Austin and Erin

This year's Strictly come dancing is finishing in 1 month. For me, I do like Austin and Erin. I vote them. But difficult to say which couple will win. Lisa Snowdon & Brendan Cole and Tom Chambers & Camilla are also good. But I don't think Rachel and Vincent. Some people may not like Vincent who kissed former S-club 7 star frequently during the show.

Austin and Erin - Strictly Come Dancing 2008 Round 8 - BBC One


Austin and Erin's Paso Doble - Strictly Come Dancing 2008 Round 11 - BBC One

Leeds

After hectic on-call nights, today I' am free. I read something in the morning. Afternoon, I could not keep staying inside any more. So I drove and chose nearby Leeds to visit. Leeds is a big city only 20 miles from my place. Basically, west Yorkshire was England's top industrialised place until most factories moved to China and other oversea destinations where cheap labourers available . It is a well developed area and big cities like Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds are not far from each other within 1 hour drive.


View Larger Map

I went to Kirkstall Abbey, which is 2-3 miles away from Leeds town centre. When I checked with wikipedia, it is described as follow.

Kirkstall Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery in the western outskirts of Leeds in Yorkshire, set in grounds which are now a public park on the north bank of the River Aire. It was founded c.1152 and was over seventy five years in construction. It was closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under the auspices of Henry VIII. The ruins have been painted by artists such as J.M.W. Turner.

Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds

Fogging afternoon in Leeds Kirkstall Abbey park

From there, I headed for Leeds town centre where Tom tom instructed me to drive in counter-flow of traffic. It also kept asking me to turn into close roads. Bugger!. I remember it also confused in central London.

I saw a sea of people in town centre. A full range of age groups, from teenagers to elderly people with wheel chairs. Wondering if the UK is in actual economic recession? Maybe its early phase? They must be Christmas shoppers. I bought a Cross ball pen with rubber grip and a Red Herring shirt from Debenhams.

It had been nearly 2 hours walking around at town centre, from one shop to another. So I was starved. Fancy a meatball baguette and a cup of latte. Unfortunately, I lost my way and took nearly half an hour to find out the shop. As a result, I had to pay parking fee £8 for over 2 hour (2 hours and 20 minutes actually). Charges are 1 hour £2.80, 2 hours 5.20 and 4 hours £8. On my way home, it was not too much traffics. Some photos are here.

X-mas lights ont he street

Taxis and buses in Leeds. London Buses are red, you know

X-mas shoppers. Air temperature was 2 degree C

Inside Victoria quarter shopping mall

Some more photos are available in my album. Better view with slide show.

Sick cars

I rarely look outside. I don't know it's raining or sunny. Basically I'm not so interested in weather and climate change which is not affecting my daily life. For example, in the morning (08:20), I go down and catch the hospital shuttle bus to go to work. Its stop is 30 seconds walk from my accommodation. During the weekends, I drive and do shopping. My fav place is Sainsbury store which is in town centre. The parking place is just above the store. I just need to use a lift to go down. For other places, more or less the same.

Well today, I am to work at night. So I was resting at day time. So I just checked outside, spending a few minutes. The photo shows what I saw from my windows.

Sick cars. No more space after 08:30 AM

The whole parking place had been filled with staff and visitor cars. (One of them is mine, I am afraid). I should see a natural beauty with rabbits running on the lawn and parrots eating fruits on the top of the trees as I was in Surrey area. But now it is just a disgusting view. Authorities are trying to restrict the use of cars, which is good. In fact, cars are moving sets of sofa. On the roads, 90% cars have only one person who is a motorist. Remaining 3-4 seats are empty all the time. Traffic congestion is everywhere. Air and noise pollutions are inevitable because of them. I feel the government needs to do more effective measures to use alternative transports, instead of driving cars with empty seats.

Cambridge visit

Today, I popped in Cambridge town centre while I was around there for a business purpose. I saw a crowd of shoppers, among them some are Chinese students and those with eastern-European accents. I am sharing some photos.



A dog with a body warmer accompanying his owner, who is a street entertainer


Christmas decoration inside Grand Arcade shopping building


An angel flying. I love it.


A pink laptop at John Lewis electronic section. Young girls might like it. Not for women over 30, I suppose :)


Again, a red laptop for who? For me I like bamboo laptop. It's absolutely green. Those laptops have been introduced in Britain lately.




You may check some of today's Cambridge photos here.

CV and Résumé

After a conversation with a friend of mine from Singapore, a former British colonial piece of land in south east Asia peninsula, I learnt that they use the word Resume', instead of CV. Well, as we all know Resume' is an American English and Curriculum vitae is British English. But none of them are originally from America or Britain. Curriculum vitae is Latin meaning "course of life" and résumé is French meaning "summary".

Basically, dictionaries describe that CV is equal to Resumé. But according to my friend who arrived in Singapore lately and was applying for a job, it was advised that the short account of education, previous experience and jobs should be written in the way of Resume, not in the way of CV. That statement made me a bit confused. So I did a quick research. I found out the relevant information on wiki as below.

A résumé more often has a free-form organizational style and is used for seeking employment in the private sector, whereas a curriculum vitae has a more standardized look and format for the purpose of seeking positions in academic or educational institutions. Another difference is that a résumé tends to be more descriptive and tailored for a specific purpose or target audience, whereas a curriculum vitae tends to be organized in a way that presents data about one's self in a compact fashion, with a clear chronology. For example, a résumé may begin with a statement about a personal goal, followed by a list of most significant accomplishments or characteristics in order of significance, while a curriculum vitae often includes complete and unembellished lists of data such as educational institutions attended, degrees received, positions held, professional affiliations, publications authored, etc. A résumé may or may not be represented by the person as a complete history of themselves without omission, whereas a curriculum vitae usually implies that there are no omissions, and in particular, no temporal gaps.

According to that information, it is slightly different in CV and résumé in terms of presentations.

Moreover, the required facts in a CV would differ from one industry to another, one country to another. In some countries, putting photo together with CV is preferable. In some places, personal details are mandatory. But when I apply the job in England, I don't need to include my date of birth, gender and ethnicity in my CV. They can't take such facts into account in the consideration process for a post. The short listing panel can not discriminate against the race, age and sex. It's against the law. But the human resource department will keep those facts confidentially.

Quantum of Solace at O2

Basically I am not a 007 fan although gangsters films are in my collection. But I watched James Bond movies as an entertainment. Quantum of Solace has been on cinema for few weeks. Last time, I checked at Leicester square Odeon, all tickets had been sold out for the whole day. It was Saturday fortnight ago I think.
Yesterday I went to nearby O2 dome which is an entertainment complex, in which The Vue cinema forms part of it. Not too many people in the cinema. So no seat number required on the ticket. We could sit where ever we wanted. I bought my ticket from the machine. No need to enter PIN. I enjoyed movie while having popcorn with coca cola. (No pepsi available what I prefer). This 007 film is just average to me, but entertaining. At least I can talk about its good and bad things with my colleagues at work.


It was previously called Millennium dome located in south east London. Now it is O2 dome.


Aerial view


I took this picture last year.


The VUE


Area map



Ticket machine

A Rail Trip

I have never been beyond Bournemouth in south east England before. Yesterday, I went to Dorchester by train as I had an appointment. It was 6 hours trip in total from my work place in west Yorkshire. I bought a return ticket online for £115 in advance which was a standard one. After collecting the ticket at the station, I was waiting for 16:30 train. Well I left work a bit early. I saw many secondary students putting on different ancient costumes, waiting to go back to nearby towns. I overheard that they participated in a show " Romeo and Juliet " at their school. From Yorkshire to London, I took the National Express train line which has got power source for laptop and wifi access. I arrived the King Cross station at about 19:20, from where I took the tube to Waterloo. Too much crowded in Waterloo as usual. I quickly bought my supper which were a baguette and a cup of black Kenco. And then I took South West train to Dorset. My destination was DCH, Dorset County Hospital. It was mid night when I got to my over-night accommodation provided by hospital.


My route


My Kenco. Fortunately, no person next to me.


A gentle man working while travelling


I was also revising Jason's Driver 2


On south west train


Hospital guide


Parking tariff at DCH

The Internet, the greatest time waster?

Apparently, I have been addicted to the internet as I visit websites without any particular reason once I come back from my work, spending over 5-6 hours a day. My laptop has been on 24/7. I never switch off my device as I hate Vista taking sometime when it is struggling with loading and shutting down. Having to live without internet access at home for about a couple of weeks meant I had got too much time to read books and to go out with real friends. It happened last month when I switched to a new service provider and I had to wait for sometime. Being offline has made me realized how much time I wasted on the internet.

I think about what I normally do online. First, I open Fire Fox, its homepage is Google. I click News. I scan if any interesting news. At that point, Twitterfox from right bottom corner shows up new tweets. I read the headings quickly. With the aid of Twitterfeed, we can know which blogger has posted new item. I click the link and open the blog pages. Well, It is a bit hard for me to read a long Burmese post with too much oriental philosophy. Just my weak point. They are good. So I close it and jump to another blogs. I would leave some comments if I want to do so. (My fav blogs are on Bravenet.com)

After blog surfing business finished, I would quickly visit some Burmese news media like Hittaing, Kitpyaing and Rebound 88. Basically they post bad news of Burma. Disappointing. Oh yes! you may say there is no good news in Burma. I have no idea at all. For instance, news of many thousands of Burmese living and settling in Singapore is good news, isn't it? But they might claim Burma has been a victim of brain drain. Ok can you say a brain trained inside Burma can be a good brain at all? Doesn't it need any further upgrade? Is there any world class higher education centre in Burma? What class of Brain can be built by those universities. Be realistic. If you have achieved a quality brain, you can help your people anytime you want whenever you live.

Ok, let's move on. While surfing from one place to another, my contacts from Yahoo, gtalk, MSN and VZO might say hi, hiya, hullo, @, ~, #, ^ and so on. I would reply and enjoy chatting from a few minutes to over night :) , making me too much tired in the next morning. I am weak.

At the same time, I would be busy with checking new posts and photos and leaving rubbish comments on facebook where I have got nearly 100 friends, all of them I never meet in actual word. How stupid I am.

Moreover, I have been running some community and academic websites. I don't earn any penny for them. But I am a hobbyist. So I enjoy updating things and changing templates. As I am crazy in photography despite having only a basic idea how to take a picture, I would be busy with editing and uploading photos I take whenever I go.

Someone said long ago(maybe a famous author) hobby is one's weak point. I would say many hobbies, many weak points. I am sure I need to cut down my time wasting on the internet. I work average 57 hours a week. When I calculate, I sleep about 40 hours a week and I surf the webs about 50 hours a week. That means it is only 21 hours left for other things, like cooking, showering, reading and going out.

Of course, I essentially need to use the internet for some purposes such as holiday package, shopping, booking tickets and on-line course. But I just leant that I have been wandering on the net without destination. The majority of knowledge obtained from those websites is not directly useful for my life and career. I believe I desperately need a detox for this internet addiction.

Do I need Google G1 phone?

Technology is advancing quickly. At the same time, Google's power is rising among the internet users, now starts to invade the field of mobile phone. In the UK, iPhone was introduced a few years previously and it is available on O2 net work. Now T mobile has launched G1 Google phone. For me, receiving a couple of calls a day is my way of mobile phone usage. Of course, I would take photos some time for my blog. Not more than that. To surf the webs, the internet access is everywhere at work. At home, I have got a cable. When I drive, I use Tom Tom. No mobile phone integrated Sat Nav needed for the time being. For pda, I have got HP iPAQ.

Maybe, I would consider iPhone if it comes with a better build-in camera resolution. Do I need all in one device? Maybe, later, not now. The same thing for Google phone. For the time being, I don't need it for the time being.


on my way to London

Any way , here is a review about G1 Google phone on Times online.

My first impression when the G1 was released was that it was not going to be a iPhone killer, and further use of the first ever “Google phone” confirmed my suspicions. Still, it is clearly a smartphone in the same class as Apple’s iconic product. Despite a few niggles, it is quite impressive.

The main difference between the G1 and its competitors is the slide-out qwerty keyboard. This is a useful addition for anyone frustrated with tapping an unresponsive pane of glass. The keyboard buttons are quite small, though, so fast typing is not really possible. But it is more like using a BlackBerry than an iPhone.

Another useful addition is the “trackball”. You can use the touchscreen to scroll through webpages and click on icons, as with other similar devices, but every once in a while the links are two small for a big fat thumb to select easily. Faced with this problem on the iPhone, you can zoom in and out using the clever “pinch” motion on the touchscreen, but the G1’s zoom is much less cool and clunkier to use. The trackball is a neat way around that problem: when the touchscreen becomes frustrating, you can use the trackball instead. As with any device, the more you use it, the easier it becomes to navigate through web pages and documents.
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