Rubénerd Blog :)

Just came back this evening from our (brief) trip to KL, as evidenced from the view from our hotel window above! I lived here in 2007-08 so it was good to go to all my old haunts. Will be posting proper photos and whatnot later this week.

We’ve got Tuesday in Singapore (going to make the most of it), then 09:00 on Wednesday morning I’m back to Adelaide to face those "people" at that university. Can’t wait.

With that in mind they’re will probably be a further interruption to your regularly scheduled blog posts here. If you feel the urge to read more Ruben sanctioned nonsense, feel free to browse the archive or barring that visit any of the fine folks on the site sidebar. They’re far more interesting, succinct, eloquent and funny than me anyway.

Danke schön, see you on the other side ^_^.

I’m typing this post from a small café next to our hotel in Dublin and boy it’s freezing! There’s snow lightly falling outside and the footpaths are slick with ice which has caused more than a few bruises in the last few days, but we’ve still been thoroughly enjoying ourselves! Anyway I was going to save blogging until I got back to Singapore, but I couldn’t resist when I saw the above ad.

Read this post >

My dad, sis and I are just about to leave the door to start our Europe trip. We’ll be heading to Germany via Dubai to catch up with relatives in Frankfurt am Main and friends in Munich, then to Plzeň in the Czech Republic, then driving back through Germany to Paris, then a flight to Cork and a tour of Ireland.

I’m going to take a ton of photos and will be blogging as much about it as I can! In the meantime you can follow our adventures on Twitter and Gowalla too.

Selamat tinggal! Wait, wrong language :D

I spent most of today frantically packing, paying bills and buying salami for my dad for my trip back home to The Singapores, but I figured I could spare a bit of time to show you the incredibly sophisticated WebJet map my online flight booking provided. I suppose when I read the awe inspired description with a fancy service name to boot I was expecting something a little more… fancy? :)

Read this post >

Given I spend so much time at the Boatdeck Cafe programming and drinking their amazing coffee I’d noticed the owner Joe Karem hadn’t been there for a while since I came back. Turns out he didn’t divulge himself of his shares after all, he was on holidays in Lebanon around the same time as I was back in Singapore but stayed there longer.

Lebanon is on my ever expanding laundry list of places I want to visit because Beirut has some amazing architecture and cultural sights, but mostly because I love Lebanese food! The best Lebanese I’ve had in Australia was in a kebab stall in Canberra of all places, in South-East Asia I had a great lunch at the Alamanda shopping centre in Putrajaya. Does being a capital ensure you have good Lebanese food, is that it?

I’d be interested to hear what people reckon is the best place to get it in Adelaide, I admit now I’m having insane cravings!

As I eluded in the previous post where I was talking about eBay nonsense, earlier this week I spent two days and one night back in Kuala Lumpur. Doing errands mostly, nothing too exciting.

One thing I was able to do in the spare time before we boarded the bus back was to go to The Ikano Power Centre in Damansara. Because my family lived here from 2006-07 my dad and I often went there to pick up IKEA furniture and we’d always grab a bite to eat at the Norwegian sandwich shop. They desperately need to open a franchise in Singapore, their salmon sandwiches are incredible and the outdoor atmosphere was great.

It’s funny the things we remember isn’t it? Going through my blog archives here for example I remember I talked a lot about internet and phone problems in Malaysia. Also funny that the design of this site hasn’t changed much at all since then either.

We moved back to Singapore in June 2007.

If I had posted this entry before my praise for Unicomp (Kudos to Unicomp), it would have been entry 1787, a particularly onerous number considering troubles at Boeing with their latest generation 787 Dreamliner. A sub-par segue I admit, but I did think it was spooky.

After yet more delays, Qantas have cancelled their order for 15 of the medium range, energy efficient airliners and have deferred their order for Jetstar, their low cost subsidiary. From Flightblogger:

The news came early this morning in Sydney, that Australia’s largest airline, Qantas had made significant changes to its 787 order, deferring the 15 787-8s it was supposed to receive starting in mid-2010 for Jetstar, while [cancelling] 15 additional 787-9s scheduled for delivery in 2014 and 2015.

Qantas management claim this has nothing to do with the repeated delays for the 787, instead citing troubling economic times as the reason. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I can’t help but think these delays did have some bearing on their decision. On the other hand as a regular air traveller I would take designs thoroughly safety tested over well timed releases any day of the week!

While ultimately I’d much prefer to have high speed trains replace the bulk of air travel because they’d use less energy and would be more comfortable and fun, I think the 787 Dreamliner is a remarkable plane. If you haven’t followed it’s development, the fuselage is the first to be fabricated largely out of composite materials which is more lightweight and stronger than aluminium, and the uniquely shaped GE engines give similar thrust with less fuel consumption. We’re really looking at the future here, at least I hope we are.

I’ve been in such a mad rush doing things since coming back to Singapore I haven’t really blogged about it or talked about it here. I will attempt to correct this.

If you don’t know the history, I was born in Australia and am an Australian citizen but grew up and spent most of my school years in Singapore. I’m now studying in Adelaide but I return to Singapore during the longer study breaks because I consider it home… I think!

Singapore and Adelaide are both fantastic places to live, but they couldn’t be more different. Well okay compared to say, Addis Abbaba they are very much alike, but now we’re just being pedantic. Pedantic sounds like a luxury brand of grilled cheese sandwich irons.

For one, Adelaide is much more laid back. I’m sitting here typing on my Armada M300 at the Starbucks at the Orchard Parade Hotel in Singapore and it’s 22:30, and they’ll be open for a while yet! Orchard Road is full of people at this time of night, there are cars everywhere, all the shops are still open. In fact I think there are more people down here just before midnight than there are people here during the day!

Then there are the differences in the cities themselves. Most of Singapore is huge high-rise buildings that are in a state of flux, being torn down when they’re 20 years old to be replaced with even taller things. Adelaide is much smaller and has a built up CBD that almost never changes with many beautiful old buildings, along with a fairly restrained suburbia. I love the bustle of Singapore, but Adelaide provides a nice break sometimes :).

What I love though is that I’ve established enough of a base in both that people recognise me in coffee shops and remember my usual order even if I haven’t been there for a few months!

When I fly out of Singapore or Adelaide I feel as though my life there is being paused, and when I land in the other my life is resuming there after a several month long pause. It’s like suspended animation.

Despite life sending my family and I plenty of sour lemons over the years, I’m extraordinarily lucky to live this lifestyle. I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

I preface this by saying I cannot possibly begin relate to nor understand the stress new parents are under, and I also relay my understanding that children may need specialised medical care in different places.

With those points out of the way, having spent the better part of my day in an enclosed space for six hours with four constanty screaming infants I pose the question: who would take their infants on a long haul flight? Perhaps I’m missing something, but to me it seems a bit selfish. The cold hard truth is infants do not belong on aeroplanes, just as I don’t belong in the play room outside Ikea furniture stores.

There are people like me who are tying to get work done on laptops; there are nervous, highly strung flyers like my sister and there are those trying to sleep on planes. I think I can confidently speak for the jetsetting public that we’re all perfectly fine having children sharing the plane with us as long as they are old enough (or quiet enough) not to be disruptive.

As with other social issues I don’t think the answer here is to legislate bans on parents taking children of a certain age (or average decible output!) onto long flights, as much as I’m temped to lobby for it! I think instead parents should be responsible and determine for themselves when their children are ready to fly, instead of just assuming a cabin full of people will be accomodating.

I emphasise again my intention here is not to be mean spirited, but people, I fly a lot, and if this uninterrupted streak of flights where I have to tolerate the shrieks, wails, tantrums and screams of infants doesn’t end, I might start screaming in the cabin too!

Sincerely,
- Ruben

All clear for takeoff!

In part one of my sister’s and my saga to get her a new passport when her current one suffered water damage I talked about our frantic dash to apply for accounts, Medicare, proof of age cards and other such riff raff so we had enough ID for her to satisfy the conditions.

Our efforts were not in vain; after a grueling interview comparing tens of provided documents to the official forms to find a combination that satisfied all the conditions, we finally got one that worked. The women serving us was extremely friendly and understanding, she even saw our last name and started speaking German to us!

Elke will be receiving her passport this Friday.

Unfortunately it wasn’t until after we left that I realised I hadn’t got the women’s name who served us. So many people in banks and government offices treat us like crap on a regular basis that when exchanges like this happen I try to always send positive feedback which I’m sure is ignored most of the time but it’s the least I can do. At least I got to say Haben Sie vielen Dank!