I had this goal since I was 9.

That was to step my foot at Old Trafford one day.

It’s been a long 17-year wait to finally get there last week. And I felt really, really good and excited as though I was still 9 (too bad I’m not!). If you’re not a big time or 17 years Manchester United fan, then being at Old Trafford is just like it’s another stadium or another tourist destination.

I’ve been to other grounds (Hertha Berlin’s Olympiastadion and Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena) before, but what I felt there were nowhere near what it was at Old Trafford.

Old Trafford was different.

It’s the ground the club I supported since I was 9 plays. I’ve been seeing it in magazines and TV for the past 17 years and didn’t get to go there until recently.

For a mere 12 pounds, I get to visit the museum (talk about that later), players’ changing room, players’ lounge, walk out of the famous tunnel, sit at the dugouts, see where the WAGS sit on match days, walk along the pitch and see Stretford End, where the most loyal supporters sit on match days.

Things could even get better, but this time it didn’t. It’s okay.

It would be even better if I could catch a match there, but that didn’t happen. It’s almost impossible to get a ticket for a Premier League or Champions League match at Old Trafford nowadays unless you’re a season ticket holder or you buy the hospitality package which starts from 299 pounds.

Another option is to buy from outside the ground on match day for prices up to 5 times the original price with the risk of getting a fake ticket.

Only tickets for low profile matches like Carling Cup will reach General Sales. Other tickets are usually sold out before it even reach General Sales.

So, the next goal (as far as Manchester United is concerned) is to watch a match there!

How we change things that we’re unhappy of? Something we’re not satisfied of?

Do we just complain? Or just pray? Or just wake up the next morning and things will be better?

Most probably not.

Someone need to do something, and it starts from ourselves.

Change is a 3 stage process. It sounds easy, but achieving it is far from easy.

1. Acceptance of Change

This is the preparation stage and the most important of all. Before we can change anything, we need to accept that the change we want could really happen. Our minds need to be conditioned that this can really happen.

We should see in our minds the final picture; the images, the voices and imagine us being there. Otherwise, how could we know what sort of change we would want?

We all know the mind is the most powerful tool we could ever have. Like Napoleon Hill once said, for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

If our minds are not ready for change, change will never come to us. Period.

Now, ever wondered why Barack Obama’s campaign phrase is, ‘Change, Yes We Can!‘?

2. Feedback & Comments

Why do we need change? Isn’t the answer obvious?

No one would ask for a change if things are perfect. But the reality is, we never stop to look for perfection. We want the best of things for ourselves. That’s just basic human behavior.

We can see a difference between what is good and what is bad and we all want to be at the good side. We say to ourselves that we need a change.

Therefore, we come up with lots of feedback and comments to those people who can influence change. Read : Obama.

3. Change - Acting On It

First, there are people who, on the surface screamed together with us that they wanted a change. But deep down they’re not even ready to change. Maybe they’re afraid of change, or they just a bunch of hypocrites. They themselves know best.

Second, there are people who are ready for change. But when they’re given the chance to influence the change or make the change happen, they simply backed away.

The thing that really irritates me is that when the change don’t happen, they start screaming again.

Complaining..moaning..grumbling..

And then, there are people who wanted change and act on it, and done it when history shows it’s impossible.

Barack Obama’s monumental rise to become the first black and 44th President of the United States was truly inspirational, not only within the USA but worldwide.

I followed the campaign trail on CNN every night for the pasy 2.5 months and most of his speeches were truly inspirational and motivational.

He spreads a very clear and simple message throughout the whole country regardless of one’s skin color, religion and ethnicity that change can happen if you believe in it happening.

I know he hasn’t take office so we won’t have any idea of what he’s made of yet until January. But I’m very sure his rise to become the first black president will inspire change in a lot of countries and organizations a like.

And finally, change has gone to America. Will make a stop here in Malaysia?

I always see the word daylight saving time printed on my old Casio digital watch. But I have no idea what it was. All I knew was that there would be time differences during the summer and such. Still I didn’t get it.

Then there was Champions League football. I would wake up in the middle of the night just to watch Man United play. I noticed how the kickoff times started to change from 2.45am to 3.45am towards the end of October. Not forgetting also the usual EPL kickoffs time from 7.45pm to 8.45pm.

I started to get a grasp of what DST is all about.

So, one day I looked up the Internet, asked Google and it replied with a simple phrase about DST.

Spring forward, fall back.

In simple terms, countries that observe DST will shift their clocks 1 hour forward during the spring so the sun appears to rise 1 hour later and sets 1 hour later thus making the day longer. And vice versa during the fall.

Therefore, I’m now 7 hours behind Malaysia.

Most of central Europe countries turned their clocks 1 hour backwards after daylight saving time has ended. I remember that DST will end sometime towards the end of October but I didn’t know it was on October. As far as my memory can recall, it’s on this coming weekend.

And when I checked again on Saturday night only did I realize that I had to turn my clock 1 hour backwards on Sunday 3.00 am to 2.00 am.

It suddenly appeared to me that winter is really coming. The sun used to set about 630pm last week. This week it’s 530pm.

The cloudy and rainy weather didn’t help either.

When I was here in December last year, the sun rose at 8.30am and set at 4.30pm.

Now, I really feel winter is coming real soon…

I think it was almost 10 minutes that we were chatting at the river banks.

“Did I bore you off? Do you want me to continue?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Because of the Treaty of Versailles, our country was weakened. They took away our lands and military because they were afraid we’ll be more powerful than they are. They didn’t want to lose their powers in Europe to us.”

“So there came Hitler. He was a nationalist at that time and he wanted back those lands that were given away by the Treaty or Versailles. So he gathered all his men and said to the Allied Forces; We want our lands back and if you’re not giving them back, we’ll take it!”

“He attacked and invaded Rhineland, Austria, the borders of Czechoslovakia and then Poland.”

Suddenly he stopped and started at me.

“And do you know how World War 2 started in Europe?”

I shook my head.

“It was the 1st of September of 1939 when Hitler attacked Poland. Very soon after that, Poland’s allies declared war on us. Everyone, including the UK, France, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada and a few more countries.”

“You see, everything they wrote on the papers labeled Hitler as the bad guy. In fact, he’s a nationalist and hero in Germany, you know? He’s just taking back what was taken away from us.”

By now, it was coming to 20 minutes that we were chatting.

“Oh, I can see my friend waiting for me opposite the road. I got to go. I hope you’ve learned something and have a wonderful trip back.”

We shook hands and I thanked him for his brief history class.

This was the second time that someone was talking to me about the history of the place since I was here 2 months ago. The first was in Berchtesgaden where a 80+ year old man talked to me how happy he was to be back there since he was there during World War 2 as an American soldier.

I was strolling along the banks of river Neckar the other day, taking some photographs of the Old Bridge while waiting for the sun to set.

“Too bad it’s under renovation, huh.”

I thought I heard someone talking to me from behind. So I turned around and there was this middle aged man smiling at me.

“Yeah. I came all way here……and it’s under renovation. What a bad timing..”

And then he pointed towards the castle sitting on top of the hill behind the bridge.

“Have you been up there before? Do you know who destroyed it?”

He was referring to the Heidelberg Castle (Heidelberg Schloss in German), the landmark of Heidelberg. It was first built as a fortress in the 12th century and then upgraded to a palace in the 15th century.

But what remains today is only it’s ruins. It was destroyed by Louis XIV and his French troops in 1689 when the war erupted.

“Do you know what they did to it”

“They stuffed the bottom of the watch tower with black gun powders and blew the hell out of it!”

Then he went on explaining the conflicts and wars between Germany and France up to the first World War.

“Heard of the Treaty of Versailles?”

I shook my head.

It seems that I’m in for a brief European history class.

“There was this leader, you know. Gustav Bauer. I think he must be crazy and went to sign this murderous treaty with the Allied Forces after World War 1″

“Because of this treaty, we have to give back East & West Prussia (today’s Poland) back to Poland, Eupen Malmedy to Belgium (near to where I am), Saarland & Danzig to the League of Nations, Alsace-Lorraine to the Frech and a few more that I couldn’t remember exactly.”

“We had to give back our colonies in Africa, Tanganyika (today’s Tanzania), Namibia, Botswana and Rwanda-Burundi.”

“And the worse thing ever was we accepted full responsibility for causing World War 1 and we have to pay out compensations to other countries for the damages!”

“You see, we were getting stronger and stronger in the early 1900’s and was about to overtake England and France as the main powers in Europe, economically and military strengths. They couldn’t let this happen as it would cause an imbalance of powers in Europe.”

“So, they put restrictions on us. They forced us to reduce our army, they reduce our lands…”

“And we went backwards..”

“Until a nationalist came and woke up the country in 1939…”

To be continued in Part 2.

I thought I told you to checkout before 11am! They called me saying that all your belongings are still there. Please checkout NOW, otherwise you’ll need to pay the bill for today, yourself.

And she attached a email from 3 weeks ago asking me to checkout before 11am, cc-ed it to my secretary.

Before I even get to pickup the phone to call her, the secretary came in and asked me to go checkout the apartment right away. They won’t be paying the bills if I was charged for today’s stay. My initial plan was to checkout after work as the landlady of my new apartment is only available after 6pm. So, I totally forgot that I need to be out by 11am.

There I went. I had only 1 hour.

In 1 hour I had to go back to my apartment, pack my things up, checkout the room, then take a taxi to the new apartment, some 2km away. When I finished packing, I realized that there are quite a lot to carry. A luggage bag, 2 backpacks and 5 bags of foods in all. Some of the foods were mine, some were passed to me when my colleagues left.

The heavy rain this afternoon just made things worse. Within minutes of calling them, the taxi arrived but it was parked some 100m away. And I had to carry everything to the taxi under the rain.

The new apartment was very near to the main train station, less than 200m away. There was no elevator. Again I had to carry all these bags 3 floors up. I ended up staying at the roof unit.

Afterall the packing, carrying things around while getting wet under the rain, I was greeted with my new apartment for the next 4 months.

It was definitely much better than the old one.

Everything in this new unit is from IKEA. I can even see the phrase For IKEA From Whirpool on the microwave cum oven. I feel much better here. At least now I feel more at home. The previous apartment (was it even an apartment?) had the bed, toilet, kitchen and living room everything in 1 room.

I was complaining about the old apartment to my colleagues when I first came and they told me to see theirs where the kitchen is inside the cupboard! The only good thing was that it’s very near to downtown. Downtown is now 15 minutes walk away, not too far either.

Anyone coming here?

How much do you know about Berlin Wall?

Before this, all I knew about Berlin was about the Berlin Wall; a wall that ran through the heart of Berlin for 28 years and 1 day from 1961 to 1989. The Soviets occupied the East and the Allied which consists of the American, British and French controlled the West.

The only place to cross between East and West Berlin was at Charlie Checkpoint. Today it’s a famous landmark in Berlin even though there’s nothing interesting there except a guard house, and 2 men wearing Soviet and Allied uniform holding the USSR & USA flags. Photos with them costs 1e each. You can also stamp your passport with the old stamps between East/West Berlin.

Further down the road, away from Charlie Checkpoint is the Berlin Wall Museum. Part of the Berlin Wall is still standing there. I think it’s about 300m long and there are no graffiti on it, unlike those at East Side Gallery. It’s a temporary open air museum where you can read the history of Berlin and WW2 on printed boards. The actual museum is being constructed on the empty land beside it.

Walking even further down the road, you’ll reach Potsdamer Platz; the center of Berlin where everything comes together. Even though the wall is no more there except for 3-4 blocks with paitings, the scars are still clearly visible. Just look at the ground and you’ll see a long scar line running through the middle of Potsdamer Platz where the wall used to stand.

I guess most of the Berlin Wall photos that we’ve seen before are from the East Side Gallery, situated opposite the east Berlin train station. It is still standing today and it’s 1.2km long; the largest open air gallery in the world.

It used to house 106 paintings but over the years, they have now deteriorated to such a bad condition that most of them have been replaced by graffiti. I had my signature there as well. Some newer paintings were painted over the past few years and the government is now planning for restoration works on all the paintings later this year.

This is one of the newer ones, painted in 2006.

And when you finally have the time to do the research, that’s 2 hours before departing, you suddenly realized that there are  quite a lot of places to cover for a short period of just 1.5 days..

In less than 2 hours, you need to decide which one to go, which one not to go…

How to go to each and everyone (public transportation, walk, get lost?)

Where are they located..

My answer : Google + Google Earth (obviously!)

Been so busy all week long that I just had the time to make a quick Google on Berlin before my train departs later tonight. In 10 minutes, I somehow came up with a list of so called interesting places to go. But the list is too long to cramp everything into 1.5 days. Some places which are not-so-worth going have to be removed, but I didn’t know which one.

The important thing is, they must look good on my camera.

So I looked for Google Earth. Searched each and every place on the list, clicked on the photos geo-tagged by others and I’ll have a feel of how the place is like.

If I like the place, I’ll look for the nearest public transportation; metro, train or trams in Google Earth. The thing with big cities is they’re all shown there. It’s so easy, convenient and saves me a lot of time. Saves me lots of money as well from buying Lonely Planet or Rough Guides.

I just realized that there’s actually still sometime left in the 2 hours to squeeze in a blog post!

Okay, Berlin. I’ll see you there.

It’s an online audio store where you can download a wide range of audios ranging from books to entertainments, comedies to premiers, Election 2008 to a digital audio subscription of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

There are a lot in store at Audible.com, depending on what you’re looking for. But only thing that caught my attention was the audio books.

I’ve always wanted to buy audio books when I was in the bookstores. But I ended up buying the hard copy 99% of the time.

1. Audio books cost 2-3 times more than the hard copy, for obvious reasons. Audios products always have a higher perceived value than hard copies, and videos have an even higher perceived value than audios.
2. I hate bringing the books whenever I travel. During one of my previous trips, I had to bring back 5 books and these itself was already 1kg. Not forgetting the space they took up in my luggage.
3. I’m starting to get bored reading hard copy books. I need to find something new. Audios and videos are the answer. They’re much more interactive. At least I have someone talking to me or looking at me while delivering the content.

At Audible.com, I pay $7.95 monthly for the first 3 months. Each month, I’ll get one audio of my choice. Besides, I can also purchase other audios with a relatively cheaper price. Having done some quick research, I found out that purchasing the audio books are slightly cheaper than buying the hard copy itself, after currency conversion.

Audios are convenient. I can load them into my mp3 player when I’m traveling overseas and play it on my laptop when I’m in the room. I can even play them while driving to office! (been doing that already).

Obvious Adams was a young man seeking an opportunity in the advertising industry. He knew nothing except the obvious.

And by knowing the obvious and having the persistency to follow them through, he would later become the VP of the biggest advertising company in New York.

If anyone could bore you to death in the advertising industry, it was Obvious Adams. He never said anything that others didn’t already know. With that, he would become the most wanted and talked about man in the advertising industry 9 decades ago.

Wait…Obvious Adams didn’t exist.

It was just a character in a 9 decade old marketing classic. Ask anyone in the marketing or advertising related industry and they’ll know this one.

Obvious Adams - The Story of A Successful Businessman by Robert Updegraff.

The young man who is going to seek his fortune in the advertising business should have Obvious Adams for a handbook. Indeed, any young man who is going to seek his fortune in anything might be aided by the common sense and business acumen displayed in this little volume.  - The New York Times

I love reading marketing books. Obvious Adams is now top of my all time favorites.

Last year, when I was told that it’s one of the classics of the classics, I didn’t want to believe it. I was thinking how could a 9 decade old idea still be relevant in today’s fast changing world. So, I put it aside; parking it on my book shelve together with my other books.Until recently, a friend of mine sent me a digital version of it.

It was so short that I finished reading it in 30 minutes. But the message was obviously, obvious. It was loud and clear.

How many of us have sense enough to see and do the obvious thing? And how many of us have persistency enough in following out our ideas of what is obvious?

The message Obvious Adams conveys is so powerful that it goes beyond marketing itself. It can be many ways related to our lifestyle, attitude, common sense and success in life.

Often times, we skipped our thought process which analyzes what is the obvious thing to do, leading to us overlook them and in turn making things complicated for ourselves.

Think again, are we doing what we already knew we should do to get what we want in life?