Christmas.. and New Year in Denmark

My first Christmas and New Year in Denmark. Nothing much for Christmas, well, I stayed at home most of the time. For New Year countdown, I had a gathering with some Church friends from FIBC and some other friends of friends. There were Lanie, Winnie (Lanie's friend), Rose, Aillen (Rose's friend), Melody, Grace, Jinky (the hostess), Nasja, Mark and Amy, Pravin and Lanie (all of them are Jinky's office mate), Kent and Rhonda (visitor from Australia) and myself.

We had a short service, some games, great food and karaoke session. The whole thing ended up at about 3 am. One thing worth remembered was the 'fun' of moving between apartments. The preparation and the cooking were done at Jinky's, the dinner was done at my place and the last session, the karaoke at Mark's. The reason behind is because Jinky's apartment was the best place to cook and prepare the food (she has complete set of the spices and stuff), my place was the biggest and the emptiest, and the Karaoke thingy, didn't work at my place, hence Mark and Amy's place came to the picture.

I was the one sharing the Word of God. I'm glad I had the chance, although I didn't feel like I was up for it as Jinky kinda force me to. I pondered upon Pak Tong's message on Psalm 90:12, on how to make full use of what time God has given us.

Another thing to note, The Danes here are crazy about firecracker. You can hear and see them everywhere. I stayed at Osterbro area, which is not the city center, but is quite near to it. When me and Rose sent Kent and Rhonda to their cab, we saw a lot of people in the street, drinking, lighting firecracker and so on. I can't imagine how it'd be like in the city center. They just love to burn money, literally. Sometimes, I think it's better to just left those to the professional. It's safer, don't you think?

Posted by jonsan21 at 10:14 PM on January 1, 2008 in Personal. | 1 notes

Snowzzz...

I've seen snow! Yeah! For someone that spent all of his live in tropical countries, snow is an amazement. It's definetely not anything like those in Snowcity in Singapore.

There're many types of snow, I suppose. I've seen two of them. The first one is just like a rainfall, but it's colder and it's has more 'substance', if you may call it, although, this one just gone when it touches the ground. The second one is like part of ice in your freezer, if you don't clean your freezer frequently and set it on a very cold temperature. It stays when it touches the ground, and it makes the ground very slippery.

Too bad in both occasion I didn't have my camera ready. From now on, my G5 will go whereever I go...

Posted by jonsan21 at 07:11 PM on January 10, 2008 in Personal. | leave a note

Airlift and Carlsberg

I've just attended the second day of the NAV 6.0 Airlift which was held at Parken, Copenhagen. It's a three days conference, where the new features of the next NAV release were showcased. The audience was mostly MS internal NAV community, with exceptions of some guests (MVPs) There're more than a dozen of technical and product presentations demo-ed by the program manager. I'm particularly impressed on the new NAV portal, the Navision solution for Sharepoint portal (both WSS and MOSS) as well as the web services support. The page and reporting were awesome too. With the new SQL Reporting Services component, dynamic sorting, which was very difficult in releases prior to 6.0, is made ease.

The first two days focus on the NAV 6.0, and the last day, is going to cover on NAV 5.0 SP1 as well as Dynamics Mobile.

I've also got a chance to talk to  the MVPs in person (Luc and Kamil) Both were great people. These MVPs are like celebrity in NAV community. I hope I could get a hold of the other two (Mark and Rene) tomorrow.

Anyway, on a separate note, Parken was not a very good place for conference. The distraction of people shouting outside the glass wall is so obvious, that sometimes the audio just completely gone. The food also was not so good. Compare to MDCC canteen, it's so far beyond.

The second day continued to dinner and self tour to the Carlsberg Visitor Center. As you may guess, free flow of beer. Here are some pictures I took (Yes, the HTC camera phone is worst than my N73)

Carlsberg, 'probably' the best beer in the world. Liverpool, the best football club?

Beers, beers and beers...

And me

Posted by jonsan21 at 11:23 PM on January 15, 2008 in Work, NAV. | 1 notes

NAV Training Team Dinner

We've had our first NAV Training Team dinner at Fox Kitchen. It was mid december last year, when Faye visitted us. She didn't join us though, due to food poisoning. Back then we've had Soren and Yuyu with us (along with me, Sine and Salvador). They left us to another team on 1st January.

This time round we've had Cordell. We ate Chinese food at Royal Garden. The dim sum was great. The food was awesome. And the chilli was outstanding. Not to mention the Tsing Tsao beer. I ate wanton soup, kung pao chicken with steamed rice, plus dim sum. By the time we finished, we were all very, very full. I could barely walk back home after that.

Left to right: Me, Sine, Cordell and Salvador

Posted by jonsan21 at 09:02 PM on January 18, 2008 in Work. | leave a note

Udsalg

It means Exit Sale, or End Sale - I think  

It is here. The Winter sale is here.. The first date to remember is 27th December, the day after boxing day. By then, all shops will have a lot of discount, ranges from 25 to 70 percent. My friend Muli recommended me to take leave next time to hunt for sale items. Be it Magasin, Esprit, Illum, or even smaller shops, they're offering a huge off price than the normal price. I particularly like Zara and Next. First of all they are quite branded with good quality. Second, their discount is like crazy.

The second date to remember is the somewhen in the third week of January. Today (18th January, Friday), I went to Next, and they've wrapped up their discounts and sales. A 400 DKK shirt at Next was down to 125 to 175 DKK. I've managed to buy 2 pairs of shorts at 50 DKK each, a few weeks back.

Zara, however is having discount, even after the discounted price. Not sure when it started, but I think is somewhen this week. I've bought 2 shirts at 99 DKK each (less than 30 SGD, 1 SGD = 3.5 DKK) and 2 wool sweaters, also at 99 DKK each. Prior to that I've already bought 2 wool sweaters (different type) at 199 DKK each. Normally a shirt would cost around 329 to 399 DKK and a wool sweater at 269 to 329 DKK.

Stadium, a Danish equivalent of Royal Sporting House in Singapore was also having a great sale. I've got an Everest down jacket at only 299 DKK (from 799 DKK), a Forza Legend 80 badminton racket at only 199 DKK (from 399 DKK), and SOC badminton shoes at 149 DKK (from 299 DKK)

I think that summarize my winter shopping .

The next thing to watch out is the Summer sale I suppose. Not sure if they have Spring and Autumn sale too...

Jan 23rd, note: I managed to get 2 Esprit shirt at 99 DKK (from 349 DKK) and 89 DKK (from 299 DKK) and another 2 wool sweater from Zara at 99 DKK each (from 329 DKK each). Boy I should stop shopping, I becoming like Tris...

Currently feeling: excited

Posted by jonsan21 at 09:15 PM on January 18, 2008 in Personal. | leave a note

Potluck @ Bill / Zhiying's

It's very nice of Bill and Zhi Ying to open up their house for a pot luck on last Saturday, or rather invite us for lunch, because in the end, Zhi Ying was the one who cook most of the dishes. I brought a bottle of wine, which ended up un-opened, Grace brought beef brocolli and Wee Min (not sure how to spell her name) and VK brought dessert. There're a total of 6 guests exclusive 4 of the family members.

Some of the girls..

The host and the rest...

Posted by jonsan21 at 07:39 PM on January 21, 2008 in Personal. | leave a note

HADIRILAH !! KKR SINGAPORE 2008

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” 
  
KKR Remaja

Ev. Ivan Kristiono, S.Sn., M.Div.
(Hamba Tuhan di Gereja Reformed Injili Indonesia —GRII Pusat dan dosen di Institut Reformed, Jakarta ; Master of Divinity dari Institut Reformed, Jakarta )

3 Februari 2008; 15.00 SIN (Remaja)

  
KKR Pemuda

Pdt. DR. Stephen Tong, DLCE
(Gembala Sidang dan Pendiri Gereja Reformed Injili Indonesia —GRII Pusat dan GRII Singapore, Pendiri Institut Reformed, Jakarta)

3 Februari 2008; 17.00 SIN (Pemuda)

Posted by jonsan21 at 07:23 PM on January 23, 2008 in Christianity. | leave a note

Where are you going on Easter holiday?

If you're somewhere around Europe, do consider joining this Retreat, by MRII in German (Hamburg, Berlin, Muenchen), and maybe I'll see you there 

Posted by jonsan21 at 10:14 PM on January 23, 2008 in Christianity. | leave a note

Joke

This reminds me so much of... myself now...

Posted by jonsan21 at 01:56 PM on January 24, 2008 in Jokes. | leave a note

Denmark: The Happiest Place on Earth

Despite high taxes, danes rank themselves as happy and content as shown by the World Map of Happiness from the University of Leiscester and the World Database of Happiness from Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University Rotterdam, two of the largest studies that rank the happiness of countries around the world.

Read more about danish happiness here.

Posted by jonsan21 at 06:28 PM on January 25, 2008 in Personal, Denmark. | 1 notes