Frau Klein

I just found out how to do youtube on a PS3. Just simply go to internet search and search for youtube.com/xl. This opens youtube in a specific, maximized view which is perfect for display and navigation on PS3. Sweet. I guess husband and I will watch W. W. Young’s silent movie Alice in Wonderland from 1915 later on the big screen :)

I haven’t used org-mode in the past few months and when I was using it this week the PDF export was broken. Instead of getting a PDF output I got this error

LaTeX Error: File `wrapfig.sty’ not found.x

As I haven’t changed anything regarding emacs nor org-mode installation it took me a while to figure how to solve it. I have org-mode installed via mac ports, I might have done a port upgrade outdated at some point and this might have caused the issue. Now, how did I get it working again?

• sudo port selfupdate :: I haven’t touched macports in a while.
• sudo port upgrade org-mode :: I upgraded org-mode hoping that this would solve it. I got a minor upgrade (7.0.2 -> 7.0.3), the error still occured.
• sudo port upgrade texlive-latex-extra :: this is the file that supposedly contains all the missing file. 
• sudo texhash :: to rebuild TeX-inputfiles-database
• changing my emacs configuration :: I added the line (require ‘org-latex) in the ~/.emacs file and restarted emacs.

That did do the job, now the PDF export runs again. Jippieh!

Husband and I recently went house hunting, after 2 months of search we found the perfect house and are now in the stage between sale is agreed and the house is ours. The post will talk about how to buy as a first-time-buyer, if you are looking for an investment property you might it less helpful. For husband and me is to find something that will be our home for the next 20 years.

Before you start looking for a place make sure that you know what you want, what your budget is and what you don’t want. Jim and I were looking initially at an area we both didn’t know. Later it turned out it was one of the more dodgy areas where we wouldn’t want to live at all. However, it helped us to get started and do all the necessary steps such as mortgage pre-approval, finding a solicitor etc.

Also, as we were looking for our future home, we weren’t willing to take any compromise. If the house it is too small, it’s too small, it won’t grow over time. If the backyard is overseen, it won’t change. If there is a busy road, it won’t go away. If you don’t like it don’t go for the house. If you step into a house and you instantly like it, consider it to be the one. But be careful, nice decoration and a freshly upgraded house might blind you regarding what you want and need. All houses we liked we saw 3 or 4 times at different times during the day.

There were a couple of useful web pages that I used for hunting:

• myhome.ie is the property website with the most for sale properties. Pretty good search and subscription facilities.
• daft.ie is the most famous site for rentals, but also good for sales searches. It’s a pity that the API is not available for private users otherwise searching and filtering would have been much easier to me.
• adverts.ie I subscribed the RSS feeds. Search options aren’t as good, agents usually don’t answer.
• property.ie Seems to be a clone of daft.ie, I have never seen any house that was only advertised there. 
• Also, it makes sense to work directly with property agents. Just check any of the house search engines for agents that come up frequently in the search results and contact them directly. Not all houses are put into the portals.

To verify location and maybe gather initial information about the house I had a look at

• irishpropertywatch.ie gives a good indication how long the house is on the market and what history it had. If you see a house that is available for half a year already and went through 3 price drops you will be in a different position when negotiating than you were if the house is fresh on the market.
• As I didn’t grow up in Dublin, I didn’t know all the stereotypes for Dublin areas, what good and what bad areas are. I find it very helpful to just walk around during the day, evening and weekend through the desired area. If you like what you see, go for it. If you doubt the social status of the people around, or if you get another bad impression, don’t go for it. If you do your hunt like me – most of the time remotely, then go for thepropertyin.ie, there you’ll find comments on most of the houses and areas. Of course – at the end it doesn’t matter as much, each area has good and bad spots, good and bad people, and the most important people – the direct neighbors – are never reviewed. So be careful not to be too shallow. Husband and I usually had a mutual understand of like/don’t like as soon as we were in a particular area.

Budget for house purchase

• Know your limits. Don’t go over them. Never. We happened to be in 2 bidding wars where we dropped out once we reached our budget, it wasn’t easy but sensible to do. At the end we got one of the houses anyway because the other bidder pulled back. 
• If you consider a mortgage, go to your bank and ask what the maximum amount is that you would get. Smile gently, then divide this number by 2 and take this as absolute maximum. Our bank would give us based on our current salaries maximum term mortgage maxing out our incomes as payback. That doesn’t make sense, it’s not realistic. Go for half of it, at most. You don’t want to pay off your mortgage only – all your life.
• Be aware that the house price isn’t all you are going to pay, you will pay stamp duty (2%), solicitor fees (ca. 0.6%), valuation and survey (ca 500 Euro), modernization cost, maybe extensions and furniture/interior. If you are not sure what to expect, consult an architect/builder/forum/furniture shops/friend who recently upgraded his house. This will give you a feeling for the numbers to think of.
• We set our total budget based on max house price + max upgrade price. That means at the end we bid on 3 houses in different states, one that had no modernization required, our bid was higher than for the other ones that required lots of work. Furniture is a separate budget.
• Don’t believe any property agent. Their task is to sell. Don’t let them push you to commitments you are not willing to take. Be honest and accept when your and the owner’s expectations are different. If the agent lied, he’ll be back.

Budget for monthly expenses.

• List 1: Current expenses: How much can you afford to spend in addition (mortgage payback) and to save?
• List 2: Overlapping expenses: Our house will require 2-4 months of upgrade work, during that time we will pay rent, mortgage and need to save up for builders. Be aware that your mortgage comes with additional requirements such as
  home insurance and life insurance to cover your mortgage. Plan this into
  your budgets too.
• List 3: Once our rent contract stopped we won’t have double expenses anymore, also builders won’t be required to be paid off. However, we need to save some money for house maintenance, some for postponed upgrades and some to do lump sum payments against the mortgage.

Costs of a mortgage:

• Use a mortgage calculator to compare options. I found a helpful one on Google spreadsheet templates. I find it’s better to play with than digging through 15 print outs of the bank that are solely designed for the purpose to confuse you.
• We decided finally what kind of interest rate we wanted to go for, how much of the mortgage we wanted to finance and what term we’d use. We decided to go for maximum term to give us flexibility and reduce the amount of monthly payment. This will in the first place cause a higher interest; however, we plan on paying in lump sums to reduce the mortgage and the paid interest significantly within the first 5 years. And if anything bad happens… we will still be able to pay off the rates.
• If you need to do modernization/upgrade work on your house: Compare. Ask multiple architects, builders, solicitors, surveyors etc for fees. Go for the good ones, but check their rates.

Insurances

• I am very pragmatic when it comes to insurances. I don’t like them, I think insurance sales persons are send from hell to threaten and scare people with risks that are rather unlikely. I got ask to get an insurance for payment protection and income protection to ensure that even if we are sick or without income that we can afford the mortgage. That sounds great in the first place, however, it will add up to additional 100 Euro or more per month that are paid for – at the end – most likely nothing.
• I think careful budgeting and a reasonable monthly rate is far more recommendable than going for additional insurances. Setting a low mortgage rate to pay back over a long term is more sensible. To reduce it, pay lump sums whenever you can afford it.
• Don’t compare price only. If you get a home insurance make sure it
  covers the entire property back to front, and not only the house itself.
  You don’t want to find yourself in the situation that your shed and
  garage got broken in and your insurance doesn’t cover for them.
• Invest separately into other necessary precaution for yourself. Think about pension and how future you would like to spend the rest of your life.

During the past years I’ve been to many different places. As work trips usually mean work during the days in areas that are good for industry but not for tourists, I usually barely have the opportunity to do extensive sightseeing. Also, after a while I got tired historic church – birth place of <insert famous person> – unique architecture – outstanding park tourist program. Most galleries and museums are closed in after work hours. So there is not much excitement left. I find it far more interesting meeting different cultures and their kitchens. Local specialties at good restaurants I cannot resist. I discovered some quite unique foods, here is the list of my favorites:

• Tromsø, Norway Lutefisk it is an aged, jelly like dried fish that got soaked in a liquid for a long while. I was told it was especially served in winter just before christmas. I had it with sweet brown cheese, mustard, fried bacon, potatoes and a local ale (Mack beers).
• Lisboa, Portugal Bacalhau salted, preserved cod served in a vegetable soup.
• Milano, Italy Mozarella Bufalata very creamy, mild bufalo mozarella.
• Selengor, Malaysia Durian a very smelly, creamy, sweet, tasty and unique fruit. It’s
  a pity that it is not growing in Europe and usually out of season when
  we are in Hong Kong. Very tasty.
• Singapore Hainanese Chicken a rice dish where the rice is soaked in a rich chicken broth with cooked and marinated chicken – a dish full of flavors
• Yuen Long, Hong Kong Water Checstnut Cake cooked by the grandmother-in-law.
• Sonoma, CA, USA Carneros Cuvée perfect sparkeling wine.
• Dresden, Germany Chocolate Balls these were a surprise dish in our wedding, a rarely known recipe by Frank Ollhof (Petit Frank)
  

There are also a couple of restaurants experiences that were outstanding: Like a small restaurant in a small town owned by a soon to be retired Michelin star cook, or a surprisingly good delicatessen store in Nottingham that served outstanding breakfast, an Asian restaurant in Milano successfully creating an Asian-Italian fusion kitchen with e.g. Tartufo Dim Sum.

The flip site of work travel is that most of the time I eat 3 times a day in some sort of restaurant and I barely know what they put in the food, how it is prepared or how fresh it is. What I enjoy most after all is self prepared and home-cooked food with husband.

I flew in to Florence, Italy a few days ago. Coming from Dublin I needed to change planes in Frankfurt airport. I had 2 really nice and talkative seat neighbors. The lady who accompanied me from Dublin to Frankfurt was on her way to Beijing, the young man sitting next to me in the plane from Frankfurt to Florence just came from Beijing. This was certainly an unusual coincidence.

Both weren’t used to long haul flights and did some mistakes, such as planning on taking sleeping pills and not resetting the body clock appropriately. I have done a couple of long distance flights during the past 3 years – for work and private purposes. I usually aim for getting jetlagged on the plane, to be able to enjoy my holiday or do my work without being horribly tired.

What I do in general

• if I have to interchange, I make sure that consider the flight times and the landing time at my destination time zone. E.g. if I land in the morning, my second flight should provide me a full night worth of sleep. When I go to Asia, I usually fly via Frankfurt, the next 9-10 hours flight allows me to sleep and adjust to time. I generally aim for having one long flight. In Europe go for Frankfurt, Heathrow, or if I have to Amsterdam they usually fly to any destination. I avoid CDG as I heard only bad things about it. 
• As soon as I enter the plane I set my watch and perception to target timezone of my next destination. This reduces confusion at airport and also allows body clock and to adjust. 
• I ignore day/night mode in the airplane. I stuck to my target timezone, adjust meals accordingly, sleep accordingly. I don’t do dinner just because the airline scheduled one after take off. If it is 3PM at my destination, I have a coffee, that’s it.
• I make sure I have enough (healthy) snacks with me to do my meals yourself. Bananas, nuts and bread are usually good. Most plane food isn’t very healthy nor tasty anyway. I always take lots of water with me. Most airport have drinking fountains, I usually refill my bottle there.
• I make sure that I have enough time for interchanges, less than 1h means
  usually stress, due to delays, long distances between gates, security
  controls etc and other passengers time might be significantly
  reduced.I usually feel comfortable if I have about 90 minutes time between landing and departure.
• I don’t look for price only. I look for convenience of the trip, too: I avoid
  long overlays, also I do as little flight segments as possible. Every interchange
  will add ca 2h to the schedule, it will increase the risk of missing a flight and – depending on visa requirements – it might add additional hassle.
• If I arrive in the morning, I go to my hotel, check in, have a strict 20 minutes power nap, setup a wake up call and alarms, have a shower
  and than I am all day on the road. I only do simple tasks such as working around, eat according to the new time zone, look at random spots, shops, parks – basically
  strolling around. I usually aim to be back later than 7pm. Also, always, I take lots of water with me.

Don’t's

• Never ever think of ‘at home it would be now 3AM’. Where ever you are that’s the ‘correct’ time. Behave accordingly.
• Don’t get drunk on planes, it makes you sleepy. But being hangover and jetlagged doesn’t really work once you crossed your 30th birthday.
• Don’t take sleeping pills or other anti-jetlag packs. It’s most likely scam. It doesn’t help your body clock at all.
• Don’t plan on interchanging in US. Immigration departments can be lots of hassle, you need to collect your luggage, go through customs and security before you can go to your onwards flight. It cost times and if you are ‘lucky’ you might meet second immigration officers or spend some additional time at customs. US airlines are usually overbooked, if you are delayed you might not be able to get on your flight or on the next one. Being 2 days delayed when you want to get home or need to go to a meeting don’t suit anybody.

If you are flying economy class:

• If you plan on sleeping book window seats. You don’t want to get bothered by somebody kicking you or asking you to move. If you need to be awake, go for an aisle seat.
• Exercise and walk around. Stretch. Nothing is worse than arriving at destination with pain caused by not moving at all.
• If you fly as couple go for a row and book aisle and window seat, if it is off season the plane is most likely not full, and middle seats are the least desired ones. If somebody sits there he’ll be happy to change to either windows or aisle. 

The only jetlags I seem to get are those when I get back home, because then I am usually treated by husband, have less duties and can sleep for days.

Urban myths

• jetlags are urban myths. Call it however you want, if you don’t sleep according to your body clock and requirements, you feel broke for a while. The younger and the more disciplined you are the easier it is.
• the direction influences the intensity of the jetlag. Having worked 8h ahead and behind GMT did not make a difference to me. Also, coming back wasn’t easier or harder depending on the flight time.
• the longer the distance the harder the jetlag. I feel it far more difficult to adjust 2h to east (2h earlier) than going 5 or more hours ahead.

Why?
My blog got quite slow recently, and I think even though the “recently shared” posts generated lots of traffic I didn’t really like them being mixed up with content generated by me. I also got tired of the layout. I haven’t done any recent updates so that was required at some point too and finally… I got incredibly bored in Pforzheim, Germany.

What?
I removed a couple of static pages:

• As Google has removed the google reader sharing and google+ just made me tired of virtual social networks I moved the Just Read tab into old stuff.
• Husband has now multiple blogs and I guess people should follow him directly.

I removed other page integrations

• I removed all the share and social network stuff. If you like my post and want to share it just copy the URL. Main reasons for that decision is site performance and the unlikelihood of re-sharing of already shared content.
• Sadly I haven’t earned anything on flattr. So the default donation button remains on the main page, but the article specific buttons are now gone.
• I removed the collection of shared items – my foot prints if you recall. With google reader gone and me not using twitter anymore it’s less likely that there is any interesting stuff on it, and sharing my foursquare logs etc does only do a little stuff. With all the call back links there was a bit of traffic and loads of spam. For now I have hidden all these posts, I might delete them one day forever. I might have messed up my timeline / feed though as my filter wasn’t correct initially.

Other changes

• I removed a few plugins and polished some other things in the back end to improve the performance of my blog.
• I added a new theme with a more lean layout.

Guess what, more is up to come.

1. Prime directive: Make Mr Tang happy.
2. Get a house and build a home for The Tangs. We actually started it. Today we lost our favorite house in a bidding war. That quite hurts, especially as I had the extensions and garden architecture scoped out in my mind already. We are bidding now on another house and I guess Jim doesn’t like it as much anymore because I considered the hillside yard to be an interesting location to build a bunker.
3. Answer private mails. I skipped all the online social network broadcasting and replaced them with real people contacts, however I still suck at answering mails from people that matter.
4. Live healthy. Less restaurant food during work trips, less pub o’clock till Ian o’clock and beyond on Fridays, less red meat, more naturally riped fruits and vegetables and lots of fibers. Also, I need to get rid of my recently discovered liking for Butler’s chocolate. Do more exercises, at least 30 min walk a day.
5. Spend less, save more. Do something to cover my pension. Husband’s b-day words are unforgotten: “16 more years and you’ll be 50.” When did I age that much… I felt I was 20-something. Now I need to take care of future me to save her from the streets, evil offspring and public social care for elderly people. 
6. Throw *the* 60th and 70th birthday party for my parents :)
7. Re-factor my blog. It’s a mess, I admit. Also, write more articles. I guess, with the next weeks in lovely suburbian Bristol, beautiful Birmingham and some random London suburb I will have lots of time for it.

I guess (1) is the most difficult, (2) is commit goal for The Tangs, (3) takes most time, (4) has it’s 20th anniversary on this list, (5) continues from the past 2 years, (6) is already in progress, (7) will most likely be actually done by end of this year.

It’s 6 weeks until the wedding and so far everything went *really* smoothly. We orchestrated our wedding, defined the events, parties, locations, budget etc. The past 8 months of preparations have been also very stressful, considering that there are two different cultures, three languages and a lot of German bureaucracy involved. Jimmy being BNO citizenship didn’t help either – no embassy is taking care of him, he has to sort out everything directly in Hong Kong:

• Bureaucracy. Most of the countries require additional documents for a bi-national marriage, such as birth certificates with apostille, certificates of no impediments (which requires a lot of additional documents and expires usually within a couple of months), if countries do not require these documents it’s most likely that the marriage will not be acknowledged by authorities:
  • In Europe Denmark allows to get married within 10 work days, it’s the easiest way for couples like us. If you happen to live in Ireland or if you are free to travel, plan for a preparation appointment ca 4 months prior the wedding with the desired registration office. In both countries a birth certificate with apostille is required – nothing else. All other EU-country’s instructions weren’t clear or involved more documents, such as the certificate of no impediment. 
  • For a marriage in Germany I got an advice to contact a lawyer as e.g. usually a 3-month marriage visa is required which wouldn’t make sense to us as we are not living in Germany. Foreseeing more “challenges” like this I didn’t bother to have a closer look.
  • In Asia Hong Kong seems to be easy to get married too, we didn’t choose the location because my parents would have not been able to attend there because of the long travel. 
  • In America Las Vegas is the obvious option… if it is your style.
  • Bahamas, Fidschi and other far distant countries allow to get married there just with a passport within a couple of days but most of these marriages are not legally acknowledged in Europe.
• Name change is a difficult decision and it comes with a lot of bureaucracy, especially if you can’t go to your local registration office to sort it out. In Germany there is the international Standesamt (German registration institution) which can help understanding name laws, but they can’t give any legally binding advice. The German embassy neither, so we are only partially sure what name rules will apply to us. We prefer a combined name (although for Jim it would be a bit strange as he then would hold undeniably German, English and Chinese name parts). So no decision on this one yet, but as there is no time pressure we don’t care too much. Actually, as Ireland is allowing people to rename themselves as they want it it’s kind of a running gag to call Jim with his Irish name: Seamusin Mac An Teanga :)
• Families. Our families can’t be united as the most important parts are either too old or in an unstable health shape so that we would be too worried to put them on a long haule flight. We appreciate that some of our relatives would ignore their health and just follow us whereever we’d go but concerning health and considering worst case scenarios shouldn’t be part of marriage planning. So we decided on having a private, tiny ceremony for the legalization of our marriage and giving the families local experiences matching cultures and individual wishes and traditions. We were very open in that point and left planning to the families, so in Germany e.g. we will repeat the ceremony for my parents, in Hong Kong planning is not finalized yet. So we will have four dates for our wedding: the legalization, the Irish reception, the German wedding celebration and the Hong Kong wedding banquet. All four dates will equally count as our wedding date for us (hurray – 4 times flowers a year for me :))
• Mothers… for most probably not a surprise that it can be challenging to please them especially as in our case they won’t attend the legalization. We tried to find satisfying solutions for them but it is tricky as we have three languages involved, and can’t talk to the future in-laws and vice versa. In heinseight I would have changed a few things how we handled this, first of all I would have given us more than a year to organize the wedding to allow us an on-site chat with each mother to explain our ideas, what we want, and what we are not going to do. We faced (and sometimes are still facing) a lot of misunderstandings which are caused by a lack of proper communication. 
• Budget. We decided to fund our wedding ourselves and set pretty early an appropriate budget. In preparation I did do a lot of reading to understand what needs to be planned for etc. Soon it was clear to us, that a traditional budget and it’s proportions would not apply to us, as we need to plan on travelling and we both aren’t the romantic couple who wants to plan on how many doves are released or what theme our wedding will have or how to punish bridesmaids with unique color schemes. So we re-invented the entire idea and setup our own budget tracker/calculation. I will release a google sheet after the wedding.
• Expectations and traditions. Soon we recognized whatever wedding trend was currently going on, it’s not like us. Also, traditional weddings don’t apply as our legalization is separate to the celebrations and we just decided to have this day for ourselves, to celebrate with our witnesses, getting a photographer to get nice materials for the families and for us. This has two downsides: One the one hand parts of our families are having issues to accept this decision on the other hand lot of the traditional facilities and services we can’t use because we are a too small or unusual party. 
• Travelling – remote organization. Organizing one wedding might be stressful, now imagine, you are organizing 3 in 3 different locations… and that you do most from when you are on the road – and this year I have made trips to California, Malaysia and around Europe. I remember call-backs waking me up at 3.30 AM in the morning, sorting out a few things via facebook, mail and other online communication tools. Keeping track of all the single stages requires a lot of attention. My main duty during the day is doing my full-time job – I asked a while ago for challenges at work to avoid boredom which is in the current situation a slight draw back. Having long work days when on-site with clients, travels, wedding preparations and stress with one of the reception organizations I ended by being close to a burnout mid June this year. I was tempted to cancel / postpone the wedding and for over almost a month I didn’t want to hear a word about getting married at all.
• Clothes. What a pain! If you have never worn a dress and didn’t give much about looks at all, finding something appropriate for a wedding is the toughest challenge of all. Trust me on that one. If one looks for a dress one will find nice, reasonably priced dresses. As soon as it is prepended with ‘wedding’ prices just increase dramatically. Why would I go for a 2kEUR dress which I am going to wear one day at most? Same applies for shoes, accessories. Also, standardization of sizes might simplify production process but certainly increases the pain of the bride to be. Hence, one can get tailored dresses which then are usually insanely priced. Thankfully I was lucky and found something wonderful in California for the receptions, a creative tailor with a good reputation in Dublin and I had a lucky find for a second dress for the legalization in Dublin.

All this trouble will end soon, our wedding is just 6 weeks ahead. Despite all the challenges from the past months I know it’s going to be awesome. It’s well prepared and there have been so many occasions where we just felt lucky as things occurred and events happened exactly when we needed it:

• Jacq was awesome to help me on the entire clothes issue. Without her I would be still desperate and would not know what to wear. 
• Jose and his dad: we do not only get perfect rings (which we saw initially in a Jewelery) but we will have rings with a story :)
• Jim’s friend’s friend’s photo shoot trial with make up and some nice pics which allowed me to understand how I want to look at my wedding day and what is important for us when hiring a photographer. Also we got a few nice shots for our wedding stationary.
• My work which happen to organize my last 5 weeks prior wedding as remote or on-site in Dublin engagements which allow me to have an almost daily life and opportunity to organize the last bits and pieces from Dublin with Jimmy.
• A personal shopper service in a shopping mall I usually never go to. I just spotted it on the way, walked in, made an appointment and met a few days later a personal shopper who was able to ignore everything what I had said and selected something nice and sweet to wear for our legalization.
• We have had support all the time from our friends and most of our families. I learned in the past months that my parents rock, that my brother is fantastic and probably the best brother/friend one could wish for.

Finally I want to share a really good advice I got a few months ago: “Remember, it’s not the most important day of your life”. This helps a lot when it comes to negotiating with venues and vendors as well as when trying to meet family’s expectations. 

We had quite some fun with the lensebaby kit we got a while ago. Since then we were considering getting the aperture kit with shaped disks. It never happened, but recently Jim found a blog post similar to this one giving instructions how to do custom shapes yourself. We created hearts and stars and started for a nightly walk through Dublin. I am quite impressed by the results.