Cisco Module Lab - First impression

I just got a demo from Cisco about the CML and to be honest looks very impressive. I took couple of screenshots for the people who are interested. I guess it will be quite a topic in the following months especially for people who are studying for CCIE.

What's next?

It is this time of the year when my and my wife are planning which place to visit next, e.g. exciting times. We were looking two options for this year, Thailand & [Vietnam and Cambodia], each of those places looks very interesting from cultural point of view and they have nice beaches, good food etc. We spent couple of months making our research and so far Vietnam and Cambodia are really nice option for 20 days trip. Lets see what will happen, I am very excited about such trip, it will be completely new experience for me.

Beijing - China

I am not sure how to describe Beijing China, maybe everyone who goes their simply use the world 'Amazing' because it will be nearly impossible to describe it. I had a personal driver and tour guide which significantly simplify my trip around.  Of course, it was a business trip and I didn't have as much time as I needed to see everything from Beijing but I will try to share couple of pictures and some of my impressions.

I will start with the food.  I remember when I was younger there was so many Chines restaurants in the neighbourhood and I could eat Chines food everyday, and at every time - my parents were joking that I will became a Chines if I continue to eat only Chines, but it was so good and I didn't care ;-)  In Beijing I tried so many different things and I am amazed by the quality of the food, and most amazingly I didn't have any problems with my stomach - which was a good sign ;-) . I uploaded few photos from my album, which are from different places I visited during my trip. 

The people. The people I communicated with were very nice and helpful, of course the language barrier is huge and if you are on your own, it will be really hard to get around the place, especially if you don't speak Chines ;-)  Beijing has extremely low level of crime, with my colleague, we went few times for a night walk in first couple of days (time zone issues) and people were walking around in the middle of the night, no one was trying to talk to you and there was no drunk people. I felt safe.  The reason why I am saying that, I travelled a bit here and there, and when I visit some european countries like France (in particular Paris) - I don't feel safe, there is this feeling that something will go wrong any minute, however, I didn't have that feeling in China.  Funny enough, when we arrived to Heathrow Airport I told to my friend that the only way to recognise that you are in European country is, when you start seeing crazy people, in the same moment some lady which was like 2 meters behind us start yelling like crazy, and she was doing that every 5 meters.. so, my colleague start laughing. 

Ooo, I forgot. Probably you've seen in the Chines movies how people are doing Thai Chi - there was a guy doing Thai Chi in the nearest park, I could see it from the 20th floor every morning.  

The Tea.  I am a newbie in the tea.. to be honest, I never liked tea.. my ground mater was forcing me to drink tea and I never like it, however, that changed in China. I visited a tea bar - I am mean a real tea place, with a lot of teas. Two of the teas I really liked, OOlong and Fruit Tea.. they are really different from the ones you can usually buy in the coffee shops in UK, which are coming from India.  The tea stores are also very beautiful from inside. I have attached few photos below. =)  We tried some nice oolong tea, the price of that tea goes up to ten of thousands of pounds, most surprisingly people are buying it.

I am not sure I will have time to complete this post.. I have thousands of pictures and stories attached to each of them. I will complete it saying.. Beijing is must visit place. 

2013 Summary

2013 was really interesting year for me and my wife - We visited some really cool places like Seychelles (La Diague) and Caribbean (Barbados).  Two really different places from each other, La Digue is a small island with population of 2000 people according Wikipedia, but in my personal opinion there was not more than 200 people. Trip around the Island by foot took us around 5-6 hours, and it was freaking amazing with stunning views. Probably it's not worthy posting photos here because they can be found on google images anyway ;-) Couple of months after we decided to visit Barbados (Caribbean), which was really different from La Digue, the island was much bigger with much bigger population. One of the most interesting things we did was to go around the island with the public transport, that was quite a fun, of course we hired a car after that, but the public transport is something to remember, especially cars which are operating within the city area, called Z*R.. laud Rege music and smoke ;-) probably you've seen that in the movies, but you can experienced in person at Barbodos ;-) One of the very popular places was Oistin's market, where you can buy something to eat and see how people are enjoying Friday night.  (p.s in person is much better than my video) :)

With my wife we are shooting those videos (in Bulgarian) every time when we go somewhere, which are summary of what we did and saw. They make me laugh every time when I watch them ;-)