This is a very long post with lots of photos. Be warned!!!

I’m not sure where I saw the ad, but it was for Singapore Day 2009 in London. And since London is just an hour away, I just had to go. I took the photos with a mix of my iPhone and Sony T20. For the record, it has been 20 years since I’ve last been in London, London was the first place I have ever lived for a few years outside of Singapore. And I have no recollection of Singapore in my earliest childhood. I can only remember London and Robinsfield Playschool where I had a blond best friend called Abe, that I sucked ladybugs out of trees with little gadgets, and that once I wrote alot of Ks on my paper such that my teacher thought that I was someone else, and that I had to choose between a pink bag and a green cat bag in Harrods and my dad buying me a little ball which costs too much since the GBP was like seven times to the SGD.

I also remember vague things, like things my parents said about Camden Town and that I should be left there with a milk bottle, how we would possibly return when we were older, and arriving at the maisonette in Singapore when I came back, only to realize that Singapore was in fact my home country, and not UK. I also realized that people hated my British accent and everyone wanted to speak Singlish.

The Ryanair tickets were really cheap. I paid like 60EUR for a return trip to London Stansted Airport. There are trains running from Stansted Aiport, and the Stansted Express takes you from the airport to some known location or to the Liverpool Station for about 15GBP. From there, take the underground, or overground to your destination. This, I don’t really understand because the transport system in London looks like Japan! The iPhone App I had (London Underground) was useful at some point, but not all the time because sometimes you need to take a mixture of train, underground, train, or bus to a certain place. No 3G didn’t help either.

We rented an apartment at the Marlin Apartments Olympic View for about 60EUR / night. Can I say it was the BEST DEAL ever???

Yes I will say it.

Marlin Apartments were the best deal ever!

The apartment was clean, big, and neat. And suitable for two to four people. There were twin beds and a couch which doubled up as a sofa bed. It had everything! Almost like the suite they booked me in (because the hotel was overbooked) when I was traveling for my last business trip in Groningen. The kitchen had a dishwasher, oven, microwave, utensils, pots, cups, champagne glasses. There was a washing machine, bath tub, digital TV with a gazillion channels. It is even better then my own home in the Netherlands!

The downside, however to living in Stratford, is that it is located where the Olympic Games 2012 London is being held, so the scenery is facing the construction site of the Olympic games. It was also an incredibly shady neighborhood being on the outskirts of London and it freaked me out slightly to be trying to find directions at 11pm at night in a neighborhood of black prostitutes, sleazy bars, drunk brits and buying kebah from a guy with a seriously disfigured face which looked like he got beaten up so badly. The main gate to the apartments also disappeared on the second night I was there…

However, there was a Porsche parked next to the apartments so it couldn’t be that bad.. right?

The next day, going to Hampton Court Palace for SG day was kind of fun. The transport in London is very expensive, and the transport system is separated into different zones which I never tried to figure out. But a good plan is to get the day ticket which costs approximately 7GBP. Going from Stratford to Hampton Court costs about 7GBP too…. one way.

Because most of my friends here are non-Singapore and mostly Europeans, it was quite funny to listen to so much Singlish in one day. It was almost like being back at home. But I’ve already talked about Singapore day so you can read that story here.

Since attempting to travel great distances and getting lost at 11pm is a really tiring thing. We went back to Stratford and shopped at Sainsbury supermarket, everything was so cheap there! I had Fishermen’s Pie for 75p – now thats’ absolutely gek (crazy)! I was also happy to know that there was many, many Starbucks around, even in such a sleazy neighborhood.

Sorry I just had to be unfaithful to my Nespresso for the next couple of days. Its like meeting your first love again.

Oh this is so sinful. Whipped cream, Berry mocha Frappuccino for Summer….

I’m glad I walked so much along Oxford Circus that all the cream didn’t go to my ass. I checked! I’m still the same weight as I left! The day however, ended weirdshit. Because everyone except me, slept at 7pm!!!! 7pm!!!! I wanted to party at maybe Ministry of Sound, or God’s Kitchen, or some great big hot club in Central London and its unearthly for people in their 20s to start sleeping at 7pm on Saturday nights!

Bah!

Anyway the next day, we went to the Oxford Street and Regent Street and naturally did alot of shopping! We went to the huge Apple Store in Regent Street and it was my only source of Internet as I brought the WiFi equipped iPhone without my Airport Express (There was free wired broadband at the apartments), and I used Vopium and Skype to call my parents and back to Netherlands. Got to love Free WiFi!

The iPhone in the UK costs only 340GBP for an 8GB version without contract, and we “almost” got another one because it was seriously quite cheap! There were a few stores which sell it, O2, which is the main carrier, as well as Carphone warehouse and a few more small stores. The uncontracted version however, was a simlocked version which was Pay as you Go, and it required a UK Credit Card or BankCard – no cash allowed! It was irritating! We managed to get those small stores which allowed you to unlock iPhones with their special Simcards and he said that he would use his card to get us a phone if we paid him twenty quids. The cash machine promptly did not want to let us withdraw money and we felt uneasy taking money from his “little machine”, so we left it as that. How do you unlock a locked iPhone 3G anyway? I never checked that part out.

Disappointed, we also went to the Nike flagship store and it was fantastic!

I have to admit, I was walking in my slippers in the rain all around Central London. After a while I was kind of grumpy making wet puddles with my shoes, so I went into Nike, saw this wonderful pair of Nike Plus.

You know what’s Nike + right? They sell shoes with this empty space in the sole, and iPod sensors along with it for like 19GBP. You drop the sensors in your shoes, and connect them up to your iPod nano and you can track how much you run! The suxy thing was that it didn’t come in my size, so J ended up with a kickass shoe anyway and I had to choose a different model.

The Nike store also had Nike ID where you could customize your shoes and they could sew it on the spot. The entire store was decked in iMacs and it was super pretty and awesome really.

So now I have Nike+ shoes without the iPod nano! Anyone wants to get me a really early birthday present? The shoes cost 68GBP, the same pair of shoes sold in the Netherlands costs 120EUR. Go figure at how much the GBP has dropped!

Thus, after blowing about 400 quid in the Nike store, we decided to walk on…

Suddenly I realized that I just HAD to buy Paul & Joe. I know, its like a crazy realization that it was available in the UK so I started asking every big departmental store on where to get it, where on earth do they stock these things?!! Since everyone was tired, I threw a great tantrum in order to go to Knightsbridge to buy Paul & Joe at Harrods! I mean, it was a waste not to go to Harrods if you were already in Central London right?

I bought an awesome Lip Gloss and other random stuff.

And since we were at Knightsbridge we had to go see Buckingham Palace. Who knows who I might meet, the Queen? Or maybe some Prince charming? Actually no, we went there to see if we could make the guards laugh.

At Buckingham Palace, I was surprised that the guards did not wear big tall black bear hats. The main gates were also closed so we could not disturb the guards.

So yeah, I did not actually meet the Queen, or the Princes. Sad.

I look soooo geeky here! But the temperature suddenly fell to like 5 degrees and I only had a very thin windbreaker with me so I was really very cold. From Buckingham Palace you can also take nice strolls along the Palace Parks, as well as see the famous London Eye. I started checking out all the people running to see if they also purchased the Nike+.

Otherwise… I really like the many channels on British Television… especially Dave! There was Top Gear every other hour, everyone sounded like Jeremy Clarkson, and there was this really nice show called Dragon’s Den. I also bought into the Raggae Raggae sauce which was featured on the show but was unfortunately confiscated during customs.

On the last night however, we stayed at Russell Square hostel. Great location, but horrible place. Bad news here. Its like moving from a 4 star hotel suite to a zero star shelter. Not the best place to go because the place kind of stank and we were so out of place there with ten thousand kids and me holding on to my iPhone and Louis Vuitton bag. We decided to hang out at the Yino Japanese Restaurant because it had better toilets and smell. Still, it was 10GBP a night, and the room was shared with 18 people and we had to leave at 2am in the morning.

The good thing however, was that there was this fantastic Thai food place nearby. I think its called Thai Ten but I can’t be sure. A starter and main dish cost only 10GBP and it was the best thing my taste buds have ever tasted for a while. It was even better than the Hokkien Mee I ate at Singapore Day. Honest!

And then, it was time to go home…

I actually liked my trip to London. It wasn’t all I expected, and I was let down by the British weather. Its also kind of hard traveling with new people because at the end of the trip either you’re friends or you never want to speak to each other again, but all went well. But otherwise it was kind of enjoyable and I spent a grand total of 500EUR for the entire trip inclusive of transport and accommodation! For five days i think that’s quite reasonable but then I got really lucky with the accommodation (Come on! 60EUR a night for a 4 star hotel comparable suite) even though I lost my day ticket once!

Till my next holiday! xoxo

I *ahem* bit torrent alot. So I’m going to try out Wyzo 3 out for size. Its branded as the Media Browser, allows supercharged bit torrent downloads, and is based on Mozilla Firefox.

I currently use Firefox and Transmission. So its going to be interesting how this venture yields. We’ll see.

Wyzo along with me: here. (For Windows and Mac only)

—

Update: Wyzo has promptly crashed after its first three minutes.

This is a Paul & Joe post. Because it is the weekend once again! Well at least for all here, because it is Koninginnedag, where posters of Obama, Hiliary and other world leaders dressed up in Orange and put in stock photos got highly criticized! Oh well, wear orange and start your parties!

So anyway, to feed my Paul & Joe addiction, we took the underground all the way to Harrods because I MUST have my Paul & Joe cleanser despite being incredibly tired and everything. You can’t really fault great determination. I think it was the few times I was truly grateful although I threw tantrums to go there. The counter was a tiny mini Nano-counter though, not even a real counter with a mirror. I was kind of disappointed but happy to get my slash of Paul and Joe anyway.

I bought the:

(1) Eye & Lip Makeup remover – Which I’ve used ten thousand times

(2) Facial Gommage – Very gentle and nice on my skin, as London dried it out (seriously!) I’m going to replace my La Mer Scrub with this, its much cheaper!

(3) Body Protective Cream – a little dry although it was marked as cream

(4) Lip Gloss N in 09 – a darkish pink which was really, really nice!

You can get a tote bag when you buy two products. Which is a really good deal! Plus the entire thing costs only 57GBP, which was approximately 120SGD. Crazily cheap! That’s how much the British Pound has dropped against, well, everything else!

I only use Paul & Joe! And I also got addicted to a couple of Summer dresses from Paul & Joe Sister as well! Here’s the super pretty Paul & Joe Sister Stripe Multi Textured Strappy Dress.

And the Paul & Joe Sister Deer Print Smock Sundress With Tie Shoulders. I just like how simple and parisian it feels! Plus its colorful for Summer!

And finally the cute Paul & Joe Sister Bird And Floral Print Cotton Dress! I’m glad things are back to the animals and floral prints instead of grandma prints!

I’m so happy Summer is coming very soon!

Simply put, Off is for the lazy human being in you, because from now onwards you do not even need to manually switch off the computer, you just use Off to do it for you. So basically after a great movie you’re sitting on the couch and want to fall asleep, you just switch it off with your Off remote instead of putting your hand to depress the on/off switch.

Very soon we’re going to be like Wall-E, and develop disproportional arms and legs because technology is doing everything for us.

Before you log in, you are required to install the Off-Helper from Hobbyist Software. If you don’t do that, the remote will scan endlessly for all the computers on the wireless network. Another thing is, the Off! Remote works only on all computers connected to your wireless network, similar to how the iTunes remote connects to iTunes. So don’t expect to just point and it works instantly.

The Off! Helper needs to then be switched on via the System Preferences. You can put a password so that your Off! Remote just switches off that particular computer.

Only then, you are ready to start the scanning for the computers on the wireless network. The scanning takes some time though, at least for my wireless network. But it eventually found Summer’s MacBook.

With that, you get four different options – Off, Sleep, Restart and Lock. Its pretty intuitive to use the remote after this step. Although when you press any option and you want to change the option you seriously need to stop it on the computer very quickly because it executes in only a few seconds. And if you want to shut down you need to make sure you are able to stop all processes because probably things like Firefox, Transmission, etc will start bugging you to manually shut things down.

Otherwise, the interface is very clean and if you can take the effort to set things up for the remote, its actually nice to be really lazy and not even get off the couch for anything again.

Get it: here.

Before anyone forgets, I’m Singaporean. So when Singapore day actually was organized in London, it was like almost a sure bet to go. And make an excuse to go to London, of course! Since London is only an hour’s flight from the Netherlands, and Ryanair actually flies budget flights to London Stansted Airport, and I managed to get tickets for us at 60EUR for a return trip! Heel Goedkoep!

Singapore Day was held in Hampton Court Garden. Well, its a rare occasion to fit in once again, but yeah, I like to stick out like a sore thumb of the Blondes in the Netherlands anyway. Plus, according to my parents, the Singapore Government has injected a grand sum of 6 million Singapore dollars for this event! I heard so much Singlish that day I swore that like there was 50% of the people which I somehow knew somewhat.

The entrance was set up like the ERP gantry, super cute. And signs were set pointing to the different places where you could get freebies or free food. Everything was free! And since I’m becoming very dutch, its great. Of course the dutch preferred frikandel to my Hokkien mee, Old Chiang Kee, Prata and the works!!!

Still, there were other great yummy Singaporean food like BBQ Seafood, Butterfly, Yu Tiao, Mee Goreng, Char Kway Tway. But typically Singaporean – the queues were so, so long by midday that I didn’t want to queue up any longer. Still! Imagine that, all the food one can sample and try!

There was also a stage whereby there were artistes and stuff. Well, Adrian Pang, Michelle Chong, Rui-en, appeared. But I was kind of wanted to explore London City as well, so we left at midday before anyone could start swimming. By then, the queues for Laksa was way too long to comprehend.

There were goodie bags for everyone who attended as well, including a whole host of swag which reminded me of my childhood! See if you can spot things in there which you know already. I do! There were so many very typically weird Singaporean things, like tissue papers with the word “Chope!” on it, paper balls, eraser games things.

As a fact, 6 million Singapore dollars was spent, 12K people registered, and the queue for Chili Crab – way too long… Need to sleep now! But enjoy the pictures!

I’m back from London! And I have a ton of backdated and new blog posts! Luckily this week is going to be a light week, because Dondersdag and Vrijdag is Koningendag (Queen’s Day)! So I’m going to have a nice long weekend and I’m going to blog for iedereen!

So I went to the Apple Store at Regent Street, and I decided to go searching for an iPhone case. Now, so far there have been only one case which has caught my eye, its the Vaja iVolution Crystal Top case, unfortunately it costs approximately 220USD for a very quality Argentina leather handmade case. Its gorgeous, there is Swarovski crystals, but it is too expensive.

Another picture for you to know how to-die-for this case is:

So it was funny when I saw something absolutely ridiculous but I totally wanted. An iPhone 3G case with monkeys dancing on hearts on the background of a baby blue background.

Its adorable. But I did not have a case and the iPod Touch 1st Gen Agent18 pink case wasn’t working for me anymore. I liked the fact that it was made of Silicon, because if you use your iPhone in the gym often as an iPod, there could be many instances where you drop it. A Silicon case actually increases the grip on the iPhone, instead of say, a leather bound or plastic case.

The case is very female orientated, because I cannot imagine a guy carrying a baby blue case with monkeys. Furthermore the monkeys were very random, and so were the multi-colored hearts. But it was of good quality and the colors didn’t seem to be able to be scratched off.

There were cut outs for the earphones plug, camera, on/off silent button and charging/syncing cable. There are perforated silicon for the standby button and the volume up/down button. It is well-made, cute and something which I can say “I was searching for this”. I did not find too much screen space being shown because I prefer to actually see the entire screen and leave the home button area open.

However, if you use the iPhone sync dock, you would find that the case makes it a little fat to fit it in. The price is also expensive – 24.95GBP, you might find this slightly cheaper in other countries, but you know the flat rates in the Apple Store. Furthermore, it seemed to collect the lint in my jean pocket which my Agent18 case never did.

The Apple Store has an option for email your receipt to save the environment which I thought was super cool as well, since people always miss out the r in summerrainx I was pretty happy to flash my moo cards around.

It’s cute isn’t it!

Tonight, I’m heading to London for Singapore Day.

Naturally I’m going to bring along my iPhone. I’ll try not to make any calls, I’ll shut off my data roaming, I’ll use the iPhone almost never except in an emergency, I’ll attempt to seek out free WiFi. And all the usual things a traveler should do.

So here’s the plan. Since I’m a rookie, I’m not sure if this is the plan you should take as well if you’re going overseas for the first time with a SmartPhone but if I ever incur a huge gigantic bill I’ll definitely inform you!

(1) Turn off your data roaming

(2) Find some great travel location Apps, without required WiFi / 3G connection, because it will cost too much

I found a few:

- London Tube, which is officially licensed by the Presselite from the Transport of London (TfL) 0.99USD

- London Travel Guide 1.99USD

(3) Get a currency converter App, because you don’t want to pay too much when you shop at Harrods

(4) Get the Free WiFi hunter. Because if you’re not on the data plan, you might as well seek out free WiFi.

Well, thats all I’m going to download to my iPhone for now. Since I have no intention of jail-breaking it in order to use a foreign simcard. Otherwise, I’m really excited about my trip, as it has been 20 years since I’ve been in London, as my first school was actually near the Imperial College. Who knows what might happen on this trip!

(On a good note, people actually drive on the correct side of the road in London)

So till then!

xoxo,

Summer

Warner Brothers wants you to choose Blu. For starters you can upgrade your HD-DVD discs by sending it in the cover art and paying for postage, getting your movie back in the blu.

Since the sales of Blu-ray is steadily increasing, this might be a good time to get a BD Player and those BD discs. Will the other studios try this tactic? Probably. Especially since manufacturing the Blu-ray is really cheap.

Of course this is only for US Residents, no surprise here.

Check it out: here

As promised, once Vopium came out with the iPhone app, I was going to review it. Now, after registration at the website, you get a link which brings you directly to the App Store allowing you to download it to your iPhone. Previously, it brought you to the Web Interface.

The main page for Vopium is very VOIP-orientated. The keypad was simple and nice. The great thing about it is that it was very focused around the address book as well, so you could access your contacts as well. There is even a voicemail (which I never tested).

(1) Calls

Calling was nice, there are two ways of calling: via WiFi and by your local call minutes.

If there is WiFi present, Vopium will automatically use it to connect to your contact. However, if there is no WiFi, Vopium will proceed to make a local call, which in turn will redirect it to say… a call to Singapore.

When I tried to use Vopium WiFi to the USA, I could not connect (for some reason, not sure) to two different numbers. So I tried Vopium with my local call minutes to Singapore, and the call quality was relatively good. I would only be able to tell if it is really good if I had a few more test cases.

(2) SMS

Previously, I really liked the SMS provided by Vopium’s web interface. Which turned out to be the same thing here. The + allows you to access your contact list in order to send an sms, which is a really nice thing.

It did not provide the same kind of “conversations” or “sms history” like the sms on the iPhone itself. But it having SMS as opposed to what Skype and Fring did not have, was a nice touch.

And finally, in the “More”, you can both check the balance as well as top-up, making the iPhone app an all-in-one contained app which is really nice.

What I didn’t like? Phone calls still need some polishing. Vopium now offers 30 free call minutes and 30 free smses as opposed to 100 free smses. Although the website still seemed not updated yet. Otherwise, if the call plan and minutes fits you, Vopium is a good choice for making international phone calls.