Euro 07 - France

Me and Hubby went for a 10 days trip to France and Italy during the October holidays. We touched down at Paris around 11pm on 1st October and headed straight to the hotel. I was feeling very dizzy and tired due to jet lag and the lack of sleep on board Lufthansa airlines for the 11 hours flight to Frankfurt and another 1.5 hours transfer to Paris. We checked into Chinagora Hotel, some lousy hotel owned by some Hongkies near downtown Paris. very lousy hotel. Not up to my standard except for the chinese breakfast. I enjoyed the mee hoon... taste like our KL mee hoon sold at roadside for RM1 or RM2 per packet type. Nice. Hehe.

On the first morning, our journey started around 8.30am. Luckily it was a small tour group, consist of only 18 people, mostly young cheena couples. Thus, we are able to get very comfy in the bus. Comfy in terms of plenty of space, nothing hanky panky, ok. Managed to capture photos of the city along the way.

Our first stop was the Arc de Triomphe (Arch of Triumph). This arch was ordered by Napoleon to commemorate the victories of his French armies. Actually, I didn't do any homework or read much before I go on this trip. So most of the time, I was blur and do not know anything about the French history. I do not trust anything that the Dao You (tour guide) says as they always just bullshit whenever they can.

See... me so happy. And it was nice weather in Paris. Thank God no rain!


Names of the armies are beng crafted on the walls of the arch.

Beneath this arch is the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I do not know who are the unknown soldiers... as they are unknown soldiers... hahaha. Sorry... I am still blur now.

Took some pictures along the roadside. Nice scenery of falling tree leaves... autumn in Paris. So romantic.

Next, we visited the Notre Dame cathedral. According to the write ups, this is not the largest cathedral, but probably one of the most famous ones in the world. Well, I got to know Notre Dame through the cartoon 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'. :) Now I get to see the real thing, and it is HUGE! But I find it a bit scary. The roof top is black, scary. And inside the cathedral is very dark.. like those eerie and horror story we see in movies.






For respect, I didn't take a lot of pictures inside the cathedral and just took a few without using flash. But I still see a lot of people taking photos with flash, which I think is not a good thing to do in a sacred place like this.

Facing the main entrance of Notre Dame is the point-zero for France. Point zero is the center of France, 'kilometer zero'. Our lousy Dao You didn't tell us about it. I saw people standing in the middle and turning in circles. I do not know what is that for, but I just follow suit. So I stood in the middle and turn around as well. Haha!

Then we went to the main attraction of France – the Eiffel Tower of Paris!! This is really beautiful! I love it! So happy to be seeing this tower right in front of my eyes. Amazing!

This structure is amazing! We took the elevator up to the second floor (115 meters). The view from here is spectacular. I realised that I have phobia of heights. I didn't dare to go near the edges to take pictures.

Then we went to the Palace of Versailles. This Palace is said to be one of the largest castle in the world, with more than 2,000 windows, 700 rooms, 1250 fireplaces, 67 staircases and most amazingly, more than 1,800 acres of park.!! In terms of built up, it is still smaller than Beijing's Frobidden City. But in terms of land area, it is much, much larger than the Forbidden City.

Take a look at it's amazingly HUGE garden. This is crazy!! Abso-fucking-lutely gigantic!!! I think they can build several golf courses in this park itself.

We went for dinner after the visit to the palace. Lousy dinner and lunch at the same chinese restaurant. 5 dishes and 1 soup plus fruits for dessert. Nothing to complain... it's normal for tour to have such lousy food.

After dinner, we went to watch the world’s most famous cabaret, the Moulin Rouge.

This show is darn expensive. Cost us a whopping 130euro per person. That’s equivalent to RM650 per person for a 1 hr and 45 mins show. Since we are already in Paris, why not? The show was nice, but to me, it was a bit too lengthy as I was falling asleep after an hour. Too tired. Expensive but it was worth the experience. The girls are topless most of the time. Damn great body... all slim and fit. We are not allowed to take photographs, so no photos of naked cabaret girls for posting.

After Moulin Rouge, back to our lousy hotel. I was darn tired on the first day.

On day 2, we started off the tour by visiting the Louvre. This is one of the largest museums in the world, and it displays about 300,000 works, among them some world-famous like the Monna Lisa from Leonardo da Vinci, Venus de Milo and Winged Victory.

This is the ever famous sculpture, Venus de Milo. Don't know she is so famous. A woman with a manly body. Yulks.

Below, the 'headless' Winged Victory. The Winged Victory has a historical background as old as the Teracotta Warriors of China. Thats about 2000 years of history. Geng!


I saw the much talked about paintings of all time; the Monna Lisa. I was pretty dissappointed as I didn't expect it to be so small. Many people surrounded this painting and took photos. I can't really see it close up because it was too far away and they do not allow visitors to go near it.

This is as close as I can get... zooming in using my camera. Again, I am not sure why this painting is so famous. They say something about her smile.

Next, we took a cruise down the Seine River. This is the perfect way to discover most of the famous attractions in this romantic city. I don't know the names of the monuments or buildings and statues that I can see from here, so... don't ask. Haha.

Notre Dame behind the scene.

This is the original Statue of Liberty. Some called it the prototype. Yes, Statue of Liberty was built by the French and the bigger one was a gift from the French government to the US.

After this cruise, it was almost the end of our tour in Paris. Dao You brought us to the famous duty free store, La Fayette. I can't believe how rich those cheenas are. They bought darn a lot of Louis Vuitton and Feragammo and Gucci etc. Bags and bags of these branded goods like they are free of charge. I didn't buy anything in Paris. Waiting for Milan to get my Gucci bags. Hehe.

After shopping and dinner, it was the end of our day 2 in Paris. Time to move on to the next city. Paris is truly an amazing and romantic city. I will definitely go there again for a free and easy stay.

*B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L*

Next place we visited in France is a small city called Annecy. On the way to Annecy, we passed by Mont Blanc, Chamonix and took the cable car ride up to the peak of the snow mountain called Aiguille Du Midi. The cable car took us up to 3842m for a stunning view of the French, Swiss and Italian alps. The ride to the top was a bit scary and the view was spectacular.



At the peak of Aiguille Du Midi. 3842 meter or 12602 feet. It was snowing up there! Darn cold and lack of oxygen. One lady from our tour got sick up there due to lack of oxygen. I can see her face turned pale and her lips were purple.






After the alps, we continue with the journey to Annecy. We finally reach the final stop in France, Annecy, which is a very beautiful, Swiss like and very peaceful small city. Love the atmosphere and we stayed at a great hotel there.





The next morning, we started the journey off to Italy. On the way, the view of the Alps was amazing. Simple breathtaking!

We finally reached the border of France-Italy where its was separated by the Tunnel du Mont Blanc. This is the 11.6km tunnel in the Alps under the Mont Blanc mountain, linking the 2 countries. Once we enter this tunnel, it was bye-bye France, and Hello Italy on the other end.

Back to reality

I'm back from my holidays. Sigh... time travels much, much faster when you're having fun. It's so sad to be back to reality, waking up and going to work again.

I have so many blogs to catch up with. It has been a tiring week for me, but it was worth it. I'm still feeling tired now. So sleepy... so lazy to come to work. My mind is still in Paris and Rome. Maybe I am still sleeping. Maybe it's just a nightmare of me being at work now. Yeah... rite. How I wish I can have a never ending holiday.

*SLAP*SLAP*

Wake up! Time to work, earn and save money again for my next holiday.

*Back to life... back to reality...
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Holiday!!!

The moment that I have been waiting for the past few month is finally here!!! Blogging and blog reading will take a 2 weeks' break.

Paris, Annecy, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome... Here I come!!! Muahahahah!!!

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Unique

I was travelling on a taxi on Yuyuan Rd and saw this tree. A tree with a pair of eyes and a mouth. This tree has a face!

Unique eh!

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I am SO HAPPY now... I will work for one more day tomorrow and then I will be on a 12 day holiday until 10th October!!! YAY!!!! I am going bonkers... yahooooo!!!!!!! Can't wait for my long awaited holiday.... Muahahahaha!

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Festival Dinner

I had dinner with Elizebeth DL and her hubby at Ming Tang (明堂) restaurant. They serve cantonese cuisine. We ordered some cold dish appetizer, pork ribs, salted prawns, kailan and some tang hoon.

Here is one of our cold dish, pumpkin with lily:


This is another set of Ming Tang cold dish set, served in a very nice decorative way:

This is the salted prawns. Damn salty. All the prawns are buried into a bucket of salt. We have to shake off those salt before eating it... else I think we will get kidney stones the next day.

Then we had kailan. The first dish of kailan turned out to be bitter. We complained about it. The waitress still had the guts to tell us that kailan is supposed to taste bitter. Elizebeth DL was so fierce. She told the waitress: "you think we never had kailan before??". Wah... I also scared.

So they finally change another dish of kailan for us. This time, the kailan was much younger, tender and not bitter.

But then, I found a worm in the kailan. Take a closer look, but my phone camera could not focus.

I complained again... but as a joke. We know that its harmless, and having a worm there means its usually pesticide free, thats why this kailan does not taste bitter, I think. The waitress say just asked me not to eat it and says that she will compensate is by giving us more fruits for desserts.

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Ok lor.. anyway, it's not a big issue. We are nice customers. Just don't come tell us its supposed to taste like this and that... we are not sua-ku.
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Overall, it's an enjoyable dinner. I am glad I did not celebrate Mid Autumn Festival by having dinner alone. :)

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Happy Mid Autumn Festival

Happy Mid Autumn Festival!!

Not much of a celebration for me here except for dinner with friends. The only mooncake I got was a lousy box of traditional mooncake from my company. Cut up and eat... not really nice also. And this is supposed to be the best traditional mooncake in Shanghai.

The Chinese do not have lantern or 'tang lung' during this day. The only day when they have lantern is during Chap Goh Mei, where they call it 元宵节.Hmm... something different eh?

Oh.. and those Shanghai Mooncake selling like hotcakes in Malaysia, they are not actually from Shanghai. Not sure why Malaysia has Shanghai mooncake when the Shanghainese here has not even heard about it. Marketing gimmick.
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Microsoft Mystery

My Womanizer friend MSN me today and asked me to try this 3 Microsoft Mystery:

MAGIC #1

An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as "CON".
This is something pretty cool...and unbelievable... At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened!

TRY IT NOW , IT WILL NOT CREATE " CON " FOLDER


MAGIC #2

For those of you using Windows, do the following:

1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it. (open it note pad only)

is it just a really weird bug? :-??


MAGIC #3

This is something pretty cool and neat...and unbelievable...
At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened!
It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself...

Open Microsoft Word and type

=rand (200, 99)

And then press ENTER
then see the magic...............................
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Fakes

In Shanghai, you can find:

Fake market
Fake Rolex
Fake LV and Gucci bags
Fake branded shirts
Fake Eggs!!

Picture taken from cnn.com

And today... so much fuss about typhoon and so many companies declared holiday. Ended up a false alarm. Just a little rain here ... Fake typhoon!

Is anything REAL here??

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Did They Do it for Real?

Since I was at home for 3 days, I dig out some old DVDs that I bought and didn't have time to watch. I was watching a Korean movie, I tell you, the girl damn chun and the guy damn cute and fit body. This show damn a lot of sex scenes. And those scenes are so real!!!

This is not the first time I've watched a show with sex scenes and continue to wonder if they are doing it for real.

I just wonder...


p/s: Please dun think I am that ham sup and purposely go watch porn at home alone. Just so happened that this show has many this sorta scenes. Never thought it was a Korean porn in the first place when I bought it.

Spinning Nearly Killed Me!

Last Friday, I went for my first spinning class. It was a beginner's class. Instructor helped me adjust the seat and everything and told me that if I feel tired, just stop. Before the class spin off, I sms my hubby telling him that there are many aunties in my class.

The class was a 40 minute spinning class. After 10 minutes, I konked out! The aunties all damn keng chau! They can still spin.... I think they are so used to ridding on bicycle, thats why huh! My thighs were hurting so badly and I can hardly walk down the few stair steps out of the spinning room. Damn it! I am so, so lousy!

Then my friend Rachel came to Shanghai and I spent the whole Sat and Sun out of home walking around here and there. I think it made my already sore thighs worse.

This morning, I went to Hua Shan Worldwide Medical Center to see doctor. He gave me some ointment and some medicine for muscle relaxation. And because I am a foreigner, I had to go to the 'foreigner section' and it cost me a whopping RMB695 (equivalent RM345)!!!

Now, I walk like an ah por, have difficulties sitting down and getting up and almost impossible to walk down a flight of stairs.

Really regret spinning so hard! But good thing is that I have 3 days MC... Yohoo!!! Haha!

Rachel's Shanghai Visit

Jeffrey's sister, Rachel, arrived at Shanghai on Saturday evening. She is here for business trip, but have decided to come here a day earlier to go around Shanghai. I brought her around The Bund and to Pudong for some nightview sightseeing.

Here at The Bund, overlooking the old buildings which are now mostly oocupied by the banking industry:


Here is one of the old buildings with a clock tower. I don't know the names of these building.

A closer take of the clock tower:

And here overlooking over to Pudong, we can see the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. I guess this is one of the most beautiful communications & TV tower. At least its much, much better looking than the Seoul Tower. For those who don't know, Shanghai is separated into two sides by the Yellow River (黄浦江). The older side is called Puxi and the new area is called Pudong. Pudong was developed 10 years ago. It's a very new and nice area.

Another angle of the Pudong side:



After this, we decided to take the tourist tunnel over to Pudong. I have no experience of this tunnel after being here for 1 1/2 years. So, we decided to give it a try. It cost RMB45 per person, including a visit to a so-called 'Underwater creature exhibition'. We have to take the tramp going through an underpass across Yellow River.



The underpass journey has nothing to see at all except for some decorative ligthings in the tunnel, like this:

Hmm... kena tipu. Nothing to see except darkness.

Then we went into the underwater creature exhibition. And what do we see inside there?

Malaysian Giant Turtle!!! Kua kua kua..... Kena tipu again.

Here is the giant turtle:

Nola... not that big. This is a fake one. No real turtle there. Only fake one. Can you believe such exhibition?

But we did see some weirdo turtle species, like this one:

This is real, and its really weird looking with a long tail.

There is also a fake alligator on display. I don't understand why people throw money on this fake thingy. Maybe they treat is like the wishing well. Gila!

After that, we pass by another exhibition called the Sex Culture and Sex Health exhibition. We didn't bother to go in la... as usual, sure tipu orang one!

But I did managed to capture some ornaments on display outside, such as this teapot. I think its a teapot la, else the KKJ so long for what??

Then this love making figurine. Some chinese karma sutra, I think.

Finally, we went out to Pudong. I can see the HUGE Oriental Pearl Tower. We didn't go up to this tower because there was a really long queue. Maybe next time for me. But Rachel planned to go up there on her own on Monday.

We were hungry after that and had our dinner at Lisboa, the Macao restaurant. Headed home after that. I was darn tired and my legs were hurting so bad because I went for spinning class at the gym the night before. Regret going for that class.

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Miserable Piece of Shit

Today, before I left office, someone came to me and gave this to me:


Hmm... can you guess what is that? When I reached home, I took a picture of it next to my cell phone so that I can show the size of this piece of shit. Take a look, it's really tiny. Can you guess what it is?



Yes, it is a.......

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PAYSLIP!!!!

Oh My GAWD!!!! I was laughing and my jaws dropped when I got this. This is the most miserable piece of payslip I have ever seen. Might as well don't print it and better to send an electronic one instead, right? What are they thinking? Saving trees??

When the Itch Hits

Elizebeth DL's post made me wonder today. And it was another wandering thought of mine, as usual. I tend to think too much. During the weekends, I asked my hubby the following questions:

Q: If you have another woman out there, will you let me know?
A: No.

Q: If you have another woman, will you divorce me?
A: Yes.

His reason for the second answer is that, if there is a second woman in his life, meaning that we are having problems in our marriage. Thus, no use being together anymore.

I don't agree to what my hubby says. Sometimes, it doesn't need any flaws in your marriage to start / have an affair out there. It can simply be the KKJ itchy and cannot resist the temptation or the seduction out there. Most men will stray once they become rich. Sad but true. Those girls also prefer men who are successful and rich and mature. And most of the time, successful, married men fit the description. It's truly sad, because all the results of the hard work from the wife when they were poor and struggling, the fruits are enjoyed by the other women out there.

So, I sometimes have wandering thoughts of what I will do if something like this happened to me:

1. Sign a no-contest for child custody before the child is even born. This will make sure that I will get custody to my children. Wonder if this works?
2. Be smart? – Keep quiet if I knew my hubby has someone else. Get a private detective to take all evidence and used that against him in future.
3. Poison him slowly. Put in some herbs into soups to make him impotent.
4. Hire a killer to kill the other woman? Or... hire a few a-char to rape her kau kau and beat her up.
5. Find a way to transfer all his money to my account.
6. Find a way to sabotage his career. No career, no more money. Woman leaves him and left him with nothing.
7. Find a bomoh and jampi him. Make him suffer.
   

Any more suggestions? I really think I am going crazy. Where's my stress ball?

Mr. Smiley

This, is Mr. Smiley. My playmate at work. :)

I like to torture Mr Smiley by pinching him...

And squeeezing him real badly...

And make him the Mr Strongman under my laptop...


And press my water bottle on him...

And in the end.... he still smiles at me!

I Love my Stress Ball!!!

(am I going crazy??)

Classifieds

I was at The Spot last week for dinner and I brought home one of the classifieds media to see what's actually inside. Well, lots of jobs and services and I found one very interesting section - Personals.

Ok.. call me 'sua ku' and I am sure there are such advertisement back in Malaysia and everywhere around the world but I just don't seem to care about these ads back home. But here, since I'm like darn free everyday, I browse through almost each and every single ad and took down some very inetresting ones.


Like this: Not beating around the bush and looking for sex partner:


Yeah rite... fat or thin. I bet if he sees a 100kg fat lady, he'd run away! And he is honest... haven't had sex in over 4 months! Haha! No wonder he don't mind a fat woman. Cheap bloke... looking for a free f*ck. Don't even have the money to go to a bar at any corner around Shanghai street to get a hooker.


And this woman is looking for a German Sausage:

SAP consultant somemore... please la... Thank goodness not an Oracle Consultant. Else give us a bad name!


Then there is this Korean bloke who posted his pic:

Poor guy. He sounds sincere la. Maybe he is truly lonely here in a foreign land which he cannot speak and understand the language. But just wondering whether this is the right way to meet someone special??


Then this one lagi keng chau: Looking for someone to go Thailand to F*ck.

Must apply like a job, and must send photo somemore. Of course la.. all expense paid trip to Thailand. You cannot be fat like the first ad.

Then there is this very pretty gal with her pic:

She's looking for female for language exchange programme. Either this is a truly genuine ad, or she is a lesbian.

I am very much tempted to send them an email just to test on their response. Should I, or should I not?