Starting January 2009, all citizens of visa waiver countries (yep, that includes me) will have to register with the US government online three days prior (!) to travel. The site is already online, but I think it’s voluntary to use it, right now.

The whole procedure is supposed to give authorities enough time to detect and deny entry to “terrorists”. Somehow, I am having a hard time imagining that there’ll be many evil terrorists amongst the citizens of Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

I dare barely say it, but there could be a minor positive side-effect. Instead of having to fill out I-94W forms on the spot — they are only valid for three months and especially painful to fill out at a land border crossing — these online forms are valid for two years.

Now, it depends, of course, how they’ll handle it, whether this will be an actual improvement or not. If they do it right, it’ll save me pulling over and going inside at land border crossings, which I have to do now if I don’t already have a valid I-94W in my passport.

In the end, I guess, this is another development that has to be filed under the “oh well” category. If I have to travel for business, I have to travel for business, regardless of how much I like or dislike the rules. As for pleasure travel, that’s of course my personal choice. It sure seems to be getting less and less attractive to go, though. The we can seize your laptop/gadget for no good reason rule certainly isn’t helping, either.

It’s great times when upcoming vacations are getting close enough to book cool stuff to do. We are already practiced winery visitors (see the Napa adventure, the Victoria adventure, as well as the Niagara adventure). It’s still fun doing it, though (one might think we are big lushes :-D), especially in Canada and even more so in BC, where we can bring home as much wine as we please (not a measly two bottles per person you get to bring with you from the US).

This time around, my parents will come along, too. It’ll be their first time in the Okanagan, which prompted this whole trip-idea to begin with. Since my parents and I come from a wine growing region back in Austria (the region is officially know as the Weinviertel — and we have tons of Heurigen there), they should get some good times out of these tours.

We’ll be doing the Signature Wine Tour by Discover Okanagan Tours and the Nothern Bench Winery Tour by Wildflower Trails & Wine Tours.

Happy September 4 and 5 to us!

I think time has come to take a big breath and relax for a bit. Three more weeks till I go on vacation, which will be even nicer.

If (or hopefully when) they clean our apartment windows, I’ll post a few Downtown views. Right now, they are too dusty and spotty to make for good photo taking.

Looks like we’ll be having an unplanned brunch out, today, before lugging around more boxes. I worked hard to convince my dear wife to go to Crave for brunch. Gotta go places while we still live close to them. — Besides, it wasn’t that difficult at all to put my plan into action.

Normally, I wait a few weeks, preferably till the x.1 release comes out. However, I liked the revision feature, so I made the jump.

On the other hand, we’ll be moving out of the condo even sooner! Moving day is August 2. That’s three weeks and a few days. We are — sort of — trying to take advantage of the long weekend. We’ll “lose” one day of it due to the move, but there will still be two more days off after that. Days to relax and chill out. Besides, August 2 already counts as “mid month” as far as mover’s rates go, which is always good.

We’ll be staying Downtown for the following not-quite two months (till September 27). That’s when it’ll be time to move to our new house in New Westminster!

Exciting times and a “first” for either one of us. Brigette’s first time living Downtown and a first for both of us living in our own house, on property that we actually own.

I took the previous picture showing the Downtown skyline from Stanley Park in May 2002. Yep, that was quite a while ago. The new picture, showing Downtown Vancouver from Locarno Beach, is, indeed, brand new (taken on June 15, 2008), as evidenced by the presence of the Shangri-La Vancouver .

The situation in Austria is different in the sense that the iPhone is offered by two cell phone providers: T-Mobile and One. That alone makes it more difficult for the individual provider to be as stupid as Rogers.

As of today, XE.com reports an exchange rate of $1.60 for €1, which makes things a little more expensive than they would have been even a month ago, compared to the Canadian Dollar.

T-Mobile:

Phone: €49 (8 GB), €99 (16 GB)
Contract duration: 24 months (changes to other iPhone plans allowed)
One-time activation fee: €49
Classic plan: €39/month: €0.25 per SMS, 1000 combined airtime minutes (mobile + landline in Austria)
Supreme plan: €55/month: 1000 SMS included, 1000 airtime minutes for each of the following categories T-Mobile, landline, other mobile carriers, voice mail (that’s 4000 minutes total)
Incoming calls: unlimited
Data plan: 3 GB of traffic included in the above
Data overage: €0.10/MB

One:

Phone: €149 (8 GB), €229 (16 GB)
Contract duration: 24 months (no changes allowed)
One-time activation fee: €0
Monthly fee: €10 for (Sep. ‘08 till Dec. ‘08), then €25
Airtime: 1000 minutes (all of Austria, cell and landline)
Incoming calls: unlimited
Data plan: €14/month for 100 SMS and 3 GB of traffic
Data overage: couldn’t find any information

Bottom line:

Not the greatest, but certainly more affordable than Rogers. From T-Mobile, you can purchase an iPhone for $158 ($79+$79), sign a 2-year contract and pay a monthly fee of $63, and that gives you more than Rogers: $199 for the phone and $115/month for the plan, locked in for 36 months. If you go over your bandwidth limit, it can still get expensive, but not as expensive as Rogers.

At the end of the day, I don’t think I’ll ever get the philosophy behind Roger’s iPhone plans. It’s the be sneaky, screw the customer over, take advantage of our monopoly, hope the customer runs past their bandwidth limit so we can charge even more approach. Customers are going to realize that (and they already have), and they’ll be rightfully pissed because of it. Rogers could have had a instead. Had they offered reasonable prices, they wouldn’t have been able to handle the stampede of eager customers, making good money in the process and not alienating their current and future clients. But no, they need to be stupid morons and try to make money the blunt (rub-it-in-our-face-we-are-the-monopoly) and sneaky (we-hope-you-exceed-your-bandwidth) way. I hope they get what they deserve, i. e. barely any iPhone sales. That’d be fun.

Would I, personally, be getting an iPhone if we had plans like the one offered by AT&T? Yes, absolutely. How about the T-Mobile or One plans from Austria? Maybe. Not sure. It’s on the verge, but still manageable enough that it could, realistically, be a yes. And with Roger’s plan? Hell, NO!

On Wednesday, we had an appointment at 6pm to see a condo one block east of Beatty, between Georgia and Dunsmuir (in those new high rises above Costco). The guy owning it asked us to call him when we were on our way. We did, but it turned out that (a) his phone went to voice mail and (b) that his voice mail was full. So, we couldn’t get in touch with him, nor could we leave him a message. His buzzer went to the same, full mail box, as well. The guy didn’t show up either, even though we had already agreed to meet there at 6pm (it hadn’t been an issue getting a hold of him earlier in the day). Eventually we left and went for dinner. Thankfully, there was at least yummy sushi to be had after this experience, otherwise I would have trekked from Burnaby to Downtown for no reason whatsoever.

The second installment of this story happened this morning. Another appointment, originally set up for 1pm, but then moved to 10am for our convenience. 977 Mainland. We got there five minutes early, waited for the owner. Nobody showed up. We phoned the owner. It went straight to voice mail. No ringing. At least the mail box was not full and we could leave a message. Not that that did us any good. 20 minutes and a second message later, we left. Can you say déjà vu?

And the “best” thing of all: guy #1 did not reply to the e-mail sent to him after the fact, and guy #2 did not phone back despite having received two voice mails and clearly being aware that he stood us up.

What is it with people?! Obviously, they are not very eager to rent out their places. And these things go between $2000 and $2500/month! What really pisses me off, though, is that there’s probably enough demand, that they don’t have to take appointments seriously. They can afford to be asses. If they manage to remember every 5th appointment they make and actually show up, it probably results in a signed deal, which is good enough for them and that’s all they care about.

Now we have to find a temporary place (likely Downtown) for us and the Kitteh. We’ll look at one apartment tomorrow and at another one on Saturday. Should be exciting times. Luckily, even though we are moving twice, we only have to pack and unpack once. So we won’t have to repeat the nastiest part of moving two times in a row.

The new owner of our condo wants to take possession on August 9, so we are planning on renting our temporary place at the beginning of August and move some time between August 1 and August 9.

We’ll be there till the end of September. We get our house on September 26, which means that we’ll be moving in, most likely, between September 27 and September 30.

We got another offer today and just put in a counter. Unlike the first offer (the seller just walked away in the end before even an inspection was conducted), this time asking price and offer are quite far apart (and our asking price is already lower). Our realtor is confident, though, that there is room on the buyer’s side to better their offer. We’re sure hoping so.

Now it’s the waiting game. And that’s the most stressful part. Sitting there, waiting, not being able to do anything anymore. Just hoping.

Another showing is scheduled for tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

Vancouver
Current Conditions: Light Rain, 11 °C
Observed at: Vancouver Int’l Airport
Date: 10:00 AM PDT Monday 9 June 2008

Yellowknife
Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy, 16 °C
Observed at: Yellowknife Airport
Date: 11:00 AM MDT Monday 9 June 2008

Fortunately it cooled off a bit soon thereafter, because that weekend was a little too “warm” for my liking. However, it’s been gradually getting worse and worse ever since. There were a few nice, sunny, warm days, but now it’s back to daily highs of 12°C and rain. — And it’s supposed to stay like that for the whole week.

To be fair, the weather last weekend was good, and it doesn’t look too bad for the next one, either.

Today

Day: Showers. High 15. UV index 3 or moderate.
Night: Cloudy with 60 percent chance of showers. Becoming windy overnight. Low 11.

 

Wednesday

Cloudy with 40 percent chance of showers in the morning. Clearing in the afternoon. Windy. High 18.

 

Thursday

Showers. Low 10. High 14.

 

Friday

Cloudy with 70 percent chance of showers. Low 11. High 14.

 

Saturday

A mix of sun and cloud with 30 percent chance of showers. Low 12. High 16.

 

However, I can’t help but wonder: when, just when will it turn nice for more than a day or two in a row? The weather we are having right now is suitable for October or February, not June.

And no, I am not asking for 35°C heat or anything even close to that.

The only thing neither one of us is looking forward to is spending 13 hours on a plane. Yuck! But at least we got decent seats this time, or so we think. Window and isle (no middle seat).

Afterwards, it was off to Aberdeen to take a look at the floating restaurants.

The bus ride back to Kowloon offered some pretty nice views:

Now, it’s time for us to start saying good bye to Hong Kong. We’ll be leaving tomorrow, May 17, at 16:35 local time. We’ll arrive in Vancouver at around 14:00 the same day, i. e. two and a half hours before leaving — the joys of crossing the date-line.

Once there, we first explored Fisherman’s Wharf. Parts of it were cheesy (the amusement park section), parts were nice (the restaurants and stores).

Thereafter, we embarked on a 1-hour long walk to Senado Square — except that we didn’t know it would be 1 hour long and there would be litterally nowhere to stop along the way to have a cool drink and a bit of a rest.

Fortunately, the walk turned out to be worthwhile. The square was quite lovely, and we finally found a place to cool ourselves down with some iced coffee (at Starbucks, no less).

We made our way to St. Paul’s Cathedral and up to the Museu de Macau.

The view from the museum square is quite nice:

Afterwards, it was time for some (window) shopping — we didn’t buy anything, though. Finally, we took the bus back to Fisherman’s Wharf, where we had lovely Portugese dinner.

This great day was concluded by a smooth boat trip back to Hong Kong Island. Conclusion: Macau definitely has a Caribbean touch to it.

On the bus, the scenery was just flying by.

At our destination, we visited the big Buddha, wandered around, enjoyed the scenery, had vegetarian lunch at the monestary, explored the temple, and generally had a good time.

And, finally, we made our way back by gondola and train. The gondola ride was pretty cool. Awesome views of the landscape and the Buddha, the airport and the sea.

Good stuff. A highly recommended day trip for Hong Kong visitors.

We went shopping, Brigette mainly looking for stuff for herself, and ended up buying two shirts for me. The story of our lives. lol We rode the traditional double-decker tram from Central till almost Shau Kei Wan, making a stop near Happy Valley.

Took a few shots from Causeway Bay over to Kowloon

Rode the tram back and went for Thai food.

We had high tea at the Peninsula Hotel, which was quite lovely, with a few musicians playing. We shopped some more. We admired the night view of Hong Kong Island from Kowloon.

Watched the Symphony of Lights performance (I’ll post a video of it, it was impressive) and finally had dinner at PJ Murphy’s Irish Country Pub on Nathan Road. Interesting experience seeing a pub menu in English/Cantonese with photos of the dishes — presumably, because the translation may not mean all that much without a picture to go with it. It tasted very authentic, though — as much as a Canadian and an Austrian can classify Irish cuisine. lol Bottom line is we liked it and we got home way past our bed time.

Update: Here is the promised Symphony of Lights video:

Then we made our way up to the highest point of Hong Kong today: the Peak. We took the tram up to get there.

The view was of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, although very misty, quite stunning.

The lunch we had up on the Peak was, unfortunately, only mediocre (even though the price for it wasn’t).

After some more window shopping, we made our way on foot back into town. It was a nice walk, but we got a bit more than we bargained for. Not only was the path down quite steep in places, it was also quite long (90+ minutes to get somewhere near civilization again). Our calf muscles are sure going to thank us tomorrow. lol

Here’s one of the side streets off of Nathan Road:

And here’s Hong Kong Island seen from the Avenue of the Stars:

I am looking forward to exploring more of Hong Kong tomorrow!