Its been long overdue for a blog makeover. The last time I install a new theme was back in Autumn 2008 and between then an now, there was just some face-lift. When I came across this free theme, it just screams out to me. In the last two years, there were only a handful of post, it became so little that one should be thinking of wrapping things up with blogging. The thought of shutting this site down have not cross my mind. When I started with this, it was for fun, as a hobby, self loathing and most of all, with the intention to keep this going till the day I kick the bucket. This still hasn’t change and hopefully with this theme change, it would trigger the little spark inside me to pen down some thoughts that have been urging to get out.

After we have checked in and left our bags at the Ryokan, we head for the Imperial Palace.  This was our first destination, and it was already 10-11am.  We first came out from the Tokyo subway Station.  The Train Station behind it looks like the Train Station in Amsterdam, and if I remember correctly, its a replica of it.  From the Tokyo station, we proceeded straight towards the Imperial Palace.  Along the way, we passed a nice fountain and we first came to the Imperial Plaza, which is a huge empty place with tiny path cutting across gravel stones.  Its like giant Japanese sand garden, nice.  We were greeted with bus loads of tourist and all of them alight at the Imperial Plaza and made their way by foot to the Nijubashi Bridge.  This bridge is on every guidebook and also all web and printed city guides.  This is where you can see the Imperial Palace with a nice angle, with the white building on top of the hill and then a bridge and waters and plenty of greenery.  It was over rated from the guidebooks.  I was expecting much more and when arrived, only the tiny top floor of the imperial palace can be seen, and have to crowd with many tourist to get a photo of the entire scene.

In front of the Nijubashi Bridge is the Hibiya Park.  This park was a stark contrast from the Imperial Plaza.  The Imperial Plaza was all grey with pebles, while the Hibiya park was green with grass and gigantic bonzai trim trees.  Comming from the congested city line of Tokyo, the Palace grounds provide a breath of fresh air and reminds us that we live in a wonderful green nature.  We walked back again towards Higashi Gyoen, the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace.  On the way, to the Otemon Gate, we passed many Swans lingering on the water surrounding the Moat.  Not sure if they are there the entire year round or seasonal, but it was nice and something that we don’t usually see in Malaysia.

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Kiehl’s @ Gurney Plaza is offering a complementary deluxe size product (body or hair) for the Foursquare mayor.

Gowalla and Foursquare have been going head to head since pioneering the location based social scene a couple of years back.  I was initially pulled to Gowalla because of it’s Item collectability and once a year, free stuff giveaway.  Since then, there were not much changes in Gowalla, still not many users/players and the appeal has since drop.  I have yet to finish my collection of items as some of them can only be obtained in the US.  The player pool has grown a little, but not significant, and not much exciting.

When I first play Gowalla, I was also venturing into Foursquare.  I stop after a while as there were no special mayorship incentive in Malaysia and nothing to collect, except badges.  Again, there were not that many players/users in Malaysia then.

Recently, I started to check out foursquare again.  To my surprise, the users/players has mushroom exceeding those playing Gowalla.  Better still, there are special offers for foursquare players right in my City of Penang.  Below are three of that I discover at the time of this post.

This is one of the insane activity that I put myself and my poor wife through just for the fun of it.  We woke up at 4 something am and I check lowyat forum on the situation at Gardens iphone pickup.  There are still people picking up phones at that time, so, if I were to go down, I have to leave now. After reading my friends facebook that Digi Penang iphone soldout, I decided then and there we have to go.  My wife was already up and she went to wake her sister up.  We left the house at 5am and the journey to pickup the iPhone 4 begins.

Traffic was to the minimal, there are still quite a number of cars on the road at this hour, but less than day time.  Dawn arrives when we almost reach Ipoh, my wife ask to go for Dim Sum, I had promise her earlier that we would.  Not wanting to queue too long to pick up phone, I took a rain check on the dim sum and whiz pass Ipoh.  As we enjoy dawn and the beautiful scenery, the whole world lighted up and the sun came.

We arrived at the Gardens at 8.30am and started to queue up.  There was more than a hundred people in front of us.  We queue up to the car park and I was drench with sweat by 10am when they started to give out numbers.  We receive 3130, not sure if we were the 130 customer for the day.  Once we got the number, we get to go into the foyer to play around with demo sets, have apples and drinks and wait for our number to be called.

At 11 something am, our number were up and we proceeded to the registration counter, once that done, we go to another payment and phone collection counter and finally that done, there is the activation counter.  Plenty of Maxis staff helping along the way, they try to make this as painless as possible and try to accommodate as many patrons as fast as possible as the previous day, they went home after 4am.

There were 25% discounts on the phone covers, and we got a nice leather flip cover and went straight for lunch.  I tried to restore the 3GS backup to the iphone 4, but itunes need to download the latest OS4.1 to do it.  The download speed was so slow that I cancel the restoration and finish up lunch and head back.

We reach Tapah at about 5pm and went to have Curry Chicken Bread.  One huge bread shared by 3, stuff with carbohydrate and loads of curry chicken, we continue our journey home. We arrived at home at 8pm and the day is yet to be concluded.

I am currently restoring the 3GS backup onto iPhone4, and it is taking forever…

There and Back Again for iPhone 4….