Helloooo! Happy holidays!!
I am finished school for this term, and Jordan is done co-op, meaning that we have lots more time to look forward to our ASIA TRIP!! :D
We just booked our tickets from Taiwan to Hong Kong for a pretty good deal! So we're set in terms of getting to Taiwan, then to Hong Kong and back to Canada. All that's left in terms of flight booking is our trip to Singapore!
There's still lots more to do, but as I complete each task off the task list, I become more and more excited about our trip! Weeee Asia! :D
Melody
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Flights are booked!
And thank god for that!
This is much needed progress and solidification of our trip plans.
I'll be flying out to Vancouver on Jan 7th, flying to Taiwan on Jan 15th, and flying back to Canada on May 27th. Will be a long escape from Canada and Winter! I wonder how quickly homesickness will come.
This is much needed progress and solidification of our trip plans.
I'll be flying out to Vancouver on Jan 7th, flying to Taiwan on Jan 15th, and flying back to Canada on May 27th. Will be a long escape from Canada and Winter! I wonder how quickly homesickness will come.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Booking flights and looking up restaurants
So I booked my first flight, which is my flight from Toronto to Vancouver. We're getting an updated quote on the main flights and are hoping to purchase tomorrow.
Residence applications have been sent in and now we just sit to hear about the residence app and visa application.
Maps
Been compiling a major map of tourist attractions in HK, Singapore and Taiwan. Found lots of well rated, cheap eats in HK! There are also a good number of fun weekend excursions that I can see in the various parts of Hong Kong and lots of temples for us to explore during our 5 days in Singapore!
Check out the map page for some of the locations that I've looked up!
Finances
Been looking into bank accounts for our time there. Seems the easiest method is to open an HSBC account when I get there and then to wire money into that account. Will have to pay a 2.5% conversion fee which is going to suck.
Cell phones
Was debating looking for a Samsung Galaxy SII for cheap when I get there but I may just continue using this Blackberry and get a prepaid data plan. With this I'm pretty sure I won't have BBM but the time difference to back home will make BBM much less useful anyways. The prepaid data plans seem pretty cheap and will allow me to navigate downtown with a GPS and help us not get lost! Currently look at http://www.three.com.hk and http://www2.pccwmobile.com.
Residence applications have been sent in and now we just sit to hear about the residence app and visa application.
Maps
Been compiling a major map of tourist attractions in HK, Singapore and Taiwan. Found lots of well rated, cheap eats in HK! There are also a good number of fun weekend excursions that I can see in the various parts of Hong Kong and lots of temples for us to explore during our 5 days in Singapore!
Check out the map page for some of the locations that I've looked up!
Finances
Been looking into bank accounts for our time there. Seems the easiest method is to open an HSBC account when I get there and then to wire money into that account. Will have to pay a 2.5% conversion fee which is going to suck.
Cell phones
Was debating looking for a Samsung Galaxy SII for cheap when I get there but I may just continue using this Blackberry and get a prepaid data plan. With this I'm pretty sure I won't have BBM but the time difference to back home will make BBM much less useful anyways. The prepaid data plans seem pretty cheap and will allow me to navigate downtown with a GPS and help us not get lost! Currently look at http://www.three.com.hk and http://www2.pccwmobile.com.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Photo Backup Madness
So this is altogether one of the least exchange-related posts but it's about the photo back up system I want to use during exchange.
I've been looking more and more at using picasa web albums for it's sync option, great program interface and sorting, it's quick accessibility from blogger, and it's decent prices for space upgrades. My main problem is that the sync is really quite the disappointment, with the upload speed being a big disappointment. I actually waited nearly 20 minutes for 1 photo to upload. At first I was being throttled by Rogers (retry needed), but I read that other users have had similar problems so I don't think it's just me. So for a manual method where I upload to Google+, it's pretty good, and seems that I would have unlimited storage. However I was really hoping for a automatic sync method where I could simply have my photos backup online whenever I dump them in a particular folder.
Other considerations were Dropbox but the prices were much higher for extra storage. And another aggravation about Picasa's sync feature is I have no way to set a "back up photos only" type feature, whether it be through file extension filtering or file size filtering.
This is where the portable hard drive is going to come in. :) I'm doing research currently to get a portable hard drive, between 500GB and 1TB that I can store all my photo media on. This is part of a long term goal I've had to store all my photos on a specific drive, as opposed to my current setup where my photos are stored along with my music and program files. If I configure an automatic backup with that hard drive to my photo folder, I think I should have what I want to do local backup, and then Google+ will be a good second backup.
I've been looking more and more at using picasa web albums for it's sync option, great program interface and sorting, it's quick accessibility from blogger, and it's decent prices for space upgrades. My main problem is that the sync is really quite the disappointment, with the upload speed being a big disappointment. I actually waited nearly 20 minutes for 1 photo to upload. At first I was being throttled by Rogers (retry needed), but I read that other users have had similar problems so I don't think it's just me. So for a manual method where I upload to Google+, it's pretty good, and seems that I would have unlimited storage. However I was really hoping for a automatic sync method where I could simply have my photos backup online whenever I dump them in a particular folder.
Other considerations were Dropbox but the prices were much higher for extra storage. And another aggravation about Picasa's sync feature is I have no way to set a "back up photos only" type feature, whether it be through file extension filtering or file size filtering.
This is where the portable hard drive is going to come in. :) I'm doing research currently to get a portable hard drive, between 500GB and 1TB that I can store all my photo media on. This is part of a long term goal I've had to store all my photos on a specific drive, as opposed to my current setup where my photos are stored along with my music and program files. If I configure an automatic backup with that hard drive to my photo folder, I think I should have what I want to do local backup, and then Google+ will be a good second backup.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Official Acceptance: Visa application time!
Ok so the official acceptance letter was ready for us at UW staring Tues Nov 1 2011. It took about a month to get a turnaround from HKUST. We 14 days to get the visa application back to HKUST (through mail) so it's hustle time! Melody helped me out by retrieving my package for me and scanning the time sensitive stuff to me so that's good! In the package seems to be the visa application, as well as residence application. Hustling to send the visa out by Thursday so that it will arrive in HK in time.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Let's go now!!
I am so ready to leave NOW...!
Although there are still a lot of details and things we need to figure out before we head off!
We're hoping to go visit some awesome places before we settle down in Hong Kong. Taiwan is definitely on the list! I am excited to take Jordan around to see my home country (TAIWAAAN!) and eat lots of yummy food and drink bubble tea :P Although I'll probably be as much of a tourist as Jordan, since I have not been back in years...:0
Singapore is another option we are looking at! A couple of my friends who are from Singapore rave about the fun they have there so it's quite exciting as well! :D
Although there are still a lot of details and things we need to figure out before we head off!
We're hoping to go visit some awesome places before we settle down in Hong Kong. Taiwan is definitely on the list! I am excited to take Jordan around to see my home country (TAIWAAAN!) and eat lots of yummy food and drink bubble tea :P Although I'll probably be as much of a tourist as Jordan, since I have not been back in years...:0
Singapore is another option we are looking at! A couple of my friends who are from Singapore rave about the fun they have there so it's quite exciting as well! :D
Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
HALLO!
Hello from Melody!!!
Testing to this how this work with 2 contributors.
I am EXCITED FOR THE TRIP! Truthfully, I have not had much time to do any research into flights and other things related to this trip yet...school has been ultra busy. But I will for sure soon! Like Jordan mentioned, we can hopefully get a good deal from ASAPtickets or something like that.
Let's see how the researching goes!!
Testing to this how this work with 2 contributors.
I am EXCITED FOR THE TRIP! Truthfully, I have not had much time to do any research into flights and other things related to this trip yet...school has been ultra busy. But I will for sure soon! Like Jordan mentioned, we can hopefully get a good deal from ASAPtickets or something like that.
Let's see how the researching goes!!
Lots of tasks to work on, mostly fun planning :)
Lots to do!
- Finish HKUST Application
- Find Plane Tickets
- Find a site (ASAPtickets.com) that has some cheap flights into Asia
- Plan out pre-classes vacation
- Hoping to go to Singapore, Vietnam, Korea, Malaysia and some others :)
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Test Post from Jordan
This is a test to see if Melody and I can easily share access to a single blog so we can both upload content :)
-J
-J
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