Photos from the funeral

As requested by Vera, here is the link to my photos...
http://picasaweb.google.com/frances.ip

I have posted photos of some of the flowers from Por's funeral (only the ones that mattered to me, of course!). Thank you so much to everyone for their support this week.

Funny story told by Kong Suk Por: she received a call at 12.45am on Tuesday morning at home, picked up the receiver, no-one on the other end. She asked Sai Suk whether he had picked up the phone and he had not. Must have been Por calling her to tell her that she had passed on (at 12.20am), knowing that she would be awake at that time of night. :-)

57 Hours Later...

57 hours after leaving the office in Aberdeen I arrived home to Melbourne this afternoon. I flew down from Aberdeen to London Heathrow on Thursday night, spent 8 hours at a hotel next to the runway, flew to LAX, sat around the airport for the day, sat in the plane on the tarmac for some time while they fixed a problem with one of the engines (!), flew to Sydney and then to Melbourne. Mum arrived home last night, having run around Italy in a bid to catch planes home, depending on the kindness of strangers to help her navigate through Prato, Milan and Rome. Lawrence is yet to arrive, having tried to travel by standby for 3 nights now. It looks like he will probably miss the funeral on Tuesday as tomorrow's flight also looks full.
The week started off with a very exciting Sunday. We found out that having moved into our flat the previous weekend, the Tour de France would come through our complex in its first stage! We could actually see part of the route from our balcony but we wandered the extra 100m down the street to get some roadside action. It started quite slowly with a few cars and motorbikes cruising past, a couple of gendarmes actually chatting loudly to each other as they rode by. All of a sudden, cars and motorbikes sped down the street, coming very close to the spectators. I wondered why they were going so fast until the cyclists came just as quickly. Within 20 seconds, it was all over and all that were left were the support vehicles. Photos of those 20s are posted on my photo page.
After the Tour de France, I settled in to watch the men's final of Wimbledon. What a match! What competitiveness and class! The right man won in the end (in my opinion). Records are made to be matched and broken and Federer deserved to get match Borg's 5 in a row.
After Wimbledon, Taffy's Uncle Sam and Gu Jie came to visit us (to make sure we weren't living in squalor) and to bring us lots of Chinese goodies (instant noodles, Lee Kum Kee sauces, crackers, lap cheung & instant meals) and a coffee table. They took us out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant where I ordered Ging Dou Pai Gwut (sweet and sour pork), my very 'unChinese-like' favourite dish.
I have a week off on compassionate leave before heading back to the UK on Saturday afternoon (will be going back via Singapore, the normal route, rather than the US).

Grandma Passed Away

Grandma passed away a few hours ago after a short battle with lung cancer, which spread to her brain. She contracted pneumonia in the last couple of days.

Shutting The Gate After The Horse Has Bolted

Having gotten home at 2.30am on Thursday morning, I proceeded to get up at 2.30am on Monday morning to get to the airport. 2 root causes (6 Sigma analysis!): I had just moved to Woolwich and was not sure how long it would take to get to the airport & the Glasgow airport bombing had resulted in UK police shutting the gate after the horse had bolted – searching cars as they came to the airport and increasing passenger security inspection measures. The car company told me that I should leave home at 3am so I dutifully got up early and was picked up at 3.05. The driver stopped at a petrol station along the way and we still managed to sail into the drop-off bays at Heathrow at 4am! It turns out that the check-in counters don’t open until 5am, at which time I sailed through them as well and into a queue of about 10 people for the security check (usually about 5 lines of 50 people deep) to find that the BA lounge doesn’t open until 5.30am. When it did open, I found myself a nice armchair with a high back and had a nap until the plane was ready for boarding. Needless to say, I was not in a good condition that day and struggled to be productive. My manager told me off when I told him about it the next day and said that I should never leave home that early. If I miss the flight, then I miss the flight, I should not get up at such ungodly hours again. That was nice.
My phone troubles are persisting. Rang up 3 on Monday afternoon to say that their efforts had been useless and they responded by saying that they could get my phone repaired. It was picked up from the office on Tuesday morning at 8.30am (despite 3 text messages saying that they would come between 12 & 6pm) and was dropped back on Thursday afternoon. The reception has improved but I am still having problems. Rang them again and they agreed to look into it and potentially send me out a new SIM card. Hope this will all be resolved soon.
Preparing for my Stirling trip, which is quite difficult for 2 reasons: 1) I work in a project room and sit next to the only phone so that everyone who needs the phone can see my screen, 2) the only computer which can access a printer is connected to the projector so everyone can see what you are doing if you want to print non-work related things!
Will be quite busy with people visiting in July/August/September. Charlie is first (at the end of July), then Vicki, then Vera, then the wedding and then Sandra. Will be great to catch up with everyone.

Another Crazy Week

Has been another crazy week. Went up to Aberdeen for 3 days to work on the project and then came back on Wednesday night to attend a conference on Thursday & Friday. The plane was supposed to leave at 8.30pm but was delayed for 2 hours due to a gas leak in London, which shut down Heathrow for a while. When we landed at 11.45pm, the pilot told us that there was no dispatcher to operate the airbridge to let us off the plane! We waited another 15 minutes for someone to come. When we finally got to the baggage carousels, there were 100s of people there from 3 flights earlier. Turned out that when they shut Heathrow, they sent all the baggage handlers home and didn't get anyone to come back. Eventually, they go a few handlers in to do each plane one after another. Got my bags at 2am. Fantastic.
The conference on Thursday & Friday was great. Got to meet more people from the company, many of whom are French, Italian, German etc living in the UK. I have found that my accent neutralises when I talk to people over here - not the Aussie twang that my grandfather can't understand.
I am beginning to appreciate how good we have it in Australia. The financial system here is crap. It takes 3-4 days for money to be transferred from 1 bank to another. 3-4 days! What are they doing, walking it over from one city to another? Also can't get nice bank statements online. Tried the Help function on the website and got - go to statement and then go to File and Print. No letterhead, no nice formatting, nothing. I have to pay my rent 3 days earlier than the due date to ensure that it will arrive on time or I get hit with a fee. What rubbish!
Anyway, have half moved and will move the rest today. No access to Internet from now on at home until we get it set up. : (