Sunday evening mood

[mood:sleepy]
[location:SIN@Home]

Sunday night ... Just came back from the cinema to see Johnny Depp alias Willi Wonka in the children's story 'Charlie and the chocolate factory'.
So far I haven't read the book, but I kinda liked the movie. Was fun to see, but I heard, that the book was much better. Even so I think it was the perfect role for JD.

There are quite a lot of good movies at the moment. Have to go more often to catch up - was surprised, when I saw all these good titles at the ticket desk.

This week was a short week for me. I've spent the last weekend with Che / Melissa in Bali & Gili Trawangan.
What shall I say ... Amazing ... Awesome ... Perfect ...
We had such a good time there. I flew down to Bali on Friday and met Che at the hotel. I haven't seen that guy for almost 10 months now and after about 30 seconds, it felt like we've never been separated. We had soooo many things to talk about. So many different experiences we both had discovered and of course had to tell each other. Just amazing. So we've spent the first night, walking around in Bali and talking.

Saturday, morning, I had the pleasure to meet Melissa, Che's girlfriend. They both living together and met each other in Thailand, where both were working as divemaster. Soooo good to see both of them. Che's seems to be sooo happy and different (in a positive way - relaxed and always in a good mood). I just told him some of my stories about the daily hassle and 'little problems' from the work life, which he just answered with a big smile, turned around - looking onto the white beach with the blue water in the background and started to laugh. Such a bastard!
So we went diving - in the meanwhile he is a certified dive master (recently preparing to become an instructor), so he knows all the good dive spots to go to. Working in a dive shop makes this much easier, as we could get the whole equipment there. I think I've mentioned it in my last blog, that I bought a new camera for him, including underwater housing. As you can see from my picture section, the first ones might be a bit blurry, but later on, they became quite good. Self-praise stinks?! Anyway ...

Gili itself is a small island close to Lombok, with about 1000 people living on it. Of course tourism is the biggest income which explains the 5 dive schools on it.
Che took me to this local restaurant, where we ate this - don't even know how to describe the food - amazingly good but so different food.
They've prepared the food on a stone fireplace, fried the noodles and put a lot of spices on it. It tasted just good. We went there every day - I was soooo addicted. *yummy* ... My stomache got a bit nervous, but all in all it was a very good experience.
Also the 'Schnorcheltest' - a test every dive master has to go through - was a lot of fun. That guy Ingo from Austria had to wear a formula 1 costume, running around through the village. He then got the snorkel and mask on his face and had to drink around 1 liter of a weird-mixed-all-in-one juice. He was sooo hammered afterwards! A good laugh for all the participating people.

You can't imagine, how hard it was for me to step on the plane back towards SIN on that day. Tuesday was also the 40th anniversary of Singapore National Day parade. Therefore they've planned, organised and tested everything since 6 weeks already.
So I was stuck in the plane above Singapore for more than 1 hour, as they didn't allow planes to land at Changi Airport, while there is the flight show going on. Of course the show was not for one hour, but the queue around it got really long.
So plane got delayed but we finally arrived at the airport. As you might imagine, it was one big hell there. So many people ... Waiting at the customs, for the luggage and I think I've never seen such a long queue in front of a taxi stand before.

Wednesday morning was quite hard to get up then. But it was just a 3 days week, so not that much pain. From all the airconditioning I got a bad running nose. Sniffing around the whole time.
That's about it ... My weekend was pretty relaxed. Wanted to get rid of my cold. Useless ;) still have it yet.
Went shopping on saturday to buy a new computer. Got close to my nerd-related computer parts again. Soooo expensive.

Here my 'wish-desktop':
- AMD FX 55 64 bit processor
- 2 x 250 GB Raid 0 stripping
- 3 GB RAM
- MSI GeForce NX6800GT 256 MB PCIe card

Finally I realized again that I am a day dreamer and did - fortunately - not buy the computer. Will see, maybe another time.
I hate working on a laptop. Everything is soo small and compact. Prefer having my proper keyboard a nice big screen and not have to worry about wasting space. My current Lap has only 40 GB of hard disk - blablabla I can already hear all the old-time-technology freaks shouting: I only had this 10 MB hard disk; I know ... BUT THIS TIME IS OVER... we are living in a time, where space doesn't cost any more. - So whenever I install a new software I have to worry abour running out of memory!! I've moved all my private stuff already to the external disk. Just Oracle alone with one instance of a DB running needs about 3 GB ... (and this is just one software running).
Anyway ... I like the idea of stripping ... So damned fast. I was once working on one of these machines and it was amazing. Never had such a fast machine before.
I also saw one of the Sony playstation 3 adds. They were announcing it on some screens in that huge mall. This box is running at 2.06 Terra flops ... Isn't that crazy?? For a gaming device? The graphics were just incredible. Xen told me about the new Xbox 360 he saw in Seattle the other day which also sounds pretty amazing. Looking forward to see these things in the shop.

Things are sorted out now. Booked my flight back to Germany!! (Yes I know - I mention this in every blog, but after the last changes, this it the final version.)
9th - 18th September. *yippie* ...
The group is getting bigger and bigger now. Paul from Paris & Caro from Vienna will join as well.

Uff ... getting tired now... My bed is calling my name soooo loudly! See y a ...

Ste[ph]an