Alive and kicking …

Posted on 2011/04/22 by Guy Chen

Man I’ve been so lazy with my updates, it’s already been four month since the last update. Life has been good, all is well at work. Still learning and enjoying the work I do. Seeing different and new customers and getting to know new people. It’s been busy at work and time really flies! It’s been two year ago that I started at TOPdesk. Two weeks ago I experienced my first consultancy weekend at TOPdesk and it was a blast. Chillax, have fun, drink quite a few beers with your colleagues and going to sleep at 4am :) Can’t wait for the next one in two years.

Other than work I’ve been to Venice and Florance in March with my sweetheart Ana to spend some time together and to celebrate our 2 year anniversary. We spent the first few days in Venice and we were lucky because it was carnival in Venice. It was an amazing time in Venice seeing and experiencing carnival. Though at some point I was getting tired of the massive crowds while trying to walk around Venice. If you want to see the pics just click here for general pics of Venice and here for the costumed people. The day after carnival ended we headed off to Florence for the remainder of our vacation. We also did a daytrip to Lucca and Pisa. In the morning walking around in Lucca and in the afternoon a quick stop at the leaning tower of Pisa before heading back to Florence. I enjoyed Florence more then Venice, but that might have been because it was less crowded in Florence compared to Venice. And it was a lot cheaper hotel and food wise. Florence pics can be found here. The vacation was very nice and it was good to see my girlfriend again. Will be seeing her again in June when I go visit her in NY. :)

Last week I’ve been to the Keukenhof which is a yearly event in The Netherlands where you can see lots of flowers. For more info about the Keukenhof click here and for the pics click here. It was the first time I went and probably the last time too. The flowers were nice to see but the whole Keukenhof didn’t quite meet my expectations, the flower fields we saw on our way looked more interesting.

Well that’s what’s I’ve been up to the last four months. Tomorrow I’m off to the Autorai with Marco, Jay & Dennis. Gonna bring along the cam and do some camera nerding look at new cars. :) Happy easter to you all.

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Merry Christmas! Update after a long time …

Posted on 2010/12/25 by Guy Chen

Wow … it has been more than seven months since my last update. O_o How time flies, how time flies. In those seven months a lot happened which I’ll give a recap on the highlights, which will make this post a bit longer but not toooooo long I hope. :P But before I’ll start with that I want to wish everyone out there a Merry Christmas!

This was the year of weddings apparently since three friends of mine got married and a few more got engaged. In July Sheng (one of the TSF family) got married which meant a TSF reunion. :) Ana, June, Steven, Kevin and Andrew all flew over to Dutchland for the wedding (for pics click here). It was one crazy week for me picking up and dropping off the TSF crew but it was very nice seeing them again and ofcourse spending time with my sweetheart Ana. We even managed to squeeze in a trip to Cologne and saw the yearly fireworks “Köln Lighter”. Cologne pics click here. The week after I went to London to visit the UK office of TOPdesk which was a nice experience. London is a beautiful city and I managed to get some nice nightshots while I was there. London pics click here.

In August I turned 30 leaving behind the twenties :P I wasn’t planning on celebrating it but my parents arranged for a surprise birthday party with friends and family I haven’t seen in a while. Loved it and had a very enjoyable evening. September was the wedding of Rezi & Marc and in October the wedding of Yip Wing & Naomi. I’ve known Rezi, Yip & Naomi since highschool, so that would be roughly half my life. I had a blast on both weddings and am very happy for them.

The last week of October I went on holiday to San Francisco with Ana. We met up with June and had a blast in SF. I love SF and definitely want to go back again in the future since there’s quite a few things to see in and around SF. If you want to see the pics click here.

Gadgets wise the last seven months I’ve spent quite a bit of money. Hey I can’t help it, I’m a gadget nerd. I got myself a Macro lens the 100L from Canon. I love this lens to use for Macro’s and tele shots. Though I must admit on a crop DSLR like my Canon 500D it is a bit too long inside for normal use. Can’t wait to use it on a full frame but that will have to wait until Canon releases a 5D mark III. I also replaced my trusty old Canon Ixus 800IS point and shoot for the Canon Powershot S95. For the times I don’t want or can’t bring my DSLR along. Which is weekdays when I head to clients for work, then I can use the S95 to take pics when I’m on the road. I also got myself a new phone to replace my Nokia E72, which is still a very good phone but I started to find the lack of app support for Symbian getting annoying. So after years and years of Nokia Symbian phones I got myself the HTC Desire Z with Android. Wow, it really showed me how much catching up Nokia has to do with their Symbian OS compared to Android and iOS from Apple. But then again, I didn’t really check out the newer Nokia models with touch screens so I can’t really say if there had been an improvement. The last gadget I got myself was something I didn’t think I would get, an iPod Nano 6th Gen. Or should I say iPod Nano G6? It’s definitely Fly like a G6 :P

Since it’s been a long while that I updated my website I decided to change the theme, hope you like it. The picture right above the menu’s in the header is one that I made. I’ll try to update it every now and then with new pics that I shot. Well that’s it for now, once again Merry Christmas! Enjoy the holiday’s and I’ll leave you with a Christmas song.

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Alicia Keys concert

Posted on 2010/05/09 by Guy Chen

Yesterday I went to the Alicia Keys concert in the Gelredome and I must say. It was amazing! I loved it! Alicia Keys is one of the few artists that I have all the cd’s from. Well ok, not all of them (yet) since I don’t have her 4th cd “I Am” at the moment, but I’ll be buying it sometime soon. Yeah call me crazy but I still buy cd’s every now and then. Most of the time it’s not really worth the money imho.

The last time I went to an Alicia Keys concert was on 13th of November 2002 in the Heiniken Music Hall. It was a lot smaller and the concert was part of something called MTV 5 Night Stand. Don’t know what it was but that’s what it says on the tickets I still have. :P Anyway, Alicia Keys had just dropped her debut album that year “Songs in A minor” and since  I loved the album I went to her concert. I still remember the energy, vibe and ofcourse incredible performance and hoped to catch another concert of hers in the future. When I was in China she came back to the Netherlands for her “I Am” tour and I was pretty annoyed that I wasn’t able to see it. But I got another chance when I heard she was gonna to a concert this year for her latest album “The Element of Freedom”.

On 28th of January when Marco, Jooky and me were having hotpot at Marco’s place we were talking and at some point after eating the conversation went to the fact that Alicia Keys was going to do a concert here in the Netherlands (in the Gelredome in Arnhem) so we decided to check when it was and if there were still tickets left. Well, there were still tickets and in the spur of the moment we decidede to get the tickets and voila. Flash forward into time it’s 8th of May and we were off to the concert.

We left Amsterdam eraly afternoon and arrived in Arnhem at the Gelredome and parked our car there and went off to downtown Arnhem to chillax. We met up with with some other friends of mine (Pamela, Sheng, Yingying, Ying, Sammy, Xuan and a friend of Xuan) that were also going to the concert for dinner and after that we were off back to the Gelredome.

The support act was Melanie Fiona, which when I heard the was like … ehhhh who is she? O_o But when I heard her perform I was like ohhhh I know two songs of hers (“Give it to me right” and the song “It kills me”) :P But then again, I was there to see and hear Alicia Keys. After the Melanie and a short break the concert finally started and what a perfoemance it was. It was amazing, just like the concert I remember from 2002 and I loved the songs and energy. I am bummed that I didn’t bring my point and shoot to the conert. But I will definatly try to go to any future concerts Alicia might give because I’ve been a fan of her music since her debut album. Though I must admin that I prefer her first two albums more that the last two, but maybe that’s because I need to listen more to them. I had a blast yesterday and the concert was the icing on the cake. :) I’m off to listen some more Alicia Keys and see you next post. Leaving you behind with a vid someone else made at the concert yesterday. Damn I’m still bummed out that I didn’t bring my point & shoot :( Anyway, enjoy Empire state of mind. C ya.

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