vendredi, novembre 30, 2007

Some photos of the market before it burnt down





Leave benefits in france

It has been more than 5 months since I switched jobs. I do not think I ever wrote about the work benefits in France. I will just mention about the leave benefits here.

In France, the annual leave is 5 weeks. I think this is a standard for all workers. Everyone I know who works here has at least 5 weeks of leave. My company is kind enough to give everyone an extra week. I have 6 weeks of annual leave. On top of that, I have extra days off. In France, the general weekly working hours is 35 hours. Depending on the company policy, workers are compensated with extra off days for extra hours of work. In my present company, we work minimum 39 hours per week. To compensate for the extra hours, we have a day off for every 9 days of work. That is about two off days per month. This day off cannot be accumulated as it is meant to be a day to rest for working extra hard. Of course, there is always an exception for new comer who does not have enough annual leave to go on holidays.

In total, I am paid 54 working days a year for not going to office. This is a big bonus compared to my previous job where I did not have off days even if I stayed back late because I was on 35 hours working week and had only 25 days of leave.

Not everyone has this chance like mine. It is really rare to find such an employee social company. Seb used to work for one such company. But now, he is working for a multi-national company where he has 5 weeks of leave and 12 off days per year.

Days off are really useful in this country where public offices and certain banks are not open on Saturday. Any administrative paper work has to be done during the weekdays and it can take up the whole day just queueing and waiting for your turn. As a foreigner in this country, I do have lots of paper works to be done. Of course, during the strike season, people took a day off to avoid getting caught in traffic.

In my opinion, having so many days of leave does not reduce work productivity and effiency. In contrast, it boosts worker's moral and after a good rest, we are even more motivated and effective in our work.

I remembered that in Singapore, the weekly working hours was 42 hours and yet we worked up to 60 hours when the dateline was near. I had 18 days of annual leave. After we delivered our project, we usually had a day off. I thought I was really fortunate then.

mardi, novembre 20, 2007

Neverending strike?

I am in office at 7am this morning. I am not an early person but I had no choice. France is crippled by transport strike since a week. On this tuesday, almost everyone is on strike. Teachers, judges, lawyers, France telecom staff, electricity company workers, university students, Air France stewards and hostesses and most important of all, public transport workers. 1 out of 5 metros are working. Suburbs trains are greatly reduced. Millions of commuters in Paris and its suburbs resorted to cars, bicycles or walking. There were 250 km of traffic jams reported last week. Now you know why I left home at 6.20am. To avoid the 1.5 hours I took when we left at 7.30am yesterday.

Last week, I was in Helsinki and did not face the strike. While the temperature there was less than 1 degree, the indoors were always warm. I even found the hotel room too hot. It was nice to have a little snow. The main street in Helsinki had a hot water pipe running underneath it to prevent it from freezing and being slippery during winter. Most of the time, we walked through shopping center and underground tunnel to get from the hotel to the client's office. I was not out in the cold that much. From the month of November, cars in Finland had to change their tyres for the winter. By 1 December, all cars must have their winter tyres fitted.

For the moment, my working trip is confined to Finland. As for Seb, he was in South Africa just a week before me and it was 25 degrees there. When we compared our photos, it was amusing to see the differences. One of green trees and lovely swimming pool with bright sunshine.The other of beautiful lights with a snowing background.

mercredi, novembre 07, 2007

The first family breaking up

Nicolas Sarkozy. If you have never heard of this name, it is okay. I can understand that you are not living in France or you do not care about politics. This guy’s name is everywhere that even the Americans know about him. He is the president of France and a friend of George Bush. He is the guy mentioned DAILY in the local news.

He is also the first president to be undergoing a divorce. Aha, did I get your attention now? Ok. I am doing a tabloid entry here.

Long ago, when Nicolas Sarkozy was mayor of Neuilly (a wealthy commune just beside Paris), he conducted the marriage of Cécilia and Jacques Martin (a TV host). Jacque Martin was in his fifties and his bride was 26 years old and heavily pregnant.

A few years later, Nicolas and Cécilia divorced their respective partners and got married in 1996. The marriage was on the rocks when Cécilia went to New York in the company of another man in 2005.

During the presidential campaign, all the candidates tried to make their family life look good. Nicolas was no exception.

This divorce was not that surprising as Cécilia did not make an effort in her role as first lady. Something was already amiss. Like in the recent picnic lunch with George Bush and family, she was absent and announced sick. However the next day, she was seen shopping in full health. In US, this news might shock a lot of people but in france, the common people did not really care. French tends to keep to their own business. It is the opposition party that criticise Nicolas for creating a fake family image. I think what is important is how Nicolas manages this country where companies get richer but there are 7 millions people living in poverty.

More gossip starts at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cilia_Sarkozy

Adieu, burnt down market

A while ago, my brother informed me that the market near our old Ang Mo Kio home had burnt down. I just dismissed this news without much thought. Today, I happened to see some photos taken years ago of the hawker stalls. Suddenly, I got awoken. I am a visual person and these photos brought back much valued memories. This market had been a huge part of my childhood and even adulthood. For nearly 20 years, this was the place where we spent most of our family time together. We had breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper there. Food at hawker centers were cheap and when mom did not cook, the most convenient way was to head down to the market for a no frills cheap meal. If going to the hawker center was considered an outing, then it was the place I visited most with my father.

Stall number 1 was the mixed veggie rice stall which used to sell Yong Tau Foo. I love the braised pig trotters there. There was also this white chicken rice stall opposite the community center. I remembered having lunch there on Saturday in between band practise. The last stall sold fish soup with fried fish eggs. Yummy. Beside it was the fried oyster which was heavenly sinful.

For breakfast, we usually shared nasi lemak with prawn mee soup or laksa. Sometimes it was the fried mee hoon with porridge poured over it. It’s not yucky. You should try it. The fresh soya bean drinks was a must despite the long queue. Each of us had our own task to do. One to buy the drinks; the other to queue for the food; another one to grab seats. It was such a normal affair that I never stop for a moment to reflect on this until now. Now that I am no longer in Singapore. Now that there is no hawker center in France. Now that eating out is usually eating in a restaurant on a less frequent basis. Oh what sweet memories of this burnt down market!

For supper, we would get fried hokkien mee and also satays. I better stop talking about local food since there are no plans to go back Singapore for the rest of the year.

The stall holders were hard working people who would start from early morning until late night; sometimes selling different food between lunch and dinner. I wonder how they were affected by this great loss. I read that the government will not rebuild the market unless the stall holders contribute money as well. As the sum was huge, I doubt many would continue. Truly, if the market had not been destroyed, I guess I would never have such strong nostalgic thoughts right now.

I better clear my thoughts fast because I wanted so much to hop on a plane for Singapore and hug my family telling them “I love you all and thanks for the meals we had together at the market.” Bisous.

mercredi, octobre 31, 2007

We have moved.

We had finally moved into our new place. Having professional movers eased our lives a great deal. Still we were kept busy with cleaning the apartments (the new and the old ones); buying the essentials for the apartment; unpacking and organising our stuff etc....

With the coming public holiday on Thursday (All Saints' Day), we will continue with our post-house moving work.- To assemble the cupboard we bought, choose paint color for our coridor, buy a microwave oven, stock up food in the fridge, visit our old apartment for last check before doing a hand-over. Friends had asked me to show them photos. That would have to wait as there are still boxes lying around and we do not have all our new furnitures yet.

As we had some furnitures that we did not bring over to the new apartment, I decided to give them away. There is this interesting website that allows you to publish items to give away. It is a donation/exchange website. You can give almost anything you no longer want. I posted my fridge and immediately got 16 replies. Some were students starting their school year in Paris and needed to furnish their studio. I would prefer this site than eBay. And looking at the replies I received, there are needy people out there who could benefit from things we no longer want.

As for the transport strike, it was over last week. However, this is the season of strike. Lawyers and judges were on strike. So were the staff of ambulances. Even the Air hostesses and stewards of Air France and KLM just ended their strike. On 20 Nov, there would be a general strike. I doubt I will take a day off but I will definately leave home real early to avoid the traffic jam.

dimanche, octobre 21, 2007

Strike three and maybe more days to come

The general transport strike started on thursday. Since it was announced a few days earlier, people organised themselves for alternate transport. Some took a day off to avoid the traffic mess.

On thursday, things were quite okay. There was no long queue at the train stations and metro stations. There was no major traffic jams. People used bicycles, car pool or walked. I walked to work on thursday. It was 3 km away and it took me 35 mins. After work, my colleague sent me home on his scooter. That was peaceful thursday.

However, the union decided to prolong the strike as their demands were not met. On friday, Paris was a mess. People could not take another day off. There were crowds waiting for metro and trains. Mostly 1 out of 3 trains or metro were functionning. RER A and RER B were totally down. I drove to work on friday as I had to visit our new apartment after work. What a bad day to do that. Driving to work was okay. The return trip from my new apartment to home took me more than 1 hour. Everyone was breaking traffic rules. Traffic was really slow and cars just cut lanes and driving on the road shoulders. The usual journey would take me 30mins.

Seb had it no easier as well. He had to travel to Belgium on wed evening instead of thursday since there was no guarante that TGV would work on thrusday. When he was returning on friday, his train was cancelled and he had to take the one before. That was still not too bad. At Gare du Nord, the queue for taxi was so long that he decided to take a bus until Gare Pont Cardinet and then took a train back to Becon des Bruyères, our station. Long story short cos' there were other bothering details. In brief, he reached home late.

And yesterday, the strike continued. :( Seb left for Boston in the morning and I had an appointment at our new apartment. My kind renovation contractor sent me to the new apartment and I discussed about the remaining works to be done. After that, he left me and I was stranded. In the internet, the transport website updated about the situation and RER D was supposed to be working. At the train station, I waited patiently until someone told me that she had been waiting since 45 minutes. We both gave up waiting and tried to find an alternative. In the end, I took three buses to reach home and that took me 2 hours in total.

Today, I stayed at home. There were only one train every two hours to go Paris. Usually, there were four each hour. I chose to pack the boxes and prepare for our house moving.

I have been too busy to go into the details of the strike. But it seems that railway workers retirement age is at 55. The government had been trying to make them work longer. The government reasoned that this retirement plan was created long ago during the time of steam trains when it was a hard and dangerous work. Now, train drivers had an easier job and should work longer. As usual, no one can touch this group of workers. The union replied that their jobs were not easy. Their responbilities were great, they worked on irregular hours and their workloads were heavy.

I will keep a watch out on the news this evening. I guess there is a high chance that I would have to walk to work tomorrow. Do I mind the strike? It is a mix feeling. I am frustrated when I was in the traffic jam. But it was my fault due to my lousy organisation. I am glad that people can manifest and go on strike. Freedom to the people! Something that we will never experience in Singapore.

mercredi, octobre 17, 2007

Some updates

I am moving next Friday. The kitchen is 90% installed. 2 cupboard doors and some pieces were delivered wrongly. They were not of the right size. The important thing is that the kitchen is functional though not completed.

During these 3 weeks, we had made a lot of last minute decisions based on the advices given by different experts. We had to change our microwave to find a size that fits. We decided to paint the living room.

We removed the skirting board and would replace them after the parquet is installed. We removed the sliding doors of the placards so that parquet could be installed in the placards as well. Initially, we wanted to leave the skirting boards and put quarter round against them and we had wanted to leave the interior of the placards as they were (carpeted).

Yesterday, we changed our mind about the presentation of our shower room. Even our bedroom location had been changed. At first, I wanted to use room 1 but now, we decided to use room 2 as our bedroom.

This is a stressful period as there are so many tiny details and things to take note of. We had made many trips to the hardware shop. Books were all packed in boxes. There was also different administrative stuff to be done.

Back at our present place, there had been a blockage problem with the water pipe. We had water on our kitchen floor thrice. Once the neighbour above us launched the dish washer, water would gush out from one of the drainage pipes that we do not use. Seems like everyone else had this problem. I hope that we could leave this place in peace.

Seb is leaving on business trip for 6 days. The responsibility is on me to supervise the works at the new place. To add cherry on top of the cake, there is a mega transport strike tomorrow and may last until Friday. I drove to work today and experienced heavy traffic. Tomorrow would be worse.

On the bright side, things are going on schedule. My mom and friends mentioned that I could move in a month after getting the keys to the apartment. For them, it was fast. Well, there were people who moved in right after getting the keys. As this is a brand new estate, there are many inconveniences at the moment. I will write about them when I am more ZEN.

lundi, octobre 08, 2007

Being multi-lingual is important, isn't it?

In office, we communicate in french. But since most of our clients are international, we communicate with them in english. In Singapore context, it will really mean that in office, we communicate in chinese and with our clients, we communicate in english. Can you imagine that? I'm posing this because based on my 5 years working experience in Singapore, all internal and external documents were written in english.

Being bi- or tri-lingual is really important. In Helsinki, during our meetings, the users were speaking in swedish or finnish among themselves. My colleague and I spoke in french while the other consultants spoke in english. Having a foreign language helped as we were able to discuss on internal issues. When the users clarified on certain issues among themselves, we had no idea what they were talking about. When the english consultants spoke among themselves, we could understand their constraints and problems. They could not hide their game. You might think that it was rude to be speaking in a foreign language in the presence of other people. I agree too but only if you want to include the others in your conversation. During the meeting, it was sometimes necessary to have private discussion among ourselves.

I can speak chinese well. But am I able to work with the chinese language? I doubt so. My written french is better than my written chinese. If I have to go China to work one day, I wonder if I can write documents in chinese. I have a few Singaporean friends working in China. I often thought that the working environment would be in english as I had doubts on my friends' chinese. Maybe I was wrong. I better check with them.

In any case, just being fluent in english is not enough. It is important to know other languages as well. When I was in Chinatown yesterday, I felt so at home listening to the roast meat seller speaking in Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and French with the customers. It just reminded me of the market back in Singapore. I wish I can speak Hokkien with someone. With my mom, we speak mandarin and english. I wonder if the young generation can speak our dialects now. It is so important to be able to speak our own mother tongues keeping in touch with our roots. At the same time, mastery of other languages can really get you further.

This revelation of being bi-lingual only hit me when I am here. Just knowing English in France is not enough. Just knowing French in France is essential but if you know English, that is a plus. I am glad that my circumstances in France obliged me to learn french. On the other hand, I hope that I will never lose my Hokkien.

dimanche, octobre 07, 2007

Another Sunday

After church this morning, I headed to Chinatown. As I wrote many times, Chinatown in the 13 district (arrondisement) is in the south and very inconvenient for me to get there by public transport. As Seb had left for Spain, I went there by public transport. I do not like to drive in Paris.
Why such desperation? Because I was craving for home cooked chinese food. I was sick of dining out for the past week. In Helsinki, half the time, I did not enjoy my meals. There were many Tex Mex resturants in Helsinki and the one we tried was enjoyable. Maybe I will just stick to Tex Mex places next time.
What did I cook? Well, the usual suspects. Chicken fried with ginger and sesame oil. And my fav big veggie roasted meat soup. I was speaking to Claire earlier and she was trying to give me ideas on what to cook since I often cook the same usual stuff. Sadly, the supermarkets here were not like those in Australia. They did not sell soba, tofu, chinese vegetables.... Best thing was, Claire remembered that I did not like fried rice. That brought back memories to our uni days. On a tight budget, fried rice was often the best choice for a quick lunch. I only like salted fish fried rice. :) Too bad, I had finished my salted fish. I am running out of "comfort food" and do not anticipate going to Singapore any time soon. If you are passing by Paris, please let me know.

Oh, France won the match against the All Blacks yesterday. There was a "kelong" cos one of passes leading to the touch down was forwarded. Only backward passes were allowed. Guess the referee did not see that. Everyone here was just happy that France is going to be in the semi-finals.

To end off, for your info, I am typing slower than usual. Normally, I type without looking at the keyboard. But after 4 days of using a Finnish keyboard, I am getting my 'a' and 'q' and a few other keys all messed up. Why can't we have a standard format for keyboards? Sigh. The english, french and finnish keyboards are all different. Headache! Working in a mutli-cultural environment, I appreciate the fact that I can speak different languages. I will elaborate on that next time. It is time to sleep and get ready for another week of work.

samedi, octobre 06, 2007

Busy month

We finally received our keys to our new apartment on 27 Sept. The promoter even gave us a bottle of champagne to celebrate. What class!
Buying from plan was really a risky business. I realised that the balcony was closer to the road than I thought. Other than that, everything built was pretty close to the plan we had.

Last weekend, Seb and I went to order the furnitures and spent several tiring hours in Leroy Merlin. This weekend, we were not spared. We continued our hunt to complete the list of things we need to buy. I was in Helsinki for 4 days and just returned yesterday. Seb is leaving for Spain for 3 days tomorrow. His travel plans for this month could not have come at a "better" timing. I just hope that renovations would carry out smoothly. The thing is, we have 3 different parties working on different areas. If one is late, the others will be affected. Let's just see if we get to move in by end of Oct.

Right now, it is the World Cup for Rugby and this year, France is the hosting country. There is a strong following for this sport and right now, most french are in front of their televsion sets watching France against New Zealand. The All Blacks had beaten the Blues 7 consecutive times. The chances of the Blues winning seems slim. We shall know the result in 20 mins. For the moment, the score is 13-13.

mercredi, septembre 26, 2007

The animals go in two by two.......Horray hooray

Summer is gone and Autumn hit us strong. In the south west of France, it is snowing at 1300m altitude. Yesterday, the central heater in our building had been activated. I am glad cos' now, the apartment will be constantly warm.

Over the weekend, we went over to Chartres. My mother-in-law just adopted a kitten. With Bao Bei previous experience with cats, we were aprehensive about meeting this kitten. The family lunch was on Saturday so we arrived in the morning instead of Friday night just in case, we could not stay over the night due to Bao Bei. Bao Bei's reaction was the same as the last time. She was hostile to Caramel though Caramel was curious and keen to make friend with Bao Bei. Fortunately, the house with the garden was big enough for the two cats. When the two cats bumped into each other, Bao Bei snarled but there was no cat fights. Phew!

To add on, we had a guest dog, Réglis. Her master was out of town so we had her for the weekend. Réglis was a really gentle dog. She was 7 years old and just recovered from cancer recently. Coco, my granny-in-law's poodle was really interested in Réglis as she was on heat. It was comical seeing these animals. They made us laugh with their silliness. Now, I just could not get the nursery song out of my head "The animals went in two by two. Horray, horray. ......."

jeudi, septembre 20, 2007

Blackwater

Saw the news on TV that some Blackwater soldiers fired at Iraqis while escorting a diplomat on sunday. 11 Iraqies were dead and investigation was ongoing to find out the reason for the shoot out.

Who were these Blackwater soldiers? They were mercenaries hired to provide security to ang mohs in Iraq. It was estimated that the lifespan of a white man/woman in the street of Baghad was 6 minutes. Companies in Iraq doing business or TV crew members had to hire these private soldiers for protection. A simple escort journey from/to the airport that took 20 minutes would cost 2000€. These soldiers were very visible as they drove big cars, carried big guns and made their presence heavily felt. The reporter in the field commented that these "Rambos" caused unease to the ordinary Iraqis.

The American government relied on these private soldiers for several reasons. The government needed to justify with its people and senates for sending more of its soldiers to Iraq. Since Blackwater was a private company, the government just needed the budget to be approved for hiring security. Less deaths in the Ministry of Defense would prevent public outcry on the war in Iraq.

The images of burnt cars and angry iraqis .... An eyewitness said that such shootouts happened often. He added that if Bush had not begin the war, these Blackwater guys would not be there. It would be very long before this country could be rebuilt with peace; where water would be clear and not black.

mardi, septembre 18, 2007

Chocolate chilli


I am sure that this bar of chocolate will be a hit if it is available in Singapore. My colleague got some from Luxembourg and passed one to me. It was dark chocolate with mexician chilli. Isn't that a genius idea?

The chocolate tasted good. After the chocolate had gone down came the after taste of chilli. It was indeed spicy. One of my colleagues rushed to put a cube of sugar in his mouth to overcome the hot flavour. I like this chocolate. The sweet and spicy taste was indeed 'shiok'.

lundi, septembre 17, 2007

Food glorious food

















I was at the market on Saturday and at the vegetables stall, I saw these green tomatoes. They were meant to be this color. The seller explained to me that these tomatoes were of a variety cultivated in the ancient days and they tasted good. I bought some since Seb loves tomatoes. However, he told me that the taste was no different from ordinary ones.














The season for melons is nearing the end. Over in France, a common way of eating rock melon is with salad and salted ham. In most resturants, this is the starter. It may sound weird to eat fruit as entrée but the sweetness of the melon goes very well with the salted ham.


This is really easy to prepare and very presentable.












Another really french dish is the jarret de porc avec ses lentilles. I had this in Dordogne and when we were served, the waitress thought that this was for Seb and Seb's salade was for me.
-No, no, madame. Seb does not eat meat. It was me, the asian girl who wanted to try this hearty meal. It was indeed too much for me. I love lentilles. It would be better if there was chilli sauce to go it.

dimanche, septembre 16, 2007

Luxembourg

I was at Luxembourg for work last week. During the three days I was there, I passed by this giant plastic bag every lunch time. It just reminded me of those china bags that we used for our purchases when travelling in Bangkok or Hong Kong. I could not describe more about this tiny european country as I did not do any visit. It looked to me like any city in France. I did noticed a lot of banks.

The planes we took were really small. On the way there, we took the new Q400 from Bombardier. It was supposed to be a silent plane. But as with any small plane, it was not silent at all. It claimed to be less polluting. For that, I won't mind the other inconvenience.

On the way back, we took a different plane. This one had a single seat on the left side and two seats on the right. It reminded me of a coach. The overhead compartment was so small that we had to leave our hand carry luggages at the foot of the plane. They were slotted away under the belly of the plane.

Upon take off, the flight journey was 35 minutes. It was really a rush affair to serve us light snack and just as we finished our meal, we were starting our descend.

My colleagues explained to me that Lux Air used to use Boeing for its Paris route. However, since TGV (speed train) started operating to Luxembourg this year, the air business was affected. There were less demand by air travel. For us, we preferred planes to train as the last plane left later than the train. On the way back, I counted 40 passangers and almost all were in suits. Only 10% were ladies. Luxembourg really looks to me like a business center and not a place for passing a vacation.

vendredi, septembre 07, 2007

Movies and more movies

Recently, Seb and I each signed up for the ultimate movie card, UGC Illimité. We can watch any movie at any slot anywhere. There are about 500 cinemas available and soon we can watch movies for “free” in other European countries too. I pay 18€ monthly and Seb is paying 19.80€ as he subscribed just after the price increased. In Paris, movie tickets cost 9.50€ on average. If we watched two or three movies a month, that would easily amortise the fees.

I hope that I will blog more about the movies I watched. Yesterday, we went to catch the latest Harry Potter. I am no big Harry Potter fan thus, I am not commenting much here. The plot is not well developed as the book thus I find it a bit disorganised.

Since we are on the subject about movies, I will just develop further on the cinemas here. In Singapore, seat numbers are printed on the tickets. In France, just like in Australia and US, it goes by free seating. So people have to queue up outside the movie hall early in order to get good seats. As some cinemas are really small, sometimes the queue forms all the way outside the cinema. When it is raining, people will be holding their umbrellas waiting to watch a movie.

Now if we have free seating in Singapore, all Singaporeans will be rushing for the best central seats. However in France, I have noticed that there are all sorts of individuals. Even when the movie hall is not crowded, there are people who choose to sit right at the corner of the room. Some would choose the first row which all Singaporeans will avoid. It just amuses me to see “different” people. Seb prefers the corner seat as he does not want to be disturbed by the audiences in the congested centre. But with me, he does not have much choice. After all, I am a true Singaporean. I prefer to be at the middle of the big screen to get a balanced view of the action.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Yesterday, I took a day off from work and went to the airport to fetch Seb. He was away on a short work trip in Tel Aviv, Israel. The minute he saw me, he complained about the treatment he received at the airport. At the Israel airport, at the queue to check in, his passport was checked. As his passport had many Malaysia and Indonesia stamps, he was questioned of his visits in Malaysia and Indonesia and also what he was up to in Israel. He was led to a cabin where they searched him from head to toe with those metal detectors. The authorities asked if he was the person in his passport photo. What a silly question! He had to switch on his laptop and showed his powerpoint slides. His suitcase was checked thoroughly. After 40 mins of serious interrogations (yeah, they spoke harshly), they released him and he was led to an express counter to check-in avoiding the queue. The weird thing was that this check was done when he was leaving the country and not when he was entering. I remembered that when my mom visited Israel and Egypt 8 years ago, she had to make a new passport just for Israel. Since Seb has to return to Tel Aviv again and his passport is not expiring any time soon, there would be another unpleasant ordeal for him. :(

Fortunately, my company does not have any client in Israel at the moment. There are many tell tales of Malaysia and Indonesia in my passport too.

mardi, septembre 04, 2007

Piano lesson

I had been diligently practising on my electronic keyboard since I took up piano lessons a month ago.If my passion persists, I will most probably get a real piano. When I told my friends that I was learning piano, three of them told me that they would like to learn it too. However, they thought it was either too late or they could not find time to commit. I felt that if one was really interested in something, one would find the resource to accomodate the activity. I had been procastinating since many years. I can say that I am now very happy and look forward to my piano lessons. I am able to play some easy music scores. Free music scores can be found in the internet. It may help that I could read music notes as I had played organ for a few years when I was very young. I just had to learn on the piano techniques. Still, it is never too late to learn a musical instrument. You need only passion and patience.

lundi, septembre 03, 2007

Ever wonder these questions?

How to get rid of mold smell in front loader washing machine? Answer

How to prevent and clean mold on plastic shower curtains? Answer

How to clean parquet floors? Answer

Okay. My target audiences are obviously the ladies. I found this site that shares information and you too can put in an advise or tip regarding anything. I do not agree that all tips work but some are interesting.

For the male readers, I have not forgotten you. I leave you with this. The secret of folding a suit coat.