On top of a hill...

Ok final post about Austria. So on the last day, after going to Schonbrunn Palace and checking out. I took the train back to Salzburg to take a plane back to London. I arrived in Salzburg at about 2pm and had about 5 hours to kill before I need to go to the airport. Seeing that the weather was nice, I decided to go up to the hill near the fortress to take photos again.

But before that I passed through the town centre again.

See the difference that nice weather makes to your photos?


Salzach river


Salzburg Dom

And the photos that I took at the viewing point called Richterhohe:



The fortress from the Richterhohe side


I like this photo very much...


The lovely snow capped mountains. See the difference that weather makes again??


Sunset...


Sunset again...


Take-photo-of-myself-with-timer time!


Somebody took this for me. Wearing a FCUK long sleeve t-shirt which costs just 3.75 pounds!! Cheap cheap!!

Anyway as I was waiting for sunset, I decided to take a few spy cam shots of people at the viewing point. Trying to be a bit artistic. Think some of them turned out quite well...

A couple enjoying a quiet moment


2 old men enjoying the sunlight. Don't be mistaken, it was freezing coz of the wind!


Now got people talking to the old man in black. After the people left, the old man started to leave but before that he talked to me and guess what? He spoke CHINESE!!! I was pleasantly surprised. And he told me that he was in Singapore 15 or 20 years ago. It's a small world. Some of the sentences he knew: tian kong you bai yun (the sky has white clouds), yu zai shui li you (fish swimming in water), damn power lah.

Anyway just a thought: wonder where I will be in 40 years time. Would I even live that long? I probably would died of being too pissed off at 40 years old...

Anyway more spy cam photos...


This not bad looking woman was fiddling with her phone the whole time. Wonder if she had come to the hilltop for a rendezvous (did I spell it correctly?) with her lover but her lover "fly her aeroplane"? She left pretty quickly though.


I really really like this photo a lot. Think it is the best of all the spy cam photos. I think it shows the scenery nicely and conveys a certain tranquility about the whole situation. Do you all think so? Do give comments ok? I wish I had people with me to help me take such photos also...but guess my ugly face will destroy the photo also lah hor?


This couple probably came up to have a nice time but found a Chinese idiot sitting there so they couldn't get up to any hanky panky. Hahahaha. This photo would have been nicer if they had come earlier and there was a bit more sunlight.

Yeah so I stayed there until just after sunset. Was deliberating about whether to stay until nightfall to see the night scene but I was extremely afraid about getting mugged since I still had to walk through a bit of woods to get back to the town centre. In the end decided not to. Guess I am extremely humji after all.

Anyway took 2 sets of panoramic shots at Richterhohe. Those of you who have Canon cameras, do make sure of the panoramic function in the cameras and then use photo stitch to combine them together! It's really simple to use and very nicely done too. The wonders of technology nowadays...


For clearer view, click here


For clearer view, click here

Anyway guess that's all for Austria. Next up: Amsterdam!

Performers and concerts in Austria

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...

He's here...


He's there...


He's everywhere!!!!


Even on the streets?!?!


Yeah that's right, the whole of Austria seems to be a shrine for Mozart. You cannot escape from his images. But seriously, Austria does really feel like a land of music like everyone is talking about. There are street performers everywhere. And they are not the half fucked kind. They are very very good. Especially this guy:


I think the picture is too dark but I just had to post it. He performs near the Hofburg and his music was really VERY VERY moving, at least to my untrained ears. I found myself just wanting to stand there and listen to him perform all the way. I wonder if I am looking at the future of some of the MOE music scholars..haha.

Ok another performer who impressed me was this guy with a puppet near the St Stephans Dom:



He is wearing different clothes coz I took the photos on different days. Basically he had a fake piano for the puppet and had a music player inside. And he was able to control the puppet such that it looked like it was playing the piano and singing along. He was really very good, the puppet looked like it had a life of its own under his control. Whenever somebody gave him some money, he would immediately change the music. For example, if it was an old lady the music suddenly changed to some "oh Mama..." tune. If it was a chio bu, the music changed to "Sex bomb", which was really funny (cool way of flirting too!). He also had a tune which went "Oh money, oh money money" and he would make the puppet look at the hat in front and shake his head in sadness at the lack of money, which again is really funny.

However the best has to be if a dog comes around. He even had a track which is a dog's bark and he would play it whenever somebody's dog came around. That would attract the attention of the dog. He would then make the puppet stick out his eyes and his tongue and completely freak the dog out. The white puppy in the second photo was a victim. It was damn hilarious.

Anyway on the second night when I was in Vienna, I watched a concert. Ok I know some of you are sniggering away at reading that. Shihua trying to be arty farty and watching concert?!?!?

YES I DID.

After all I didn't have anything to do at night and I was in Vienna after all. Some pictures:


The Kursalon, where the concert was held.


There were various kinds of performances in the concert. There were performances of Johann Strauss' and Mozart's music pieces, ballet and opera items. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but throw a football match my way anytime.

Anyway made some interesting observations during the concert. Ang mohs are as fucked up as Asians when it comes to manners and all. See the second photo? It is blur. Why? Because I did not use flash. The steward already said loudly to someone just before the concert started that you can't use flash to take photos. Everybody at my side can hear it. But throughout the concert people were still taking photos with flash and it was extremely annoying. Can't be so many of them don't understand English or don't know how to turn off flash right? So ang mohs don't necessarily have good manners.

Anyway there was a group of 4 rather old Italians who attended the concert. The tickets for the concert was divided into 3 categories and they bought category B tickets. When the steward showed them to their seats, one of the old men asked why they can't sit in the empty seats further in front. DUH! Coz you bought cheaper tickets lah! The steward also answered them rather sarcastically. Anyway they came pretty late so was in the last row of category B. When the concert started, some of the category A seats were not filled. So guess what? The same Italian man went to sit down in the category A seats and his other 3 friends also joined him after the interval. Hmmmm....seems like not only Singaporeans are kiasu right.

Anyway my point is this: Ang moh fart is not fragrant! Some of them are just as fucked up as Singaporeans, perhaps even more so.

Like smooching your way through a concert like the couple in front of me. I wonder if they are there to observe each other's ugly faces under the chandelier lighting or to listen to the concert. Throughout the whole night they were looking at each other, kissing or whispering. AND THE GUY'S HEAD BLOCKED ME COMPLETELY. God damn it. But lucky I liked the music more than the dancing actually.

Anyway during the concert my crappy mind got to work again and thought of a way to propose to a girl, Viennese style.

First of all, note that there are a lot of horse carriages around Vienna:


This is just one of the stations outside Hofburg.

Then you would have to hire a street performer to play nice soothing music in St Stephans Dom platz at night:

Now make sure that when it is 12 midnight, your horse carriage driver brings you to the place with the music. Then when the church bells go off, tell your girl this:

Dear, when the clock struck 12 midnight, Cinderella's pumpkin carriage disappeared and she changed back to her original status and she had to be separated from her Prince. However, I don't want to be separated with you ever, do you agree to be mine forever?

(ok I know the words are extremely lousy but you get the idea....horse carriage, nice church, nice music...)

OR you can just bring her to a concert which both of you are not paying attention to and kiss each other and slip a ring on her finger and annoy the person sitting directly behind you.

But yeah you get the idea, Vienna is a really nice place for couples and in my opinion much better than Paris which is over rated really.

So who wants me to be their travel agent for their honey moons?

Vienna sights

This is St Stephans Dom which is a well known landmark right in the heart of Vienna. If you can go anywhere high up you are bound to be able to see it. Too bad it had to undergo renovation while I am there. Still went inside to take a look though.





What really struck me was that the church was surrounded by endless shopping streets. The above street was one near the church. The sin of materialism right at the doorstep of the church. Hmm...


I like this photo a lot too. Got a bit of the Taj Mahal seh right? Anyway this church is called Karlskirche. Also quite famous landmark of Vienna I think


This is the Vienna Staatsoper, the place to come for performances and stuff.


Burgtheater. It looks much nicer than my photo taking skills would allow me to show you.


This is the Hofburg Palace. It is damn big with over 1440 rooms if I didn't rmemeber wrongly. The open space called Heldenplatz in front of it is really very nice to take a stroll in or just to sit on the benches (with your girlfriend, please don't be like me sitting there shivering in the cold).


View of Rathaus (Town Hall) from Heldenplatz


Heldenplatz


Michaelerplatz, the other entrance to Heldenplatz


This is the Belvedere. I think the word stands for Presidential palace, not very sure also. But the garden is very nice:


Facing the back of the Belvedere is the Belvederegarten. You can see the St Stephans Dom in the background from here (see what I mean about climbing hills?)


Belvederegarten. The Europeans just have a way with statues and gardens.

Ok last attraction now, the Schonbrunn Palace:

Pardon the very wooden pose as I only had like 5 seconds before the timer went off. Sadly this photo is one of the better ones of myself already :( I think this palace has the nicest garden of all which you shall see below:


The garden of the Schonbrunn Palace. Don't be mistaken by the small size of the structure in the background. It is actually quite big but I am very far away.

And so I climbed the hill to get to the structure which is called the Gloriette. I nearly died while walking up, I must eat less bacon and omelette :S

The Gloriette. Reflection in the water somemore leh, nice???

And if you turn 180 degrees, you see this:


The Schonbrunn Palace from the top.

Time to show off my take-photo-of-myself-with-timer skills again:

Notice my new pair of jeans from Top Man? Haha. Bought during Boxing Day Sales but it wasn't on sale. But had been eyeing it for damn long so could not resist buying it.

Ok that's all for tourist attractions and sights for the tour. Now on to some of the stuff I did and nonsensical thoughts during the trip.

Salzburg sights

The Ryanair flight I took landed in Salzburg at about 9 plus am on 6th Jan. I swear it was the worst ever landing I had ever experienced. Ryanair pilots seems to be getting from bad to worse. My ear drums felt like splitting and right before it landed on solid ground I swear the whole plane shook from left to right like as though it was going to flip. Perils of being able to travel only on budget flights.

So the bad flight added to my du lan-ness caused by a lack of sleep the previous night from all the packing, researching and travelling to Stansted airport. I said to myself: this trip had better be good. And on hindsight, I certainly wasn't disappointed. For when I stepped right off the plane (haven't gone inside airport terminal yet), I was confronted with this scene:


Check out the mountains! Salzburg is near the border with Germany, and near the Bavarian Alps I think. It is a town surrounded by several mountains which provided me the suakoo (or should it be citykoo?) with some stunning views.

However, the weather was really poor. Not only was it raining (not Singapore standards but still quite heavy), the wind was really strong and my enthusiasm waned and rose as the rain came and gone. However, since I only had 1 day there, I still quickly proceeded to the town centre to do some sightseeing.


This is the Salzburg town centre. The river/canal is called Salzach. The fortress on top of the hill is the landmark of Salzburg and the dome directly below is the Salzburg Dom.


And so on I went to climb the hill to get to the fortress (climbing hills will be a central theme in my trip :S). And I managed to catch this view halfway up the mountain. Nice? I am such a sucker for snow capped mountains.


Yet another view from about halfway up the hill. The 2 towers thingy at the sides are actually part of the Salzburg Dom. This photo looks nicer when viewed full size on my lap top.


I got to the fortress, decided the admission fee was not worth paying, and so continued walking into the mountains through a bit of woods because there was supposed to be a viewing point somewhere. I wasn't disappointed by the view. However the pictures turned out to be crap due to the weather :(

Since it was drizzling and the wind was blowing, I went back down to the town centre very quickly. Some other photos:


Entrance of Salzburg Dom


Front of Salzburg Dom


Interior of Salzburg Dom


Interior of Salzburg Dom

So after this I finished pretty much all the major sights in Salzburg and the sky was nearly dark too. And so it was off to Vienna the next day morning (and a 80 Euros return train ticket :S).

Fucking du lan

Yes I am back from Austria, a trip during which my mood swung from ultra xian to utterly in awe at some of the brilliant scenery. Shall try to process my photos ASAP (there's a lot of stuff involved like deleting repeated photos, naming photos etc so will take time...) and load some on here.

When I logged onto the net, the first thing I saw was United 0-0 Exeter.

Seriously WTF?!?!?!?!

Even the Singapore national team would have fancied their chances against a Conference team, not to say a reserve/youth team from United. How the fuck can this happen? The second string is sadly not good enough.

They will get slaughtered by Chelsea tomorrow unless some of the big guns come back in, a game in which incidentally that I had gotten a ticket for. The only annoying thing is that its not at face value. It sometimes makes my blood boil that some season ticket holders who are SUPPOSED to be loyal supporters of United find chances to make money off other fans.
Note to self: Life is unfair, accept it.

Speaking about loyalty, take a look at this article.

The key line is near the centre where they said that people who had applied for tickets for the game against Exeter would have a better chance for the game against Milan. Not really sure if it is true though.

Kan ni na be chao ji bye.

I was in Austria and so could not go for this game and they decide to introduce this? Jibye. I had sacrificed money and time to go for the Carling Cup game against Crystal Palace which I would seriously think is a more unglam game than this. Why should I suffer any disadvantage? Surely if you want to use loyalty then its more fair to look at the long term? I had applied tickets for all of the Carling Cup games so far. Surely I deserve something?

JIBYE.

Break

Hmm about 1.5 hours before I leave for a short break in Austria. Felt rather sian initially because of the cold, short daylight hours, trouble of having to do research on Austria etc. But after checking out some of the tourist attractions my spirits were lifted. Saw some really nice pictures on the following 2 pages:

Sights in Vienna

Sights in Salzburg

Hmm yupz, those are the 2 places I will be going. Hopefully the sun will shine more then I can take better photos. Hoping to buy lots of chocolates too! Damn I sound like a girl.

So I guess that's all for now. Tschüß! (German for bye bye, taken from Google :P)

The past is history, the future is a mystery, the present is a gift...

Here's a look back at 2004, TosH style, in no particular order:

1. Winning the UCL Intersociety football shield tournament. We didn't exactly win the whole tournament, just the section for teams knocked out in the first round. But still it is the first time I won anything in football.
2. Watching Euro 2004, the summer football extravaganza, live. Incredible experience, which is truly once in a lifetime. Thus enabling myself to find out what is the perfect holiday for me, i.e. eating seafood by the river in lovely weather with a football match in the evening.
3. Attending the 2004 FA Cup final, and finally watching United lift a trophy before my eyes. Shame that I was far away from the end of the match celebrations though.
4. Watching the United vs City FA Cup game live. One of the few matches when I had tears in my eyes, being too ecstatic at taking a 3-0 lead with only 10 men.
5. Being able to go for the last home game of the 2003/2004 season against Chelsea. Being there to listen live to Sir Alex's end of season speech at Old Trafford and then singing "United Road" in full voice as the players did a lap of honour around the pitch was the dream of a lifetime too. Shame that Untied were not league champions.
6. Being able to attend my first away game and at Newcastle too. Helped me see why United had a truly magnificent away support.
7. Ok ok enough about football. Moving into a new home in Singapore. Had lots of work cleaning up and maintaining the place, but its still lovely. I love my rooftop and koi!
8. OBS. The canoeing part was really excellent fun especially when I had a really good partner. Brought back memories of the cross country camp in Sec 3.
9. Dying of ecstasy when eating super duper cheap seafood in Prague. Seafood spaghetti, fish soup, mussels, ice cream and service charge all for just FOUR POUNDS! *Thumbs up*
10. Last but not least, leaving Singapore after the summer holidays feeling like I had better relationships with my parents. *Priceless*

Some New Year resolutions which I will break anyway:

1. Grow up, being still far too childish.
2. Relax, being pissed way too easily.
3. Study harder. I am a full time student, part time United supporter, not the other way around.
4. Go to Athens (its my last year god damn it!)
5. Become more handsome.
6. Be more generous.
7. Stop taking money from parents in the summer.
8. Watch as many United matches as I can (including an away game in Europe if possible), which is not in conflict with point number 3!
9. Save more money (POSSIBLY in conflict with point number 8 but I can always cut down on the number of jerseys I buy. I now own *gasp* EIGHT jerseys)
10. Eat less. I am growing fat.

A set of contingency resolutions if I really go back to NS:

1. I will not chao geng.
2. I will not moan when I have to do weekend duties.
3. I will not lie in bed when I have to do area cleaning.
4. I will not chao geng during morning 5BX.
5. I will be more enthusiastic about field camps.
6. I will clean my rifle faithfully.
7. I will help my platoon mates more.
8. I will not be the last to fall in.
9. I will do chin ups regularly.
10. I will get a date for social night *yippee*

That's all folks, have a great 2005!

I hate people sitting on their moral high horses

Mr Brown website

Deafening silence of corporate philanthrophy

Finally some semblance of reason

I was pretty angry at the posts in the first 2 links. I have said this before, and I will say it again: It is far too easy to criticise other people and then hide behind an excuse and thus absolving yourself of all blame, when others ask why aren't you doing the same thing.

If you are such a philanthrophist, why don't I see you rushing to donate to every other charity which comes along?

Perhaps my most important point is, companies are companies, businessmen are businessmen. People should not EXPECT them to donate all the time. If they do, it is out of their goodwill etc, but we have no right nor claim to their wealth. Whether they donate or not is up to them and none of our god damn business. The way that some people write as though they EXPECT people to donate is downright pathetic. Until we are in a situation which allows us to donate $500,000 and have done so, we have no rights to complain about how much they donate. It is THEIR money. If we were in their shoes, would we donate $1 million? Think about it.

Let me draw an analogy. Imagine you are the richest among a group of friends, by a long way. If any of your friends had financial problems, they would look for you first. Ask yourself, would you feel du lan? Ah you will say since you are so rich, it doesn't matter right? Yeah once or twice, it doesn't matter. But what if it happens everytime? Are your pockets limitless? You better wish they are, for they will keep on coming and coming...

Everytime there is a donation drive, you can bet your ass that the big corporations will be the first targets, quite rightly so too. But when everyone does that, what happens? You kill the golden goose, that's what happens. Big companies have shareholders to answer to too. Throwing $1 million at every donation drive which knocks on its door is an invitation for the shareholders to kick out the management.

It is all too easy criticising other people behind a computer screen and keyboard. (Oops, isn't that what I am doing now?).

Another thing is, although I had said I am rather disappointed with myself for not feeling more for the victims of the tragedy, I also do not expect other people to wallow in misery. The second link I posted wrote about a NTU webring he came across and how the students in it all seemed so apathetic because of the mundane complaints in their blogs. COME ON, get REAL. Not blogging about the disaster does not mean they do not care about it. People keep blogs for various reasons, to let their friends know what is going on, to be a sort of diary etc. Some of them might not want to write about it because their friends might not want to read about it. It does not mean they are being apathetic. What did they expect anyway? Everybody to cry and sulk the whole day? As what one of my friend said, life still must go on. The worst thing to happen right now is for the whole world to indulge in misery, stop spending and thus leading to a downward spiral in the global economy. Perhaps its a bit sadistic, but economies grow through optimism about the future. Without economic growth, where is all the spare cash for donations going to come from?

Optimism is the best cure for global economic woes. (TosH - Jan 2005)

The last link contains a post which had some really interesting points. And some of which I agree wholeheartedly.