Mauritius 3

The beautiful country of Mauritius and people

Mauritius is a beautiful place. Now, the north and the south of the country are actually quite different. The North generally has the sandiest beaches with the area packed with more tourists. The capital is also located there called Port Louis.

The South is actually quite different. Although there are nice beaches, the areas are less developed and slightly more naturalistic. I would urge you to see both areas as they are very different. The people are very nice here, they shake your hand to greet you and generally everyone around. A lot can if not most, can speak English, so language would not be a problem especially in touristy areas.

Port Louis Capital

The Beaches of Mauritius

The Beaches of Mauritius

My friend Walking on the Seabed! Amazing

This is a house made out of Coral

South of Mauritius! Nothing like the advertisement!

One of the Natural wonders of the world - Seven coloured Earth

Mauritius waterfalls in the South!

Food is generally cheap if you know where to go and if you are on a tight budget. It can get very expensive if you go to restaurants around tourists areas. If you go to local places and food stands, they are very cheap! The cuisines can vary but there are a lot of Indian style cuisines but it is very delicious! You must try the Roti and Briyani there. It is cheap and amazing!

My Mauritius Journey 2

It's funny, my flight was late for the introduction and I did not realise that most people had already arrived. I was the last to arrive. My flight was delayed so I landed late and when I came out of the airport, no one was there to pick me up (someone was supposed to).

It was hot and I was aware that I was rather alone. Luckily, I met a nice fellow who helped me. He rang up the number I was given and was told that the driver would be coming now. So I waited and had a good banter with the nice chap. Eventually, the driver arrived and I said my thanks and was on my way.  I was feeling rather nervous since I was late, everyone was there already and must have introduced themselves. So many thoughts were racing through my mind at the time.

One of the first thoughts that raced through was the scenery, it was a lot different than I  had imagined and people a lot friendlier than I thought as well. Other thoughts included, I just got off a 13+ hour flight journey and I looked hideous and how I should approach everyone who have already settled there. As soon as I arrived I looked around  where we are. It was a very quaint village with hardly anything on either side. It was strange, I expected more to the place. I hastily carried my luggage out of the car and stared up at the building I was supposed to enter. I was greeted by another person that ushered me in. I took a deep breath and entered the building. Everyone's head turned as soon as I appeared. Curious faces and smiling individuals. My mind was blank, but I was asked to to first place my luggage on the stage. I did that and then I went back down to sit.

I was welcomed by one of the Aiesecers of Mauritus. His name was Chaman. I felt at ease when I spoke to him. He introduced himself and told me a few words to describe him. I was then asked to do the same. Afterwards ( since everyone was paired up) we had to stand up and introduce each other to the rest of the group. Following this, other ice-breakers ensued with chatting, presentations ( I forgot to send mine so I had to give a speech) and lunch. Here, I began to meet fellow individuals like me on this project and realised everyone was just as nervous as I was. Everyone was in the same situation. I had yet to realise that I would form such a special bond with them and memories that will last forever.

After the introduction, we were allowed to go back to the house. As I was chatting with my newly found friends, I didn't realise where we were going. It was only a short walk to our accommodation and it did not register that  I would be living upstairs to the landlord with 11 other people. As I saw the house, I believed that the whole house was for us, however, I was shocked that only the top half of the house was for us. I stood there and thought 'how could  possibly 12 people live here?'.

View from our accommodation

Since everyone was already settled, everyone went up first and I came last. Two guys from Pakistan immediately said that I could stay with them in their room. I realised that that the house was tiny and there was only 5 rooms for 12 people. however,  one room was the WIFI room and was not recommended for sleeping. There was a living room two shower rooms and a kitchen as well. Everything was basic, but I didn't mind. However, the place was rather unclean and a bit smelly. At first I said I would stay in the WIFI room but was convinced by Neeresh that it was not a good choice and eventually stayed with Bilal and Hasan in their room. This was the first time sleeping on the same bed as another guy and this was for 7 weeks haha.

The Wi-Fi room with super slow connection - Kind of missed this!

My fellow Aiesecers were very multicultural - The 12 of us included:

• 4 from Pakistan - Hasan, Bilal, Maria, 
• 2 from India - Sahil and Archit
• 1 from Taiwan - Melissa
• 1 from China - Winnie
• 1 from Poland - Ania
• 1 from France - Orphee
• 1 from Croatia - Veronika
• and me from the United Kingdom

My multicultural family whom I miss a lot still! The struggle and the joy we had for 7 weeks was awesome!

My Aiesec Journey in Mauritius

I know this is a very late post about this (A year after). I got lazy haha. But This journey really gave me a new insight and experience into life in a different country and I am grateful that I jumped into this opportunity.

So after my second year of University Shenanigans, I was trying to find an internship, but alas, I was unsuccessful. However, I did not want to waste my time moping and rolling around at home, I decided to look for alternatives. Remembering that my sister did volunteering in Taiwan, I sought an audience with her to find out more about Aiesec. With super enthusiasm, my sister assisted me in providing essential information and gave her opinion.

Once I was registered, I began to look through the large database of internships and volunteering abroad. At first, it was rather overwhelming, there were so many questions: Where should I go - What should I do - Will I enjoy it - How long will this last - What are my skills - Am I ready to go? I e-mailed numerous countries that I was interested including South Korea,  Brazil, Taiwan and many others. However, I was a bit disappointed to find that a lot of them did not reply, or were very slow at replying.

Eventually I stumbled upon Mauritius. Now I must admit that I had no idea where this country was, so I researched it and found it was like a small island just besides Madagascar. It was funny how this happened. I liked a post of a beach on the Aiesec exchange group and instantly someone messaged me. It came as a surprise as I just liked it for the photo. We got talking through Facebook messenger and was intrigued with the project called IT4ALL. Time was running out and I was very interested, so I decided to go for it. I had a Skype Interview and 30 minutes after I was accepted!

I was there for 7 weeks with 11 other people living in the same roof. It was daunting, It was exciting but best of all, I  did not know I was male incredible memories there.

My family for the next 7 weeks :)

20+ Tips and Tricks for HTC One

Just a quick post, this video really helped me get used to android ( previous iOS user) OS and the HTC one. I hope you find it useful if you ever decide to get the one!

Tech Review: HTC ONE (M7)

So I have been using the HTC one for about a week and a few days now and I have to say, I have not regretted one bit on getting this smartphone.

Let's get on with the tech stuff that almost everyone thinks they know about (but in reality they have no clue, including myself).

Technical specs and features

• Dimensions 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm
• Weight: 143g
• DISPLAY: 4.7 inch, Full HD 1080p, 468 PPI
• Battery: 2300 mAh
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.7 ghz
• Ram: 2gb
• Storage: 32gb also available in 64gb
• Data: LTE, HSPA+ etc
• Simcard: microsim
• Camera: Ultra pixels (4mp)
• Sound: HTC Boom-sound, stereo speakers
• Platform: android, HTC sense 5 ui

Design, Build quality and Practicality

HTC one is definitely THE best looking phone around hands down and hands up and wave your hands all around. It's aluminium finish is a sight for the eyes. It's gorgeous and it definitely goes with apple products! Is this what the iPhone 5 should have looked like? Probably! Throughout the week I have had many many compliments about the phone and how aesthetically pleasing it is. This phone just oozes class. It's sturdy in the hand, light but still feels premium. Compared to the S4 with it cheap plastic design and less premium feel. Although this does not mean the S4 is pants. It just does not look as good and very similar to the S3 ( I can hardly tell the difference). Prior to this silver HTC one, I actually intended to get the black counter-part. However, there was no release date for the black version. So I went with the silver. I must say, I think silver really looks better than the black now. ( Then again I haven't got my paws on the black one or have I seen a demo). 

Yet this doesn't mean it was without it's problems, numerous consumers had problems with the phone straight out of the box. Many reported that there were gaps above the phone between the speaker and the the screen. This occurred at the bottom as well. One particular HTC one phone had a huge gap which could fit a receipt straight through the screen Others found that the edges were not smooth. Mine came with those defects and I got it instantly exchanged. My  exchange has none of these defects and it is in perfect condition!

Storage and microSD

I currently have the 32gb model, but out of the box, it comes with 27.6 GB worth of free space and the rest was used for the OS. In my opinion that is not bad. However, it does not have a removable battery or micro SD slot which I hear people going crazzzy about. According to reports online, the Chinese version of the HTC one will have a microSD slot and dual micro sim (Asians :D). In all honestly I do no mind since I owned an iPhone previously. 

People argue that They NEED a micro SD card in phones, but most average consumers don't use that much space anyway! What most consumers don't know is that, you CANNOT download apps onto your MicroSD card, it pretty much making it useless unless you like to put music and movies on to it. ( which I don't really). Recent reports about the S4 has emerged that their 16GB storage, comes only with HALF of the storage ( That's 8 GB if you can't do maths). 8GB of S4 is their OS and bloatware. 

TD:LR, Storage is fine ( maybe I should have just said that).

Display

With HTC one packing 468 PPI on a 4.7 inch LCD 3 screen. It is the perfect size for me. The glass of the display is made from gorilla glass v.2 and and the screen resolution is just fantastic. It is a bright screen and very sharp indeed. It made my iPhone look like an analog TV. It is readable in the sunlight too! Well almost. You really have to see it to believe it. From pictures you just cannot comprehend how good the screen is until you lay your beautiful eyes on it. 

Just a quick snap of the lock screen. Simple and elegant.

Camera

I had many doubts about the one's camera. This is because, HTC decided to jump out of a Megapixel car race. We all know ( myself included ) believed that more pixels equates to better pictures- pew pew pew!

That is not the case and HTC decided to go with a fresh approach. Instead of more pixels, they enlarged the pixels. Too technical? Yes for me too! Basically, they named it the 'ultra pixel' which is 4 mega pixels but they have been enlarged to capture more light, thus better pictures than your average 4mp shooter and thus reducing the noise of pictures. You can read more about it here. Megapixels only increase resolution and how much you can zoom in and retain details. HTC believed that most consumers, will point and shoot then oftenly upload to their favourite social network. This camera is the perfect for that. I also agree that this is the way to go too. Screw the megapixel race haha.

The camera has many settings and it does get a little used to. One thing is for sure, generally point and shooting is ok however, it is over sharp sometimes. So to get the best results by a quick point and shoot would be going with -1 sharpness in the camera settings. I have also found that it takes better pictures when shooting vertically than horizontally. That is not to say it's rubbish when horizontal, it just needs a few more shots to get a perfect shot sometimes. Other camera shots included are HDR, macro, landscape, portrait, night and sweep panorama. Funnily, I used to just shoot with my iPhone but now with the HTC one, I want to get THE best, most awesome super duper pictures and often I would carefully choose the settings.

This is one  of the first pictures I took with the HTC one, as you  can see, macro photos are amazing. Definitely the highlight of the camera!

Jjim dak- yummy! Plus excellent picture :D

Macro photo. I love how natural the colours are!

As you can see, macro shots are well good! Pictures below are just random point and shoot with -1 sharpness and using modes such as landscape mode etc. They turn out great! However, it generally looks better on the phone than when you upload.

I generally, like the natural colours are the photo and they look great on social network sites! Win win right. I also love how it captures motion really really well. There is no blur where people are walking or the fountain above. I think this is because of the amazing speed of the shutter. Simply brilliant! 

Low light performce

The low light performance on this camera is definitely the best thing about the camera, since it takes in more light, there is reduced noise on dark photos and generally still takes decent photos. Likewise, it performs better than any other phone I have seen in low light conditions. Now I can finally take photos in the dark! haha.

Features: ZOE, Boomsound, Sense 5, Blinkfeed, Video

ZOE

Now there's a crazy feature on HTC one that really makes this phone stand out. It is called the HTC Zoe  What is this ZOE, is it a girl you get with the phone? Not quite. Ever feel like pictures don't always tell the bigger picture of a great night or memorable one? Well that's where Zoe ( my girl) comes in! A simple click of Zoe and it will capture a 3 second video and 20 shots and including images before you clicked the camera button. You might think that's stupid! But it really is quite the opposite. It can capture great moments, the perfect photo and then it will be create a highlight and mix of all your photos and videos into a 30 second video automatically! WOW? Yes WOW. It's a great way to share other than a photo to capture what happened in a night in in 30 seconds. Visuals are always better right? 

An example is this https://share.htc.com/em1jLObM3# 

With Zoe you can also remove objects, get the perfect smile , ace sequence shots and all done with relative ease! This feature is a winner with me right here!

Boomsound

There's not much to say about the audio as it's the best sounding audio experience on a phone that I have ever had. Endorsed by Dr Dre, the beats audio makes everything sound so much better! You have to hear it to believe it! It's the first phone to have front-facing stereo speakers. Hurrah for not cupping your hand for better sound! 

Sense 5

Sense 5 is the user interface that HTC uses. At first it was very confusing to use since I did not know how to move apps and change the dock icons. But anyone with a bit of brain can figure it out. Sense 5 ui looks great, does not contain crappy bloatware that some other devices come with  very smooth transitions between apps. I'm not sure if this is sense 5 or because of the previous model of jelly bean but I don't like how you can't  have two different wallpapers for the screen and lock screen. Minor gripe, so I'll let it slide. Another Minor gripe is that, when some apps are launched, there is a massive button for the menu/settings of the app that takes up way too much space of the screen. HTC definitely needs to short that out. 

Blinkfeed

Blinkfeed is htc's take on the already established app on android called the flipboard. It's very simple, it just gives you updates on news , social network , channels all in one easy way to read them. Clicking on an image will expand the story or open up Facebook. It is a very useful feature for people like me that just like to scroll and scroll about news etc. However, many people complain about it because you cannot turn it off, you can only make another screen the homescreen. It is also currently in its infancy stage and has not started teething yet. There is a limitation to what news you can subscribe to and you can't add your own personal ones. Once htc updates blinkfeed, I think it will be a very useful feature!

Blinkfeed

Video

Video quality on the phone and sound quality recording are absolutely amazing. The colours are right, the sound is perfect. I haven't experimented with video too much but from initial impressions, it has been great and the playback look superb as well. Since HTC has two microphones or dual membrane as they call it, the phone can reduce the distortion of noise making it much clearer than other phones. That is to say, it will come very handy in night club recordings and concert!

Check it out here! MUSE MUSE MUSE 

Closing Comments

I have to say I am very happy with this phone, I think it is the best phone out in the market, although it is heavily overshadowed by the S4 ( which is a good phone still) I still think, the usefulness of the HTC's features and its aim for consumers to share ( which we love to do right now) makes this phone the most desirable at the moment.

HTC has done well, it looks great, sounds great, performs well with killer features such as ZOE and boomsound it definitely deserves an award. ( you can tell I love this phone right?) 

Tech Impressions: HTC ONE (M7)

So I just upgraded my contract and finally have my hands on the HTC ONE...! Hurrah!

Can I just say, this is the most beautiful looking phone I have ever set my eyes on! This is just the initial impressions but so far, it's a wonderful phone, snappy, no lag and the display is gorgeous!

The sound is just out of this world! It's loud, it's crisp and clear! Wowee

Some minor gripes though, there are some rough edges but can't really be noticed as well as a little bit of a gap at the top of the phone. Phone provider gave me the worse screen protector too! Charging the phone is a bit slow as well as the syncing.

Here are some of the shots I took from my iPhone!

This is the box it came with, unfortunately, the charger is separate which was a bit of a bummer! I had to buy the charger individually.

First time turning on the HTC one, the intro sound nearly made me jump out of my skin, It was that loud!

The Back, aluminium build, very very nice! 

A full review and  a more in depth look will be done!

So this is my first time

Let's just start of by saying, I have no idea what to write!

I mean, I've always wanted to get into blogging, it was a way for people to freely express their interests and opinions online without being a journalist for a news website or any website for that matters. Let's be honest now, some of the journalism online ( not naming any, DM!) are far from professional. Some blogs are a much better read as well!

So let's cue in the drum roll and applause for my starting post! Yippee!

Current Thoughts

So we are currently in April and the weather has been a hit and miss sort of month. Yes I am British, so there's always a part where the weather will fall into a conversation... or in a blog haha. When the sun finally decided to shine on the land of the Britons, the wind decided to tag a long too. Although it feels warm, the attention seeking wind decided it wanted to play too. Yes, you guessed it, it was too windy to really enjoy the warmth of the sun.

Let's hope May will be the land of the sun! 

I just keep reminiscing about the great weather we had prior to this, at this very point in time. It was hot like super hot! I miss the hot weather .... and exploring places outside of the UK.

Malta 2012 - Blue lagoon

Exams are soon to befall me, I hope it does not slay my motivation I have just gained from going to the gym everyday! Am I already losing motivation to study by starting a Blog? Oops.

Current Addiction

Let's just say when I peak an interest in something, I really throw my passion onto it and almost indirectly ( and directly hehe) begin to influence other people. I don't know why. It just happens. So currently, my new found addiction would be a new smartphone. NO! It is not the Samsung Galaxy S4! It is a smartphone that has starting to receive a lot of recognition lately; a sleek looking, beautiful phone named the HTC ONE.

It's really weird, I had no intention whatsoever of ditching my iPhone 4 and when Samsung announced its new smartphone, I really thought my next phone would be a Samsung product. But then...while mindlessly browsing, I stumbled upon the HTC one and immediately fell head over heels for it. Not that I wear heels or anything! Although this device has been released for roughly a month now, I actually still do not yield this mighty phone. Yet, I am still infatuated about it and I have already made preparations for it's impeding arrival. I intend to get this soon and do a 'proper' review of the phone!

For now you can check out here of what the HTC one looks like!

^ Just look how wonderful it is! I could go on about how super duper fantastic this device is, the features and so forth, but I will leave that to a full review later in the week (hopefully).