TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

Handling a Disgruntled [Customer] Me 2 WEEKS AGO – After booking my Easyjet flight to London and the Gatwick Express (tip: book this from the Easyjet website and you get additional discount, aside from the discount you get for booking online), I decided, upon Queen Victoria’s insistence, that I book my train to Sheffield ASAP. She said that it’s best to book advance so I get a seat reservation. The football match between Manchester United and Sheffield United might cause a rise in passenger booking, so I should not be risking buying last minute tickets, she added. OK fine my dear Queen Victoria, I am your obedient and loyal subject, thus I will obey your order. I am going to book online. Now. So as told, I went to Midland Mainline’s website. Typing into the keys of my laptop, I thought - ah great, online booking is the greatest internet invention after blogs. Quickly, I browsed through the timetables and right away experienced a severe headache. Ugh, whoever designed this? I proceeded...

Last weekend was so busy! I went to the Manchester United (Devils) vs. Sheffield United (Blades) football game in Sheffield, UK last Saturday together with old friends. It was my first time to watch an English football game. I knew about the hooligans and how passionate the English are about football but nothing tops the experience when you are actually there to witness football religion in action—with a rowdy crowd of fanatics. My train from London arrived in Sheffield an hour and 10 minutes before the game began. My friends picked me up and we immediately proceeded to the stadium. The streets were already speckled with excited football goers dressed in red stripes and aggressive fans who are howling like crazy. Yes, they were howling, haha. There were as well unbelievably so many police. While passing through a busy street, we saw this big tourist bus that just arrived parked adjacent to the big dome. The bus was full of eager Manchester United supporters. Unfortunately, they were n...

Thanks to Dove - Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant for spilling out the golden secret of advertising and media companies. Wowsers, everyone can now become a super model?! Wahoo! While we are at the subject of super models, er, I mean photoshopped super models - I wonder when Adobe will start banging on Unilever’s mighty door. Or perhaps, Adobe loved the extra attention (free advert) this photoshopped Dove commercial clip has brought to the media? Like what they all say, any publicity, good or bad, is always a publicity. Oh well, so much for caring [insert sarcasm] what real beauty is. It’s all about the money people. What else. Wake up. Slap. Bottom line is the profits, Dove needs to get its cash cow products milking and maintain its market share dominance. Controversy sells so not clueless at all, marketing and creativity at its finest. But, I sill love the clip. Brilliant!

Every first Sunday of the month is Koop Zondag in the Netherlands. The predictable sleeping cities and towns in the flatlands come to life during Koop Zondag . The big warehouses, some of the specialty shops, and even the street vendors selling loempia (lumpia/spring rolls) and fresh cut flowers joins the city street camaraderie. This means a lot to us individuals who work fulltime and work in another city because we do not have the extra time to get off from work to shop during weekdays. Stores in this part of the planet close early (read: 5PM) during weekdays, and they are also close on Sundays (except for Rotterdam I believe and a few shops in Amsterdam center). Since shops close early on a Saturday too, to realize non-food shopping chores is sometimes not possible. There is just not enough time. Saturday for me is THE day when I don’t want to wake up with my eardrums torn apart and hanging outside my ears because the blaring alarm clock orders me to get my ass up and out of bed. ...

The new travel regulations in the European Union will be implemented tomorrow Monday, 6 November, 2006. We have been alerted by the operations department at work 2 weeks ago about the new travel rules and the restrictions they follow. Today, I received an email in my personal inbox from KLM explaining the details together with a visual of the ONLY items and the maximum quantity of liquid a traveler can bring onboard the plane. I’m flying again in less than 2 weeks and since I can’t do without the laptop, I will have to settle with my laptop bag as my handbag. *deep sigh* In this circumstance, apart from the minimal items (toiletries) allowed onboard, losing the hand bag is another travel disaster for us women, especially when we are to choose it between a laptop, although, it does have its plus point: less load to carry. Some scenarious to ponder about: (a) Duty Free shops will soon go bankrupt (b) Lots of harassed or ugly-looking women sitting in long haul flights, lol. (c) Instead of...