Football fan? I am not actually, but...

I'm not a fan of football. I'm really not. But living in London, I can't help but noticing how people here are so crazy about football. Or football mad as some people call it. A few weeks before world cup started, I already saw cars with England flags on everywhere. Houses, windows, balconies were decorated with bigger flags. I also saw on newspapers that there was even a pub whose owner is a football fanatic and he decorated his pub's roof with the largest England flag he bought on ebay. A few days before the world cup started, the news then went on talking about how people would call in sick and avoid work to watch the match and how it would cost UK businesses because of that.

Today, my office was a little quiet. Quite a few of my colleagues finished worked early to watch the 3pm qualifying match of England vs Slovenia. And yes, if you're wondering, we are allowed to go home early to watch the game and we can pay the hours back later. I think a lot of companies do that too. After 2 rather disappointing games, many people were very hopeful that England could go further. Anyway...where was I? Oh yes...my office was a little quiet and then suddenly I heard people cheering so loud. Yeaahhhh! There must have been a big screen or big TV somewhere near my office building where people gathered to watch the match. The cheer made me and my colleagues who were working to wonder. What happened? Did England score a goal? So we checked the internet and found out about the first goal. Another loud cheer - the almost second goal. And so on, until the game finished where England won 1-0 over Slovenia. England can go forward. Yeay! And people were happy. Somehow I could feel it. Football brings people together.

So you see, now I know that much about the world cup and football...:). And not to forget, the world cup song, which my daughter keeps on singing everyday as her school has been preparing its students with world cup theme for its open day this Friday.

Here's the link to the song in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhM-cpSwrmM&NR=1

And my last words to people here who are really passionate about football: Go England Go!

Blogging Absence

I haven't been writing for a while now. I just moved to a new house and finally got a bit of time to relax. I still have lots to do but at least the move is over. It's been a hectic couple of weeks. And I'm so glad it's over.

Now let me have a cup of coffee and hopefully I can start writing again soon :)

Missed My Flights!

I just experienced an unexpected turn of an event. I missed my flight to a supposedly lovely holiday in Norway. And in my overall travel experience, this was the second time it happened. What a shame! I just can't believe it!

Last Friday, when driving to Stansted Airport, there was a long queue somewhere in M25 towards M11. At first, I thought I wasn't going to wait for very long but I think we were stuck there with very little movement for over an hour. Apparently, there was a tunnel refurbishment where only 2 lanes left allocated for an initial 4, hence the bottleneck happened. We reached the airport 5-10 mins before departure time and I was hoping for a miracle like a delay or something. We went through the customs and ran towards our boarding gate as quickly as we could, but it was already closed. I actually saw our plane moving away from us. Sigh. What can I say? We tried.

A few years ago, we were planning to go to Hainan, China. We reached the airport with plenty of time left to check in and things. The problem came when the check-in staff told us that we didn't have the valid visa to go into China. We argued that Hainan accepts visa on arrival to certain nationalities and ours was one of them. The staff checked for more information on her system but at the end, she still didn't let us go because she was sure that we would be sent back without the visa. Another sigh.

If I didn't miss my flight, I would have been in a boat by now enjoying and taking photos of a beautfiul fjord somewhere in Norway. Well, looking at the bright side of things, the weather forecast said that it would be raining on most days so I wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway. But still. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Now that you know my stories, I hope you can take away the good things out of this. Please be safe than sorry. Prepare plenty of time before you travel to check on things such as travel time, visa, etc. In the case of the visa story, if I knew that would be happening, I would have just applied for a normal visa or phoned the airplane company to confirm about it before hand. What's the point of us knowing about such a rule if the staff working at the airport doesn't. At the end of the day, we want to go to our holidays, not miss them.