by Jonny | May 16, 2013 | Travel
Terrible. Just terrible.
It’s not because of the over the top prices for the transport, namely the Underground and buses No, it’s not because the WiFi is not free at Heathrow Airport and because of that I was unable to contact anyone. It wasn’t even the flight being late by an hour and it wasn’t even the crying baby on the A380-800 airplane via Malaysia Airlines for the 16 hour duration to London. All of that didn’t bother me as much as the following:
Today was terrible as my suitcase broke. That might not seem serious, but when your luggage weighs 30kgs, it becomes a serious problem. The airport loaders must have broken my bag as the wheels axles were bent, and in the end the thing broke and I was left dead in the water lugging around 30kgs of my worldly items. Here you can see the extent of the damage:
I took the London Underground from Heathrow to Bromley By Bow (To the District Line), where my sister works. I surprised her as I couldn’t get a hold of her, as the phone box machines were eating my money like it was nothing. I put 60p in, my only small change, and I lost that money in the instance that the 02 voice-mail service saying my sister had not picked up the phone. I then went to get change, and put a £1.00 coin in.
To my surprise, phone boxes here don’t accept £1.00 coins and even though they don’t, they’ll take the money anyway and even when you pull down on the phone lever it won’t refund you or give you your money back. That made me sick and I promised myself I’d never use phone boxes here again. Sure, it’s radical, but I simply had enough of wasting money, – especially if the money spent is not actually being used. Sure, the 60p was my mistake because I let the phone call continue onto the 02 voice mail service. (Though I hanged up as soon as I could) However, the phone box taking the £1.00 that’s not even being used is almost criminal and I would say is stealing. That’s why I took a radical approach to never use phone boxes in London again. I’ve also taken other steps such as looking into buying a bike to cycle and hopefully not have to use the transport system here.
Either way, I’m a little fed up today and I hope that things will look a little better throughout the week. But my goodness, my luck today is really on a low. I’ve had such a terrible experience just going back to London.
The only consolation is that I’m now typing this in a café that doesn’t have a WiFi connection. Although the “not having WiFi” is an issue, I’m finally relaxing and getting the things that have happened to me today, behind me.
Here’s what I’ve eaten at this café:
Dubbed the “New York Bagel” at a small-time cafe I went to!
Tea with salmon baguette or dubbed by the cafe as the “New York Bagel”. The cafe I went to looked pretty cool and it is actually a listed building that was once a mill. The bagel that I ordered was delicious, but it cost me £4.60 altogether. I would be able to go to a nice restaurant for that price in Taiwan. Moving on, apparently the café that I’m in is based in a historical building and I guess the profits from the café pay for the upkeep of the place.
Here’s a picture of it:
A cafe situated in a grade 1 listed building called the “House Mill”.
Looks very British.
by Jonny | Apr 27, 2013 | Updates
Wix is a free web service, similar to what Geocities was, and that provides people the methods and means to open up websites using one of their pre-made templates. Last week I gave my first impressions of their affiliate service. Today, I’ll be sharing my progress with their affiliate service that I’ve been using on my Simple Templates website.
I thought I’d give an update on the Wix affiliate program that I recently signed up with for one of my sites. It’s been under a week or so since I’ve been using Wix’s affiliate program.
Have I struck any gold with them?
Not yet. I’m still working on that.
Currently, I’ve only signed up 7 people, out of the 36 people who have clicked on the Wix affiliate ads. Obviously, to gain any affiliate sales, I need those 7 people to be spending money on subscriptions with Wix. This simply has not happened yet & I’m not sure if I’ll be with Wix any longer because my site, really, caters to those who are looking for free stuff. They aren’t people whom are looking to pay for hosting, templates or anything. I’m not sure that “affiliates systems” will work for the site in question that is working these ads. I’m still going to leave the Wix affiliate ads on for an indefinite period, as I don’t know much about affiliate marketing and this is some first hand experience into this market.
Feel free to comment on any affiliate techniques that you have or if you’ve been using Wix’s affiliate service. Thanks.
by Jonny | Feb 26, 2013 | Updates
I just came across this brilliant video about getting people to learn how to code. It’s amazing. It features a handful of creators in the past century who have created something with code and who have become successful.
The Code.org website is about teaching people to program and to encourage those who may have had a slight interest to have an even bigger interest. It has certainly got me excited. Perhaps, I won’t have to go to university after-all, and I can learn how to program completely free – this I think is the premise behind Code.org.
by Jonny | Sep 20, 2012 | Updates
Friend: Your Chinese is getting better and better! Keep going!
Me: Thank you! You are great!
So, I can read that bit of text and it’s no problem for me, even though it is in Chinese, I can actually read over 200 characters, but I still have a long way to go. According to sources that I’ve read, you need to know at least 1,000 characters to read newspapers here in Taiwan.
However, the issue here is with ‘Bing’s’ translation service, that is being used on Facebook. It sucks, period. For some reason it mistook “中文” for “英文”, which is quite a bad translation as it just mixed up two totally different languages. At least with Google translate that service is somewhat accurate, especially when it comes to regular verbs and nouns. But Bing fails altogether and I’ve been using it for a while, just for fun on Facebook to see what mistakes it makes. – It sure makes a lot of mistakes, which is essentially why Bing is a failure.
by Jonny | Sep 5, 2012 | Opinion
Let’s just say that life is being a pain in the butt for me right now.
I have probably the most controversial decision that I have ever made in my life. Whatever decision I make now will have an impact on my life later on in the future.
I really want to obtain a degree in computer science or even at least to have some sort of degree. At this point, anything will do. – An English teaching degree would probably be ideal seeing as it’s likely the best job a foreigner could obtain in a foreign country. This is because my girlfriend is Korean and I’m thinking that perhaps one day I’ll be able to live in Korea with her and I could possibly teach English.
I haven’t even completed university and she has. Although she is 26, and I’m 20, I feel that perhaps we are destined that we will break apart as long distance relationships aren’t that easy. It’s worked up until this point. We’ve been together for over 10 months with 3 of those months actually together in Taiwan. The rest of those months, well, for the most part we have been talking over Skype and KaKaoTalk. We have had fights, wonderful talks and just a general feeling of not being alone. — Sort of, having someone to speak to and someone waiting for you. – That genuinely feels good.
The problem
My options
- I could go back to London and complete a degree in something, preferably something to do with computers. – Although, if that isn’t possible or not worth the hassle, then I don’t mind doing other things. – Like a teaching degree. I like that feeling of being able to go to different countries to teach English and if I have a degree related in that field of study, then I have a higher chance of getting some sort of job in Asia, preferably Korea. That would take 4 years. I would spend 1 year taking a foundation degree course then spend the last 3 years doing the actual degree. By then… well, my girlfriend has already said that she wants to get married to someone by at least 30.
- I have an obligatory military service tenure coming up next year in April. I have no choice but to do this military service. I do however have the option of deferring the draft, however I need to be a university student. That is my dilemma. The military service will be for a 1 year period. I’m thinking of getting this over and done with then after I can go back to England to apply for a degree or something. — I could also save up money from the military service ($6000NT per month/£120 per month/$200USD per month), then use that money for a ticket to the UK. Literally, the ticket would cost the same amount I could actually save, if I did one year of military service in Taiwan. It’s quite absurd.
Those are my two options.
At the moment, I’m leaning moreover to option 2. When I first heard when I had to do military service, my initial reaction was pretty much of option 1. Now I have realised the better option.
Just get my military training over and done with then I’m free to do what the fuck I want in Taiwan and I won’t have any travel restrictions to Taiwan. Unless, I intentionally want to be pulled into military training.
But first, before I do the military training, I want to go to Korea to see my girlfriend.