Left Paris for good on Saturday (10 Feb) and when I got into Singapore the next day, its time to prepare to travel again. I’m currently in Singapore Changi airport, waiting for a 8am flight on 12 Feb to Taipei for work. My clock is so messed up , I spent between 2am to 5am awake before its time to go to the airport.
Everything seems to be ok, except I’m not contactable at all for 3 weeks because of a little oversight. I got the old GSM SIM card I was using in Shanghai in 2005 sent to me from the office there, but just before leaving France I realised that it doens’t work. Someone must have cancelled it and a check with China Telecom told me that it cannot be enabled. SO I’ll just have to be contacted by email if there’s something urgent.
Last food in Paris? Croissant from the corner boulangerie. Fine as usual. And a cup of expresso from La Brioche Doree at the airport. Nothing special, no overweight luggage, managed to fit into the 30kg/person allowance. 2 bottles of Castellane champagne was checked in and it survived the trip. Oh, the 777 that we took from Paris to Singapore was one of those newer refurbed planes Singapore airlines had and its great even in economy. Ok, you stilll get to sleep upright, but there’s more leg room (5in for my long legs to the next seat!), at least 12″ LCD screen, and the usual VOD movie library. There’s StarOffice built in to the system as well, with a mini keyboard on the other side of teh usual tethered controller that you get. Simple, stick in your USB memory into a USB slot to save and access files. Tried to fool with it for a while, but I dont think its something you can spend a long time working on a large document. Its slow and its clunky to move the cursor with the arrow buttons. BEtter than nothing for those that doesn’t travel with a notebook. Which is almost no one who’s on a businesss trip?
Hectic week trying to get everything done before leaving. First up was my second Hepatitis vaccination with Havrix (name of the vaccine)… Did it in the office infirmary since they’re the one that’s asking me to take the first one 6 months ago. So now I’m covered for another 10 years before I have to take my next shot.
Next up is the cancellation of my RATP train/tram/bus subscription. I was thinking that I had to pay some penalty but the cancellation of the contract (or suspension, if you want to call it, up to a year) is easy enough, just walk into any RATP office, tell them you want to stop it, and they will key in the month you want to stop or suspend the subscription and that’s all. Only problem for me is usually the 12th month is free, and since I’m cancelling it only after 10 months after subscribing, I dont get the free month subscription! Dommage.
It was a nice day yesterday, full sunlight although the temperature was about 9C at the most. Took off for a nice slow ride counter clockwise from Boulogne-Billancourt, up the hill after Chaville/Viroflay into Velizy, and off downhill to Jouy-en-Josas, up to Saclay, detour to Chateaufort looking for the ex-Nortel office (which I did not find), down to Gif s/Yvette, Bures, Orsay, Palaiseau, Anthony, Clamart and back to Boulogne via Issy-les-Moulineaux. Sounds far, but 60km at the most. 61km on my Polar S625X. Twas a nice ride, relaxing, and burning about 2500kcal on the way, but at the same time nostalgic. I dont know when I’ll see those sceneries open air… its definitely different to see them on a bicycle rather than in a car. I had a little fall but when I was stationary trying to balance the bicycle on a pedestrial path. It was stupid but no problem, nothing was damaged except for a bent bottle carrier on my Felt F1X. Anyways, its all over now, coming Thursday, packers will be here and the bike will see the new day in Shanghai!
The movers are coming next thursday. I should be flying out of Paris next Saturday. What do I do with 1 week more to go?
Most of the adminstration stuff with the moving is taken care of by the company, so lucky for that. I will have to cancel my Freebox internet/phone subscription and my bus/metro card but other than that, the other stuff is to think about what things I should buy to bring with the rest of the shipment to Shanghai. Clothing is one, but not too much since generally things are cheaper in China. Bought a bread machine as well since we’re not sure if they sell a lot of them over there. Cooking utensils… they have it in China but at least I trust more the EU standards not to put dangerous chemicals during the manufacturing of things like non-stick pan (even from the same brand). So this weekend will be the last weekend for us to do last minute shopping.
Continue reading 'One week left to the end of my time here in France'»
Was developing my last roll of Kodak 400TX last night when I realised that instead of measuring 300ml I poured 400ml into the beaker. Can’t start all over again because I’ve just finished the small sample bottle of Rodinal that I have. It wouldn’t be practical, a week before moving my things to Shanghai to open a new 500ml bottle of developer.
So what do I do with 475ml of solution instead of the usual 375ml of 1+50 rodinal? I did a quick computation and found that 467ml of water and 8ml of Rodinal is equal to 1+58, so I figured if I had 16% more water than I should, then the concentration is 16% more dilute, so I developed it 16% longer in time compared to what I was planning to do at 1+50 concentration.
The resulting negative looks a little light, but still has quite a lot of details in it (maybe better even than 1+50 becuase of the diluted developer and longer time! but will have to scan it before I can tell). Overall, it was a disaster when I poured the solution into the tank, but it came out well! Phew!
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