well … when you saw real Reindeers on the Piaza of your local Shopping mall of course

These pictures were taken at Ealing Broadway Shopping Mall London   And that was the FIRST TIME I saw a REAL Reindeer !  Sadly no Rednose one.

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London Westfield SuperMall (just make sure you don’t get separated)

Last weekend, my fiancee and I went to check out this newly open Westfield ‘Super Mall’ in West London, which is allegedly the biggest in-city Shopping Centre in Europe. UK has many other Shopping Centres that are bigger than this, for example Bluewater and Sheffield’s Meadowhall, but all of them are located out-city.

We have been passing by near the building site many many times throughout the year because it’s situated on the main route that we usually take from the Centre of London to our place.  As such, we literary witnessed the growth of this behemoth, and were anxious to see how it was going to become.  The development was not only consisting of this big shopping centre, but also a Tube Station, an Overground Train Station and a Bus Station !

The mall was opened about 2 weeks ago, and since it’s only 20 minutes drive-away, we decided to have a peek and to see what all the fuss is about.
My first impression came when I drove into the indoor car-park and tried to find a place to park the car.  At each junction, they install an LED sign that tells you if the car park is full or not, and if it’s not it will tell you how many spaces left, in addition it also tells you which row is for Disable and the direction of the Exit.  Impressive !

LED Sign at Westfield Car Park

And then, as I was parking my car to one of the empty slot, I was thinking, how on earth that it knows how many places left ?  The answer was *up* there, on the ceiling, on top of each slot where they installed somekind of sensor.  Clever !

Car Park Sensor

So we went inside to the mall (after taking a mental note of where I parked the car), and we were greeted with a very big Atrium.  When we looked up, we could see another level of the mall, and another one on top of that.  We actually didn’t know where to start So, we just started by turning right and walk that way.

Inside Westfield

Inside Westfield

Inside Westfield

Not long after that we found a corridor where the Toilets are.  Perfect we thought, because our bladder was almost bursting

Toilet Corridor

Sign for Women

and for Men

Inside Men

The Mall was full of your usual Highstreet Shops, from Next to House of Fraser, from Boots to Cards Galore, and from Tiffany’s to De Beers.  But my favorite was … the Apple Store !

Apple Store

Obviously I spent *quite* considerable amount of time in there.  I got my hands on the new Aluminium MacBooks, which I like a lot

Here, I will give a bit of warning, if you come with your friends, DON’T YOU EVER GO SEPARATE WAY, because unless you have agreed where and when to meet back again, you will NOT be able to phone and find out where they are !!!  The mobile network in that building SUCKS !  I had two mobiles with me, both had full bar of reception, and I couldn’t frecking phone my fiancee, everytime I tried it told me that the ‘Network is Busy’.  The same thing happened with SMS, I couldn’t send text message, it just hanged there on the outbox waiting to be sent.  At the end, after 30 minutes trying, I gave up and went down to the O2 store.  I asked one of the guy there whether it was only me or the network was really crap, and he confirmed that it’s true, and advised me to go OUTSIDE to get a clear signal ! What the …. !  At which point I just asked them if I could borrow their land-line to make a quick call, which they did.

Anyway, admittedly the place was really big.  It took us 6 hours just to go around 80% of the place, with only occasional visit inside some stores.  The Cinema hasn’t opened yet though (originally we were going to watch James Bond there too).  There are still many place we haven’t explored.  The food court was particularly interesting.

So, we vowed that we are going to come again, next time maybe a bit earlier so we have more time to explore, AND another thing is, we will come by public transport.  This is another warning, DON’T COME BY CAR if you don’t have ‘mucho dinero’, because you have to pay parking for £2 an hour.  We were there for 6 hours, so we paid …. £12 ! *painful*

All in all, it was quite an enjoyable afternoon (apart from when we couldn’t find each other), we will definitely come again regularly, especially because it is closer, hence cheaper to go there, compare to if we have to go to central London.

A little note for Indonesian readers, yes the Malls here are *tiny* compare to our multi-level Mega Mall, I know

For more photos, please visit my Flickr Page.

Have a good day !

As I was explaining last week on my first blog post, one of the reasons of the sudden desire to reconnect to my root was the Social Networking phenomena. Although it started with Twitter and Facebook to some degree (actually more lately), the urge of wanting to started to write a new blog was finally sealed by my active involvement in Plurk.

Lately, the more I use Plurk, the more I have this feeling of Dejavu. I feel as if I’ve experienced and done this thing before in the past, and it’s bugging me.

Finally it dawned on me, that *this thing* that I remember doing was … IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

If you don’t know what IRC is, a quick trip down Wikipedia would tell you what it’s all about . As a matter of fact, IRC is quiet a sophisticated internet tool, that I don’t think I’ve ever found the equivalent in modern day tools.

mIRC - IRC Client for Windows

As I started my new life in England as an Undergraduate student at Bradford University, the realisation slowly came to me as the days was creeping by, and after the Euphoria of being *far from home* had died down, that I was on … my … own. I mean, I was the *only* Indonesian on a radius of 100 miles. The reality had finally sinked in, that I was infact *alone* and *very far* from the people I love, I was the stranger, the foreigner, and that was depressing. Luckly for me, this state of depression didn’t go very long, because just right about this time, I found IRC

You have to remember that, this was the 90′s, there was no Instant Messaging, no Twitter, no Facebook, no MySpace, no Skype, and WWW had only just been around for a few years! What we had was the good-old Email (and mailing list), the Newsgroups for threaded conversation, and for instant conversation we had IRC

These great internet tools were about the only things that *connect* me to the outside world, in particular to other Indonesians, whom were either living back home or like myself were studying abroad.

It was a great feeling to be able to communicate, in my own language, to my fellow countrymen and women, who were not only in Indonesia and in the UK, but also all over the world; the US and Australia (the 2 favourite destinations for Indonesia students), Holland and Germany (2 major destinations in Europe), and even the former Soviet Union (the son and daughter of the then Indonesian Ambassador in Moscow ).

My daily schedule was also changed quite dramatically. Basically, classes in the morning and afternoon, and as soon as the sun was down I would sneak into my Department Computer Lab (one of the perks of being Soft. Eng. student as I had the pass-key), and stayed there until I couldn’t hold my eyes open or the sun was up, whichever came first

IRC Client for UNIX on which I spent most of my time

I made many friends through IRC, some of them became good friends, which in turn opened many other opportunities for myself, especially in term of travelling. For example, on one school holiday I went travelling to Europe, and I was able to visit some of these IRC friends and stay in their place for a short period of time (Kopdar as they say in Indonesian). Those were great times that I would cherish all my life.

Obviously, after a year or so, I got to know many other Indonesian Students who were studying in the UK, some of them even studied on the same University as mine. So, my activities shifted a little bit from the *virtual* to a more *real* one. I became more involved in the Indonesian Student Association (PPI – Persatuan Pelajar Indonesia) and their activities, which probably warrants another post . Suffice to say, my life became more enjoyable and lively, no more loneliness.

Fast forward to today’s time. It’s a new century, but still the same problem. I’ve been lost contact with what’s been happening in my own country, for many reasons which I will tell you in time, so the emergence of the Social Networking has helped me to overcome this gap, just like the old days, only that I am not a student anymore and I’m 12 years older

The thing is, when I am on Plurk (or Twitter), I feel like IRC all over again. It’s like re-living those moments all over again and it feels good. On a more technical side, there are few differences of course, most notably is the (non)existence of the so-called Channels. IRC channels are based on chat-rooms where people can join in and start conversations with other peoples in that particular channel. Plurk, Twitter, and other micro-blogging tools don’t have Channel concept. Plurk’s threaded conversation is probably the closest thing to channel that I can think of, albeit an ad-hoc one, i.e. every Plurk Post can be regarded as a channel with a particular topic of its own. Or you can also say that the whole Plurk is just one big permanent always-on channel where everybody in it can have conversation with each-other

In anyway, the feeling I get from these are the same as the feeling I had 12 years ago; it’s that warm and fuzzy feeling when you feel that you have close connection with your friends. It definitely has been helping me to reconnect and rediscover my root.