After a bit of stuffing around, I’ve finished uploading all the halfway decent photos I’ve taken in Singapore.

I’ve got one of the photos I took of a spiderlilly as my wallpaper at the moment.

1920×1200 jpg version here for those of us with nice high-resolution monitors.

NB: Yes, it was touched up slightly (getting rid of some minor splotches) and the contrast was pushed up a bit too.

Oh, and as a followup to my post before I left about the Customs in Singapore — they’re pretty much like that.
My total interaction with any authorities on the way there was:

Immigration/Passport Control:
Me: (Nervous-ish) “Uhh… Hi” *hands over passport and immigration form*
Customs Officer: *swipes passport through scanner, stamps it, hands it back, waves at the next guy*
(No talking, didn’t really look at me… kinda creepy)

Customs:
Me to Police Officer standing near door: “Excuse me, do I need to declare 1.1L of Alchohol?”
Police Officer: “That all you have? No medication or anything?”
Me: “Only the alchohol”
Police: “Go through then”.

Something I forgot to post about while I was in Munich is that people go surfing in the Eisenbach river.
I took these photos in one part of the English Gardens, on a pretty cold morning.
Water temperature for this part of the river usually sits somewhere between 4C in early spring and a positively balmy 8C in the height of summer.

Apparently it’s not new — there’s a whole bunch of surfing sites and even a few competitions at the other location.

I particularly liked this photo too:

Gotta love the new google maps updates. Now I can see…

Home

Looks like I need to mow the lawn…

Work (and the ATO)

Oh… so that’s what the roof looks like.

That weird place near the power station…

Just what the heck are they doing there?

The place I lost my PDA in Cologne

well.. only in Map view… the satellite view is kinda old

The coldest place I ever visited…aka Munich

Do I have to go back? Please don’t make me…

Arrived in Sydney at about 5:30 yesterday, about 25mins early — the 190Kph tail wind we got over most of Australia might have had something to do with that.

Starting to process the images — putting up higher resolution/higher quality versions now.

So… what’d I miss?

Just about to grab my backpacks and grab a train to Heathrow, I have a
lovely 13 hour flight to Singapore, a 3.5 hour stopover, and then
another 8 hour flight to Sydney.

As you know, I´m not exactly a big sports fan, but I´m glad to see
Australia won their first match in the Soccer
(Futbol/Football/Fussball depending on where you´re from) World Cup
against Japan.

3-1 … all three goals in the last 9-10 minutes. Thats what I call
cutting it fine.

Hope everyone´s good. Seeya soon!

Someone finally got their blog and photos organised…

It must be that whole “I’m using OS X” handicap…

Back again… no more needing to understand strange languages, or look left instead of right when crossing the road…

Only a few more days left until I fly out…

Anyway, now I´ve got halfway decent net access again, I´m doing a bit of maintanence on the site, and trying to upload some photos…

Attention: Kumuka People
See the kumuka photos page for direct links to the photos I took whilst on tour…

Well… it’s my second last day in Europe, not sure what I can say
except that I’ve enjoyed just wandering around the ‘old town’… lots
of little side alleys full of restraunts and cafes.

On the PDA front, I did get a call from someone when I was going to
catch the eurostar… but they didn’t understand much english, and the
call dropped out after a little while… so not sure what’s going to
happen there… No callerID either, so couldn’t call back.

Anyway… off to find something else to do.

I caught the night train, as per usual - and got a sleeping car.
Unlike the Austrian Railways night train, this was *TINY*, and so
cramped I couldn’t fit my bag inside properly.

Anyway, I was promised I’d be woken up at 5:20 (since the train
arrived at Cologne at 5:45) and given breakfast (Tea, breadroll, and
jam).

Because of the very cramped conditions, I didn’t sleep very well. I
didn’t get breakfast or the wakeup call either… so I ended up in
dussledorf with another german guy who was sharing the same cabin, who
was also supposed to get breakfast and a wakeup call to get off in
Cologne.

Luckily they’re not too far apart (45mins via the S-Bahn), so we
caught another train back…

Then I got myself kinda lost… well, *I* knew where I was, but the
maps near the Underground station were crap (The maps didn’t have up
as north, they were oriented some random direction) - So I spent about
2hrs wandering around this empty suburb, with almost noone around,
trying to find my hotel.

Somehow I managed to lose my PDA (Handheld PC) while I was at it - I
was using it to look at the directions on from the hotel’s website…
so, not sure where it is now, and I can’t find a police station either
to report the loss.

The two things that might get it back are (1) The “Ownerdetails”
sticker on it, saying to go to a website and enter the number on it
and (2) the password-lockout screen has my mobile number and email
address on it. (They can’t use it without knowing the password, or
reformatting it if they know the right set of key-combinations)

If that doesn’t help… well… I’ll try claiming it on my insurance.

Anyway, I’m now in Cologne, with a headache, and nothing to read (all
my books are on there, but they are backed up). *sigh*

Hope everyone else is having a better time.