Mr Zang

San Francisco

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:18:00 +0000

I am here in San Francisco about to starting training on Filemaker with the rest of the team and the product management guys.

I arrived in the afternoon a bit shell shocked but manage to get out of the nice room at the hilton and walk around the city. I walked around china town which was the same old crap that you get everywhere and happened upon lombard road which is the famous bendy road in san francisco.

At the top of the road I turned left towards fishermans wharf, a tourist area and was rewarded with some fantastic views across the bay and one of the steepest roads I have ever seen, with a cyclist just arriving at the top.. crazy fool.

I walked around the wharf for a bit and laughed at the easy riders and fat hog harlys, said hello to the seals and had a bit of a bread clam chowder.

I got back to the hotel had a quick beer in the bar and dragged myself up to the room zzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Today is a wine tour and a chance to so some redwood trees.

Training in bristol

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:38:00 +0000

The queen's house

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:06:00 +0000

Is Archie watching the road

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:13:00 +0000

Click above to find out if archie is hungry and watching the road for us to come home!

Celia's Birthday 21st again!

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:52:00 +0000

Jacob and i at weymouth

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Jacob with Choclate face..again

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:11:00 +0000

Donna with baby Flo at xmas 07

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:08:00 +0000

James came to visit from oz

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:14:00 +0000

James came to visit from oz

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:14:00 +0000

Back to the uk

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:12:00 +0000

So back after a year aboard, I will be taking up this blog again, as I enjoyed the travelzang one so much.

This is the second week, Eleanor has already got a good job in London, we have decorated a room and seen all the family.

We hope to move back into south street in Feb 2008

Our room at Celias

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:08:00 +0000

This pic was created with my new K800i nice!

Bangkok 2nd Time Around

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Thu, 24 May 2007 03:40:00 +0000

So we came back to bangkok from Koh Tao this time by boat and overnight train, the train of course was an hour late, but the carriage was quite clean and the sleeper mattresses was mega soft and clean which was a bonus for the train seemed to have no suspension that or the track had sleeping policeman to slow the train down, I have never been on a train that bumped so much, they also seemed to think that turning the lights off to go to sleep was for wimps, but with the wonders of ear plugs and eye masks, the train was no match for the travel zangs.

We hooked up in bangkok with a friend called Carolin, our German Dutch looking dive buddy who is vonderful, we have had a completely different experience in Bangkok this time as we decided to stay in the center of town on "shopping street" in a lovely hostel called suk 11 with bags of character and close to the sky train. We had a lovely few days shopping and getting the sand out of our hair so to speak.

Anyway, Spiderman 3 was cool and 28 weeks later was awesome (we LOVE zombie movies) and so you can see that we are fully immersing ourselves in Thai culture. Someone pointed out the great palace from the bus last night up to chang mai where we are now but Eleanor could be bothered to look as we had stolen / borrowed a copy of Empire magazine from a bar and that was more interesting. We will do one or two more temples but India kinda templed us out!!!

Off to do some "trekking" for lame-o's where you walk about 3 hours then get on an elephant and see "hill tribes" (the ones with rings round their necks) although by all accounts they have a group of tourists every day so not sure how genuine the whole experience will be but at least it's not diving or temples!!!

After that we may do some massage / jewelry /wax batik courses / downhill mountain biking painting before setting out for Loas.

Missing home but now we're back on the run and a renewed sense of adventure. We'll be in Laos from 1 Jun for 2 weeks and internet is prob not available there (there is apparently one ATM in the whole country!) so you may not hear from us in that time.

Koh Tao - Dive Master Snorkel Test

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Thu, 24 May 2007 03:40:00 +0000

For those not in the know, the final piece of training for dive masters is a very serious test called The Snorkel Test. It was clearly invented by a Brit as no other nationality (except perhaps the Aussies) could come up with something like this.

Essentially you go to Lotus Bar* (*location optional) and after warming up with a few G&Ts, and have had a bit of food (we had a lovely fish BBQ with friends on the beach), you get sat down on The Snorkel Test Seat and are presented with a custom-designed mask and snorkel combo with a special funnel attached to the snorkel which you then don. A small bucket (about 1 litre) of cocktail is then poured down the aforementioned snorkel funnel and you have to drink the whole thing in one go without a) breathing, b) puking, or c) passing out completely.

Well as Kieran and El are such true Brits we managed to pass the test with flying colours and to be honest the rest of the night was a horrible sticky mess that neither of us can really remember!!!

Suffice it to say it was a really fun night with our dive buddies and the next day we didn't manage to get out of bed until 7.30pm. Obviously we are never drinking ever again (until the next time) and have realised that once you're past 30 you just can't do things like that anymore! Still it was a good way to say goodbye to Koh Tao and we made a fairly quiet exit 2 days later, exactly 2 months after we got there.

Flickr

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:08:00 +0000

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

My first podcast test

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:46:00 +0000

So here it is my first podcast post, took me a while to figure out because you can not host mp3 file on blogger, so I had to find some where else to place the files

So as a test have a listen to this lovely spanish track:

Vanessa da Mata - 03 - Alegria.mp3

Baby Eva

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 10:19:00 +0000

Cathy and Rik 016
Originally uploaded by kieran_saunders.

We went to Sailsbury to vist Sophie and Phil and Baby Eva last weekend, on the sunday coming back from Frome visting Cathy and Rik. This is eva in the car on the way to pick some sloe berry, that will be used this weekend in making sloe gin.

Flickr

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 10:15:00 +0000

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Google Map of College Road Reading

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 15:31:00 +0000

This has grabed from http://wikimapia.org fantastic tool!!!

Podcast

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:59:00 +0000

I can see the future and it is audio, I hope to get some kind of RSS link to this blog to allow friends and family to download video and audio files.

The feeds address is :

I will be testing this feature in the next month so expect some random video and podcasts to go up.

Kieran

Blog beta

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:45:00 +0000

Not sure what has changed, I will have to take the tour

India Guide

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:22:00 +0000

This is THE book to india any one thinking of going to India should get this guide book.
I bought this guide book on amazon about a month before I went travelling, and out of my friends who travelled with me, I had the best info, the most comprehensive set of guides, maps and advice and generally the most invaluable aid to my travels. all my friends referred to it over thier own, it got me to places i'd never think of going and it simply has to be the most well written, well laid out guide to india you'll get your hands on. dont even think about getting any other guide book, this is the one!

Walking map of geneva

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:54:00 +0000

carte_temps.gif.gif
Originally uploaded by kieran_saunders.

Jake pumps for England

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 11:49:00 +0000

Copy of Donna & Matthew's Wedding 123
Originally uploaded by kieran_saunders.

Donna's Wedding

El and I set off from Reading early in the morning to pick up Nan from Wool. We had to be at the Venue Kingston Maurward College at 11:15 to perform my duties as usher. Donna arrived and had photos outside while everyone inside was wondering if she had had second thoughts and “done a runner”. Much to Matthew relief the doors opened and she walked down the row of seats looking lovely with Dad at her arm. Jacob broke up the moment to shout out hello to a friend on the side, who was then quickly scooped up by mum and taken to the front row. The weather was a bit so so and did not know what it was doing as every 5 minutes it would change its mind. But it cleared up to allow the photographer to get most of the usual mother and farther pictures in, it only tipped down after asking all the blue tie wearers to strike a slightly silly pose, hands crossed and one leg bent a right angles, serves us right for complying with him.

We all made it back to Holmebrdge were the marquee was waiting, wow it looked fantastic all pointy bits like a flash Gordon film ;-). Dad made a fantastic fathers speech to Donna, which made me very proud of him, well done Dad. Matthew’s was very slushy and romantic as the grooms speech should be and the best men’s speech WWF style by Jack and Tim was very funny. From then on in, it was a hazy daze of champagne and wine. The bands were great and had everyone up head banging and jumping around like nutters, Dad and I even did the “wipe out”.

The next day the survivors all went for a walk down to the river and had a great time mucking around jumping in the water and splashing around.

The next day we all went for a walk down to the ford and Jake tried to pump some water out of dry well. This damm hose pipe ban will be the death of people.

Nan gets stuck in the pims and ice cream

kieran.saunders@gmail.com (Kieran) — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 11:47:00 +0000

Donna & Matthew's Wedding 073
Originally uploaded by kieran_saunders.

Nan really liked the ice cream