Categories
photography travel

Milan, Italy, November 2007

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Milan [wikipedia.org] was the beginning and the end of Candice and my trip to Italy. The alpha and omega or our long delayed honeymoon. Milan was the beginning and the end because it is cheaper to fly in and out of the same city, otherwise we might have ended in Rome.

In the end it was a good idea to return to Milan; before leaving Singapore I tried unsuccessfully to get reservations to see the Leonardo’s The Last Supper [wikipedia.org] in Milan. I told the reservation company that we would be back in Milan for a day before leaving and they were able to get the reservations for that day. But I’m getting ahead of myself… Quite a few things happened before we saw the Last Supper.

We arrived early in the morning an had an adventure trying to get enough small change to buy tickets for the train from the airport from the automated machine. To get enough small change we had to get coffee from a cafe (and the first cafe turned us away as they did not have enough change for our 20 Euro note—this was to be a reoccurring theme while in Italy, everywhere we went people were asking for exact change or smaller notes. This was mostly annoying but in some places it was a problem, if I had had smaller change I would given it to them, I didn’t!) Even after drinking our espresso and latte we still needed more change so we went to a shop and got some bottled water for the train ride.

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After navigating the train and metro system we checked into our hotel and attacked their breakfast. Like having correct change, hotel breakfasts were to be a reoccurring problem. Candice was not impressed by them and she was distraught at the thought of the same thing every morning for almost a month but we only had Chinese for dinner four times in three weeks so I think we did well.

Our hotel was not quite two blocks away from Piazza del Duomo. This made the first stop easy enough; The Duomo of Milan [wikipedia.org]. The Duomo is impressive, being one of the largest and tallest cathedrals in the world. The vast open space of the inside is truly awe inspiring.

After exploring the insides of the Duomo we stopped for lunch near the Piazza and then visited La Scala [wikipedia.org] and spent some time listening to a symphony practice the works of Toscanini [wikipedia.org].

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We didn’t actually spent a lot of time in Milan, we went to Como [wikipedia.org] and on a train ride to Switzerland on the second and third day we were in Italy respectively. And on the forth day we were off to Verona and Venice.

Unfortunately one of the downsides of going to Italy in November is that the sun sets at 4:30. Most of the major sites close an hour before sunset or at sunset so it is hard to visit more than a few things in a day. Fortunately La Scala and the Duomo in Milan are close enough that after La Scala we returned to the Duomo to take in the sunset from the roof. The roof of the Duomo is magnificent, a must visit site. Even packed with all manner of tourists the site is awe inspiring. Every inch of the spires and buttresses of the Duomo are covered in carvings creating a magical playground unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been.

As I said earlier we visited Como and spent a day to ride the train through Switzerland (to Geneva and back to Milan) while staying in Milan are at the start of our trip. So the only other site we visited in Milan in the first few days was the Castle Sforzesco [wikipedia.org] which contains some nice museums. Worth a visit but not much to shout about. Anyway, there are no photos from the museum (or many from Milan for that matter) because of what happened on the way to Verona: someone stole my camera bag and all my camera equipment while on the train to Verona. Partly due to my own stupidity but this threatened to kill my mode for a few days. I did manage to put it aside and enjoy the rest of the trip but still feel sad about the photos that could have been. Candice was nice enough to let me use the Canon Ixus 75 I purchased for her for the trip. But it was not till Rome near the end of the trip that I was used to it enough to take a number or good photos. Everything you see posted to Flickr in my Italy sets is from the Ixus. This explains the lack of photos from Milan and Como as I was using my 40D not the Ixus, we only took a few snap shots with the Ixus.

As I said before I turned out to be a good thing that we returned to Milan for our flight back to Singapore. I managed to revisit the Duomo (including the roof—this time early in the morning) to take a few photos and even though they are not what I would have liked it is at least something.

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The only other thing we did when for the day we had back in Milan was to visit Leonardo’s The Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie [wikipedia.org]. Candice was not impressed and I don’t blame her. I was quite disappointed because the ‘tour’ you have to buy a ticket for in advance includes nothing but the painting itself. And while I enjoyed the tour the first time I took it with A—– in 2002 I felt cheated this time. The first time I went there was a guide who explained the history of the painting and talked about the symbolism making the whole tour much more meaningful. This time there was nothing. Just a room with a fresco. I don’t know if the guide the first time was a fluke or if this time we visited on a bad day or maybe they have decided that since the Da Vinci Code was so big they don’t need to have a guide. Whatever the reason I was disappointed and I have a hard time explaining to Candice why I enjoyed the painting so much.

That covers the sites we visited in Milan but a few words must be said about just walking the streets of Milan around the Piazza del Duomo. Streets filled with shops in the name of every major and minor fashion house in the world. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II [wikipedia.org] and other less known streets are amazing just to walk. Downtown Milan seems much more a living city than any of the others we visited (except maybe Rome) and it actually feels like people live there not like the glass bubble of Venice or the postcard vistas of central Florence.

You can see the whole Milan, Italy, November 2007 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].

Categories
ranting

Fini

It is done. I have finally uploaded all the Italy photos! Now… I have to sit down and write up a blog entry on the trip! I was planning on doing one entry per city but I don’t know if I am that ambitious now. Anyway… expect something on Candice and my honeymoon trip soon! (If you can’t help yourself you can take a sneak peak over at Flickr here [flickr.com].)

Categories
quotes

Standards

“…the funny rule about IETF RFCs (Internet Engineering Task Force Request for Comments) is that if you wait long enough just about every one will eventually be required”

Robert X. Cringely, from “The Once and Future King” [pbs.org].

I like this quote because I’m a fan of the IETF [ietf.org] and the work it has and is doing in standards.

I became a standards geek a few years back while working on a system for MMS [wikipedia.org] (more commonly known as picture messaging,) interoperability. In the course of working on this system I read a number or standards from various standards groups; the 3GPP, the 3GPP2, the ETSI, the OMA and the IETF among others. Invariably the common feature of the standards produced by the telephony standards bodies was their complexity. Nearly all the documents of the 3GPP, the 3GPP2, the ETSI and the OMA i read felt like the classic standard by committee. It was easy to read many different agendas into the various parts of the standards. I remember one line in a 3GPP standard that basically said; ‘this is the standard, but if you agree on something else you can use that too.’

The juxtaposition of these telephony standards with the IETF documents is amazing. Very few of the IETF docs run to more then a few dozen pages and each document deals with a single thing rather than trying to define the entire world. Given that IETF (and other standards docs) have their own language I won’t try to suggest that one will understand an IETF doc on first reading it but I do think that a person totally unfamiliar with the standards world would more quickly come to understand the standard in an IEFT doc than in any of the other standards bodies various documents.

The telephony world no doubt makes money but is today moving toward the same models that underly the Internet and it is the IETF who designed and defined the Internet’s protocols and functions. I think the success of the Internet speaks a lot about the quality of the work the IEFT does in standards. As Cringely says, sometimes they are years ahead of the rest of the world but it’s good to know that someone is thinking that far ahead.

Categories
quotes

Too many people

“In 1800 less than 3% of the world lived in cities. Most people lived their entire lives without ever seeing one

In 1900, 150 million people lived in the world’s cities. That number has now surged past 3 million and last year crossed another tipping point: more than half the people on Earth now live in cities. By 2050—it will be more than 2/3 of us. Humans are now an urban species, cramming into vast urban agglomerations.”

192021.org [192021.org]

192021.org is an interesting site. An organization dedicated to dealing will all aspects of the urbanization of the human population of the Earth. It is mind boggling to think that more than 3 billion people live in cities—more than half the worlds population lives in cities.

I live in Singapore, one of the cities that 192021.org notes will have more than 20 million people living in it sometime in the 21st century—that is assuming that global warming does not cause the ocean to rise an wipe Singapore off the map completely. But I grew up on the very outskirts of the suburbs of a very small city, less than 40 thousand people! I enjoyed, still enjoy, wide open spaces, trees, mountains, fields of green growing things, the singing of bugs at night and birds in the day. I hope to be able to return to wide open spaces one day. I don’t want to call 20 million people neighbor.

Categories
ranting

Taxi Rage

I can’t stand the cab system in Singapore.

It constantly drives me crazy. Between cab drivers who don’t understand, very simple, slowly spoken English, cab drivers who can’t get the car out of second gear –even on the expressway– and the classic ‘can show me? I new driver lah. Don’t know. Sorry!’ (which translates to either, ‘I can’t understand your accent’ or ‘I don’t know my way around Singapore.’)

I just spent… oh, 36 minutes by the clock on my phone, on the corner of my block (a major road by the way) trying to hail a taxi. During that time about 150 to 200 cabs went by. I finally gave up and just called off going to meet some mates for a drink because I’m too mad at this point about the whole cab system here in Singapore.

Why? Because it’s the most fucked up cab system I’ve ever been forced to use. To be honest I don’t really like cabs in general, but it’s the most efficient way to get around Singapore most of the day (with the exception of closing times: office closing times (about 6 in Singapore,) shop closing time (about 9pm) and bar closing time (which stretches from about midnight to 3am.)

Unfortunately for me my 36 minutes minutes falls just before midnight. So after 36 minutes standing on the street corner like some gigello with my arm saluting mein fuehrer I still did not have a cab. About 70% of the cabs I saw were hired. Another 20% were ‘on call.’ Which still leave about 10% but it’s the cabs in that 10% that make me so mad.

I saw one guy, in a blue Hyundai ‘comfort cab’ go around the block four times with his for hire sign on talking on his mobile.

I saw one guy in a while Mercedes cab pass me three times looking right at me and then keep driving. This is typical… they see a white guy and they assume if they circle the block he will call for a cab and they can get an extra four bucks for call.

Several other cabs with their for hire signs illuminated just speed on by like I did not exist—no doubt waiting for a call since it’s cab rush hour.

At least six cabs turned their ‘for hire’ sign off, or switched to ‘busy’ (which I assume means ‘I really need to take a crap… so I can’t pick anyone up.’) when they saw me. I guess they forgot to switch the roof signal off when the last passenger got out.

A bunch of cabs were on ‘shift change.’ Which is the biggest socialist nanny state screw up I’ve ever dealt with! Shift change came about because cab drivers say they can’t make enough money (cab rental is paid by the day, at least by most divers) so several guys team up to share a single cab. This means that, for example, one guy drives during the day for eight hour, then switches with another guy who drives for eight hour. The second guy switches with a third guy for the last 8 hours and the third guy returns the car to the first guy. The problem is that when they are going to switch drivers drivers will only pick you up if you are going somewhere near where they are switching with the other driver. Inevitably these guys don’t switch anywhere near town and so they are all headed to the Singapore boondocks for the switch. Which means 90% of the time they are not going your direction, but they still pull over to ask. And it never fails that while they are asking and then saying ‘no thanks’ to you empty, not of shift change cabs pass right by! This will make a kind, tree-hugging, bleeding heart liberal into a Nazi who wants to euthanize all the cab drivers in Singapore in oh, about 2 seconds.

And then… there are the cabs who do stop. But not for me. It went down like this (and this is typical): A couple or group walking along the side walk will pass me or come out of the door next to me, look at me and walk down the side walk against traffic. There they will wait, 20 meters from me for a cab! And every time they get a damn cab! Tonight there were 4 times this happened. First a group of four party kids (2 girls and 2 guys) dressed in bright colors, then a couple both in all blue and black, then a woman and her 2 kids and maid, and finally a couple of guys in way too tight cloths! 3 of the 4 groups got cabs that were dropping someone else off, all of them came to the sidewalk after me and all of them clearly saw me… in fact everyone but the mom looked at me as the cab drove off like it was a big joke.

The last straw was the silver cab that pulled up about five meters from me to drop some guy off and then after I walked over and before the guy got out pulled back into the street and drove on 20 meters to drop the guy off. As soon as the guy got out another guy standing there got in.

Un–fucking–believable.

They just busted a bunch of taxi drivers here for running an off-the-meter racket. Nights like tonight make me want to get tickets to see them caned. (We’ll not really…)