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My favourite app on my iPad is Flipboard. Mainly because I use it to read my blog roll on it, thanks to the Google Reader function. It's like reading a magazine!
Unfortunately, Google Reader is getting shut down on Monday, for good. I have no clue why, but after a bit of research, I have now started using Bloglovin instead.

Don’t use Google Reader as your reader? Then you’re fine! But if you do, I recommend switching to Bloglovin, it was really easy. You just create an account and in the process it asks if you want to import the blogs you read on Google Reader to your new account.  Click the button to import and that’s it. There is also an app you can install on your phone or iPad, if you prefer keeping up with your read on the go.

Thank you all for being such loyal readers. Now go get your read on and follow my blog! (Click here or on the Bloglovin icon to the right!)

Work in progress

I realized after coming home that for some reason when I blogged from my iPad this time, the photos didn't upload in normal size. When you look at the blog from a computer they come out all pixelated and blurry.
I'm fixing it. Slowly but surely post by post.

So if you are keen on seeing the photos in better quality, stand by, I'll slowly be replacing all the photos in all the Bali posts.

Edit: It took me all afternoon, but now it's done! And I've even added a few new photos here and there! Enjoy!

Watch out!

Do you guys remember this post..?
Well, Nathan better watch out:

It's back!

During this year's summer holiday in Sweden my big SLR camera started to behave really strangely. All of a sudden it would give me an 'error' message, freeze - and wipe all the photos currently on the SD-card!
This of course wasn't good at all. I couldn't bring it anywhere since I never knew when it was going to wipe the photos I'd taken that day. Sometimes it'd be after each 10th photo, sometimes not until after a few hundred.

Then, I must admit, it took me quite a while after we got back until I actually got it in to the Canon HQ here to have it fixed. (I guess I got used to the convenience of just carrying around the light little snapshot camera...). Eventually I dropped it in for repair, waited for a quote, and finally agreed to have it sent to Malaysia to get the card reader slot replaced (which had been the issue).
That took it's sweet time as you might imagine, but finally this week - I got my baby back! Yay!



I'm really happy to have my big camera back, I didn't realize how much I've missed it! It's such a difference between just taking photos to document events, and taking photos.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck...

It's no secret I'm married to Mr Gadget...
Nathan got his new iPhone 4S this Sunday (yes, it was only released last Friday!), and where as it might not have all that many interesting new things - at least one has been amusing us, lots - Siri.

The other night we couldn't stop asking her questions, and were amazed and impressed by the apparently friendly and humble but slightly edgy personality of this new "assistant".



She made us laugh so much because she gives some quirky answers sometimes. For example we tried her with:

Us: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Siri: That depends entirely if it's European or American wood.

Us: Will you marry me?
Siri: Aaahh, that's sweet!

Us: What's the best phone?
Siri: The one you are holding in your hand.

Of course, there is already an abundance of websites (f.e this one) on the internet where people post their conversations with Siri. Here are a few of my favourite ones:

Q: Blah blah blah
Siri: I don't know what that means. But at least it rhymes.

Q: What is the meaning of life?
Siri: All evidence to date suggests it's chocolate.

Q: Beam me up.
Siri: Ok. Stand still.

Q: I love you Siri.
Siri: Oh, I bet you say that to all your Apple products.

:D I love it! Humour!

The iGeneration

Dalecarlian

I found this phone cover in Sweden and I knew I just had to have it:



It's a pattern inspired by the wooden Dalecarlian horses, one of the more famous symbols of Sweden. Feels like carrying around a little bit of home.

Camera problems

My camera is causing me problems at the moment. I will take it in to the camera shop tomorrow and have them look at it. Hopefully it's an easily solved issue, cross your fingers!
Every now and then it gives me an "error-message", and tells me I need to insert a new card or format the current one... and then it wipes all the photos currently on the card! Not good.
I've been taking the card out and tried to blow down the card slot to clear it in case there is a any dirt, or lint or such, and that seemed to help at first.

Luckily, I've been downloading the photos daily to my iPad, but I've still lost quite a few these past few days, since it started doing the "error" thing more and more frequently. In the end, at every 5-6th photo... Which meant that most of the photos from today for example, got wiped before I even had time to download them off the camera.

So, you won't be seeing any photos from last nights fab dinner (lasagna on moose mince meat, mmm!); none from the kids' cosy movie-morning together this morning on the sofa; none of the beautiful close-ups I took of all six kids in the garden; none of Linda and me together in front of the colourful flowers in the park; none from our ice cream break; none of the cute ducklings and fearless goats in the petting zoo; none from the playground or none from the first part of the visit to 'Naturum'.

It sucks.

(Edit 27th of July: Well, I have now done research on the internet ("Google is my friend!"), tried formatting the card and even using another card; and talked to the guys in the camera shop. The only conclusion is unfortunately that the camera has a problem with the card reading mechanism. Boo.
So, I'm now halfway through our holidays, and without a reliable camera. Boo-hoo!)

Adding colour

Ever since I bought my white Triwa last summer, I've been in love with it and have got tons of compliments for it. I even have a friend who just recently got the same one, after having seen mine. The Triwa watches are really cool - and I knew I wanted another one.
So... Here's this year's "souvenir" - the 'Pinkish Libre':



I had to order it via their homepage this time since there are no dealers around here. I wasn't sure wether it was going to be this one or the 'Orange Revolution', it was hard to judge the colours just on the computer screen. This one was described as coral coloured, so that's what I went for.
When it arrived it wasn't quite what I had expected, it's rather illuminescent! But yesterday when I spotted two other people with the orange one, I got really happy, I had definitely picked the right colour, for me!

The only way is up

There is a Swedish site called 'Bloggportalen' (=the blog portal), where you can list your blog if you wish, to try and attract more readers.

I did just that a while back, more for fun than anything else, and you then have to decide which category your blog belongs to. There are all sorts of blog categories: food, religion, parenting, health, education, sport, sex, gadgets, language, music etc etc.
My blog wasn't hard to place, it fits quite nicely into this category: 'Svenskar boende i utlandet' (=Swedes-living-abroad), which currently consists of 2842 other similar blogs. (On a rainy day I'll sometimes surf around all these different blogs, there are a lot of interesting stories out there!)

They also publish Top-50 lists on the Bloggportalen, total, and for each category. F.e 'Most linked blogs in the category Swedes-living-abroad', 'Most chosen as favourite in Swedes-living-abroad' and this:



'Most visited blogs in category Swedes-living-abroad'.
Check it out - I'm currently on place 30!! Quite cool! Would be even cooler to reach Top-10, so the only way is up!

Life in Brunei - On the go

I stumbled upon a pretty good blogger tip today at this (Swedish, sorry) blog, about how to get your blog to appear in a more friendly version for the small screens of mobile devices.

So, I'm going to do a little trial and see how it works out. What do you think? You guys who follow me on your iPhones etc, do you prefer this adapted version, or the original web version?
Let me know.

1-2-3-4-5-3-4-5-3-1-2-4-6-5-3-1-2-1-2...

No, unfortunately this is not a winning Lottery draw but just how I drive around Brunei at the moment...
My car is at the garage for service and to have some smaller jobs done, so I'm using Nathan's truck which unfortunately, is a manual.

Now, it's been a wee while since I last drove a manual car, and also this one has six gears. That's a lot of gears to choose from! Add to that the way the Bruneians are driving, you can appreciate there is a lot of changing gears going on!
Even the kids have noticed this extra activity whilst driving, and they are both wondering nearly every time we're out why we move that "stick" around so much?

Bad idea

The other day Misuzu and I drove down to the gym to try out another SpinFit class. We didn't think we needed to be there too much in advance, but helas, the class was full already when we got there! Bummer...
Now that we had driven all the way there, we thought let's just join whatever class is on in the main room... Well, that was a bad idea! It was BOOTCAMP!
Oh... My... God...

I'm so sore still, and it was so hard, but sooo good!
Fun..? Not really, but I'll still go back, because the body got such a work-through and in such a high tempo that you hardly had time to think about that you were actually exercising!

And, it's doing me a lot of good - even my iPhone was celebrating with me yesterday when I reached the first of my loose-weight-goals!

I can see you...

I have this thing called Feedjit installed on this blog, it's a widget that tells me who reads me. It also tells me how each reader arrives here, f.e if they enter directly or if they google on something that makes them end up here; and if they leave by closing their browser or clicking on any of my links or photos. It's rather interesting actually.

A lot of people google on 'life in brunei' or 'expats in brunei' - which often leads them straight to my blog; as there is not much other information out there in cyberspace on everyday life here.
But I've also have got hits on 'hate brunei' (on my post "I hate the heat"), 'cooking classes in Brunei' (so many hits on that, people must be keen on learning to cook here!) and 'starbucks in brunei' (well, there is none..!), 'pretty clothing in brunei' and quite a few hits when I've been writing about the royals, f.e the school trip to the Sultan's hangars etc.

Just in the last 24 hours, I've had visitors from the US, Australia, Polen, Sweden, Malaysia, France, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Indonesia, Belgium, Russian Federation, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, Israel, Norway, Philippines and Denmark. Sure, I do know people in some of those countries, but it's still amazing to think about how (our) life in Brunei can interest so many people!
(I still get most hits from visitors here in Brunei though! I find that funniest of all!)

So cool!

Check this out, this was my run on Saturday:



Not that the result itself is too much to brag about... but it's a very cool service provided by this site.
This picture above is just a screen dump, but on the site itself you can see all your results as graphics. F.e the finish line in a 'birds view', you can see where you were when the winner of your category, the overall winner or your friends crossed the finish line; you can also see you split times and other statistics.
Very cool for a number geek like me!

My new toy!

My new Garmin is so cool!



As those of you who know me in real life will know, I'm a number freak. I like excel sheets, tables, statistics etc; and of course - anything that will make it more fun to keep up the exercise is a good thing!
This is a good thing, and cool!

It's a GPS watch, so it'll tell you exactly where you have been running, can show you on Google maps, it'll be able to tell you the distance, your heart rate, calories you've burned etc etc. It's a rather sophisticated little gadget and will give you tons of info, displayed per lap, or per run or however you would like it of course.
It connects via wireless with the computer and puts all the data into a program for you, so you can keep track of all your exercise!
This one run, is just around "our" track, so not so exciting maybe - but I'm looking forward to map some of the hash runs we do - and also to use it for some heart rate based training etc in the future.

So cool!

In sync

I really, really like my iPhone. It has many useful applications, is easy to operate and I have every information I ever need in it - truth is I would be slightly lost without it.
What I like the best about it is that it syncs automatically with my Mac, and with Nathan's Mac. That's a feature that is very much needed now that school is about to start again, everybody are back in the country from their holidays and all sorts of functions are starting to get booked in.

The calendar has already started to fill up with exciting events and happenings, and I'm sure there will be much more in the coming weeks. Although the new notice boards in the kitchen have already proven useful, I'm glad I have my phone to help me keep track of it all!

{365:75} The DS

The DS.
Linnea has been getting more and more restless for every flight we have done lately. She is not interested in much; not books, not her movies, not her toys... just has ants in her pants and is not very nice to travel with at all.
So, we thought it was time to introduce her to her own special toy: we got her a pink Nintendo DS in HongKong; with the Super Mario Bros game on it.
It was fun for a while, but as it turns out - at the moment it's the mommy who has most fun with it! (Hopefully she'll get into it eventually...)

Being married to a gadget man

It is no secret that my husband is a real gadget man, it was even mentioned in a few speeches on our wedding! Our house it teched out with every possible gadget you can imagine, and he always has plans for the next cool toy or fantastic new gizmo he is planning to get.



Sometimes, there are things he would like, but can't justify buying - like f.e an iPhone. The thing is, his flying log programs aren't compatible with that. But... that doesn't stop him from getting it for someone else in the family - me.
For the record, yes, it is a nice phone.
I must say though, I think it's totally overpriced (even if we bought it in NZ, which is one of the few countries in the world you can buy them unlocked, and cheap) for what it is; and I was very against this purchase. I actually really liked my old Nokia, it worked really well (even after it's recent swim) and suited me and my needs perfectly.
But, now I have a new baby. As I said, yes - it is a nice phone!

I have a white one, and am currently spending some time getting to know it and synchronizing it with my other baby, my Mac. Just call me Gadget Woman!

Clumsy queen hits again

On the bad side, I put a water bottle in my bag today, apparently without screwing the top on properly - so I flooded the bag, with everything in it... Fortunately, both my SLR and Nathans camera survived. Unfortunately, my phone didn't.
(Nathan got support for his argument he had during a recent discussion we had about getting a waterproof or non-waterproof camera next though...)

On the good side, it means that I will now need (need!) a new phone. Pronto. Bring it on.