Rib uit mijn lijf

Drie weken moest ik naar het stadsdeelkantoor om mijn een nieuwe ID-kaart te halen. Mijn huidige verloopt eind november, (nu niet meer geldig dus) dus vandaar. Zelf ga ik altijd naar stadsdeelkantoor van Osdorp terwijl ik in Slotervaart woon. 1) Omdat die van Osdorp simpelweg dichter bij is en 2) lange wachttijden bij Slotervaart (al die paspoort aanvragen).

Eenmaal aangekomen dien je via een touchscreen in te typen wat je wilt zodat het systeem een nummer voor je uitspuugt. Aanvraag document -> Ned. ID kaart -> en dan krijg je te zien wat je bij je moet hebben maar ook de prijs om je gewoon te stangen. De prijs was zodanig hoog dat ik niet meer goed kon nadenken. Het duurde zolang dat het systeem weer terug naar het hoofdmenu ging.

42 Euro!!!

Te achterlijk voor woorden. 42 euro?! Voor een pasje met mijn naam, sofinummer, foto en stad van verblijf. Dit te bedenken dat ik 5 jaar geleden 20 euro heb neergelegd, wat ik overigens schappelijk vind. En ja, ik heb ook een paspoort. Maar om nou met mijn paspoort over straat te lopen vind ik niks + als ik die zou kwijtraken zou het me 80 kosten. Het rijbewijs is helaas geen geldig identificate bewijs wat ook raar is. Je rijbewijs kan alleen opgehaald worden met je ID en de gegevens op je rijbewijs zijn identiek aan die van je ID, alleen lengte ontbreekt :S.

Zucht, Nederlandse wetgeving..

TyKH.. signing out..

Geld uitlenen

Hey, kan ik 100 euro van je lenen? De ene persoon krijgt het vaker te horen dan de ander. Een vriend van je wilt een bepaald bedrag van je lenen. Vanuit uitgaande dat je geld gewoon binnen een maand terug krijgt, leen je zonder moeite de 100 euro uit.

Een maand later, vraag je geld terug en dan beginnen de excuses al te komen; "Sorry ik heb het nog niet, me rekening is geblokkeerd", "Ik heb nog rekeningen open staan, ik geef je het volgende week" etc etc. Het probleem is dat jij gewoon je geld terug wilt hebben maar je vriend vind het niet zo'n ramp en doet nogal nonchalant over het gehele issue. Een heksenjacht start zodat jij je geld terugkrijgt..

Wanneer je zo'n gelijksoortige vraag naar je hoofd krijgt toe geslingerd moet je eerst bedenken of de persoon in kwestie een vriend is of een kennis. Deze scheiding is misschien flauw maar aan de andere kant essentieel. Het geeft wel aan hoeveel vertrouwen je in iemand hebt. Want juist wanneer jij je heksenjacht moet beginnen geeft al eigenlijk aan dat de persoon geen vriend van je kan zijn. Natuurlijk, het bedrag is ook een factor die je meeneemt maar in mijn visie; geld is geld. Of het nou 30 of 150 euro is, leen het uit aan je vrienden en niet kennissen.

Besluit je het toch aan een kennis uit te lenen zorg ervoor dat je in ieder geval weet waar die persoon woont. Op een gegeven moment zal je moeten toespelen op een vriendelijke intimidatie; daadwerkelijk voor zijn/haar deur staan.

Na 3 maanden heen en weer gesjoffel krijg je eindelijk je geld terug. In mijn optiek zou dan ook meteen alle banden met die persoon moeten verbreken. Diegene heeft simpelweg aangetoond dat hij/zij niet te vertrouwen is. Op persoonlijk vlak zal het waarschijnlijk ook niet meer zo soepeltjes lopen dus maak het jezelf makkelijker.

Hieronder heb een filmpje geplaatst die naar mijn idee wel past bij dit verhaal. Ik hoop voor je dat het niet zo ver hoort te gaan :P

Greetz TyKH


Family Guy- Where's My Money - The funniest videos clips are here

First Period a succes

The first period being a student at the university has been a success.
I passed all the three courses;

- Statistics - 5.5 (Yeah, who's the man!!!)
- Information Management - 8
- Organisation Science - 7.5

In the new period I have the courses Business Modelling & Design, Knowledge Management and Data Mining. BMD is quite easy, I've had similar courses in college. Knowledge management is doable but Data Mining... it's damn sequel too Statistics!!

It are going to be some long nights for this course..

This will be my last post in English. I will continue my blog in Dutch. However, if I decide to post reviews or anything in that particular it will probably be Englisch.

Greetz,

TyKH

Got love for the K-Swiss

Hi world,

Somehow I always keep my shoe boxes in my closet to place my shoes on top if it. Probably too show off or something. A week ago my mother wanted to use my shoe boxes for here shoes in the shoe closet downstairs. There is tip for to clean up your shoe closet; put the shoes in boxes and print a image of the shoes and place it on the box. This is especially for women due the insane amount of shoes they have.

As I don't really do something usefull with my boxes, I took all the boxes and came to the conclusion: I love K-Swiss!!

University: How is it going?

Well, it's been an administrative hell to begin with. The University of Amsterdam demands that you deliver a special copy of yout diploma before the start of the school year - 1 September. Well, I received my diploma on the 23rd of September so you can probably guess what kind of hassle it was.

Out of courtesy, at least that is what they think, you can the copy at the end of September. Well, only the goverment can make this special copy and my school didn't deliver one so I was !*%&ed. I just send a normal copy of my diploma but they informed me by telephone that I was too late and that the subscribtion will be valided at the end of October. Strangely I received a mail the next day of the University that I was succesfully described. Really, what were they thinking!!

As we are starting on the 6th week now, University is not hard but so much too cope with. I only follow three courses (Information Management, Organisatio Science and Statistics) at the moment but have probably read over a 1000 pages by now. The worst course is Statistics. It has become unreachable for me, it's depressing. I don't understand anything of it. But I can't give up: Keep on Pushing!!

I have a mixed class; some student are full fledged university studenst who don't know anything about the business life while other students have had four years of practical teaching like myself.

University is not enjoying and as for now it doesn't add any value to what I know but who know's: You have to bite the dust before you can sit in the office chair..

Greetz,

TyKH

Graduated!

On the 26th of August I graduated for HBO Informatics. This is results that I'm from now on a bachelor of ICT. Fancy :D

But the job isn't done yet. The following day I received notice of the University of Amsterdam that I'm accepted for the study Information Science which starts next Tuesday :( No time to relax or to chill. This study will take two years and if I make it, I will be a Master of Science :D

Wish me luck.

TyKH

Photo's

Yes, yesterday I had some free time on my hands to look at all the photo's I made during my Hong Kong trip. I had to delete a lot of pictures, espacially those taking during the night due the awful quality. Digital Camera's can't compete with SLR on that part of the field.

You can view them at http://picasaweb.google.com/Tyndell/HongKong . If you also want to see the pictures of my Japan trip just go to http://picasaweb.google.com/Tyndell and select the day you want to view.

My Canon automatically makes folder for each day which I used during the Japan trip. The olympus however makes on folder containing all the pictures but formats the name of images in day/month/year. I was to lazy to make seperate folder so bare with me.

Greetz,

TyKH

Busy

I'm so busy at the moment with work and school that I didn't had the time to post the pictures I made and give full story telling about Hong Kong.
Of course, I have unpacked all the clothing but I haven't ironed it yet. I'm also waiting for my package which I send from Hong Kong to myself. Too much clothing :D

When I have some space in my schedule I will try to post the pictures.

Greetz,

TyKH

Departing tommorow

I'm rounding up the last bits now. I have bought the souvenirs, packed my stuff (18 kg) and thinking about all the things I have to do when I get back.

The plan for tommorow is quite simpel. We're leaving at 23:50 witht the plane so I can do some things during the day. Alex has been occupied with family visits the last days so I was on my own.

I do have to send some clothing by plane. My stuff exceeds the 20 kg limit and with the 1 kg/120 euro ratio I rather ship it for around 30,- ;). But with my Chinese handicap I hope Alex can let his aunt send my stuff just as he does.

I'll post the list of purchases when I'm back in Amsterdam. It would be hassle to unpack everything. Just for the fols who had specific requests: You'll be disapointed.

Well, that were the few things I had to say. I will do a post which consist of my experience of the vacation in Hong Kong.

See you all in Amsterdam ;). And for the people who are taking their vacation shortly, have a save trip!

Greetz,

TyKH

Limited Movement

Folks,

My last post was six days ago. You could say unacceptable but I haven't done anythings what would interest you.

I've visited the largest Buddha that exists. A nice trip with a cable car and then a lot of stairs resulted in a face to face meeting with the holy statue. I wish I could upload the 4 minute long video but it is 444 MB, a bit too big to upload.



A few days ago I had a beach barbeque with the Alex, his sister and her friend and the family I'm staying with during the vacation. It was a rainy day but as you can see we had good cover.



I've also seen the origin of the flag: Bauhinia blakeana statue. This flower is shown on the flag of Hong Kong. The British Kingdom gave this flower when Hong Kong was officialy handed over to China. Let me take the oppurtinity to clarify something;
Hong Kong officialy belongs to China. On the side note Hong Kong has it's own regulations, own laws and it's own separate goverment. As I told in my "The Spa" post you even need to a passport to travel to Hong Kong to China and vica versa. Another thing, in Hong Kong the population speaks Cantonese as in China Mandarion is the mainly used language. Further more, people from Hong Kong don't want be refered as Chinese but has Hongkonese.

I find it fair to say that there are two different countries. Oke moving on..



These were my tourist activities in the past days. The vacation is starting to end. 14th of July I'm departing so I'm again in shopping mode. I even purchased a PSP :). I will have new post on the 13th.

Greetz,

TyKH

Bad weather

I've haven't posted in a while and that is due the fact I've not done anything exciting in the last days. Hong Kong has been tortured by bad weather - a lot of rain. Because of the rain I cannot visit the tourist spots.

The picture above is from the highest peak of Hong Kong named Victoria Peak. I have made more pictures and I'll post those on Picasa when I'm back in the Netherlands. I have refrained myself from taking night pictures. Alex has his expensive SLR camera, it would be a shame not to make use of that quality :P.

If we are lucky today, we can visit a large Buddha on top of a hill but it depends on the weather. The forecast wasn't that positive though :(

To keep you hungry here are some pictures of the food I have eaten during the vacation.

Halfway

Yes, the vacation is halfway now. Vacation flies by when you're having fun.

To be honest, I've not done so many things. I've been shopping, to a spa in China and again shopping. I've added new collection Ray-ban sunglasses and Bathing Ape t-shirts to my list.

Today I've visit my first tourist spot. The Victoria bay of Hong Kong. Every evening they display a light show. I must say, the light show itself wasn't that impressive but the view of the bay was gorgeous. The night pictures are not good quality. We will be visiting it another day so Alex can take pictures with his new Nikon SLR camera.

Tomorrow I will visit the highest peak of Hong Kong to have another unforgettable view of the country.

The Spa

As told in my last post, I went to China for a spa yesterday. We left early in Hong Kong standards 11:00 AM to take the train too Lo Wu, the border of China and Hong Kong. I was told no to bring anything valuable so I left everything at home including camera. No pictures...

To get in China was quite the hassle. I showed my passport 5 times and filled more than 6 forms. I find this all quite strange, for a country claiming to be the centre of the world they are not even possible to efficiently let a tourist inside for one day? I understand to show my passport and fill in a form or two but this was ridiculous!

Finally after all the paperwork I was in China. Boy oh Boy, I was getting harassed by women who want to take me to their spa. Luckily I had Alex's dad taking the defense, he had already arranged a bus and spa.

The spa was luxurious. Maids all over the place. I had a feeling I was in a palace. After the sauna and hot tub I had a foot massage. Soon I received the full body massage. For the first time in my life, my foot touched my nose. A few muscle stretches and bone cracking my body was in full rest.

By the time everything was finished it was already 10:00 PM. Leaving China again the hassle, less than coming in. Showed my passport two times and had to fill in two forms.

Well, this was my massage day. Keep the blog in check.

TyKH

29th of June

As promised, here is a list of what I've purchased so far in Hong Kong.

Sony Vaio Notebook SR46GD;

13.3 Inch, Intel Duo Core 2,53 GHZ, HD 320 GB, 4 GB RAM, Ati Radeon HD 4750 and Windows Vista Business 64 Bit

Olympus Camera u-1070

Casio Edifice

And some small things; couple of shirts, jeans, car charger.

The day before yesterday I went to the cinema to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Thee Chinese sub didn't bothered me at all while I was watching the movie. I've got to say: the movie was incredible!! It has outdone itself and the first one. Way above my expectations. The fights between our autonomous robotic lifeforms were more intense and more brutal. Optimus Prime finally gets the respect he earns in this movie. In my opinion he simply got his ### kicked by Megatron.

As for today, I will be visiting China for a spa. Massage, hottub, sauna all inclusive :D.

Due the fact I can connect to 'someone's open WiFi, I can keep the blog updated while i'm here ;)

Keeping you posted...

TyKH

Update

Yes, finally I've the time to update the blog.

My journey hasn't started the way it should've been. While we were driving the highest score you can make with throwing darts on the German Highway, I realised I forget my camera!!! A real bummer.

After a night sleep at Alex's aunt we went to Frankfurt to catch a the plane for a 11 hour long flight. It went al smoothly and arrived in one piece at Hong Kong airport. What was exeptional is that the landingsstrip is in the bay so I already had a nice view. I wish I could share the experience but as said earlier, my camera is not here.

The uncle of Alex was waiting for us and brougt us to Alex's place of stay. Arriving at her house the beautiful scene of Hong Kong didn' became reality. The appartments which are 40 floors high are old, very old. While this is called the New Nerritory (Tsuen Wan) the buildings are over 30 years old. The paint is almost completely washed off. We were early ( 7:00 am). We took a long nap and went to my place. Alex's family who offered the room were very nice nice, great hospitality. The room itself was small, very small. 3Mx3Mb if not smaller.

Later on the day we bought the Octopus. The octopus is the public transportation card for the use of metro, busses and many many more. The Netherlands could take a lesson or two how this is implemented.

We visited Mang Kok. Mang Kok is the central point is the New Territory for shopping :). I also got to see the Sony Store. Very important for my Sony Vaio purchase.

Mang Kok, actually whole Hong Kong, is crowded and busy. Slow walking which irritates me to this day, blocking my path constantly.

Up to today i've spent most of my time in Mang Kok due the varieted supply. I've gone to some other neigboorhoods; Sham Shui Po, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kwai Fong and Lan Chin Kok. While Kwai Fong was loaded with electronica (from motherboard up to car chargers) Tsim Sha Tsui had some more exclusive clothing (Calvin Klein, Gucci, Diesel, Luis Vitton).

Wait for my nex post, I'll sum up what I've bought these days. Check below for some pictures..first purchase was new camera.

Departure!

Yes, today is the day: I'm going to Hong Kong. Well, i'm leaving actually Sunday.

Schiphol is an unfriendly airport concerning import. I will be buying a load of stuff for me, myself and I. (oke and a few requests from friends and family). I don't want my electronics to be taking in by Customs.

I will be leaving shortly with my friend Alex riding in his dad car (BMW 3-series, automatic) to Mannheim were his aunt lives. We will have a nice sushi meal there and stay for the night. The following day his uncle will drop us by Frankfurt Airport.

You'll be wondering; Tyndell, how can you update your blog while you're in Hong Kong? Simple, the first or second my first purchase will be a notebook, a Sony Vaio to be more exact :D. I won't be buying it just to keep the blog up to date but I also have some schoolwork to be done. (Graduating end of August).

I have two other "devices" on my list.
- PDA (HTC Touch Pro2)
- MP3 player (Samsung P3)

Price will be AOK I think ;)

I have to leave now, eat some breakfast and then cruising to the Mannschaft!

Introductie

Nou, het is dan eindelijk.. eigen blog. Ik was al van plan om een jaar terug mee te beginnen maar steeds uitgesteld, geen goede zaak natuurlijk.

Ik heb het nu in leven geroepen omdat ik 21 juni vertrek naar het zonnige Hong Kong en zal daar blijven tot aan 14 juli :D. Planning is om een aantal keer mijn ervaringen te posten om jullie op te hoogte te houden hoe het mij vergaat in Oosten.

Het is natuurlijk de bedoeling om de blog ook bij te houden na de vakantie en nog wat posts te zetten voordat ik vertrek.

Om dit korte verhaal snel te eindigen zal ik ook proberen mijn posts in het Engels te schrijven. Dat maakt de lezersgroep wat groter :P.