Lone Locust Productions

Tag: Travel

  • Taiwan 2010 – Part II – Of Eating Habits and Knowing When to Shut up

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    Our first day in Taiwan passed somewhat uneventfully. We ate, we went to the park, we fought the insidious effects of jet lag – rather unsuccessfully, as, while I managed to stay awake until around 8:00PM local time (5:00AM AZ time) I awoke just before midnight feeling refreshed, wide-awake and hungry. The rest of the night proceeded in similar fits.

    Yesterday as a bit better, as we’ve gotten out and about, did some shopping and did a bit of sightseeing.

    But that’s not what I’m writing about today. I’m writing about food.

    The Taiwanese, at least those I deal with, seem to have no concept of discriminating taste. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but what I mean is that they seem to completely embrace the concept of “eating whatever is set in front of you.” (My mother-in-law excepted, who will eat it, but will make sure you know that she doesn’t like it through nothing more than the magic of her facial expressions.)

    My grandfather was the same way. He lived through the Great Depression and he would eat anything put in front of him. I wonder if, at least to some degree, this is true with the Taiwanese. It’s not so long ago that the prosperous island of Taiwan was only prosperous to the few “connected” individuals. The bulk of the island’s inhabitants were much nearer the poverty line than not.

    Nonetheless, from Chinese banquets, to street vendors and everything in between, the idea of “special orders” or dietary restrictions seem alien to them. (Of course, they’ll do it, but they look at you like you dropped in from another planet and just asked for a broom for breakfast.)

    I still remember clearly when my friend with a deathly egg and poultry allergy came to our wedding in Taiwan, more often than not, when we explained about his condition, they seemed almost to look put upon or not believing. In some cases, they served egg contaminated or poultry food to him anyway. Fortunately, he’s very cautious and avoided serious medical problems.

    As a picky eater, I can’t claim a medical excuse, but I still don’t fit in well in this culinary world. You might just think it is picky, but I don’t think so. I just want to enjoy my food. Is that a crime?

    Yes, it’s true, If I like pepperoni or sausage pizza, and you like vegetables and another person likes cheese pizza, in my book it is not an acceptable compromise to order a pizza with everything on it. That solution thereby guarantees everyone gets what they don’t want. If that’s picky, then so be it.

    But here’s something I simply cannot imagine ever happening back home: Last night, it was apparently too late to go eat, so my bother-in-law was tasked with buying food. His remit was simple: Get food and remember Eugene is a picky eater. (I don’t think they yet realize that my kids are far more picky than I am.)

    I didn’t have much hopes, but, when food arrived, mine was excellent, but, and this is the part that makes me write this: look at that picture. They’re hamburgers. Excellent quality, gourmet-style hamburgers – and no two are alike, and no one was consulted on what to order. There’s a cheeseburger, a chicken burger, a bacon cheeseburger with a funny sauce, a jalepeño-laden spicy burger, a mushroom burger and hot wings. Never in my life would I think to walk into a restaurant, order a random assortment of different types of food and bring it home to a group of diverse people and expect anything but chaos as people jockeyed to find the burger they’d like. It seems like the Taiwanese wouldn’t think twice about doing that.

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    Me? I had the bacon cheeseburger.

  • Taiwan 2010 – Part I – A whole lot of waiting and cramping.

    The first part of any Arizona to Taiwan trip is a misery. There’s no long and short of it, it’s just a royal pain.

    Arrive two hours early (at 5:30AM) for a 7:30 flight.

    Flight to LA, 1 hour.

    6.5 hour layover in America’s most miserable airport – no thanks, we decided to take a train and get out of the airport.

    2 hour transit by train to a mostly random destination. If the ride had been shorter, we could have gone to the La Brea Tar pits, but ti wasn’t.

    1 hour eating at a fast food restaurant

    2 hours back to the airport by train

    Arrive 1.5 hours before flight and wait.

    Fly on plane for 14 hours in astounding agony of crampness.

    Finally fall asleep on the flight with only 9 hours remaining… wake up: there’s only 7 hours

    Repeat at 5 hours and 3 hours.

    Watched Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightening Thief. Did they even bother to read the original book? Sucked. Totally wrong.

    Arrive Taipei, go through immigration, customs and then drive 90 minutes to get into Taipei!

    25 hours to make the distance. Misery. Pure Misery.

  • Trips and Videos

    In a couple weeks, we’ll be in Taiwan.

    I’ve upgraded (or downgraded, depending on how you look at it) all our travel video gear. This year, in addition to digital cameras and phones that can record video, we’ll be carrying two different mini-HD cameras. Chu-Wan has a “Flip MinoHD Camcorder, 60 Minutes (Black)” (Flip Video) and I have a “Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera (Aqua)” (Eastman Kodak Company). So far, I’m particularly happy with the Zi8 because it uses SD cards, has a replaceable battery and a microphone jack. These small cameras really have a problem with camera shake because they’re so light your hand just naturally moves them around a lot.

    I’ve upgraded my Vimeo account to handle all HD videos and I’ve setup a dedicated channel just for videos from this trip. You can subscribe to the Lone Locust Taiwan 2010 Channel right here.

    Don’t expect greatness, but do expect some video from Taiwan…

  • The Priceline Experience

    Now, I can make my final judgment on our recent experiment using priceline.com to book our hotels.

    A brief recap:

    • We decided to book our hotel(s) on a San Diego trip via Priceline’s name your price program.
    • We bid for 3 nights at a minimum 3-star hotel at $75 per night – fully expecting to be rejected
    • We “won” the bid, to our delight at the Woodfin San Diego.
    • We decided we could afford another night at that rate and attempted to extend the day an additional day at the same rate.
    • Priceline could not match the $75 and instead was able to offer $116. We decided to decline.
    • We thought we’d be clever and tried to extend the stay the other direction and arrive one day earlier.
    • Having already bid on an extension at the end, Priceline would not allow us to try to arrive earlier, either.
    • We decided to bid separately for another night, knowing it would be at a different hotel.
    • We again bid $75, but this time chose only 4-star hotels.
    • Again to our surprise (and even greater delight) we got a room at the Omni San Diego.

    Actually, before we attempted to extend the stay at the Woodfin, we checked the place out online. The hotel seemed just fine, and we noted that most of the rooms at the hotel were actually suites with a bedroom, living room with sofa bed and kitchenette. We inquired with the hotel and learned we could “upgrade” for $20 more a night. The kitchenette meant could prepare our own breakfasts and save nearly $20 each day, and a sofa bed for the kids wouldn’t go amiss.

    We took that into account before we bid on the extension, so, in essence, we were prepared to pay a total of $95 per night (still cheap by San Diego room rates available online.) That meant that the $116 became $136 and that was just out-of-bounds.

    The hotel itself was perfectly acceptable. It was clean, quiet and close to several of the places we wanted to go. It was also close to fast food and other restaurants, a Fresh & Easy for shopping and a park where we took the kids to play in the evening.

    We were never troubled in any way by staff or other guests. There was the fire alarm incident, but you can’t hold anyone to blame for things like that.

    If I had any criticism of the it might be that one evening we called and asked for extra towels and they said housekeeping would bring them up and they never did.

    Priceline Experience 1: Woodfin San Diego. Good price, good room, no complaints. If this is an example of the typical Priceline experience (especially if you don’t go trying to change things after you’ve started) then it’s all recommended by me.

    Now, on to the Omni San Diego…

    Largely what you might expect from the Omni would be a top-class hotel, and indeed it was in every way. The facilities were immaculate and well designed. The staff were all friendly, efficient and almost comically eager to please. I described elsewhere how they found Sawyer the Cat for us. The hotel also provides a toy bag for each child staying in the hotel. the bag, somewhat mysteriously, also contains a kazoo. Who in their right mind would give a kazoo to kids in a hotel?

    Being just an “ordinary” room with two beds, we didn’t have nearly as much space as we did at the Woodfin, but it was more luxurious (I’m not sure that’s quite the right word but it will have to do.)

    The stay wasn’t quite as uneventful as at the Woodfin. The first night (and remember, we were only booked for one) there was a room party of some kind 2 doors down. It didn’t sound exactly like a big party, but the music was a bit loud (enough to come through the walls from two rooms down) and two or three children kept running out of the room, slamming the door, and running up and down the hotel corridor every few minutes.

    Unfortunately, the doors to the room opened inwards, and I was unable to swing it open and give them an “accidental” face full of door as they passed our room over and over. They quieted down by 10:00PM. That’s a little late when you’ve got small children going to bed at 8:30, but not excessively, so I hadn’t reached the point where I would call the hotel. Either they voluntarily shut down before I decided to call, or the hotel shut them down.

    Despite that, we decided on the first night that we were going to test Priceline again and try to stay yet another night. We realized we wouldn’t get the kids to the beach if we didn’t add a day.

    Here’s another restriction we learned about Priceline: You can only extend a stay by the same number of day (or less) of the original bid. In other words, we could have attempted to extend the stay at the Woodfin up to three more nights, but we could only try to extend the stay at the Omni by one night. This was no problem because we only wanted one night, but it’s good to know for future reference.

    We weren’t hopeful we’d get an extension. We were scheduled to depart on Friday morning, and so we’d be trying to book into a weekend slot, which is no doubt busier and normally more expensive.

    Once again, Priceline couldn’t get a $75 extension, but came up with $94, which we felt was reasonable enough to accept.

    Indeed, the next day the hotel was noticeably livelier. It turns out that the Omni is next door to Petco ballpark. Sadly, they don’t play cricket there, but instead that baseball game that’s all the rage in this country, and there was a game Friday night, so the whole area was packed, and, from our window, we could watch the left fielder (cow corner) play ball.

    So, the Omni itself was just about perfect. Just about. My complaint? I think the complaint is more about Priceline. It’s hidden costs… the Omni charges $30 per night for their parking (which is valet only.) That would have effectively bumped our $75 per night room to $105, or a 40% increase over what we bided and accepted.

    We parked at a garage across the street for less than the $30, but that was still an unexpected additional cost “gotcha.” At no point in the Priceline bid process do you have any opportunity to specify any form of minimum requirements such as “free parking.”

    So, Priceline Experience 2: Omni San Diego. Great price, but hidden costs. Exceptional experience otherwise.

    In conclusion

    Overall I’m quite pleased with the Priceline experience. It reduced our costs down so much that we were actually able to take a short vacation, which we had pretty much concluded was not going to be able to happen this year due to finances. In fact, that worked so well, we were able to take a two-day longer vacation than we originally planned.

    I would; however, take from this a couple of lessons.

    The first is to be wary of hidden costs, and plan accordingly. I don’t know any way you prevent them from happening based on the system they’ve got and I don’t know how often these things happen. I’m sure that 99.9% of all hotels in California have free parking, so this was just “one of those things” but it does seem like it might need to be taken into account.

    The second is to go with the 4 star hotels and bid low, really low. The same room we got at $75, booked online at the Omni’s website costs $219 per night – but includes “complimentary valet parking for one car per night”.

    Third, plan your vacation a lot better than we did. Figure out exactly how many nights you’re going to stay, in advance, and stick to it. Even if you have to say to yourself, “We’ll stay five nights if we can get $75 and only four if it is over $90…” etc, and then bid accordingly. Save any further thoughts of extending your stay until you’re in the room.

    Next domestic trip, I can assure you, we will be using Priceline to book our rooms.

  • Fuzzy Kittens

    I recognize that my previous post was a bit of a rant, but, I can assure you, dear reader, that had it written it immediately after the event, it would have been positively vitriolic, even by my standards. As it was, it still took three complete re-writes (from scratch) before I thought it down to PG-13 level.

    To help soften things up a bit, I thought I’d tell this tale of a fuzzy little kitten, named Sawyer.

    Sawyer is a stuffed cat. Not a stuffed previously-live cat, but a stuffed toy cat. He is a fluffy white toy given to my daughter when she was very young by a friend. The cat is very soft and droopy. it’s also permanently positioned in a reclining, lying-on-the-side resting repose. It looks, for all the world, like a dead cat lying along the side of the road.

    I named him Sawyer long before Michelle could talk. Someday, I suppose, she’ll get the Tom Sawyer reference. The name has stuck, but quite often she just calls it, “kitty.” That could be a genetic throw-back to my dad, who named every cat we had some variation of “puss” or “kitty”.

    We left the hotel for the beach and, with a little persuading, got the kids to leave their toys behind in the room. They’d no doubt get lost or destroyed at the beach.

    Later that day, when we returned, nobody really noticed that Sawyer was gone.

    The next morning; however, Michelle was in fits being unable to find the cat. We searched the room with no luck. All the other stuffed animals that had been in the same place were still there, so we concluded that Michelle had taken Sawyer the car in the afternoon/evening. The car was parked in a garage across the street and as we were getting packed up to leave, I headed across to search the car. Sawyer wasn’t there.

    I knew a storm would be brewing. Michelle can be very emotional about such things and Sawyer would be her first lost “major” stuffed toy.

    I stopped by the front desk, working on the slightest possible chance that she’d dropped Sawyer in a hallway or the elevators, and, to their credit, they made a bit of a production out of checking with their housekeeping and such. They checked their logs and asked around, but alas, Sawyer was gone.

    Michelle freaked out. We did our best to convince her that everyone was doing everything they could to find Sawyer, but we knew in our hearts he was gone. We knew that she must have dropped him somewhere, but she continued to insist that she’d left Sawyer in the room and that someone had taken him.

    We explained that the only people in the room would have been housekeeping, and they wouldn’t take Sawyer. There were other stuffed animals and even electronic equipment in the room. If they’d been thieves, they wouldn’t have taken Sawyer.

    As we were preparing to leave, the head of housekeeping called our room. They had found a white cat, that had been scooped with all the white comforters, sheets and towels the day before and it was found as it was being prepared for the laundry.

    Yes, it was Sawyer, and Michelle was overjoyed to have her kitty back.

    And that is the heartwarming tale of Sawyer the cat and the staff of the Omni, who get a lot of points in my book for saving a little girl’s fuzzy kitten.

  • San Diego – Day Two – We Lost Our Son at LegoLand

    Getting out fairly early, after a breakfast of toaster waffles, we headed towards Legoland, which is 20-30 miles north of our hotel. First we had to stop at a nearby (to LegoLand) outlet mall and pick up our three-day passes to San Diego’s major attractions. While we were there I stopped, for the very first time, at Hot Dog on a Stick. Although I love corn dogs, and their name is fairly explanitory of what they sell, I was still rather surprise at their limited menu. Hot dog on a stick, cheese on a stick, hot dog on a bun, lemonade, fries… yep, that’s it. And they were turkey dogs to boot.

    It was almost lunchtime and my justification for stopping for a snack was that food prices in theme parks are frequently akin to rape… and not just rape, but prison rape. My hope was to last through the day and then proceed to Shakey’s Pizza afterwards. (More on that later.)

    LegoLand is… well, what can I say? It’s an amusement park, mostly just rides for smaller children (2-12) with lots of Lego statues. Their artwork is impressive – but I feel if I had access to an unlimited number of every Lego ever made, I could probably make an elephant, too.IMG_6378

    I’m not very impressed by how the park is run, and I can give two examples. Although every ride has height requirement and they are posted at each ride; however, for some reason they don’t work very well. I saw no fewer than five instances where children (and their parents) were turned back at the boarding of the ride. Height requirements were enforced strictly at the last possible moment. The displays at the beginning of the line look like they ought to be clear, but at one point even we were scratching our heads over what the requirements were.

    Considering how devastated the children who were turned away were, perhaps a re-think of their system is in order.

    Second example: Children get easily lost in some of the play areas. There are large playgrounds where the parents and children enter, the children can play, the parents can watch, but in some places, the children can exit the playground out of sight of the parents.

    In the first case, I saw a young asian girl (maybe 3 or 4) come down a ladder/slide thing that lead to the outside of the play area. Her guardian was obviously still inside, probably on the ground floor. Who would expect an exit on the second floor? The child popped out, looked around and had no clue how to get back into the play area, she headed off. At first she seemed to know where she was going. I kept watching her as she soon started to look worried, then started crying.

    I got up to go help her when a woman came up to her and started holding her hand. Not her mother – just a kindly stranger noticing a child in distress. She hadn’t seen her come out of the playground, so I went to her to tell her where the child came from. They got her back to her mother – who never saw her leave the play area.

    Second instance, different playground, same scenario, different child – ours. There’s a large playground with lots of ladders and climbing things and slides. The parents can come along, but not all the parts are suitable for adults. There are alternate paths up and down for the parents and kids. Michelle and James went up (to a third lever) to come down the slides and only Michelle came down.

    I ran up, James wasn’t there. I ran back down, James still hadn’t come down. Then I look through the playground (we are standing at the back) and see a woman walking James towards the exit. He is crying. I shout to him, but he can’t hear me. I also can’t get to him because you have to go all the way around the playground to get there. Apparently there is another slide that leads to the opposite side of the playground.

    I run around the front, pushing slow, old women with strollers out of the way and get to the front – they’re not there. I run to the guy “guarding” the entrance. I say to him, “I just saw a woman walking my son towards this exit. He may have gotten lost. Did she bring him to you?”

    “No, what did he look like?”

    “Small boy, four years old, brown hair.”

    “Nah, I didn’t see anything. What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

    “Blue shirt, pants, white hat.”

    “What type of hat?”

    “White, Gilligan hat.”

    “Were his pants long or shorts?”

    “Ummmmm, actually, I’m not sure.”

    Now, mind you, he’s not the slightest bit concerned or even giving any impression that this is something he should even really give a rat’s ass about.

    Just about then a woman (“the” woman) comes up behind me and says, “Was his name James?” After I confirm she says, “He went back in there. He seemed lost and I tried to help him but he wouldn’t let me take him anywhere.” She pointed in the direction he went and there he was.

    Case solved, but I ask myself, “Would the LegoLand employee have actually tried to do anything?” The playground was designed in such a way as it was easy for him to go down a completely wrong direction, and then it was not easy to get from the front to the back. What if he’d tried to wander out of the area? Would the Lego Guy have stopped him? Are there even any basic controls in place to stop children from leaving the play area unattended?

    The whole place seemed rather lacksidasical.

    …and then we got hungry and had to eat. 2 slices of pizza, 1 salad, 1 cup of fruit, 4 breadsticks, 4 sodas…. Over $40!

    Otherwise, LegoLand… ehhhhh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not too keen on amusement parks to begin with.

    So it was off to the highlight of the day: Shakey’s Pizza!

  • San Diego – Day One – iPhone 3GS on the road

    It’s a bit of a fudge to call this “day one”. Any trip road trip to San Diego involves basically wasting all day on the 376.01 mile drive over. Even though we left at 8:30AM, we didn’t arrive at the hotel until 5:00PM.

    It’s really one barren, desolate wasteland, with Yuma smack dab in the middle. It’s a lovely town, Yuma, and one that I’m sure most Arizonans would willingly cede to California, if only that darned Colorado River didn’t make such an obvious border. Personally, I wouldn’t cede Yuma to California. I’d like to trade it for the Imperial Dunes, where they shot the Dune Sea sequences of Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi.

    To be fair, Yuma does have two things of interest: The last remaining Round Table Pizza in Arizona and the last remaining Village Inn Pizza in Arizona. On the way over, we stopped at Round Table for a bit of nostalgia for the taste buds.IMG_0083

    We’ll be having Village Inn nostalgia pizza on the way home.

    Shortly after we checked into our room at the Woodfin San Diego, which seems like a nice hotel, situated right next to a huge Qualcomm complex, the fire alarms sounded and we had to evacuate. As the fire trucks arrived, we decided to go to dinner. Michelle, who had to leave her toys behind was in tears, worrying that one of her favorite toys was going to be destroyed in the fire.

    We browsed a nearby shopping area and found Luong Hai Ky, the Original Chinese Noodle Shop and had a decent batch of noodle soups. I had beef, the kids had duck and Irene tried the seafood. All agreed that it was good, but was more Vietnamese than ChineseIMG_0092

    Our room has a kitchenette, so we stopped by the nearby Fresh & Easy to get some supplies for the morning and headed back to the hotel. The hotel was still standing and there was no sign of a fire, so we turned in early.

    Looking back at my previous San Diego trip, I commented how incredibly helpful having my MacBook was. In that instance, we’d return to the room and could make all our plans with everything at our fingertips each night. This time, I’m on my first “real” trip with an iPhone, which should extend my information store to 24X7 and geo-aware. So how well did it do on the first day?

    We lost the 3G signal just before we reached the last major housing developments on the west side of Phoenix – about 20 miles out from home, leaving me with the older, slower Edge connection. Since this was just like my original iPhone – well, it was disappointing, but I was used to it – and, I’d rather have slow internet than no internet – even if all I did was just continue to receive e-mail from work.

    We never got 3G back until we arrived well into the suburbs of San Diego.

    After you leave Yuma, you travel very close to the Mexican border. The new border fence is often within sight of the freeway, At one point, at a gas station that doesn’t even seem to appear on Google Maps, you’re so close that both my iPhone (on AT&T) and Chu-Wan’s phone (T-Mobile) started receiving SMS messages saying, in effect, “Welcome to Mexico”. The iPhone message included a note that said, “International Data Roaming rates are in effect at $19.97 per megabyte.” Youch! Luckily I have International Data Roaming turned off – as should everyone, unless they intentionally are planning to use it. What would have happened if we’d driven past the border just as a bit e-mail with attachment had arrived?

    Inside San Diego, the iPhone Maps application gave different directions than did my Garmin GPS. We went with the GPS directions only because traffic was looking a little ugly on the Maps route – although we had to travel through the only “solid red” traffic problem in San Diego no matter which route we took.

    At the room, we quickly used the iPhone to locate a nearby shopping area, and were easily able to check out restaurant reviews before we chose our dinner location. So far, that’s all good.

    Now the bad: battery life. It’s appalling. When using GPS features, even plugged into the car for charging the battery is being drained at an incredible rate. Using the GPS while plugged in for over an hour and the battery only charged 2%. It was literally draining as fast as it could charge. I kept the phone on the charger for much of the drive. It was 100% charged in Yuma. 53% when we reached San Diego 3 hours later. It was charging in the room when the fire alarm sounded and was back up to 75% and was down again to 50% at bed time.

    On Day Two (which is actually today) at Legoland, I’ll try to conserve a bit. Typically, at home, I get one day out of a charge and typically have 25-30% charge left. Here’s hoping 3.1 OS will improve this!

  • It’s a big world out there…

    Darn it, I never get to do Internet memes! So I’m just going to do one on my own:

    This is where I’ve been in the world, and when you put on a map, there’s a whole lot of world left to see:


    visited 7 states (3.11%)
    Create your own visited map of The World or try another Douwe Osinga project

    And this is the US


    visited 19 states (38%)
    Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

  • Where to go in the UK?

    So, the world’s in financial turmoil, and things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better. My employer (and technically speaking, my wife’s, too) is $1 billion over budget this year. People are worried about their jobs. Prices are up. Sales are down. Fuel Prices/Airfare are outrageous. The UK is one of the most expensive places to visit.

    But, dammit, I promised my daughter a cricket match and a trip to the British Museum of Natural History for her birthday, and I aim to keep that promise. At least it is still 8 months away.

    (Video after the jump…)

    (more…)

  • Fast Passport

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    How often do I get the chance to compliment someone on a job well done? It seems all I’m ever doing is pointing out the flaws. Well, today is different.

    Kudos and thanks to (of all people) the US Government, passport office!

    I submitted my expired passport, by snail mail, Friday June 6th. My replacement passport arrived, by mail, today, June 14th. Subtracting out one day each way, they got that processed in 7 calendar days. They haven’t even cashed the check, yet!

    Not only did I receive my passport by priority mail, but, in a separate mailing, standard mail, I received my old passport back, too. That has a postmark, so I know it was mailed two days ago. They must have processed my passport in 6 days. Amazing.

    That’s nowhere near the 6 weeks they tell you to expect. I pity the people who pay the extra fee for expedited service.

    Once again, I’m free to roam the world, and my new passport book is rather sad because it’s empty…

    Looking at my old one, I have all those stamps and visas:

    • Taiwan 15 May 1998 to 24 May 1998
    • Taiwan 15 Dec 1998 to 20 Dec 2000
    • Singapore 20 Dec 1998 to 26-Dec-1998
    • Taiwan 26 Dec 1998 to 05 Jan 1999
    • London Gatwick 21 Jul 2000 – No exit stamp – I guess I never left
    • Taiwan 26 Mar 2000 – 22 Apr 2000
    • Tokyo Narita 01 Jun 2001 to 05 Jun 2001
    • Taiwan 05 Jun 2001 to 25 Jun 2001
    • Taiwan 15 Jan 2003 to 20 Feb 2003
    • Taiwan 29 Sep 2005 to 07 Nov 2005
    • Taiwan 05 Jun 2007 to 25 Jun 2007

    They’ve all been fun, but looking at the list, I think we’re in a bit of a rut… and that’s why we’re UK-bound in Jun 2009…