Peo Kindgren on YouTube

You may familiar with Slash (from Gun N' Roses) or Richie Sambora(from Bon Jovi Band) if you admire the greatest guitarist. But I bet you might not heard about Peo Kindgren if you do not browse YouTube regularly.

I was browsing in YouTube a few months ago to practice guitar and I found pieces of music played by Peo Kindgren. They are wonderful, amazing and unbelievable. He instantly become my favorite guitarist after I listen to a few songs that he played.

He played mostly the classic songs of J.S.Bach and others greatest musicians, however I found that he also played other genre of music on classic guitar and they are amazingly beautiful. He played like "Nothing Else Matter", "Don't cry for me Argentina", "Yesterday" and others non-classic songs with his classic guitar.

I found out from his profile that he is a Swedish guitar professor living in Copenhagen, Denmark. His YouTube nick is "AndanteLargo". If you type in "Peo Kindgren" in YouTube is enough. You will find tonnes of songs played by him or other people playing using his arrangement. He inspire a lot of people to play classic guitar too. I myself is currently practicing "Bourree In E-Minor" after I have watched his video.

I want to recommend the following songs if you wanna listen beautiful music.
Blue Moon
Bourree In E-Minor
Air
Nothing Else Matter

The books that I bought recently

I was in Hanover Hbf train station in Germany at May,2007. It was too early to catch the train and so I was browsing through the book store. The book store at train station sold a lot of German books plus some English bestsellers. I was looking for a book to read on the train and finally I picked up the book of Paulo Coelho, Brazilian writer named "Like the flowing river". It was amazing. All the essay like stories in the book gave me peace of mind and something to think about. All the stories were reflection of author on the experiences that he have countered. There was also something catch my eye on the cover of the book which was "the author of Alchemist". I was really interested in reading "Alchemist" after that.

In June, I was in Battle Creek, Michigan. I stayed in Hampton Inn and there was a shopping mall at a walking distance. Anyway, I am a bookworm. So I browsed through "Barne & Nobles" at that shopping mall. Surprisingly, I found all those classic novels that I want to read in that store. Since I did not want to carry a lot of books with me back to Singapore, I only bought a few books. There were "Metamorphosis" by "Franz Kafka", "The Brothers Karamazov" by "Fyodor Dostoevsky", "The Great American Short Stories" and "The Best of Mystery" chosen by "Alfred Hitchcock". So far, I only started reading "The best of Mystery" and it was a really wonderful book. I planned to read "The Brothers Karamazov" if I get sometimes. I long to read the books of Kafka and Jame Joyce but I was not able to materialize my thought so far.

In July, I was back in Germany again. I browse through the bookstores in Airports but I did not buy anything. Finally, I finished my job in two weeks and ready to fly back to Singapore. As usual, I browse through the book stores in Amsterdam Schipol Airport. I picked up and bought "The tipping point". It was time-killer for me on board 13 hours flight and theory present in that book was reallying interesting.

Last trip I went was to India in first week of August. I was planning to visit to book stores as I heard before that I can get the book with cheaper price in India. I stayed in Hotel 32nd Milestone at Guragon which is in between New Delhi and Haryana. My schedule was tight and I went between hotel and factory everyday. I even don't have time to visit to Taj-Mahal which is not far from there. However, I was lucky enough to find a series of books of Paulo Coelho in the bookstore at hotel. Not surprisingly, I picked "Alchemist" from the bookshelf. I only paid less than 200 rupees(S$8) to get it. I was so absorbed in the book and so I read it whenever I have free time. When I came back to Singapore, I take a leave to study for my final exam but I am able to finish "Alchemist" within study week. :-)

First Day in Czech Repulic

I had fly to holland to transit to Czech Repulic. If I am not wrong, there is no direct flight from Singapore to Prague. The name Prague is familiar to me in a short story I read 10 years ago, a friend of Kafka but I don't know it was a city of Czech Repulic. Anyway, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly until I reach check-in counter in Singapore Changi Airport.

Prague is a nice airport. But I noticed that there was a lot of CSA(Czech Airlines) planes. Apart from CSA, a few jets from British Airways and Air France parked in Prague Airport. I had no problem finding our agent from Czech Republic. He hold the paper with my company logo and my name. He only didn't know how to pronounce my name correctly.

We drove more than two hours from there to Pardubice, a small town in Czech repulic which has a few big industries. We stopped on the way to have a lunch. It was rice with some dishes. I was surprised that they eat rice for their meal. But my agent said they eat mainly potatoes and dumpling. The announcement on the radio was like Russian language. But it was Czech. They all can speak Russian very well as they need to learn Russian language for more than ten years under Communist regime. I heard (bel bel bel) a few times on radio. Later I realized that it was referred to (www). :)

They revolted in 1989 to overthrown Communist government. Now their country enjoy the benefit of Democracy. There are a lot of fruit trees planted beside the highway. My colleague explained me that people were very poor under Communist government. When they travelled from one town to another, they need to walk on foot. So they planted the fruit trees ( green apple, red apple and others) for other travellers to eat on the way.

I found a very big castle on the way. My colleague said it was from 17th century. It is really magnificent. We arrived to customer place in the afternoon. I was really tired partly because of jetlagged. But I managed to fix a few problems on machine before I went to hotel.

The name of the hotel was "Penzion Atrium". It cost us around 1200 ck per night. It is around 42 Euros. It has satellite TV with more than 800 channels to views. I tried to find Asia SAT 1 but I can't find it. I think it was only Europe satellite. I found some girls advertising on TV. It was a strange thing for me. I haven't found that sort of advertisement in US or UK before.

I had my dinner at nearby restaurant. One of my customers advised us to find it because he said it was famous. We were lucky to have English menu in that restaurant. I chose Mexican soup and barbecue pork for my dinners. The soup was really nice. The big bread was remove in the middle part and soup was poured into it. It is simply delicious. I went back to my hotel room after dinner. After I had written an e-mail to Singapore for on-site report, I fell asleep before I had my shower.

Visit to Michigan

Flying in United States is really difficult experiences. You need to go through security check like a hell. They frequently pick you up for random security check if you have strange last name. Of course, I am Asian and I was pick up for random security check one time in Los Angeles, one time in Denver and one time in Kalamazoo airport.

However, United States has a lot of differences from Singapore. Singapore is a conservative country although it look modernized city on the surface. You cannot even buy adult video like Philippines. But I found different in United States. Adult Magazine like PlayBoy and PentHouse can be found in stores. I watched HBO documentaries which was about the life of drug-addicted couples in New York City. The languages in that documentaries is really coarse. Of course, drug is a dangerous subject in Singapore and Gay Sex is a crime. So I will never get a chance to see this type of documentaries in Singapore.

I took some photo from my hotel which is just beside I-94 in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Weather is not bad this time around. I felt terrible when I was in Michigan during winter. It was freezing like hell. I could taste the American food better in this time. But I don't really like American breakfast.

People there are friendly too. I will found everyone greet me in breakfast table at hotel although it is the first time ever we met. Waitress in restaurants are really friendly. Some security officers in Airport greet me like "Honey, this is a wrong way". I really like those type of friendliness.

I saw so may six windows limousines in Chicago Ohare which I like it a lot. However, I really had unforgettable experiences in Chicago Ohare International Airport. I took transit flight in Chicago Ohare to Hong Kong and planned to fly back to Singapore from there. The aircraft I was boarded delayed at the gate for nearly one hour as they could not close the cargo door. We were advised to stay on board as it was an international flight and we were already checked out. However, they could not fixed the problem on cargo door. We alight to Ohare airport again. After another hour or so, we were boarded to new aircraft just arrived. However, this aircraft also had some electrical problem on radar and we had to turn back from runway. They took another hour to fix the radar. Finally, we could successfully take off from Ohare after six hours delays.

We arrived in Hong Kong in rush manner. I cancelled my plan to shop at Hong Kong airport. I ran to smoking room to have a few puff of smoke before I boarded the plane to Singapore. I could not find any smoking room in that Chicago airport and so I was really starved for smoking.
Then, I thought everything was fine and I was ready to fly home. But things were not simple as I was expected. They made random security check to passenger at boarding gate. Some passengers felt really angry and they made skeptical comments on security check. (Who the hell would not feel angry after that long and terrible flight delay experiences?). Our flight was delayed again. Airport security personals boarded our plane and search for items those can threat security. We delayed one more hour at Hong Kong airport. I finally arrived in Singapore 5 hours later than expected arrival time.

Anyways, United Airlines sent me US$100 voucher one month later as an apology.

Running Visual C++ 2005

Well, I have installed a copy of Visual Studio 2005 professional edition on my PC last week. Beware ! There is no .NET postfix in Visual Studio 2005. I made an enquiry for Visual Studio .NET 2005 but a supplier reply me there is no such thing as Visual Studio.NET 2005. Let it be. It does not really matter whether there is postfix .NET in product name or not since it is running on .NET framework 2.0. My concern is how it backward compatible with previous version. I have limited time to write software for my current project.

I created simple MFC Dialog-based application. Hoping that it would work in Visual Studio 2005 with MFC version 8. I still need to write unmanaged code in my new software as I don't want GC(Garbage Collector) to interfere my critical thread. I had added in the following code under OnOK() procedure.

AfxMessageBox("Hello");

When I compiled the program it give me an error. So I tried another attempt by adding the following code.

CString str;
int i = 1;
str.Format("%d",i);
AfxMessageBox(str);

I compiled again. I still got run time error saying that CString format function cannot accept that parameters. I was confused and search inside MSDN. It wrote simple message box can be displayed by

AfxMessageBox("Test");

I tried next time using type casting to remove error message.

AfxMessageBox((LPCTSTR)"Hello");

I can successfully compiled that time. However, it displayed Chinese Characters instead of hello when I run the program. I tried another way to solve the problem again.

CString str;
str = "Hello";
AfxMessageBox(str);

It work!! I totally lost confident that I can develop the application on Visual Studio 2005 with traditional MFC coding style. In the subsequent day, I found out that message box can be displayed by

AfxMessageBox(_T("Hello"));

My first encounter with Visual Studio 2005 is not so sweet.

Welcome to America

I arrived in America at 19th January. I took direct flight from Singapore to Los Angeles. It was a long hour flight but pretty comfortable. I was a bit nervous before I go through Immigration. However, American Immigration officers are far more friendlier than Immigration officers in Malaysia and Singapore I think. They didn't look down on me because of my citizenship.

I passed through custom and walked out from Tom Bradley Terminal to Terminal 7 to take connecting flight to Denver, Colorado. It was really freezing outside and the scene there was unusal for me. I was surprised to see six-windows Mercedes and SUVs which I never seen in person before. I went into the terminal 7 and check-in my baggages there. It is a terrible thing to pass through security checkpoint in U.S airports. I have to remove my laptop from the bag, take out my shoes and take out my coat. When the security officer saw my boarding pass, she picked me up for random check because of my unusual name.

There was a flight delay to Denver. So I walked around in LAX terminal 7. The first thing I interested was a book store. However, it was not much different from book stores in Singapore. There were so many of Dan Brown's books on the bookshelves. Finally, I got into the United Airlines flight to Denver. It was quite packed onboard and I was in Denver around 10PM. When I walked out from Denver airport, the snow were falling outside. That was the very first time in my life I saw a lot of snow falling. The wind was freezing and I could not stand without the gloves. I was picked up by bus from hotel. I was surprised to see that some people are swimming in hotel in that temperature. However, it is pretty warm inside the hotel. I went out to take some photos outside the hotels. I could not stand there longer becasue of the freezing temperature.

Wikipedia and Myanmar Unicode

I am started writing some articles in Wikipedia with Myanmar Unicode font. I am trying to translate some technology related articles from English Wikipedia to Myanmar version. Now, I realize how limited Myanmar language is when it come to modern technology. Perhaps, it is because I have never attended technical school in Myanmar before. A lot of technical terms are still not yet translated to Myanmar language especially Computer and Electronics related terms. It is a bit difficult for me to translate technical terms to Myanmar. Some of the thing I translated might be ridiculous.

I also contributed something to Myanmar history. I am writing about Konbaung Dynasty which I read in the book of Myanmar writer Maung Pe Nge a few years back. Unfortunately, all three books of Maung Pe Nge was banned during socialist era in Myanmar some fifteen years back. He is not a famous poet Maung Pe Nge during the time of King Thibaw but somebody adopted pen-name in modern era.

I have now familiar with typing in Myanmar Unicode font. But when I type in WinInnwa again, it cause me some problems. Anyway, I still can manage to type in both Unicode and non-Unicode fonts.

Now it seem like I am the only one writing in Myanmar Wikipedia. I hope somebody will join me soon.