Tag Archives: Google Translate

A Day of Discovery

10 Oct

Thursday, being the Fourth Day of our trip, turned out to be a day of discovery. The itinerary was a mixture of Days One, Two, and Three, plus an unplanned destination, Uji, thrown in.

We took the train to Fushimi Inari Shrine, and it was crowded! We did not heed the advice to go early to avoid the crowd. Oh well. We spent only an hour there as we felt it was less peaceful than the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. The next stop was Uji, and we found this place to be delightful, like the Bamboo Forest.

Fushimi Inari Shrine

An early lunch fueled us and kept us going to discover more of Uji. I give this place a thumbs up! On impulse, we decided to go to Nara Park and Gion. Towards the end of the day, we had a lovely dinner in Pontocho.

Uji was peaceful and less crowded
Deers at Nara Park, Todai-ji Temple and Gion Shijo bridge
Dinner at En En

The day of discovery had us taking several trains and the bus. We even ended up on the wrong train on the way back from Gion! But we did not worry because we had Google Translate. Best app for travel in a foreign language country.

I guess sometimes it’s okay not to have a fixed agenda, as we improvised along the way. We ended up seeing and experiencing more. We left Kyoto with wonderful memories and headed to Osaka for the remainder of our days in Japan.

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Land of the Rising Sun

7 Oct

Konnichiwa from the Land of the Rising Sun! We arrived at Kansai Airport this morning. The flight was not the best experience. There were three gate changes within an hour at the Satellite Building at KLIA. And although it was rescheduled to depart at 11:45 pm from 10:25 pm, the flight eventually took off at 12:12 am.

Twenty minutes after airborne, there was turbulence, but not too bad. However, my entertainment console sucked. The touchscreen had issues returning to the home icon, and the headphones worked only on one side. Sigh, how much worse can it get? Honestly, the start of this trip by MH is not Malaysian Hospitality at its best. Not living up to their tagline.

After the meal, I could feel a headache coming, ugh. I tried to sleep it off, and it was a restless phase. An hour before touchdown, I was awake. It wasn’t beauty or comfy sleep. Nonetheless, time flew by, and I must have slept, or did I?

My AppleWatch showed some unusual Vitals stats! I had only two hours of sleep and my blood oxygen level dropped to 91.6 %. It concluded that elevation could have caused such numbers to be recorded because I had set my watch to Airplane mode upon boarding. Such an amazing and clever device to be able to detect this.

After the delayed arrival, and like typical tour packages where Day One starts at the airport, our self-planned itinerary is no different, our adventure finally begins. Hahaha.

We made our way slowly from Kansai to Kyoto, and it was supposed to be effortless, yet we faced a bit of a challenge in terms of language. Google Translate was a savior when we needed it!

What a long day to kick off our October adventure!

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DIY Project #28, Part 2

11 Apr

Sunday was not a golf day but a good day for some me-time and my craft. I worked on DIY project number 28, and there was much progress. But this project is taking a little longer because we have been traveling up North to hubby’s hometown more frequently than before.

Anyway, back to the project in hand – all the eenie meenie pieces of furniture are on track to being assembled. It’s hard to hold them, so two tweezers are required to hold onto them when I apply the glue. And several times, I messed up because I did not read the instructions properly.

My little Happy House

Then again, the manual is in Chinese, and during those mess-ups, I did not use GoogleTranslate on my iPhone to do the job well. I assumed and thus messed up. One just cannot be complacent when it comes to dealing with tiny things here.

The biggest challenge will be the hinges. This piece is very different from the others that I have worked on. The frontage wall and roof are not glued down but hinged to open and close. Interesting. Well, I hope I can complete the set before the end of the month!

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DIY Project #27, Part 2

24 Feb

The latest miniature project, number 27, has kicked off! I opted for the Elegant Studio set. So far, it’s going well. However, the challenge lies in understanding the manual, which is in Chinese and not English. But with the Google Translate app, this minor challenge is hardly one with the phone in hand to do the job!

The bonus of this set is the dust cover that came with it. So upon completion, I don’t have to worry about crowding my Ikea display cabinet. I can decide where to place this Elegant Studio anywhere in the house. Nice!

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Giddy with Excitement

23 Oct

With the completion of DIY project number five, I wondered when my recent DIY set purchases would arrive. They are a Japanese restaurant, a fruit shop, and a tea shop. I didn’t have to wait long as the packages arrived on Monday morning.

I was giddy with excitement when all three packages arrived at the same time. Yay! I bought them during the 10/10 sale from my favorite online shopping site. Although the boxes were all crushed slightly, the items inside the boxes were intact. Thank goodness.

My new DIY sets to with on!

So I have started working on the Japanese restaurant first and keeping the two smaller sets for later. The best part of this project, all the packages are labeled accordingly, making life so much easier. And despite the instructions being in Chinese, it’s not a problem as I have Google Translate!

How to make miniature sushi!
An impressive piece to be used
Immaculate labeling of all the packages

I was thrilled upon opening the box to discover a music box inside! Oh yay, I didn’t even realize the purchase came with this. The last time I bought a music box intended for project number five, it did not fit at all. The measurements were off. So I fixed the music box to project number four instead, which worked out well.

Stay tuned to see the progress of my latest project number six, the Japanese restaurant.

Tiny cushions for tiny chairs

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