My Simple Life

Snowy Ending of 2007 and Freezing start of 2008

I ENDED THE YEAR 2007 with 3 weeks holiday in Canada and the US. I spent Xmas with my cousin's family and friends in North Carolina. It was my first ever white Xmas and did enjoy meeting my relatives after more than 15 years of no communication. My cousin made my vacation a memorable one. Details of my trips were posted in my eTRaveldiary.   

           I started 2008 with a short visit to Montreal and Ottawa. Unfortunately, there was no fireworks in every Canadian house, except in Niagara Falls area where Festival of Lights was held during the New Year's eve. Well, we had a table of Pinoy foods and we enjoyed singing using the Magic microphone!

            It was a refreshing vacation to face the new year and of course recharging myself to continue my university research project. I do hope that I could finish it on time and finally have my PhD degree by early of 2009.

            Photos taken during my travel were posted in my Flickr account: Xmas 2007 Celebration  and New Year 2008.

           How about you, did you enjoy your Xmas and New Year's celebrations? Anyway, wishing you all the best of 2008!

My Travel Journal

  A variety of free websites nowadays that provide a portal for personal travel journals and blogs, and one of them is TRAVEL BLOG.

It has an excellent and diversed number of members around the world. The salient features of this site are: (a) it has a good template that automatically lay-out the photos within the journal, (b) each photo could be linked to an existing site, (c) travel locations are indicated in the world map as indicated below where the countries that have been visited are plotted in red.

If you want to post your travel journals where other people around the world will read and appreciate your photographs taken during your holidays/trips, then join the site by clicking this link thru my account:

My Travel Blog: Digital_Explorer

Thanks  for the time navigating my blog and hoping someday you still have the interest to read more of my travel escapade. I will try my best to give the best places and attractions elsewhere, and feel the difference of having you (my readers) in my travel experience!

Please dont forget to leave a message in my comment box!

TRIVAGO: My Eworld Travel Companion

Recently, I signed up for another consumer site, TRIVAGO. As a member, I can post photographs and travel reviews and being paid thru the shares you got for every operation you made in the site. There are several levels for the members to undergo to increase my activities and responsibilities in the site. I will not explain further what this site can offer, but you can visit the site and if you are interested to join, please dont hesitate to sign up or send a comment. In this way, I could personally send you an invitation message and hopefully I will get extra points for your membership.

Please visit the link at:

http://www.trivago.co.uk/

or to my personal account:

http://www.trivago.co.uk/member.php?&member=11883

or you can also browse my other site, The DigitalEnvironmentalist which is also featured in my blog's contents side bar.

http://digitalnvironmentalist.blogspot.com/

If you just maintain as a guest, then it is still okey and you could still browse the TRIVAGO website if you want to search for tourist destinations in the world, including accommodations/hotels, siteseeing and attractions.

My Life Down Under (Australia)

January 26 is a very important day in Australia. In some way, Im happy to celebrate with the rest of the Australians for this special event despite the fact that Im not an Australian but somehow I had the opportunity to experience the Australian way during my research program at the University of Queensland, Brisbane.

Living for two years in Down Under was a rewarding and memorable experience. I did so many things as a student and an ordinary person in a different environment, quite different from my home country. Having the opportunity to travel around Australia, I visited my friends in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. And within Queensland, I had the chance to visit interesting places in Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba. I was also able to work in a big shopping mall as a cleaner or 'dakilang janitor' and it was really a rare opportunity to work at that level of profession, and not to forget my extra job as a 'newspaper/leaflets' delivery man. And because of my savings from these jobs, I had the chance to travel in the UK, Sweden and Finland!

For details about Australia Day, visit this link:

http://www.australiaday.gov.au/pages/page3.asp

Oi...Oi...Oi... gooday mate!!!...no worries!!!

a day-trip in scotland

having a short visit to the most fascinating cities in the world (i suppose) is always a rewarding experience...

my short stay (half day) in Glasgow and Edinburgh was really a fulfillment being an urban planner. these old cities are the good examples of our early and modern urban planning! prior to my visit,  stories about these cities were just purely accounts of authors from books and magazines... and my own imagination!

being there alone is really a wonderful feeling of fulfillment - experiencing what these authors said about these places... amazing, magnificent, awesome, beautiful and fantastic - those words described my feelings - admiration at first sight! wow! whoaa... through my digi cam, i was able to explore the places, enjoy the city scenery - the architecture - the urban form! thanks for the coach driver for being so kind to bring me there just for a half day!