in difficulty. These divers in difficulty may - be out of
water - be conscious-less - be panicking - be tired and so on. There is
a lot of interesting theory to learn, including a First Emergency
Response (EFR). But the most interesting part are the exercise. On the
final exercise, a conscious-less diver has to be found under water,
brought up to the surface, it's breath has to be controlled and he has
to be brought out of water to the beach. An other exercise shows how to
give oxygen to divers who may need it. A funny exercise is the one where
a panicked diver has to be helped. Since panicked divers on the surface
are afraid to die, they try to go over everything they find to save
themselves - including the rescue diver that wants to help them. For the
rescue diver this can be a danger. A technique is therefore to dive
under water to approach the panicked diver, then go behind him and
rescuing him without that he has the time to push you down. In this
exercise, the panicked diver was played by Richard (picture). After the
courses I've been diving two days. The most interesting animal I've seen
was a blue Nudibranch with different yellow horns.

Palau Tioman (23.7.2007 - 29.7.2007)

Tioman is an island of Malaysia. It is a wonderful place to relax since
there is not much to do - besides diving and meeting people from
different countries.
The middle of the island is jungle. The airport in the village called
Tekkek (I assume not more than 300 people live there). Since there is no
road to the other villages of the island (all placed at the coast) a
taxi-boat has to be taken. Nazri's place 1 is a nice hotel on ABC
village. Its most simple room have no television, and no phone. However,
there are ants who like to enter the laptop. Maybe by the time I'm
writing this, there are still some ants who get squeezed under the
keyboard while I type. The bungalow I was in was is completely build out
of wood, with exception of the bathroom.
ABC village is a long village with different really simple resorts.
There are 4 little shops with some food, and some simple restaurants.
Whole meals on the simple restaurants cost less than an ice tea in a
restaurant in Zurich. And the island is a duty free zone which means
that also alcohol and cocktail are cheap.
Staying on this island was really pleasant. Both the locals and the
tourist are really friendly. There are even some white monkeys.

Kuala Lumpur 23.7.2007

Monday 6:00 local time (24:00 Swissitalian time) Malaysia Air flight MH
009 landed in Kuala Lumpur. A fully automated train with air
conditioning (AC) brings the tourists to the city. It travels through a
joungle of palms, which I was later told by a Austrian tourist are
palm-plantagen for oil.
In KL I've seen the Petronas towers and some other buildings and had a
walk through the city. I was a little bit disappointed because most
buildings/ shops were closed and I was not sure where the best place to
change the money was. At the end it was a book store. After noon I took
the plane to Tioman (picture).

Beginning

Hi,
The blog is now open. Before starting to work in Singapore, I'll go to
vacation to Tioman Island, Malaysia. I look forward to some good diving
and snorkeling.
In Zurich, I enjoyed working for the Space Industry a lot. It was an
amazing experience and the colleagues were all really friendly.
Bye,
Fabio