It is Saturday, and I'm in the office. Do I have to say more?
Outside it is just getting dark again, and I am ready to pack my stuff and go home. Boy am I tired. It was planned to be such a good day!
I took home the DSL-Router after I was assured that the DSL-Connection would work from whatever telephone line you plug it to. Of course it did not, I found out after carrying all that stuff down to the apartment. Having no Internet access means no finishing of the survey from the home-office. So I had to come up to the fifth floor, Palais Renaissance, Orchard Road again today, with my rucksack on my back. First thing I noticed: The aircon is not working on the weekend. Fabulous. Then my computer broke down several times in a row. Great. Then I noticed that I have no access to the data I need until monday and won't get it.... I'm quite good at complaining, don't you think? :-)
Of course, there were good parts of the day as well.
Walking down Orchard Road I came across two guys who asked me for some time. They looked like pupils who did a survey, so I said yes. Well... it was not really a survey. It was more like christian mission. But who cares? I was bored, I was angry because I had to head to the office on Saturday, so why not talk to some strangers about god? It figured out to be quite a fun. You have to know, I even like it when someone calls me for half an hour of "who would you vote for, if election was next sunday, and which icecream do you prefer"-questions (only when I have the time, of course, and nothing more interesting to do), so call me stupid, but I liked that guy and what he said was not too bad - although nothing really new to me, as I am christian already and did not have to be convinced of that God and Jesus thing. By the way, the guy who I guessed to be a pupil is married, has two children and a job. Damnit, I will never be able to guess the age of Asians! Finally, when we came to the end of the little brochure he brought, we even spoke a little prayer together - I thought I would spoil his feeling of successful mission when I stopped him there, and who cares. Can only bring some more of god's love, huh?
Sad to say, but thats all I experienced today - a lot of nagging and some prayin'.
Now this is the line, cause I said so!

I just wanted to try out a new feature of my blog - the PhotoBlogging!!!

goooooood morning Singapore!

What a fine day it is! Tine gave me a wake-up call at half past six, and with some minutes to wash the sleep from my eyes and enjoying the sun just waking up like me I made it to be in the office at half past seven, which gave me enough time to start working on the LCC survey. I review it in every detail now, to not miss a single line and present perfect work to Mr. Bussmann on monday. It's all about the first impression, y'know!
I crancked up the webradio until the others arrived by nine. Now I am sitting here with my third can of coke light (its not called diet coke here, don't ask me why) and look forward to an relaxed day of concentrated work. Oh, did I mention concentration? Looks like I have to end blogging for now :-)

Hello people!

I am sitting here somewhere close to the marina, and I feel like it is time to give you some advice: Before going somewhere, make sure it is the place you wanted to go! As easy as it is, I just did that wrong. Intentionally, I wanted to go to the "coast" of SIN to walk around the bars and the people after work, just to see more of the city then my way to the office and back. So I thought the MRT station "Marina Bay" would be the place to go. Wrong! In fact, here is nothing but the freight-harbour and a lot of trees. The park is near, but as it is after 8pm I can hardly see it. Damn! That takes all the motivation away in an instant, and now I just want to go home again, feeling like I spoilt the 80cent for nothing but some more meters to walk...
but I don't mind really. I will figure out how to get to the right places soon enough, and I have plenty of time left.

Work was not that funny today, because I felt a bit left in that big "boss" room and hardly anyone found his way inside. The survey I am at is much more work then I thought it would be, because the research has to be made in various sources and not all of them are as updated as I want them to be, others are just a big pile of paper to analyze. Of course I will finish it by the end of the week, but I would prefer it to be faster. I would prefer ME to be faster! Actually, I needed half the day to understand that database, because it has nearly every information about every commercial aircraft of the world stored and it is not as easy as google... ;-)

I hope that when Mr. Bussmann comes into office things will change a bit and I will get more information around the business here. I do not yet know what the people around me are really doing!

Lunch was fun, anyways. Leonard Wong, who has just cancelled his job, is really funny, ironic and sarcastic as I like it. He gave me a hint of some bureaucratic burdens inside the LH-System, and it was more like watching a play then just listening. And I got to know the little daughter of Sharon Chong - Victoria. She is just about a year old and can hardly speak a word yet, but the eyes tell everything! She also practices winking bye-bye and throwing hand-kisses. Such a funny little girl!

A good motivation was the ICQ-Chat with Tine this afternoon. She spent nearly a full "whatever-law-it-just-was" lecture chatting with me, and she took away my lousy mood as always. Thank god to have her!

OK folks, I'll just walk my way back into the station now and take my train home, where a tasty chocolate snack is waiting for me, and some strange-tasting star-fruit-juice that I bought yesterday at midnight at the seven-eleven in the hospital. See ya! (written 2004-05-19 20:17)

first update from SIN!

hey hey hey!
Now I finally made it - I'm in Singapore!
The flight was an absolute dream. As my boss had arranged a business-class flight, I was in heaven. This time, heaven was a Boeing 747-400... :-) Of course I had a bit too much luggage, but there was no problem during check-in. They are somewhat nicer when you wink with the right sheet of paper, I guess. Saying goodbye to Tine was not easy, but she made me really confident that we will stay in closest contact, and don't forget she is going to visit me middle of July! That is still some eight weeks to go, but they will pass quickly, I am sure. In Frankfurt I had to wait about two hours for the connecting flight - enough time to shop for some presents and -gosh!- to hang around in the Lufthansa-Lounge. That was awesome, I felt like the businessman I someday want to be. The time passed like nothing and then I entered the 747, having waited long enough to let all the ecos grab a seat before. The seat was impressively huge, and my place by the window was great. A champagne as welcome drink? Why not! I spent about half an hour figuring out the functions of my seat - there is a special manual for it. OK, it is not THAT complicated, but it is sooo cool. Entertainment-System, notebook power supply, adjustable everything and when I stretched out my feet I could not reach the seat before me! After watching two movies, having a tasty dinner and writing some articles for my WHUfriends-network I grabbed some two or three hours of sleep, and swoooosh, it was just an hour to the arrival in Singapore. That got me really exited! My first impression during the descent were the fields - they are not arranged as rectangular as I am used to, but totally unregular, like a paisley-pattern sometimes, round, corners... are the farmers taking some drugs in Singapore? ;-) The airport was very empty and kind of old-fashioned, and I feared that would continue throughout Singapore. How wrong I was! Sharon Chong and her collegue from LH Technical Training picked me up, and we took a cab to my apartment. That was the time when I first got in contact with no-aircon-air... about 33 Degrees Celsius. Oh-my-GOD! I felt like dissolving. Luckily, the cab was airconned. The apartment lies in a very clean (as everything here) and nice housing area, close to a big hospital complex. In the moment I have two flatmates, Elena, who is studying business in her 10th semester (well, I will never study that long) and has been here for over 5 months now, and Markus, who is writing his diploma thesis at LH passage. Elena seems to be from spain or something, I can't really understand her german and she stops talking when I wait the sentence to make sense - - - yeah, whatever. She seems to be much more into partying and having fun then working, fine with me. Markus is in the office for long hours every day, but when we met we had a nice little talk and I believe we will not go on each others nerves. On it went with a walk to the MRT, the mass rapid transport. The underground, so to say. It is one of the most modern systems worldwide and famous for being efficient and fast. I have to add that it is reasonably cheap, too. The way to the MRT leads through an enormous hospital, where I pass a Starbucks on the way (good for the first shot of caffeine in the morning!). It is just two stations away from Orchard Road, the ride is no more than three minutes. Perfect! I bought an EZ-Link-Card, which is awesome: You can charge it with some money and then keep it in your wallet. When you enter, you tap the wallet on the counter, and it lets you in. When you leave the station, you tap again, and the counter shows you how much your ride did cost.
From the MRT station Orchard it is a nice five minutes walk down this main shopping road of Singapore. It is like an "Allee", with large trees all around. The amount of (mostly expensive) shops and mega-malls ist incredible. The best feature: Nearly everywhere in the basement there is a food center, where a plate starts at 3 SGD, which is no more than 1.5 EUR. You can find all kind of asian food there - be it malaysian, korean, thai, indian... I will take my time to taste as much as possible! The office itself is located in the Palais Renaissance, which is a luxus-shopping male for the first three floors and an office-building above. LHT is on the 5th floor, sharing it with an LH passage ticket-store, and the accountants. LH Technical Training is sharing an apartment with LHT, so that there are about 8 people working there. It is a mixture of Germans and Asians, and it seems to be working very well together. The atmosphere is very good and I got a warm welcome from everybody. Mr Bussmann could not be there as he had to go to LHT in Manila, Phillippines for this week, but he gave me a call today to see if everything is alright. He also mentioned that I would have to join him the next time he goes to Manila, as there is a huge LHT-base there with a lot of people related to my project. Yesterday I did not really work but just get to know the ways and the office, so that I left early and got something to eat. I went home at about 8pm, and it was already dark by then. Sunset and -dawn is a thing of minutes here, what a pity! Today I came into the office at about 20 to 8 and spent the morning with trying to get into the internet to start my research. Gosh, it took me hours, and neither my notebook nor the old notebook they had in store for me worked, until I saw a new ADSL-Router lying around and asked if I could set it up. Miracle, miracle: It worked! I am actually actualizing (haha) the LCC survey, which is really outdated as it is from february. Things change amazingly fast here! I also have access to two great databases, which provide me with a lot of details, so this part of the work is easily done and will be finished this week. After work I went to a bookstore just to see what the people like to read here - sooner or later I will buy some nice books here. Then I went home, bought a new top-up-card for my Singapore mobile and took my first swim in the swimmingpool. GREAT THING! Just a minimum walk out of the door... that felt much more like vacation then like work. After a little nap and one of the relaxing-empowering-lovely phonecalls from Tine I went to the 7-11-store in the hospital to grab some junkfood and "starfruit-juice" (haven't tried it yet) at about midnight, enjoying the warmth and the view down to the skyline downtown. That's it by now - can't wait to add more of this great trip! Good night! (written 2004-05-19 01:30am)