Photos taken from my Italy trip November 25 – December 3, 2012.
November 25 – December 3, 2012.
9 days well spent in Italy, and half a day in Switzerland! 🙂 I just got back and I’ve taken plenty of photos and videos from this wonderful trip! It’s a shame that I can only post so many on my blog – the rest of the photos will be made available on my Facebook profile later.
Here’s a summary on my vacation to Italy…
My friend Lilian invited me to join her in the 9 day tour to Italy year end so I signed up; I was busy clearing as much work as I could before the vacation. Amazing that I thought little about my online business, the renovation of the new house back home, nor did I read a single book while on holiday. I was totally mesmerized by the beauty of Italy!
We arrived in Milan on our first day here and the first place we visited is the famous 14th Century Duomo Cathedral.
Our tour leader is Damian Mok (Man on the right) He’s by far the best tour guide I have met! Unlike previous tour guides who are usually a local, Damian led the tour group of nearly 50 people (which is a massive group!) from beginning to end.
He’s obviously very experienced and led a colorful life; he entertained the group with a variety of impressive magic performances and wowed the audience with his jokes and stories.
Did I mention he’s multi-lingual as well? Majority of the group is Chinese-ed, me being one of the few ‘bananas’ but he spoke Mandarin, Cantonese and English and totally engaged 100% of the audience. A sure sign that he has plenty of experience on stage and talking to audience! I even learned a lot from him.
The next day, we boarded a private boat to San Marco Square in Venice. We also road the famous gondola. 🙂
Weather throughout Italy was chilled and rainy. Temperature was anywhere from 1 to 9 degrees Celcius!
Outside the square, we shopped for souvenirs and we singled out some stores that were selling them cheap 🙂
As far as exchange rate is concerned, it used to be 1 EUR = 4.76 MYR last year; now it’s 1 EUR = 3.99 MYR!
Good deal for me 🙂 Although it wasn’t nice of me to say that at the expense of the Europeans here. FYI just like most parts of Europe, things here are usually costly and at this time of writing, Italy is in bad economy shape.
Following day, we visited Rome! One of the two main highlights of the Italy trip! 🙂
We visited St. Peter’s Basilica (the biggest church in the world and throughout Christian history) and of course the famous Colosseum.
And the other main highlight?
The leaning tower of Pisa.
We also spent half a day in Switzerland to do some high-end shopping on our second last day here before going back to Malaysia. It’s more chilled and windy here but the view is nothing short of breathtaking!
All in all, it was a great vacation! Points to myself for evading the notorious pickpockets while in Italy 😛 Fortunately none of us fell victim to them. But then again, I come from a more dangerous country so that was nothing haha!
Some photos from this trip will be posted in another blog post, and the rest on my Facebook profile later. 🙂
After what seemed like nearly forever, I finally got the keys to my new place last week! As soon as I got them from the lawyer’s office, I drove over to check it out 🙂
(To be very frank, I feel somewhat emotional now.. Feel like crying lol)
On this rock, I shall establish my new forward HQ. New office. New home.
I met a potential Contractor just today to discuss the renovation plans. Here’s my plan in a nutshell for my new place.
Ground Floor: Home Office, Incubator Space, Private Armory
First Floor: Mini Lounge, Bed Rooms
Watch me transform this ordinary house into a 3-in-1 Forward HQ in the coming months!
It’s nearly 4:00 in the morning and I am nearly done with my tasks at hand! Totally busy month, this one.
This is going to be the only skirmish I will be taking part this month but it will also be the most intense one for the year, second to the 3 day 2 night Seri Menanti skirmish I participated in March.
I have been training regularly and my weight’s exceeded 60 kilos again, body’s developed some more definition… good start for a come back! Also for the past two weeks, my nausea feeling has dissipated in spite of the intense work out. I am glad I fixed it just by eating on time regularly.
I was about to relaunch Internet Sales Machine under a monthly membership model when Peng Joon approached me with a deal I can’t pass up. He’s agreed to help me publish my product on ClickBank with the help of his team.
I’ve done a couple of launches with him before but this time it will be mainly under my name, thus marking my first serious foray into ClickBank. This is exactly what’s keeping me up into the wee hours of the morning!
I need to make some substantial changes to make my training system “ClickBank worthy” and some of my business associates are keeping tabs on this launch now. It’s going to be a big decision maker in more ways than one because for the past several months, nearly everyone I spoke to is fed up of the low-ball prices marketers are throwing on JVZoo and WSOs.
Will this rally marketers into the blue ocean as far as finding better quality, better paying customers is concerned?
I am working to launch this with Peng Joon and his team on November 20, which isn’t far away from now!
Khai Ng and I started our Big Ticket Machine webinar gig last month, and I’ve arranged for some of our Joint Venture Partners to seat their subscribers for our upcoming sessions this month.
The first two we did was a success with both our own subscribers and even Facebook friends 🙂
To me, I consider this as a ‘warm up’ pre-cursor to my speaking engagements which I plan to be doing next year… on stage!
Still waiting for the damned keys to the new property. It was my bad luck that I had to deal with a ‘tai-tai’ vendor and her idiotic lawyers who have been giving both my own lawyers a tough time.
It is already more than a month late. My lawyers today have successfully fought the disputes the vendor’s lawyer who have been throwing my direction for so-called ‘late payments’ – which is beyond my control on how my appointed bank had been approving the loans. Not to mention that a previous banking assistant screwed me over (he even quit his job and stopped picking up calls from his own manager!) thus causing unforeseen delays in the process.
I wonder if this is the kind of tedious dealing with people to expect often in the properties business, because this sure is a huge turn off if I ever want to dabble in properties for investment reasons.
(When I am working from home and it’s easier to build a website, I admit I get complacent that almost everything else don’t seem to be as bright an opportunity as Internet Marketing!)
I am expecting to get the keys anytime soon now and I cannot wait to commence with the renovations. From the looks of it, I think I can only move in by February 2013 earliest. This shall be my last house warming party. I’ve been moving from place to place for so many years, it’s time to settle down for good. Can’t wait to play The Sims in real life!
I am in hurry to get most of my work done before I go on a holiday in Italy near the end of this month with my travel date. 🙂 I will be leaving right after my birthday so I don’t think I’ll have time to celebrate here. More on this later on!
BRB in December.