Prague (Part 2) - Updated

After my coworker from Algeria arrived, we went to for a short excursion to Prague's renowned Old Town Square for a visit and dinner.

The Old Town Square and the nearby Charles Bridge (more than 600 years old) offered amazing sights of wonderful architectural structures that are rich in history and culture.

After spending an evening soaking up the fabulous medieval-ish European atmosphere, I've decided that I cannot adequately capture the moment in words. Unfortunately, my poor skills with the camera don't do justice to the pictures I've taken either.

As the evening draws on, it got colder (around 5 degrees) and we were inadequately clothed. Taking the recommendation of our taxi driver, we found a local restaurant that is "less touristy" to take our dinner near the square.

Here's some pictures that do the Czech historical sites gross injustice...but anyway... (I'm going to add comments later).

Streets Around the Hotel
A type of Czech architectural styles

Big Loreal office building and store: Eat you heart out, ladies!

Around the Old Town
Dancing Building named after Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers: Could you guess who is who?

Lamp-post

Old Town Square
Approach to Old Town Square

It's romantic to walk to Old Town Square in the Evening

The Astronomical Clock Tower in Old Town Square

Old Town Square

Astronomical Clock & Tyn Cathedral

Tyn Cathedral

Jan Hus Memorial

Great looking building

Doorway to Tyn Cathedral

A puppet shop

Another nice building - Byzantine syle?

Stone carved decorations

Charles Bridge




View of Prague Castle from Charles Bridge

My Algerian Colleague

Dinner @ Apetit
A recommendation from the cabbie

Cozy interior



Traditional beef meatball soup

Bohemian style beef with dumplings (the white bread-ish thingie on top

Trufito or something...Nice!

Prague

I arrived in Prague via Istanbul. This is the initial leg of a first long trip to the European continent, excluding all the airport transits in Paris in the past. I will be in Prague for two days for a business trip before leaving for Netherlands on vacation.

My flight to Prague was an ultra early flight via a long transit of 5 hours in Istanbul. It was reminiscent of my first flight to Algeria where I reported for work for the first time in late 2005. I was similarly stuck in Istanbul airport for quite a while then.

As I've only just checked in (I'm blogging from the hotel business center), I've yet to see the splendor of Prague, a much touted city of architectural and historical marvel.

Since tomorrow's business itinerary will be starting a bit late, I'm waiting the arrival of another co-worker before planning to catch a glimpse of some of the interesting places that Prague can offer later in the evening and tomorrow morning. And of course, to have a glass of the famous local pilsner while I'm at it. Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures here...

Ripping off the hotel postcard ^^''

Main building of Hotel Movenpick, my hotel, is in the foreground. Looks like a school doesn't it?

Lobby of the main building

Says here I need to take the cable car to the executive wing. Same car as seen in the hotel postcard.

Glimpse of my room

I'm about to raid the minibar!!!

Big Dinner In Little China

We found this Chinese restaurant, Little China, recently at the entrance of the popular Beirut clubbing Monot Street (think Mohammad Sultan street of Singapore).

Looks like a 5-foot way entrance, ain't it?

Apart from having a name that doesn't inspire any of my appetite, the interior of the small restaurant does invoke an authentically Asian feel. From the management and crew, interior decorations down to the tableware, everything looks made in China.

Raise the red lanterns

The Manchurian Candidate?

Paintings of the four seasons

According to the restaurants sole waitress, who hailed from Beijing, the restaurant has a long history in Beirut, since her brother started it more than 10 years ago.

This is obviously no "Rush Hour".

Asian usually dine around 6pm, we arrived way ahead of the dinner crowd.

Conversing in our rusty mandarin, we stated our preference (make it extra spicy!!!) to the waitress but left it to them to bring us the food that they think we would like.

Eat Drink Man Woman: Hungry and expectant customers

The moment of truth came as we tasted dish after dish. Altogether the three of us had 6 dishes. The generous food serving was notably untypical of overseas Chinese restaurants.

There was authenticity in the cooking in this restaurant. For example, I could discern the different base of Asian sauces used to prepare each of the dish. The plus side of having more flavour in their cooking is that they can save on sprinkling more MSG or salt, which makes the food more enjoyable.

This is unlike other Chinese restaurants, like Chopsticks, which basically based most of their dishes with either one or two sauce base: i.e. soy sauce or bean paste sauce (rare) or curry (not even East Asian). Usually, the aftertaste is terribly salty and an insatiable thirst usually associated with eating too much MSG.

I considered the quality of food in Little China to be comparable to the more mainstream restaurants in Asia and definitely should be returning to the restaurant soon to try more of their fare.

Springrolls that was tad too oily, as characteristic of Northern Chinese cooking.

Hot and Sour soup, which was neither hot (my standards) nor sour at all. But it still taste good.

Huay Guo Ruo, refried pork slices

Teppan Yaki beef, Chinese style. This dish was rare in this region.

"Fried Rice Paradise"*. This was the worst dish of all. The taste was a little bland. So no, I didn't go to paradise after eating this. (*Name of a popular Singaporean musical)

Smiling customer = Happy customer

New PSP

Did I mentioned before that I lost my PSP in Morocco last year?

Now I have a new kick-ass PSP Slim in Mint Green, courtesy of my financial advisor, Gillian!

Googled it, the mint green version is only a Japan release recently launched in February 2008.

I think it's an awfully cool color. Don't you?

Is That My Car?

I was blog surfing (at work!) when I came across these blogs.

Almost couldn't refrain from bursting out in laughter.

Parking Idiots in Singapore: covers reader contributions before 2007
Singapore Parking Idiots: covers reader contributions after 2007

I'm just glad to know that I'm not alone out there...

Anyone interested to start a blog about parking & driving idiots in Algeria.

Singapore 2: 0 Lebanon

In yesterday's 2010 FIFA World Cup Asian Qualifiers, Singapore beat Lebanon and moved to second place in Group 4.

I always have the opinion that the Singapore Lions is a lousy team. Now I know that the Lebanese national team is also lousy. Suddenly, I feel a sense of national pride that we are just slightly better than the Lebanese.

Actually, to be precise, Lebanon has a ultra lousy coach. Here an exerpt from his post-match interview:

Lebanon's coach Emile Rustom, who was missing four first-team players including Cologne midfielder Roda Antar, bemoaned his selection problems.

"It was expected. Lebanon were missing four key players, you can imagine Singapore without four players," he said.

What a LOSER!!! Haaahaaa.....

You mean the rest of your team cannot play?

Mr Rustom, when you cannot do something, seriously reflect on what your management skills and how to improve. Don't blame the circumstances. Who will you blame when your team meets a stronger team? Blame it on Israel?

Soccer-Singapore ease to qualifying win over Lebanon

Reuters - Thursday, March 27
SINGAPORE, March 26 - Singapore
comfortably beat Lebanon 2-0 to pick up the first three points of their Asian
World Cup third round qualifying campaign on Wednesday.

The city-state's 37-year-old striker Aleksander Duric, who scored twice on
his debut in the 3-1 second stage aggregate victory over Tajikistan, opened the
scoring in the seventh minute after capitalising on some poor Lebanese
defending.

Midfielder Fazrul Nawaz then doubled the home side's advantage, effectively
sealing the game after 24 minutes.

Singapore coach Radojko Avramovic praised Bosnian-born Duric, who was
called-up to the national squad late last year after becoming a Singapore
citizen.

"He was running hard in the first half and then in the second half he was
playing more in midfield, I think he has done really well for us," Avramovic
told reporters.

Lebanon's coach Emile Rustom, who was missing four first-team players
including Cologne midfielder Roda Antar, bemoaned his selection
problems.

"It was expected. Lebanon were missing four key players, you can imagine
Singapore without four players," he said.

Singapore move to second in Group 4, level on points with Saudi Arabia whom
they lost to in February and three points behind leaders Uzbekistan. Lebanon
remain bottom without a point.

12th Algeria Motorshow & Trade Talk

The 12th Algerian motorshow opened yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I could not attend the show because I had to travel to Casablanca. This is probably going to be the first Algerian motorshow that I will miss since I started working in Algeria.

According to feedback, the motorshow in Algeria is improving in terms of the quality of the booth designs and display models compared to 3 years ago. In my opinion, Peugeot and Toyota booths are setting the benchmark.

Also noteworthy was that last year, Mitsubishi brought in a Lancer Evolution as special exhibit. I think it's the ninth version. This year, not to be outdone, Nissan will be showcasing the 2008 GTR. I love the GTR but unfortunately I won't have the chance to touch this new model at the motorshow.

The signature tail-lights of GTR

As for us, I would love to see a special concept car on display during a motorshow in the future.

Friend of mine got a nice hybrid concept car for the motorshow in his country

I think that things are heating up in the Algerian automobile market. The market has been undergoing tremendous growth coupled with the rapid development of consumer financing and economic improvement. This is good news for us.

But a lot of companies are making more efforts to increase their sales in Algeria, so competition is going to get tougher. With the Free-Trade agreement with Europe, the French brands, which had traditionally dominated the market, will be benefiting from lower import duties and are definitely going to get their acts together.

However, as the economy will still take many more years before reaching maturity, Algerians will probably continue to go for lower-priced, entry segment cars. Which is good news for brands that specialize in cheap cars like Tata and Maruti.

To digress, Tata is really making inroads into the global automobile markets with the launch of Nano, a super cheap car with a retail sales price USD$2,000. According to recent news, Tata has bought Landrover and Jaguar to it's sprawling group. It's definitely a force to be reckon with.

Back to the point, I do find the Algerian market a tad uninteresting because it appears that the market is very price driven and customers are mainly attracted by low-priced cars with very basic specifications. I'm really curious to see that with the proliferation of consumer financing options from Societe Generale and Cetelem, will customers begin shifting towards higher end models like 308 or Auris? What do you think?