09 Days - Treasures of Europe by Star Tours UK

Tour Details:

Tour Duration : May 2nd till May 10th 2015

Booked in Jan 2015 - received early bird discount.

Traveled as a couple. Pure Vegetarians.

Traveled on a very comfortable coach for 3500+ Kms in 9 days. Fortunate to get the first seat just behind the driver and enjoyed 180 degree view all through the tour from the coach. TIP : Booked very early - as first customer. Seat allocation is based on the order of tour booking.

Tour Manager : Kushru (wikipedia)

Coach Driver : Tony (Captain)

Coach # : 11

For some reason we did not get the call before the trip to give us heads up on the coordinator details. we were asked to wait when we called early in the week and had to follow up the day before the trip to get to know the contact details. 

Travelers range from 1 year infant till 76 year grand pa

Travelers from India, UK, US (All Indian origin passengers)

Covered every aspect of advertised itinerary and tour manager was kind enough to cover additional attractions whenever possible.

Few words about the Tour Manager & Driver:

Kushru was very experienced, knowledgeable, calm, polite, understanding and very friendly. He ensured the drive was not boring. He knew every detail about the attractions on his finger tips. You will be amazed to hear the statistics for every location. He speaks very slowly (in English), if you know little bit of English you will feel very comfortable and of course you can talk to him offline for any doubts (in your comfortable language). 

Tony was the captain of the coach, we were fortunate to witness his driving skills from the seat behind him - no doubts whats-soever anywhere on the route, he drives the coach very brilliantly. Louvre musuem, dover channel crossing and most of the toll gates just exactly fits the coach and he drove right into them without any second thoughts. I wow 'ed many times appreciating his driving skills.

Meals:

Breakfast is continental breakfast offered by the hotel most of the days and not too many options for vegetarians (if you take eggs then you are fine no concerns here). Few days we had continental bfast offered by Indian restaurants and in those days we had options like paratha's, upma's etc.,

Lunch & Dinner : Buffet at proper Indian restaurants most of the days with variety of buffet menu. Eat as much as you want and whatever you like.  

Very minor -ve-- on few days * tours arranged meals in their canopies for many tour packages and on one day close to 6 to 7 coaches dined at the same time causing commotion. We had similar situation on few other days but timing was managed better by the tour managers.

Hotel Stay experience:

Stayed on the hotels as listed on the brochure and on few days due to the unavailability of the rooms offered similar or better hotel on the same location. 

At Aran park, Italy - the shower was bad / clogging and there were no curtains. At La go verde - they had all green themes in the rooms. It felt like a motel. we removed the green comforter and slept on bed with just white sheets. 

Other hotels no complaints - you get 4* treatment. 

At Le Terraze, we were asked to pay 3 euros for internet and all other hotels offered free wifi. Star tours could have payed that 3 euros and made whole trip as wifi included trip. At La go verde the signal strength was very poor.

Coach Drive Experience:

In the trip we traveled close to 3500+ Kms and on an average 400 km per day. Coach had good music system and Kushru had some hindi collection. If you have any specific taste - you can carry the dvd with subtitle and enjoy in the journey

we played Bingo, anthakshari on the bus. Rest of the days - we enjoyed the scenery & took rest.

Neck pillow came in handy on this trip and I strongly recommend carrying one.

Coach is fitted with toilet but we were advised to avoid using it. Per rules, driver cannot drive continuously for 3 hours so they stop in a service station for a 45 mins break. Except in Venice we did not pay anywhere to use toilets. Keep some change just in case.

Load snacks / water from Tesco - you can have them on the coach when you feel like eating something in the evenings.

Site Seeing Experience:

Kushru is a wikipedia, he knew about all the attractions very well. He would set us up for the upcoming attraction in the coach itself and we knew exactly what to look once we get down the coach. For instance in paris night tour, he knew the best photo spot location for illuminated Eiffel tower. We got down, enjoyed the view - took pictures back in the coach in 10 mins. We took selfie stick with us and it came in handy to take as many pictures as we wanted. 

Day 1: (prepare for lot of driving)

- Boarded at Maidstone check in point, reached calais via channel tunnel train crossing.

- Reached belgian chocolate factory for lunch (* tours canopy)

- Sight seeing at Atomium (around 4 PM)

- Dinner at an indian restaurant

- Reached hotel

Day 2 :

- Checkout the hotel. All morning drive.

- Reach Drubba region in black forest / cuckoo clock location (at around noon). You can opt to ship the clocks to your home country directly if you buy one.

- Lunch at *tours canopy

- Travel to Rhine falls (at around 4 PM)

- We had some time so took the boat ride to visit the peak location (paid 7 euros per adult) of the falls to enjoy the view.

- Reached Lucerne, visited chapel bridge, walked for 10 minutes to see Lion Monument (around 6 30 PM)

- Dinner and reached hotel.

- we stayed at seehotel kastanenbium, on the banks of lake lucerne. super dooper view from the balcony.

Day 3:

- Checkout the hotel. Reach mount titlis around (9 30 AM)

- Take a cable car and then a rotair car to reach the titlis mountain (10K feet above the sea level).

- Opted for ice flyer & sledging (paid 12 euros per adult). We were lucky, weather was fine and the area is operational that day.

- Enjoyed Glacier cave walking.

- Return to the ground level around 1 PM. Lunch buffett at an indian restaurant.

- All evening drive to reach Italy and Indian dinner / stay at hotel.

Day 4: (this day * tours reserved a lot in venice and they insisted everyone keep time)

- Checkout the hotel and drive towards Venice.

- Boarded a local boat (time sensitive) - around 11 Am

- reached main island

- spent free time approx 2.5 hours in venice including gandola trip (time sensitive)

- Returned to mainland italy. Lunch buffett at an indian restaurant

- All evening drive to Roma and indian dinner / stay at hotel

Day 5 : (walked 15 K steps / 6.5 miles) - prepare for lot of walking

- Checkout the hotel, visit time elevator at around 10 30 AM

- Local guide will take you around roma (rome) and show many famous attractions such as pantheon, roman forums, churches etc.,

- Lunch buffett at an indian restaurant

- Photo spot at collosseum & constantine arch

- Drive to Vatican city

- Stood in queue for 45 mins to visit the church

- At around 6 PM returned to the coach for early dinner and rested at hotel

- We were not offered rome night tour. I speculate the actual reason may be, there were many coaches in Rome that day and they could not coordinate dinner better and they may face criticism if they offer night tour only for few packages.

Day 6: 

- Checkout the hotel, all morning drive to florence

- Experienced birds eye view of florence (at around noon)

- Lunch buffett at florence

- Local guide showed us around florence. Lot of free time to explore this ancient city. Tried Gelato icecream in florence.

- Returned to hotel for dinner and stay

Day 7:

- Checkout the hotel and travel towards Pisa

- Reached around 11 30 AM, took a local bus to reach Leaning tower of Pisa. * tours offered Gelato ice cream in Pisa.

- Spent till 1 PM for photo spot in Pisa.

- Lunch buffett in an indian restaurant

- Reached Geneva lake to witness 135 metres tall Jet d' Eau, UN head quarters, Broken Chair

- Reached hotel for dinner and stay.

Day 8:

- All day drive towards Paris

- Lunch on our own as it is not possible for *tours to pack/ coordinate indian lunch this day. Vegetarians are advised to manage with french fries and soft drinks.

- Cruise at River seine (at around 5 PM)

- Early Dinner buffett at an indian restaurant

- Entire coach opted for Paris night tour.

- Finished the night tour around 11 00 PM and headed to hotel for stay

Day 9:

- Checkout the hotel, visit eiffel tower. Queued for an hour to reach the top of the tower.

- Spent time for photos around the tower. We felt view from second level is better for photos compared to top level which is surrounded by grills and was not a great photo spot. 

- Lunch buffett at an indian restaurant

- Drive towards Calais to board the ferry at around 5 30 PM

- Back to the drop off point in UK.

Suggestions for this package:

-  On Day 1, Brussels City square can be included. We felt there was time to include this in the package.

- Add a castle in germany on Day 2

- Squeeze Pisa with florence on Day 6 and re-organize the rest of the itinerary so that more time can be spent in Paris / France (cathedrals / monument).

If you enjoyed the review and find it informative, like this post. Happy Travelling !

60 PDUs for PMP certification renewal

There are lot of ways to earn PDUs and below are the courses I completed to earn required 60 PDUs for PMP certificate renewal for another 3 years.

 

CAT F : Work as a practitioner  - 10 PDUs : I have been working as a Project Manager / Scrum Master / Release Train Engineer on my projects and PMI rewards 5 PDU per calendar year for practicing project management. I was able to claim for last year and current calendar year eventhough my certification is active only from Sep last year. Super cool !

CAT C : Self Directed Learning – 8 PDUs : It is an interesting category, I spent lot of hours (definitely more than 8 hours) to learn about Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and many more agile best practices in the past few months. Unlike other PDUs which are immediate approval – PMI took a day to approve it . So I can say someone is reviewing the submissions.

CAT A : Registered Education Provider / PMI Componet – 21 PDUs : My company offers skillport license and they have plenty of courses which are eligible for PMI’s PDUs. Skillport’s license # is 1008 and with the course code, one can pull up the course from PMI and submit it as PDU. I am planning to take PMI-ACP (I prepared for PMP 4 years - lol) and completed 21 hours of required learning towards the same and I used those hours for PMP renewal as well.

CAT B : Continued Education – 5 PDUs : (took less than an hour) Six Sigma White Belt certification – A free online course sponsored by Aveta business institute. Link http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/six-sigma-white-belt-training/

CAT A : REP / PMI component – 8 PDUs : (took less than an hour) Six Sigma Yellow Belt certification – Another free online course sponsored by VMedu Inc., Link http://www.6sigmastudy.com/Six-Sigma-Yellow-Belt.asp

CAT A: REP / PMI component – 10 PDUs:  (took less than an hour) Scrum Fundamentals Certified – Another free online course sponsored by VMedu Inc., Link http://www.scrumstudy.com/Scrum-Fundamentals-Certified.asp

 

faq's:

a)      Any time you can renew your certificate during the 3 years cycle and the extension (3 years) is only from the day of the certificate expiry.

b)      Acquire 60 PDUs before your initial membership runs out so that one can save dollars renewing the certificate (I managed to complete just before my membership expires and paid only $60 for renewal)

c)       Except the self directed learning PDU, rest all are approved instantly by PMI

d)      Be prepared to publish reports / proofs for any possible audit.

 

Sincere thanks to +Saravanan G my friend & college junior who guided me to these free materials which saved lot of internet search time.

Acquired PMI's PMP credentials

 When I acquired my PMP credential I had close to 5 years of Project Management experience out of which 3 years of sound PM experience. I had little respect for any certifications before I took this exam, I must say for a moment I thought I would flunk on this exam while writing it. PMI after these many years keeping the exam challenging and you have to be a PM to succeed with good scores.

Exam Duration : Most annoying aspect of the exam is the 4 hours test, yes I could finish only at 3:58:40. Since this test I never sat for an exam this long. Luckily I practiced couple of 4 hours exam before I took the test which really helped.

Materials : I read RMC's/Rita Mulcahy's latest version of the PMP material  and PMBOK couple of times and nothing else.. I made sure I am not memorizing it - yes i did not have to memorize I,T&T,O. Before the exam day, given any process I was able to guess key I,T&T,O so I take my understanding on the topics are good.

Practice Exams: Online has good amount of practice exams which helps to identify the weaker spots in the knowledge but of very least helpful for the actual exam. Compared to the tech certifications I have written, PMI's quality of exam questions are phenomenal - one has to read the question couple of times to understand the situation and choose the answers. Some of the free practice tests I have taken are from - headfirst pmp, skillsoft, pmstudy, izenbridge etc.,

Surprises:

• Did not get any questions in the professional ethics category, i was expecting close to 15 questions which could have been answered easily. 
• Many math related questions which took more than 2 minutes to calculate and respond - considering the volume of questions - i did not expect these many on the exam.
• Many direct questions asking for input / output / T&T . I did not expect such questions.
• Forming, Storming, Norming... - there were four questions on this tuckman ladder principle alone !
• I had to mark close to 60 questions for review ! high number compared to the the practice tests i have taken.
• There were no direct questions from the PMBOK which is good, no one has to memorize anything in the book.
• My score - Initiation, Executing, M&C - Proficient // Planning & Closing - Moderate Proficient

This certifications has been lingering on my head for awhile and finally I can put it to rest. Special mentioning about my dear wife who was house arrested in the last two weeks while I was crazily reading through all the materials, Thanks Honey.

Samsung Galaxy S4 cell phone broken screen repair in US

I accidentally stepped on my 4 months old Samsung Galaxy S4 cell phone and it cracked in the middle breaking the outer layer screen, second layer digitizer and the third layer of LCD damaging the entire display.

I was not able to view anything on the screen. I turned off the cellphone by taking out the battery and switched it back on. I could see the phone switching on and even heard notifications for new emails / reminders. I called the cell phone from my land line and could hear the calls coming in and I was relieved that nothing happened to the internal hardware. I could not pick the call bcoz the display was down and digitizer was not functioning and I could not swipe to pick the call.

I researched on line and found few local shops for repair and I was told since the phone is new and the parts are costlier - no one stocks them and they needed 3 to 5 buisness days to bring in the parts and fix it and it would cost me around $300.

I called Samsung and learnt about their repair center. Since it is physical damage, they could not cover the repair cost through Warranty however they serviced my phone for $200. It includes the 2 business day UPS shipping and tax.

Samsung provides online tracking to learn about the repair status and it takes approximately 2 weeks including shipping time frame to receive the phone back.

I could not access any of my data on the phone for the same reason the digitizer is no more working and i could not enter my secret code and unlock my phone to choose USB mode to connect to my laptop.

If you have any queries, leave them in the comments section !

Bug Rush (Free) version - Complete Review with tips to win the game

As I start writing this review, I noticed a .99$ version is out and some of the features highlighted in the drawbacks might have been covered in the new version. So please checkout.

I and my wife write this post after successfully crushing all the bugs in all the levels :)

Reviewer background:

1. First time smartphone user
2. Samsung galaxy S4
3. Have not played two many games before.

Negatives first :

1) No detailed instructions on how to play the game overall.
2) No instructions on how to upgrade / use your coins accumulated in the game to buy up power.
3) No instructions on when to use and what kind of plants to kill the bugs.
4) Big blunder, no option to SAVE the game (we find out a shortcut to it - read it later) - may be the creators reserved it for paid version.
5) For each game they show other players finishing maze, they are not accurate since at the end of the game - players may decide to sell some of the non-required plant and build something else to handle final sets of bugs (selling the shooter plants and constructing the bomber plants etc.,)

Positives:

The game is addictive to the core and I could concentrate on everythine else only after finishing up all the levels. For three days in a row, I played a game to clear it. Hats off to the creators !!!

Tips & Tricks:

1) Saving the game - there is no explicit option to save the game, so if you think you have cleared certain levels in a game and if you want to start the game only from there - hit the home button / minimize the game - bug rush is automatically saved - then maximize the game and continue the play - but remember at this point you have to complete the game all lose all the lives and see the final "You Lose" screen and completely quit the app. When you restart the app you will notice "Resume Saved" option which you can use to restart from the level you previously saved... Also remember to use "multiple saves" in the same game - using the above strategy. We used to spend close to an hour to clear final levels and spend many such hours to clear JUST ONE level - once we figured it out this shortcut we cleared the final complex levels with multiple saves.
2) Make the bugs walk more - at many times you have to walk the bugs up / down using the strategy of removing a constructed 5 coin plat. Bugs will look for shortest path and walkback at which point you can close out the maze. While the bugs walk from the background upgraded plants with boost may be hitting and crushing the bugs.
3) Remember to capture critical the big bugs at anycost - +80, +120  etc., that comes up in the level 30s to 45s. these bugs are very critical to win the game.
4) Ping bomber plants help a lot against the ones that walk so closely, one over the other.
5) Use lot of "Frozen" plant to slow down the fast walking bugs and kill them.
6) In the final few difficulty levels, use lots of boost constructions minimum of 2 to overcome the floods of healthy bugs.

Though the game lacks some key features, giving 5 stars since I & wife thoroughly enjoyed playing this game !

Enjoy Playing and please hit like if you enjoyed the review /tips/tricks!!!

Mr X

1) Mr. X is comfortable walking/catching auto to workplace at low cost but he owns a bike @ higher interest rate and day dreaming about Audi, BMW for future.
2) Mr.X has great vision but he owns goggles.
3) Mr.X never seen sunrise in the past 10+ years (except in the kitchen ) but early morning workouts in nearby park & gym and rigorous swimming classes in the evening are chores now.
4) OLD NAVY, JOHNIE WALKER, ARROW, POLO sounded like English film names for Mr.X but now these are all his possessions.
5) Sleeveless - possession of girls to brag thyself was Mr.X's thought but now he owns two.
6) Mr.X can guess time accurately on looking at the Sun but he replaced his timemachine twice in the year and browsing internet for ROLEX deals.
7) Dhoti – Comfortable wear for him few months ago but now Mr.X is comfortable with Shorts and obviously Dhoti for cleaning in the Kitchen.
8) Mr.X had simpler slippers for outside use till his college days but now he wears branded sandal for outside use and costlier good looking slipper to roam around the apartment.
9) GIRLS were just girls for him but now they seem to be beauties.

and me in the search of Mr.X

~GAP

Joseph M Corne

Hi Joe,

It is my pleasure to learn to drive Car from you. The way you taught me the driving and your six hour company on the whole I would say in a single word AWESOME !!!. I scored 96% but I do not know when you conducted road test :-).

I will get my license tomorrow.

Today I renewed this blogger Id only to write about you Joe.

Enjoy your weekend Riding & Boating and enjoy your life to the fullest

Sorry for making you to wait for an hour in scorching sun.

Hats off Joe. I kept your name in the gtalk status for a day. I will maintain the coffee mug you signed.

~GAP