Feckoff.net

Got back home from China (again) late last night. The 12 hour flight from Shanghai was fine except for the fact that I was stuck sitting beside the smelliest, most ingorant bollix I’ve ever had to endure that kind of time with in my life. I also had several hours to kill in the dump that is Heathrow terminal 1. I arrived in Shannon at around 9 last night. Got out to the long term car park at around 9.30 to find my car’s battery completely dead I really did not need that after being on the go for 24 hours between travelling and airport hanging about!
Fortunately the airport has a jump start service and they arrived after about 10 minutes and got me going.

Here’s a photo of Shanghai at night. I took this last Sunday night. Forgot to change the time on my camera so the EXIF data will have the GMT timestamp on it. I was very busy with work this time around and ended up taking bugger all photos.

Click it for the flickr page and larger sizes.
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Going back to China bright and early tomorrow morning. Back in about a week’s time. Seeya!

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Here are some photos I took in Shanghai on Friday, over on my flickr

A sample:

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Anywhere that gives you free wifi that will happily download stuff at over 500KB/sec is worth a positive mention! This airport is a very slick operation - I got straight off my flight from Shanghai to walk pretty much directly from the jetway to a flight connections desk that got me checked in for my onward flight to Heathrow within 5 minutes. Security check was quick and painless. Heathrow, please learn from Hong Kong’s example.

The duty free’s pretty cheap too!

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Here are some photos I took as I strolled around Suzhou last night. All at ISO1600 (it was pretty dark) with my trusty cheap nifty fifty Nikkor lens.

Here’s a sample:

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I’ve been here in Suzhou since Sunday now, and I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. Suzhou is a city of some 6 million people, and while its been around for thousands of years, most of it was constructed in the last 12 years or so. Its about a 2 hour drive from the airport in Shanghai.

The city looks absolutely amazing at night, as most of the buildings are very well lit with bright neon. Its full of high-rise towers and great architecture. I haven’t gotten any photos yet - my camera stuff got locked in an office at work yesterday!

The hotel I’m staying in is fabulous and would be utterly unaffordable if it was in Europe. It is situated beside a beautiful park that is very well lit at night and contains a massive amphitheatre in its centre.

The roads are absolutely fantastic, and the drivers absolutely terrifyingly awful! 6 lane highways all over the place, wide cycle/pedestrian lanes separated from traffic by grass verges, etc. I’ve seen so many newly manufactured cars here that have been long ago discontinued in the west, many of them based on an old Seat Toledo design. Lots of Volkswagens and Buicks around here. the Buicks here are mostly rebadged Korean models like the Chevrolet/Daewoo Lacetti, known here as the “Buick Excelle”. I haven’t seen many of the Chinese marques with their poor reputations around, besides a single Landwind which looks suspiciously like the ancient Opel Frontera.

I haven’t had any free time from work to do any real sightseeing yet - we’ve had a lot of setbacks and time wasting caused by cock ups on the part of the Chinese builders.

I’ll be back with more later!
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Tomorrow I get up at 4 in the morning for the drive to Shannon Airport. From there I get the its-days-are-numbered Aer Lingus service to Heathrow. Then I will spend a few hours hanging around Heathrow (in queues at security I reckon…) before getting a Virgin Atlantic flight to Shanghai Pudong Airport, which will take approximately 12 hours. Its my first time flying with Virgin. I hear they’re very good, even for economy class peons like me.

Once I get there its sleepytime, then I spend the next five days working. After that its back home, but because of the Special Olympics its impossible to get a flight from Shanghai to Heathrow so I’m going via Hong Kong. I get the impression that I might well crash my car on the drive home from Shannon when I eventually get there!

I’m told I will have internet access in my hotel room, so hopefully I might be able to stick up some photos here and on flickr during the week. If Aer Lingus shuts down for my flight home I think I’m going to have to visit Dermot Mannion’s house and take a dump on his doorstep. They’ve already screwed me once this year with their industrial relations bullshit.

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Mercedes Benz Museum, Stuttgart

I have uploaded about 150 photos that I took at the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart to my flickr. They are not examples of fine photographic technique or anything of the sort, but they are a whole bunch of pictures of cars, trucks, buses etc.

Landed in Dublin airport this morning in fairly heavy fog. Didn’t hear about the crazy carnage on the M7/M9 until I was on my way home. Boy am I glad it wasn’t affecting the southbound lanes!

I’ve stuck a few more photos up on my flickr.
I like this one:

Here you go, my photos from Auto Salon Singen - earlier than expected too, I had some spare time waiting about today.

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