Harpenden Story

First of all I went to Harpenden (a small town about 25 mins by train from London's St Pancras Int. station) for a training/group meeting, since most of my group mates work in the Harpenden office. So it was not for holiday and I would not write a blog on it, if it was not because something that I will tell later :-P It was my first time to Harpenden office and I was so excited (though I just returned from Scotland several days before) to meet some new colleagues who just recently joined our group and also to see Muhammad, Dez, and of course Tony, my boss again.

My flight was at 6:30am (thanks God that I live not so far away from Duesseldorf airport), I woke up around 4am and I managed to catch the bus around 5am. I did the web check in before, so everything was okay and I had quite relaxing time in the airport. We took off and then flew for about 15 mins before the pilot made an announcement that we had to return to Duesseldorf because they had a problem with the windscreen (which reminds me of one episode of NG's Air Crash Investigation program that I have seen before). Thankfully we landed safely in Duess and they decided to fix it and let us waiting on board (you could imagine a lot of people started to call with their cell phone or Blackberry...you name it..most of the passengers traveled for business purpose on that morning flight). I sent a text (since it was still early morning in the UK) to Tony informing that I would not be there at 8am as it was planned.

After 1.5 hrs or so, the mechanics have finished with the repair and we got ready to take off. But before we reached the runway, the pilot made another announcement to inform us...that they still had that windscreen problem. They decided to cancel the flight and transfer us to the next flight of their airline.

So we returned to the terminal building, transferred to another terminal building where the next flight (which was at 10:30am!) supposed to be, and waited. Not to mention that I have to pass the security control again (and took off my boots again, unpacked my laptop again...). We boarded around 10am but finally because of several things, we only took off around 11:30 (well my training supposed to be started at 10am). Finally I landed on England soil (London Stansted) around noon. I was a bit worry about how to get to Harpenden from Stansted, it supposed to be one hour drive and Faye from Harpenden office had ordered someone to pick me up from Stansted to the office, but it was for 7 in the morning and I was 5 hours late. I just started to call Tony to ask him how the best way to get to Harpenden when I saw someone holding a board with my name and my company's name on it. I was so relieved and the guy who picked me up was really waiting for me that long, he almost returned to Harpenden but someone from the office asked him to wait (I said "sorry" to him several times :-P).

I arrived at the office around 1pm and the guys in my group were so nice to wait me for lunch, oh and the view from Stansted to Harpenden was quite nice also. I joined the training for the next half day and after that Tony took us for some drinks in George, a very nice pub in Harpenden.
The next day, we had a group meeting and I headed back for Duesseldorf in the evening...this time everything was so smooth. The funny thing, I met a woman who also took the same flight with me before, she also recognized me and told me that she hopes that it would not be like yesterday again... hehe, well definitely I could not stand for another 5 hrs delay...(it was 8pm already) :-P...

All in all...Harpenden is a nice small town, the guys in my group were great, and we had a good time together. The flight delay just made my first Harpenden trip unforgettable .. I think..

Scotland trip, Easter 2008

My second trip to Scotland, but this time I planned to discover more of it, not only Edinburgh and the surroundings. At first I thought about joining a 3-day or 4-day tour offered by Haggis or Macbackpackers. But after several discussions with some 'experts' on Scotland (thanks to Win and Collin), I decided to create my own trip, since I want more than what they offered :-P I almost did this trip alone, but I am lucky that Yuko would like to join me (thanks Yuko :-)). The funny thing is that since we knew each other from our German class, we get used to talk in German (even when we went out several times together). In fact, I just recently found out that she can speak English.., but German has already been our first language when talking to each other :-P So I was a bit wondering which language that we would use in this trip. It turned out that we still spoke German even when we were in Scotland. I can say that I improved my German in Scotland :-P

Prestwick-Edinburgh-Inverness

We started the trip in Wednesday evening after we arrived in Prestwick airport. We went directly to Edinburgh to stay overnight there. The next morning, we took bus to Rosslyn to visit Rosslyn Chapel (remember Da Vinci Code?). Rosslyn is a small town about 40 mins from Edinburgh and actually not only famous with its chapel but also because of Dolly, the famous clone sheep, that was cloned in Rosslyn Institute. We managed to return to Edinburgh around noon and had a walk around High Street and Edinburgh castle (and also visited some souvenir shops). We left Edinburgh for Inverness around 15:00 and arrived in Inverness in the evening (it was raining). Luckily the B&B that we booked was a very nice one. Catherine, the owner is very nice (and she gave us a big Scottish breakfast everyday).

Inverness-Culloden-Loch Ness

After a very good sleep, our first destination was Tourist Info Center. Our original plan was to go to Glen Affric and Loch Ness, but we found out that we just missed the bus to Canich (and it’s only twice daily :-(), so we decided to join a tour to Culloden battlefield and Loch Ness. Culloden battlefield visitor center was a nice one, though it was nothing too special, they really reconstructed the battlefield so we could imagine it. Good thing that now I know about Bonnie Prince Charlie and also that Culloden battlefield is the last hand-to-hand battle fought in British soil. In the afternoon we continued the journey to Loch Ness, visiting Urquhart castle.

Inverness-Kyle of Lochash-Portree (Isle of Skye)

We took train from Inverness to Kyle of Lochash the next day. The view was great especially because it was snowing. We continued our trip to Portree in Isle of Skye by bus; it was great view during the trip. We arrived in Portree around noon and after left our luggage in our B&B we decided to have a walk to Tourist Info Center. But again, we have to deal with the fact that we could not rely only on public transportation. Our only choice was to go to Aros visitor center, we decided to take walk there, only visited its shop and café, back to Portree, and it was quite heavy rain after that.

Portree-Fort William-Glencoe-Glasgow

After breakfast we still had sometime to walk a bit around Portree and we left for Glencoe around 11 by Citylink bus. It was four-hour trip, but I just realized when I was on the bus that actually we stop in Fort William (which is close to Glencoe already) for one hour to have lunch break. I was a bit worried about this trip because I do not know how the situation in Glencoe. I only know that the bus stops at Glencoe crossroad on the way from Portree to Glasgow. The plan was to take the next bus from Portree to Glasgow since we would stay overnight in Glasgow. It gave us about four hours to explore Glencoe. When we stopped in Fort William, I asked the driver how far the stop at Glencoe to the Glencoe visitor center. Instead of answering my question, he offered me to drop us in Glencoe visitor center and I was happy with that (since I thought that it must not that far away). As you might guess… the Glencoe bus stop is quite far away from the visitor center which is in the middle of nowhere. We passed through the bus stop first and we just realized it …Yuko and I only stared to each other, thinking how we could go back to the bus stop (for our trip to Glasgow). We could not see the pedestrian way…it was only highway with some hills and valley in the middle of nowhere. So.. the driver dropped us on the way to the visitor center (still have to walk to go there) with our luggage. A bit panic actually (I thought about hitchhike some cars that pass through the highway) but we still tried to enjoy the beautiful view of Glencoe with some snows at the hills, which reminds me of marmer cake and powder sugar on top of it, and for sure we were also busy taking some pics. We went to the shops (still with our luggage) and I asked the man there how to get to the village from the visitor center. Thankfully, there is a walk path from the visitor center to the village, which he said about 20 mins walk. To make the story short, it turned out that the walk path was one of the recommended walk paths in Glencoe area and it was beautiful. We passed a small forest with a small river (and the water was green). The distance is about 2 miles and for sure we could not make it for 20 minutes :-P But it was indeed our fave walk during this trip. It made me want to go back to Glencoe again in summer (and try other walking route) :-)

Karneval in Duesseldorf

Helau!!! (that's a carnival greeting in Duesseldorf). We just had a big celebration of carnival in Duesseldorf! I know there is a big celebration in Koeln, our neighboring (and also rival) city, but I only recently knew that there is also a big celebration in Duesseldorf. It's actually one of the highlight of Rhineland carnivals, together with the celebration in Mainz and Koeln. This year is my first carnival in Duesseldorf.

As other carnival celebration in other countries, this celebration is also originated from religious reason. The carnival celebration is actually started from 11th of November every year, but the real big celebration is started on the Thursday one week before Ash Wednesday, in a so called Altweiberfastnacht. The day when women take the power and the tradition is they cut the tie of men around... see more on www.karneval-in-duesseldorf.de.
After that, every day you can see a lot of people with funny costumes. I have seen the carnival celebration in Eindhoven before and I always admire the effort that all the people put for their carnival costumes. I was surprised when last Thursday in my office we sort of celebrate the carnival by having a lot of Berliner (a filled doughnut covered by sugar usually with strawberry filling) in the kitchen. It was really funny when later that day I had a discussion with Daniela at her office, Peter another colleague came by and shouted Alaaf! (that's greetings from Koeln, since they are both originally from Koeln) then they sang together a carnival song and pushed me to follow them knocking the table. That was really funny :-P

The big celebration is on Monday (we had holiday on Monday) and is called Rosenmontag when they have a big parade (Rosenmontagszug). I had an appointment with Yuko, a Japanese friend of mine from my German class. We met several minutes before the parade started and finally got a nice location to stand. It was a bit rain and cold. But the parade was great, I shouted a lot of 'Helau' today :-P I finished 1 Gb of my memory card and just realized that I was wet and almost freezing. That was after almost 3 hrs standing in the crowd :-P

Singapore - Indonesia Trip

One and half weeks after my trip to the UK (it also means that I only worked for that period in December), I started my going home trip. As I did last year also, I chose Singapore as my destination from Duesseldorf (by Emirates again...it's good for my Skywards points :-P), then continued to Surabaya by JetStar (Valuair). I like that route since I do not have to go to Jakarta and change to domestic flight to Surabaya, and also because I like Changi airport so much :-)

This year I stayed in Singapore for three days and explored it with my parents who joined me there. My flight from Duesseldorf arrived around 2am in Singapore. I decided to sleep at Rainforest lounge until around 9am, took a shower, had my breakfast at Toast Box (yummy....see..that's why I love Changi), walked around the duty free shops, and then I decided to go to the hotel, that I have been booked before, at Scotts Road. I picked up my parents at the airport in the evening and after dropped the luggage in our hotel, we walked along the Scotts road and had dinner in Far East Plaza which has quite a lot of muslim restaurants. We spent two days exploring Singapore using hop on hop off bus. We also went to Sentosa island to see Song of the Sea performance, which was okay, but it's been better if it was not that wet because of rain.I am happy to be able to explore Singapore (finally) , though to be honest, our main activity was shopping (from Mustafa Center, Chinatown to Orchard Road) :-P

We went back to Surabaya after spent three days in Singapore, then continued the trip to Malang, and finally home...
I spent 10 days in Malang, having relaxing days (the days have gone so fast for sure), visiting relatives, eating lots of foods... I also went to Surabaya at one of the days there.

I continued my trip to Bandung at 2nd of Jan. Meeting Yayan, my bro.. stayed at his place for two days. I met Remko, my Dutch friend who works in Medan, and we spent one day exploring Bandung...well actually we only went to Kawah Putih, which I have not been there before, then ate at Kampung Daun. But I was impressed with Bandung now... with the fly over, the toll road...

I returned to Jakarta with Remko and went directly to the hotel. In the evening (it was Friday) I met Eva, Aris, and mbak Helena. We chatted a lot (first, dinner at Setiabudi building then moved to Menteng to have some drinks) until almost midnight. My parents and Caca joined at the hotel that evening, and the next day, we were finally full team. Yayan arrived from Bandung, Didit and Nia also joined us in the morning from Bekasi, oh and also Hendra, Caca's boyfriend who works in Jakarta. It was nice to finally meet the whole family :-)

I spent four days in Jakarta, mostly for family gathering in the weekend, but I also managed to meet Robin, mbak Elvi, and Bing bing on Sunday evening. On Monday, I had lunch with Wira (finally we met each other :-P), then met Ocha in Pasar Festival, who was so kind to accompany me to visit Diery, and her Ira, at her house. I had my first experience using Busway by the way :-P Directly after that, I met Runi, who waited for me already in Plaza Semanggi....that was really busy schedule for my last day in Jakarta. The next day... we left early from the hotel. I had my trip to Singapore (then Dubai-Duesseldorf) and my parents returned back to Surabaya (and then Malang).

It was really nice to meet my family, relatives, and my friends in Indonesia....three weeks seem so fast. The next day after I arrived in Duesseldorf, I had to go back to work...to my real life, and I still could not imagine that I have left the office for three weeks already :-P

London - Scotland trip

It was really a surprise trip to me. I thought that 2007 would be a year without so many traveling activities. I managed to go to Provence-Cote d'Azur-Monaco last May. But after that (even during summer!) I felt that my traveling activities were buried somewhere beneath my working activities. I have admitted myself already that my other big trip this year would only be my going home trip for the year end holiday. But it turned out that I had a chance to go to UK (again!).

I went to London because of a three-day conference last week and I was really happy to be able to stay in West End area where the conference took place. I think I like London more after this trip :-P. The hotel where I stayed was in the Strand area, close to Covent Garden (Covent Garden market was totally cool), Charing Cross, Leicester Square (well I mentioned the three closest Underground stations from my hotel :-P) and Trafalgar Square.




When I knew that I was going to stay in West End area which is surrounded by theaters, I could not resist the temptation to watch one of the performance there and I was so excited when I found that I would be able to see Phantom of the Opera. I booked a seat for Phantom of the Opera in Her Majesty's theater in Haymarket when I was still in Dusseldorf :-P POTO was kind of an obsession for me. I really like its songs for quite a long time. There was some melancholic reason behind it (a ha :-P), my ex-boyfriend gave me Think of Me lyrics when we decided to separate (the lyrics is sooo touching). And actually it was my first introduction with POTO's songs. I like that song so much and I wanted to know more songs from the performance and I ended up liking most of them. So watching POTO is the highlight of my London tour this time. It was just amazing. I love their performance (the songs) and the stage decoration. It left me speechless :-P I just really really like it. No wonder the show is still running after 21 years!! I just wondering how it was when Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford played it for the first time.

After four days and three nights in London (gosh I think I miss walking through the Trafalgar Square from my hotel to the conference venue every day in those three days....it just felt so cool :-P), I flew to Edinburgh for my Scotland trip. I arrived almost midnight because of the flight delay. I was lucky that I booked a hostel close to the airport bus stop, so I do not have to put a lot of effort after quite a long day. I was so impressed with the night view of Edinburgh even when I was on the way from the airport to its city center. Indeed Edinburgh is so beautiful with its old buildings and its castle. I joined a free walking tour for three hours at 11 pm in the next day and it was worth it. Now I know more about it's unique culture and history.





Later in the evening, I met Vivi and we stayed in a very nice B&B that night. Early in the morning (around 7:30am...) we left the B&B already to join a Highland tour. We went to Trossachs National Park, visiting Loch Lomond and other Lochs (I do not remember their names :-P) , Inveraray (a nice small town, famous with its jail, later a friend of mine told me that Inveraray actually is pretty close to Oban, the ferry port for several interesting islands in Scotland), Killin (a scenic village). We also dropped by to Kilchurn castle (to take a pic) , Doune castle ( I managed to buy nice postcards and souvenir there), and Hamish (a cute highland cow :-P). It was an interesting trip, especially because I experienced my first snow this winter during the trip on the highland (and yes it's freezing). Greg, our guide tour is a good entertainer, he talked a lot about Scotland (about how they hate English people hehe....it's funny to hear it from them), about the clans conflicts (now I know that MacDougall does not get along with Campbell), about Scotland's dark history (I heard it before from my walking tour in Edinburgh). I think Scotland is beautiful and Scots have a unique culture and character (and also accent hehe, it's bit difficult to understand their English sometimes).




After the tour, we went to Dundee where Vivi lives now. I took a train to return back to London the next morning. It took around 6 hrs from Dundee to London, but it's nice to be able to catch a glimpse of UK from almost its North to South.
All in all....I am happy finally I made it to Scotland (yeeeee!), also to be able to visit London again for the second time. I was completely exhausted this week and now I have to prepare for my going home trip but it was a nice feeling to be able 'on the road' again.



Singapore, Indonesia, my next destinations...I am coming :-P