Venice at night

Blue trip on a tramway in Budapest

Legalized Gambling in Singapore

These days, my Singaporean friends are talking about the latest IR (Integrated Resort). To me it is rather an interesting topic. Gambling was briefly legalized in 1820s when Singapore was then a British colony. However, due to gambling addiction, increased crime that followed, gambling was thus criminalized. Only government-run lottery called Singapore Pools provide the only legal avenue for betting. As we all know, this way helps in countering illegal betting syndicates (which is good). The other advantage of the Singapore pools is that the surplus earnings are devoted towards worthy causes that serve the needs of the community. 

Just as everyone can check out Online Casino Reviews, no one can be stopped from visiting the Best Casinos Online. These online casinos are even localized to the native languages from italian to german, french and spanish (Casino Online, Beste Online Casinos , Casino en linea, Casino En Ligne). As the Internet can provide an equal amount of temptation for anyone to access to gambling avenues as the casino in the IR.

It was not easy during those times of considerable debates among Singaporeans because from Muslim to Christian communities, these groups had openly expressed their disapproval to the casinos. They raised concerns of negative social impact. They cited worries of increased risk of compulsive gambling, money laundering, loan sharks, organised crime etc. Even the prime minister acknowledged the downsides, however, Singapore went ahead with the building of not one but TWO casinos. 

Safeguards has been prepared to limit the social impact of casino gambling by setting restrictions in the admission of the locals. Legally, family members of casino patron have the rights to block him/her to the casino should he/she became addicted. Singaporeans are also imposed a steep entrance fee of S$100 per entry, measures like these.

To be honest, if one really wants to gamble, there is just a short jump to Genting Malaysia or Macau or even on some cruises. They provide it as part of the entertainment options.

PMS

When being mentioned 'PMS', many know it is related to women. We are talking about women having a higher level or lower level of progesterone in their body. A number of women are finding ways to increase this hormone nowadays. It is known that there are several ways from cream to oral means. The thing about choosing the most suitable and safest type is critical.

For the available types of progesterone cream, some women apply them as a way to add progesterone to their body naturally. It is generally used to reduce PMS symptoms. Quite a lot of women complain most about irritability, tension and unhappiness as their premenstrual symptoms. As these are emotions, it is quite hard to determine them as simply PMS.

Thus a better association will be physical symptoms such as bloating, abdominal cramps, tenderness in the breasts, acne that is cyclic or even constipation. Sometimes unusually, muscle pains.

Well, there are also known psychiatric effects from depression, mood swings, emotional instability to forgetfulness. Some serious cases also include abnormal crying, insomnia and sleep disorders. Of course the worst form of these effects is aggression.

Be sure to choose wisely any kind of progesterone cream to be applied to your body. Who knows what it might contain?

While choosing, it arise the question what is 'paraben'? It is explained as a class of chemicals widely used as preservatives in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. So that makes 'paraben-free' an important keyword for women choosing any kind of progesterone cream or cosmetics.

Translation

I have been trying to read some comments written in my blog posts which are in Chinese. You know this language can be so interesting. Before I could understand what appears on my comments box, I will first do a translation of the comments. We all know about Google translate. However, it does not really give the most accurate translation. Sometimes, even for names they translate them to strange and at the same time funny words that gives me a good laugh.

My wife helps me in the translation whenever I suspect the translated piece of information looked strange. She is more of a tutor than what many would call translators or teacher. To me a tutor is much more than a 'teacher'. Zannnie is a private instructor who teaches chinese pinyin, chinese culture, chinese writing and conversational skills to an individual student (the tutee) and/or sometimes a small group of students (tutees). Such attention allows the learner to improve knowledge or skills far more rapidly than in a school classroom setting. 

In Hungary, all the important paper documents for processing Visa or residence permit must be translated to Hungarian. So there is a place where you can get it done professionally. It is located at the Bajza u. 52. And it is not like you can simply do an online translation with Google translate. 

DriverAccess

I can't stand when my computer is always slow, it takes hours to set up the system, it is frozen or it is poorly performing. Having even a "just OK" computer/laptop is always a race with the time. The newest version will be totally out of fashion by tomorrow and I guess this is artificially generated by the IT industry. 

If you want to run the latest games you will have to have larger memory, better graphic card, if you need to have  a fast wireless connection you also need a driver update. And I am not a patient guy. I hate to surf on the internet searching for the latest updates for hours, downloading different versions and hoping to find the right version.

Somehow I imagine the future like having a computer which is able to upgrade itself automatically while I am online. Just like the latest virus scan programs. Why I have to deal with the boring IT background all the time? I have a washing machine but I do not care how it works in the background. I prefer to have a "push the button and go feeling and I am not interested to deal with the details. I feel the same with computers and I don't feel like to be an IT expert just because I wanna use it. Thats why I like solutions that give me a quick solution for driver updates.     

Of course it is related to softwares only that need computer drivers but maybe one day we won't use CD's or manual downloads for setting up our system.

Exploring Piano lessons

If you ask me, I am considered quite musically inclined. Why I said this is because I started learning guitar with one teacher and it took me a year to learn the basics. Not just it, I can grasp the musical notes, I have a certain talent doing so without looking at the score sheet :) Let's say I am slow at reading the scores on the score sheet. Nevertheless, I love music. To an extent, I cannot do without music. One of my favourite instruments other than the guitar is the piano. I like pianist Frédéric Chopin and his works are totally amazing! My wife likes percussion instruments, like the drums and I encourage her to take up lessons. Even I am considering taking piano lessons having chanced upon the site.

I would think, a piano teacher not only should be good in her own piano skills to inspire, she should also be patient and always giving positive encouragement. It is a very important element of learning an expressive art like music.

I have been inspired to learn to play the piano because the other day, we visited the House of Esterházy in Fertőd, Hungary. The much celebrated composer Joseph Haydn was serving this Hungarian noble family in the beginning of the Middle Ages. This noble family were great landowner magnates of the Kingdom of Hungary during the time it was part of the Habsburg Empire and later Austria-Hungary. Well, most of all, I like the beautiful music by piano trio which was invented by Haydn and to me, the violin and the cello are such wonderful complementary instruments to piano music.

Hosting of our photoblogs

We get to know a lot of friends when we first started our photo blogging three years ago. One main effect is by the community called  'dailyphoto' which we joined. A lot of talented photobloggers we have chatted with, and two of them whom I would like to mention are Abraham Lincoln and Denton. 

He called himself oldmanlincoln. Recently I was looking back at the posts which was posted on Singaporedailyphoto.com and I found a lot of his comments on my site too. He is always very sincere in his comments of the photos by Zannnie. Incidentally I clicked on his name leading to his blog of very good photos which I vividly remembered. It was of birds and animals which are unusually captured but Abrahim Lincoln did it with his superb photography skills. As I read on, he mentioned in his latest posts that he was facing problems with blogger unfortunately. Thus, he had to move all his blogs to wordpress and he handled his web hosting like this.

About a year and a half ago, Denton who has always been very helpful, very patient and very kind, has helped us to move both budapestdailyphoto.com and singaporedailyphoto.com to the wordpress. That time, we really know nothing about webhosting. It was lucky we knew someone like Denton who will always answer our emails promptly and with lots of detailed information. Otherwise, I would think we will not be able to continue our posts til today. Budapest Daily Photo has posted the 1,328th post todate. :)

In all honesty if you were to ask me, I am glad that I have come this far.

The funny Singaporean language

This video is funny in itself but also an excellent example of the creative mix of languages people use in Singapore.

Turul

The myth about the Turul: Emese's dream
In the legends Turul is mentioned at least twice to shape the fate of the Hungarians: the first time Emese, mother of Álmos, wife of Ügyek (whose ancestor is Attila the Hun) had a dream where a Turul appeared, impregnated her symbolically and a crystal-clear water stream started to flow from her, and as it moved Westward, it grew into a great river, which meant that her child was going to be the father of a line of great rulers. The second time, the leader of the Hungarian tribes had a dream where eagles attacked their horses and a Turul came and saved them, to symbolise that they have to move, and when they did, the Turul helped them to show the way and led them finally to the land that became Hungary.

This legend is about Hun-Magyar kinship, and the base of the theory that Magyars reconquered Hungary as their rightful inheritance from Attila's great Hun Empire.

Based upon ancient Hungarian tradition, the royal house of Hun(garian)s (the kings of Huns and the later Hungarians) bears the name of Turul clan (original Latin: genere Turul, later called by the name Arpad house also), what descents from the wise and just king Nimrod, the first king on Earth.

Representation
The Turul represents the god's power and will. The Turul was seen as the ancestor of Attila, and it was also the symbol of the Huns. The Hungarian Turul is often represented carrying the flaming Sword of God (sword of Attila).

Entertainment

Denes bought some DVD films as presents from France for us. However, he did not know that we do not have a Blu-Ray player to play those which works only on a Blu-Ray DVD player. So some of the disc are sitting at the corner of the house. We have a SONY home theatre multidisc player. It was bought two years ago before my birthday as our previous home theatre system broke down before my birthday party. However, we are happy with this one as it has better sound quality and most of all, I love the speakers all around us in the living room. 

Now that our place is a cosy one, I imagined Zannnie and I will have a place in the future where we can install Rear Projection Television. We both also have been tossing the idea of getting a plasma television. We saw those in the mediamarkt, all kinds of sizes. These days, everyone is talking about AV Receivers. There are even bonus as nowadays, it came with video processing, with auto set-up and equalization and even those with XM Radio and network streaming. Wow, what a new century of electronic home entertainment! I am still wondering when the 3D home theatre system will arrive to the home entertainment for us to watch 3D films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland at our home sweet home.

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We decided to take the train from Budapest Keleti to Venice, Italy this time around instead of flying. Both of us were somehow curious of the train ride as it will be an overnight journey by train crossing the  Croatia and Slovenia borders before arriving to Italy.

Taking the train does has its advantages. First and foremost, there is cost savings. These days, there are many ways to save money you can always look out for Internet promotions. Uverse coupon, dell online coupons or  New Egg promo codes for example. We found our train tickets in this way by checking the websites of the train transportation. Traveling to Venice by train becomes a very sensational experience. I even thought it was romantic and I am looking forward to travel like this to other European cities near Hungary.

Of course, flying to Venice is more time savings. Flights are only 1-2 hours from Budapest to Venice. However, the hotel that has been booked is just one minute walk across the Venezia Mestre. In such a scenario, better to arrive at the train station. We even had time to have a nice morning stroll upon arrival.

Zannnie fell in love once again in Venice. This is a city of bridges, a city of water, a city of Masks, a city of Canals, the Queen of the Adriatic! Who does not fall in love with Venice? I know, the older people who will find the walking over the various bridges inconvenient and physically challenging. Also, the people with physical disability like a friend of ours who hurt his leg during his ski trip in the Winter and was in clutch find it a hassle. Upon saying this, we are still quite impressed with the water buses or better known as vaporetti services. On the last day, we had a good time sightseeing the beautiful Grand Canal.

Church of Máriaremete

A nice walk to the Church of Máriaremete with Momo and Zannnie was lovely in the beautiful early Spring as the temperature is exactly cool and the air extremely fresh!

Kürtös Kalács

Kürtös kalács

It's becoming like a ''tradition'' that we visit the christmas market during christmas, to have a Sült Kolbász(kolbász = sausage) and hot wine called Mulled Wine :) followed by some traditional sweets called Kürtös kalács=which you can see in the photo on the right :)

Párolt lila káposzta

My wife made her first attempt at the Párolt lila káposzta. We usually eat it with duck and both of us totally love this hungarian style of preparing the cabbage - the purple cabbage to be exact. Zannnie has not tried making duck at home at all. One day I am sure she will go to buy duck breasts or duck drumsticks and learn to prepare it the hungarian way! :)

Here's the recipe:-
1/2 red cabbage
2 Tbsp salt
3 Tbsp oil
1-2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp caraway (cumin powder)
ground pepper to taste

• Thinly shred the cabbage.
• Generously sprinkle with salt.
• Mix well and let stand for 1 hour.
• In a saucepan, heat up the oil.
• Add the cabbage, sugar, caraway seeds and ground pepper.
• Cover and SLOWLY simmer. Do NOT add water.
• When the cabbage is “crunchy tender”
• Serve

Matthias church

Matthias Church (I. Szentháromság tér): Catholic Church in Budapest has a neo-Gothic appearance during rebuilding under the direction of Frigyes Schulek in 1896, and its frescoes and stained glass windows are the work of Károly Lotz, Mihály Zichy and Bertalan Székely. King Béla III and his wife, Anne of Châtillon are buried within, and three other kings were crowned here.