Looking out from the bow of the ferry from Tobermory to South Baymouth
Today we began or journey to Sault Ste. Marie. We start from Tobermory by hopping on the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry. The ferry ride itself accommodates mostly vehicles, such as cars, motorbikes, various recreational vehicles, vans, etc. I was impressed at how many vehicles it was able to carry in a single trip. There must have been 40 to 50 vehicles easily.
Driving into the ferry was also interesting, as there is two levels. The main level for vehicles that require extra height and motorbikes. The second level consists of mostly regular cars and SUV’s.
The ends of the ferry opens up to allow the vehicles through
The ferry took us to South Baymouth where we had our first road trip incident with our Tesla Model Y. Because the car was transported with the ferry, it lost its GPS position and had to reacquire the signal when we get off the ferry. Well, that is how it is suppose to work. The GPS signal was acquired, but the software map on the main dash failed to update the “current position”.
We tried the following to no avail:
Rebooting the dash;
Powering off and on with both a 3 minutes and 5 minutes wait;
Called Tesla support and they suggested the same with a final recommendation to drive to a Tesla Service Centre!
I am totally blown away that such a software glitch can exists on a Tesla. The fix probably just require a recycling of the GPS module. Unfortunately, there is no user-friendly way of doing this.
We gave up on our troubleshooting and drove from South Baymouth to Sault Ste. Marie without the Tesla navigation app. This is more of a handicap than I thought. The car fails to precondition the battery when we arrive at the supercharger so it takes a little longer to charge. We also miss the mapping functionality that tells us the locations of the on-route superchargers and how many were available. Good old Waze on our iPhone to the rescue, and some manual range calculations.
When we arrived at our hotel at Sault Ste. Marie, and with the help of the hotel Internet, I finally “risked” a software update on our Tesla. I had to use my iPhone’s personal hotspot and download the new software update for the Tesla. With fingers crossed and 30 minutes of unwanted and undesirable anxiety, the update downloaded successfully. Another bare knuckles 30 minutes wait, we were rewarded with a correct map and location on the dash once more!
The moral of the story is, when taking a long road trip, DO NOT transport the Tesla other than under its own power. Lesson learned! Those who are planning on taking a road trip, I highly recommend that you avoid ferries and trains that can transport your Tesla.
Tomorrow, we are off to Thunder Bay with a functional navigation system again.
Here is Carol’s video for the day.
Day 3: Taking the ferry to South Baymouth and on towards Sault Ste. Marie
Yesterday we started our journey to Calgary. Our first stop is Tobermory where we plan to checkout the Flowerpot Island and do some hiking on the Bruce Trails.
Charging at Owen Sound
We started our journey at around 1pm. The drive is quite relaxing especially with Auto Steer enabled with our Tesla Model Y. We stopped at Owen Sound’s Walmart to get some supplies and did a quick charge before proceeding to Tobermory. We wanted to have lots of battery capacity when we arrive at Tobermory because we were not sure if we can charge there. By the time we came back to our car from Walmart, the car charged from 55% to 87%. We continue our drive to Tobermory.
When we arrived to Tobermory, we had about 65% battery left. This should be enough, but out of curiosity we discovered there was fast charging available by ChargeQuest at the Tobermory Community Centre. For fun, we charged it back up to 80%. At Owen Sound, we paid $12.37 for 25.79kWh ($0.48/kWh), and at Tobermory with ChargeQuest we paid $6.58 for 14.29kWh ($0.46/kWh), which took 17 minutes. It looks like the rates are more or less the same.
We booked an AirBnB about 1.5km South of town. Our host Susan, was very responsive. The place was really nice and both Carol and I really enjoyed our two night stay there. I personally love the huge and spacious bathroom. The weather was kind of cool, so we did not make use of the large backyard or the patio. Check this place out if you are looking for a spot to stay in Tobermory.
As mentioned earlier we wanted to visit the Flowerpot Island, but when we found out the prices, we decided to forgo this idea. Below are the prices from Blue Heron Cruises.
Prices for two adults to Flowerpot Island – Drop Off Cruise
Instead we just went to the Fathom Five National Marine Park for a 4km hike along its trail. Below are some photos we took along the way.
So getting back to the Flowerpot Island, the photo below is taken from the shores of the hiking trail, and it is as close to the island we got. Not a total loss!
We sighted Flowerpot Island!
Tomorrow (September, 14) we will be taking the MS Chi-Cheemaun ferry to South Baymouth and onto Sault Ste. Marie!
Below are the lovely video summaries that Carol has made for our first two days of travel.
Day 1: From Richmond Hill to TobermoryDay 2: Adventures in Tobermory
The advent of the Large Language Model (LLM) is in full swing within the tech community since the debut of ChatGPT by openAI. Platforms such as Google Colab, and similar variants from Amazon and Facebook allows software developer to experiment with LLM’s. The hosted model of the data center based GPU’s makes training and refinement of LLM’s tolerable.
What about using LLM on a local computer away from the cloud?
Projects such as llama.cpp by Georgi Gerganov makes it possible to run the Facebook open sourced Llama 2 model on a single MacBook. The existence of llama.cpp gives hope on creating a desktop that is powerful enough to some local development with LLM’s away from the cloud. This post documents an experimental procedure in building a desktop machine using parts readily available from the Internet to see if we can do some AI development with LLM’s.
Below is a list of sourced parts from EBay, Amazon and CanadaComputers, a local computer store. All prices are in Canadian dollars and includes relevant taxes.
GDSTIME 7530 75mm x 30mm 7cm 3in 12V DC Brushless Small Mini Blower Cooling Fan for Projector, Sleeve Bearing 2PIN (sourced from Amazon)
$16.94
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 64GB (4 x 32GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4-25600) C16 1.35V Desktop Memory – Black (sourced from Amazon)
$350.28
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G 8-Core, 16-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor with Radeon Graphics (sourced from Amazon)
$281.35
Noctua NH-D15 chromax.Black, Dual-Tower CPU Cooler (140mm, Black) (sourced from Amazon)
$158.14
Asus AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) ATX motherboard with PCIe 4.0, dual M.2, 12+2 with Dr. MOS power stage, HDMI, DP, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Aura Sync RGB lighting (sourced from Amazon)
$305.09
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB NVMe M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V7S2T0B/AM) (sourced from Amazon)
Miscellaneous 120mm case fans and cables purchased from CanadaComputers
$63.17
The total cost of the above materials is $2,062.87 CAD.
The Nvidia Tesla P40 (Pascal Architecture) specializes for Inferencing limited to INT8 based operations and does not support any FP related operations, so it may not be optimal for machine learning. However recent claims have been made that INT8 / Q8_0 quantization can yield some promising results. Let us see what our experimentation will yield once the machine is built.
A custom design 3D fan shroud has to be designed and 3D printed because the P40 does not natively come with active cooling. The P40 is originally designed to operate in a data center so cooling is provided by the server chassis. The custom shroud design is posted on Thingiverse and some photos of the finished shroud is shown below.
Note that M3 screws were used to secure the shroud to the P40 GPU card. The GDSTIME fan came with the screws.
I also made a mistake by initially getting a 1000W ATX power supply that ended not fitting the case, because the case is built for SFX and SFX-L power supplies. Lesson learned!
Once the machine is built I performed a 12 hours MemTest86+. It turned out that running the memory at the XMP profile was a bit unstable. I had to clock the memory back from its 3200MHz rating to 3000MHz.
After more than 12 hours with 3 passes.
The BIOS settings had to be configured so that Resize BAR is ON. This is required for the P40 to function properly.
Turn on Resize BAR
The next step is to install Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS with Nvidia GPU and CUDA drivers. The latter was quite challenging. The traditional way of installing using the package manager did not work. The best way is to goto this site, and pick the run file like below:
Beside to use the runfile
The run file had to be run in recovery mode using the console because the installation will fail if an X11 window manager is running. Also all previous Nvidia drivers had to be removed and purged. The Ubuntu default installation process may have installed them.
A detail that was left out of the instructions is to set the appropriate shell paths once the installation is completed. The following changes were made with /etc/profile.d so that all users can benefit. If the login shell is using zsh, then /etc/zsh/zshenv has to be changed. Without this change, commands such as nvcc and other CUDA toolkit commands will not be found. The same is true for CUDA related share libraries.
$cat /etc/profile.d/cuda-path.sh
export CUDA_HOME="/usr/local/cuda"
if [[ ! ${PATH} =~ .*cuda/bin.* ]]
then
export PATH="${PATH}:/usr/local/cuda/bin"
fi
if [[ ! ${LD_LIBRARY_PATH} =~ .*cuda/lib64.* ]]
then
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/usr/local/cuda/lib64"
fi
if [[ ! ${LD_LIBRARY_PATH} =~ .*/usr/local/lib.* ]]
then
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/usr/local/lib"
fi
In this hardware configuration the AMD CPU has integrated graphics, and the P40 does not have any HDMI or DisplayPort connections. We need to change the X11 configuration so that it will only use the AMD CPU while dedicating the P40 GPU for CUDA based computation. The following configurations have to be made in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
The BusId can be obtained using the lspci command and be sure to change any hexadecimal notations to decimal in the configuration file. Without this xorg.conf configuration, the Ubuntu desktop will not start properly.
When everything is done properly, the command nvidia-smi should show the following:
Fri Aug 25 17:33:31 2023
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 535.86.10 Driver Version: 535.86.10 CUDA Version: 12.2 |
|-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+======================+======================|
| 0 Tesla P40 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | Off |
| N/A 22C P8 9W / 250W | 0MiB / 24576MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=======================================================================================|
| No running processes found |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
The machine is now ready for user account configurations.
A quick video encoding using ffmpeg with hardware acceleration and CUDA was performed to test the GPU usage. It was a bit of a challenge to compile ffmpeg with CUDA support. This is when I found out that I was missing the PATH configurations made above.
For good measure, gpu-burn was run for an hour to ensure that the GPU is functioning correctly.
Next step is to download and setup the tool chain for LLM development. We will save that for another posting.
Update: The runfile (local) method did not preserve through a system update using apt. I had to re-perform the installation with deb (local) methodology. I guess after not using the GPU for the desktop, we no longer have to run the operating system in recovery mode to install using the deb (local) method.
We are all set! Today, I received my 9 years Chinese Q2 Visa, which allows multiple entries with each entry lasting up to 180 days. Getting this visa requires some perseverance and a little sweat. I am going to document my experience here so others can benefit.
Pick the first bullet if you are starting a brand new application.
Pick the last bullet if you are want to edit a previous application.
The application is online and you will have to gather your present passport information. There are other information which you will need to consider:
Old passport with a previous Chinese Visa; You will need to provide a photo copy of this;
Choose whether you want a tourist (L) visa or Q1/Q2 for visiting family members. There are other visa’s such as commercial, work, student exchange, etc. If you are visiting China, then typically it is either L or Q2. For details of all Chinese visa types, click here.
An invitation letter from a relative in China that you are visiting if you are applying for a Q2 visa. There is a specific form that you or your relative need to fill out. If you are applying for a Q2, then the relative also need to provide a copy of their passport and their Chinese ID card;
Also have all your previous and current citizenship information or landing papers information;
Some pointers when filling out the application:
If you are born in China, make sure you provide your Chinese name in section 1.1E;
If you were ever a Chinese citizen, you will have to provide past Chinese nationality information;
If you are not, then you will also have to provide an explanation and proof that you are not a Chinese citizen;
For Canadian citizens, the National ID number (1.6B) should be left blank;
Ensure that Place of issue (1.7D) and Issuing authority (1.7E) matches your Canadian passport;
Your work history;
Your education history;
Your immediate family information including father, mother, spouse, and children;
Your travel companion information;
A photo of yourself that meets their specification. I had to scan and adjust the photo for the purpose of the online application;
The full application is eight pages long!
Once your application is completed online, you should print / save a copy in PDF format. The web site will automatically prompt you to make an appointment. You cannot make an appointment unless you have a completed application online. The appointments are made in 30 minutes interval, and the place is called the University Centre, located at 393 University Avenue, Toronto, ON. Suite 1501:
There is parking in the building, but you will have to enter from Centre Avenue. We now have been to this building three times, and we did not have any issues finding a free spot in the underground parking at the University Centre.
There is a check list from the website, so make sure you bring all the required documents and photos.
When you arrive at the centre, you will have to line up to have your documentation triaged or inspected. This queue will be between 15 to 45 minutes depending on how busy they are. I suggest that you arrive 30 minutes prior to your appointment if not earlier. There will be people who have appointments lining up outside of the centre before they open at 9am.
Once your documentation and application pass the first round inspection, you will receive a ticket number, which you will have to observe on their wall mounted monitors that are hung around the centre. When your number is called, your documentation is further inspected and this time processed. If everything is okay, then you will receive another payment ticket number. Once again you wait for this number to appear on their monitors. This time to provide payment for the application. In return for your payment, you will get a pickup slip for your passport and visa.
For whatever reason, if your application did not past their first inspection, you will have to modify the application online and re-queue for triage. There are counters available at their office. If you bring your laptop, you can make changes to your online applications, and have it printed at Staples on the ground level at a building South of the University Centre.
Including ourselves, we also observed many people having issues with the applications and have to make modifications. Since I did not have my laptop with me, I had to come back the next day with the rectified application. I feel sorry for the seniors there who were not technically savvy and are lost in this process. If you have a senior who wants to get a visa to China, they WILL NEED help from someone who can complete the online application.
Our total effort include:
Getting a visa photo taken (0.5 – 1 hour);
Filling the application online, the first application took some time, subsequent applications will go a lot faster (4 – 6 hours);
Obtaining the invitation letter and have it filled out (0.5 – 1 hour);
First visit to the visa centre (2 hours + 2 hours of travel);
Second visit to the visa centre (2 hours +2 hours of travel);
Third visit to the visa centre to pickup visa (0.5 hour + 2 hours of travel);
Roughly speaking it was (for us) about 4 half days contributed to this exercise, and this did not include getting our Canadian passports renewed to ensure that we have the maximum time frame on the Q2 visa.
Get your mind psyched so that you are not too stressed in this endeavour!
On the evening of April 17, 2023, I started to feel really tired and cold. That evening my body went through periods of chills, and the next morning I woke up with a stiff body and painful joints. It took a lot of energy to check the phone and reschedule my appointments.
By Thursday, the fever is gone and coughing is under control, but the body felt week. Small exertions created a spell of dizziness. There were also random periods of cold sweats during the day. Thursday was also the day when I last took anything for the “flu”.
Others in the family started showing symptoms on Wednesday and Thursday. My wife tested herself for Covid over the weekend and showed positive. I tested myself yesterday (1 week after first sign of symptoms), and also showed positive. My sons did the same self-test with the same positive results.
After three years of avoiding Covid, our family finally caught it, inescapable. I am glad that the symptoms, in my opinion, are certainly more mild than some past flus that I have experienced. Hopefully we will all be back up and running soon.
Subsequent Tests:
2023-04-26
2023-04-28
Still positive 9 days from first symptoms. However at 11 days (April 28), I tested negative!
We just returned from Mauritius in the afternoon of October 24th. We left Mauritius on an Air Mauritius flight at around 11pm at night on October 23rd, and arrive the next day at around 4pm in Toronto, with a 6 hours layover in Paris. If you do the math, we have a total of 25 hours from the first takeoff to the final landing, and 19 hours of actual flight time when the layover time is accounted for. If you count, the transit and waiting to and from the airport, which is another 5 hours in Mauritius, and 1½ hours in Toronto, that is a total of 31½ hours door to door time from our vacation condo in Mauritius to the front door of our home in Richmond Hill. Whew!
The arduous travel itinerary aside, we had a wonderful stay in Mauritius. We stayed at the Residence Abrico near Mon Choisy beach. The owner was wonderful and the place was just right for the four of us. For 33 nights, and the privilege of both early check-in and late check-out, we paid less than $2200 CAD. You can read my review here. I also rented a car from Azam Joomun, who resided in Grand Bay. My cousin Nathalie arranged an excellent price for the car. The car is a Suzuki compact car with automatic transmission, perfect size for the cramped lanes in Mauritius. For the entire month of our stay, we paid less than $600 CAD. The combination of a wonderful condo with free parking, and a rental car resulted in absolute freedom to explore the island and command our own schedule during our stay.
It took about a week to fully acclimate myself to driving on the opposite side of the road and on the opposite side of the car. That particular change is difficult enough, but why the car manufacturer had to also switch the windshield wiper and turn signalling levers as well? I totally do not understand that design decision. As a result, I constantly turn on the wipers when I really just wanted to signal my turn.
Nonetheless possessing a car allowed us to drive to neighbouring malls like La Croisette and Super U Grand Bay, to purchase convenient groceries, toiletry supplies, etc. If we are lazy, then there are plenty of restaurants in Grand Bay near the coast for us to sample. We also discovered Chez Popo Supermarket, that has a more international selection at its store. If we really, really miss the super malls of the West, then we can drive to Bagatelle Shopping Mall South of Port Louis.
With the car, we can visit family who resided in Port Louis, as well as other regions such as Rose Hill, Pereybere, and Balaclava. Aside from the beaches, reacquainting with family members and catching up is the other highlight of the trip. Speaking of family, we also took the opportunity to pay respect to my grandparents and other memorable family figures at the Bois Marchand Cemetery. Let’s face it. If it was not for family, going to the Caribbean can probably have similar access to paradise like beaches and comfort.
Of course the other reason for being in Mauritius is to ensure that we get our fill of Mauritian street food, such as Roti and Dhal Puri. These pancake like delights are pasted with the usual curry or tomato based fillings. The baguette sandwiches that we got from street stall on BourBon St North of Royal Rd were also very delicious. This place is literally downstairs from our family grand central nexus in Port Louis at La Rue Royal, which makes it super convenient for breakfast, brunch, and lunch!
On our second day, our Uncle Claude and family invited us to eat at Restaurant Lai Min, a restaurant with literally decades of history in Chinatown of the Mauritian capital city, Port Louis. That meal was exquisite! I don’t know whether I was hungry or not, but everything from the soup, the deep fried calamari, the Hakka dishes, and the chicken were all very savoury and I devoured them all to my happy and fulfilling belly. Throughout our stay, we frequented Lai Min and the food there has never disappointed.
On a similar note, The City Orient Restaurant, near our family’s place in Port Louis was also delicious. The stir fry dishes, and winter melon soup were all very memorable to my palate. Thank you Uncle Regis, and Auntie Dominique for treating us there. The dumplings, fried noodles and vermicelli at the Restaurant Panda were extremely moreish. A big thank you to Auntie Mary and Josiane of showing and treating us to Panda.
Our cousin Jimmy treated us to local Creole food at Friends Cafe-Restaurant. This provided a unique experience. It is not Chinese and not Western food. A different mixture of spices and a combination and interpretation of different cooking techniques from different culture. That night was a tasty experience.
The restaurant food is one thing, but family cooked meals like the dishes provided by Auntie Maryse, Ah Manfa, and Ah Moy, were all very good. Personally I think their personal touch made their food better than the restaurants.
Mauritian cuisine is good, but in the end, one earns the variety and quality that Toronto culinary reputations have to offer. However, one can never get tired of the fresh baguettes in Mauritius. We found a local bakery that we can walk to during the morning. It is located just South of the pharmacy on Trou Aux Biches Rd. At the bakery, we can have a long fresh baguette for just 5 Rs! That is equivalent to a little over $0.15 CAD. I’ve been told that the flour is subsidized that is why it is so cheap.
Me holding onto the 5 Rs baguette (the paper bag cost 3 Rs!)
Having our family largely centred in the city of Port Louis, I have to drive and park there. The experience of driving in Port Louis during morning and afternoon rush hours is not for the faint of heart. One has stay calm and possess nerves of steel to get to where you want to go. If you drive with hesitancy, you will get no where fast. Parking is another matter. During my stay, I either park at my relatives who reside outside of the commercial district of the city, and then simply do a 20 minute walk to city centre, or I give up and park at Dias Pier Parking at Caudan. The latter costs money, but it is so much more stress free, and relative to Canadian parking rates it is cheaper beyond any comparison. If I park at Caudan during the weekdays, then I usually move the car back to our family building at La Rue Royal at around 5:30pm to 6pm. If it was the weekend, then Saturday after 2pm or anytime Sunday I can usually find parking near La Rue Royal.
Our rental condo is already pretty satisfying with a semi-private pool steps away, and a pretty quiet, beautiful beach minutes walk away. We still have to plan our meals, do laundry, and wash our dishes. For a real relaxing experience, we decided to stay a couple of nights at Constance Prince Maurice. You can read my review here. I can summarize by saying that it was heavenly.
We also took a sojourn of 4 days to the Rodrigues island, which is also part of Mauritius, staying at the Cotton Bay Resort. The beaches and scenery there was beautiful, and we love to sleep with the natural sound of the waves, and the nighttime stars were glistening and calming. The locals on the island were friendly, and the hotel services were indicative of the island’s gentle and calm culture.
Our trip ended with a big climax with our Uncle Claude’s 85th birthday celebration, which was held at the Opium Restaurant. It was a unique location. The restaurant is actually situated above an Audi car dealership. The decor was the most beautiful Chinese restaurant that we have experienced on the island. The food was prepared by a chef from Hong Kong. The family and food combination created a celebratory atmosphere that is difficult to forget. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
I started out this post with a notion that Mauritius is not an easy place to get to, at least from the Eastern part of Canada. Having said that, the generosity and welcoming nature of our family makes the visit memorable. Although when we left on the 23rd of October, there is a mixed feeling of the desire to return home, and the sadness of not seeing some family members for sometime.
One thing is certain, we left happy. Although the company of family may have been cut short, the memories that we created here on this visit will be ever lasting. I want to thank all my Mauritian family members who helped to make our stay as memorable as it is. To ensure of this, my next task is ahead of me is the video editing of all the footages marking those happy memories!
We decided to spice up our stay in Mauritius with a two night stay at the Constance Prince Maurice, one of the 5 star luxury hotels on the island, located on the East shores.
The drive from our apartment at Mon Choisy to the hotel was longer than expected, as we twist and turn to follow the many curvy roads of the Mauritian country side, bridging from the West to the East of the island, passing many sweet, but pungent smelling sugar cane fields.
The final stretch was lined with palm trees on both sides, which ended with a double, metal front gates, welcomed by staff members who have your reservations at hand. After providing our names, we were promptly let through and we drove directly to the reception area. Our luggages were handled and our car was parked for us. All we needed to do was to take our passports and were guided to the magnificent, welcome lobby, and a spectacular view of the elegantly placed, central swimming pools that blends with the natural, and beautiful beaches of Mauritius. The afternoon skies just had enough cotton clouds to contrast against the comforting blue skies. Our eyes were filled with the near perspective of man made wonder and far horizon of natural paradise that only Mauritius can offer. The welcoming experience culminates into a single word in our minds, and that is “relax”.
Colorful and flowery pool at the reception
Youdish and Shaan, the manager, who handled our check in were very gracious and welcoming. Youdish had a sense of humour about him that I find it at home and was certainly easy to open up to, he was the perfect ice breaker. Shaan informed us that we were upgraded to a honeymoon suite, a junior suite on stilts, overlooking a lagoon connected to the white sand beach. Upon entering the suite, our eyes were graced with a magnificent view. I will not even attempt to use words to describe here, but check out our media below.
Play the above video to see the scenery to our suite.Our suite consists of a balcony overlooking this beautiful view. (click to enlarge)Another perspective of our balcony view.A quick tour of our suite. (play the video)
We started out our stay with a light lunch at the beach at the main restaurant, which we planned to visit again for dinner, since we were unsuccessful in attaining a reservation at the Asian restaurant. However on the same evening, I received a surprising call from Akshada, a wonderful magical worker who made it possible for us to attend the Asian restaurant that same night. We were really appreciative of this gesture. Thank you Akshada for pulling a rabbit out of your hat!
Our first lunch by the beach (click to enlarge)
The Asian dining was very pleasant. The most enjoyable was my after dinner chat with our waitress, Anousha, who was extremely friendly. I feel that all the staff members were genuinely friendly, and not the facade that most other hotel staff put up during their working hours. I hope my five plus decades of life experience can tell the two apart!
At the Asian restaurant (click to enlarge)
Sticking with dining experiences, the breakfasts at the main restaurant were pleasant and accompanied by the ever present, heavenly view of the sea side. The neighbouring birds all seem friendly enough to dine with us adding to our angelic culinary experience.
Another special restaurant is one that consists of several floating platforms on the lagoon. Each platform consists of around four to five tables. We had our last dinner there, where I had the scrumptious and mouth watering Sous Vide veal on the rib. That was the best piece of meat that I have tasted in recent memories. There are fishes of different sorts swimming around the platform, and a light rain that evening, added nuance during dining.
Walk way to the floating restaurant.The floating restaurant
My wife is a frequent swimmer, who took advantage of the lap pool every morning while I sleep in. I would usually walk along the beach but I’m still recovering from an earlier heat stroke so understandably I was a bit allergic to the sun, BUT not the SPA. We both took advantage of the SPA services, taking on a Deep Tissue and a Balinese massage spanning across two days. The masseuse that I had — she was phenomenal — probably the best masseuse that I have ever had, and I have been getting massages for many decades. Once again I have to apologize for not remembering her name. Something about Mauritian multi-syllable names always throw me out.
Can you tell how relax I am at the SPA?
On our last night, another wonderful conversation with Atish, our housekeeping supervisor, whose department arranged a wonderful flower petals covered bath which my wife thoroughly enjoyed. Happy wife, happy life!
A rosey bubble bath
As I am writing this in the last few hours of our stay, I just wanted to thank every staff member at Constance Prince Maurice for a truly wonderful, and relaxing experience that was sorely needed from the hustling and bustling of noise infested traffic of Port Louis.
Last and certainly not least, our many thanks to Jean-Philippe who facilitated to help bringing this heavenly, paradise experience to us. We also appreciated the early and late check-in and check-out respectively, allowing to savour our relaxation as long as we can, before rejoining the crowd in the whistling winds.
If the fruits of life are happy memories, then the Constance Prince Maurice is certainly an orchard ripe of such fruits! We look forward to more harvesting at our next Constance experience.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that we purchased the my.t tourist package. In this article, I will explain how to configure the iPhone when using the Dual SIM feature.
Fig. 1: All Configurations are in Cellular
In Canada I have the Koodo mobile service, and when I arrived in Mauritius I purchased the my.t tourist package. This package can be provisioned with an eSim. An eSim is an electronic SIM card. This is a digital, virtual SIM card residing in the secure memory of the phone instead of a physical SIM card. Any iPhone above an iPhone Xs has the ability to add one or more eSIM card. My Koodo service has an existing physical SIM card already within my iPhone. Both the eSIM card and the existing physical Koodo SIM card can coexist on the iPhone. In other words, the iPhone can access both networks at the same time. This is essentially the Dual SIM feature.
Fig. 2: Adding an eSIM
To add the eSIM, simply goto Cellular Settings and select Add eSIM. You will need to scan the QR code which is provided by the my.t provider. This is important. Remember that you must have WiFi service before you scan the QR code. We did this at the airport using the telecom kiosk WiFi. You can have eight or more eSIM installed but only two phone numbers active at the same time, so this is quite a handy feature if you frequently travel to many destinations.
Once the eSIM is activated, you should have my.t service in Mauritius. By default the iPhone labeled my existing Koodo service as Primary and my my.t service as Personal. I renamed the Personal to Travel as depicted in Fig. 2. I also make sure that Cellular Data and Default Voice Line is using the Travel (my.t) service.
Fig. 3: Ensure Data Roaming is OFF
The other thing that I did was to ensure that Data Roaming is off. See Fig. 3. You can do this by tapping into the details of the SIM service. In my case, I tapped on “Travel”.
I also went online to Koodo self-service and activated Easy Roam® International. At this point, you are probably wondering why are you roaming with Koodo when you already have a local Mauritian eSIM? The answer is that I am simply enabling Koodo roaming services but will actually not be using it. The Koodo roaming needs to be enabled so that my existing Koodo phone number is “reachable” by voice and SMS from Canada and elsewhere.
Fig. 4: My Primary Service Configuration
To ensure that I do not roam on the Koodo network, I then have to make sure that Data Roaming for my Primary service is also turned off, as depicted in Fig. 4. Notice that the “Network Selection” is EMTEL-MRU instead of Koodo, because Koodo is roaming under EMTEL.
So now while I’m in Mauritius when I use data and voice, by default it will use the my.t local Mauritian service. However, I am also reachable from Canada with my existing Koodo number. Koodo roaming is only activated if I accept an inbound call from Canada or other international countries other than Mauritius. Not to worry, receiving international SMS messages is free. This is especially handy for two factor authentications, like logging into a bank. You can even customize which service each contact should use, but I won’t go into that here.
Any apps that uses your primary number, like WhatsApp and WeChat will still be okay, because that number is still active, but those apps will use the local data service. You do not need to change your number that is associated with WhatsApp and WeChat.
If all goes well, your iPhone should report dual services.
Fig. 5: This is what your iPhone
Finally I turned on automatic Data Switching, so when I go back home to Canada, Koodo data will be used again.
Today we are heading off to Mauritius, taking an Air France flight this evening. I’m going to try to live blog our travel experience here. It has been several years since our last flight, so it will be interesting to see how much have changed and what remains the same.
We arrived at the airport about 4 hours prior to our flight. The check-in counter for Air France / KLM in Terminal 3 opened about 3.5 hours before the flight. This was perfect timing. We had our bags checked and passed security in about 45 minutes since arriving at the airport.
The terminal is super busy. Glad that masks are mandatory here. We situated ourselves in front of Smoke’s Burritorie to kill about 2 hours or so.
September 20 3:33am (In Air):
Just finished breakfast and we are close to Paris now. Ended up paying for Wifi on the flight costing about $45 for the entire flight. Caught up on the House of Dragons and did some surfing.
Flight Information
September 20 11:31am (CDG Paris):
Even though we are connecting and going through the same terminal (2E), we still had to go through security. The security at CDG airport is more strict. Anything that is electronics had to be taken out. This is quite different than in Toronto. A couple of us were caught and had to get our bags separately inspected. Now we are going to the gate for our connecting flight to Mauritius.
Our layover is approximately 5 hours long. We spent the time snacking and napping. I was partially amazed that our Apple Pay continues to work flawlessly with my Apple Watch at the airport. However, not all electrical outlets had power. This is a bit of a mystery. My theory is that power consumption that is impacting the entire EU, and perhaps this is an energy conservation policy that is being enacted. Just 30 minutes before our boarding, we finally discovered an active outlet. We quickly charged our Apple Watches that were all on their last legs.
September 20 3:30pm (CDG Paris – Gate M45 – Boarding):
During the boarding process, half of us had no issues with our electronic boarding passes and their corresponding QR codes worked flawlessly. The other half were sidelined to get our passport rechecked. I am not sure if this is a random selection process, or something went wrong with the QR code validation.
September 21 5:50am (Mauritius Airport):
There was no issues with immigration, since we had our health information form all previously filled out. We got to baggage claim quite quickly.
Mobile shop at airport
I previously signed up for the my.t tourist package. My expectation was that once we landed we can just scan the eSim with the QR codes provisioned after my registration. Unfortunately, this did not go as plan. Our cell activations with the provided QR code continuously fail to activate. While other waited for our checked baggages at the baggage claim area, I went out first to the telecom kiosk to see if we can resolve the activation issue.
I was told by the representative, that a face-to-face check-in is required at the kiosk so that a passport authentication can be performed prior to the activation of the eSim. All of this makes sense, I just wished they told us this when they provided the QR code!
The good news is that everything got sorted out and we all had our dual eSim ready to go online and make calls.
September 21 7:15am (Mauritius Airport – Parking Lot):
Our vacation home
We found our driver and started our journey to our vacation home. This took much longer than I thought. The traffic in Mauritius was horrendous! Someone needs to tell urban planning that roundabouts and motorways do not mix. The concept of on and off ramps are the way to go.
September 21 9:00am (Mauritius – Trou aux Biches):
Finally reached our home away from home. The host was very gracious and nice, and the hand over was without a hitch.
Last year on July 27, 2021, I placed a reservation for a RAV4 Prime with a Toyota dealer. It is now over one year, and the latest news from the dealer is that I am in position number three. However, they are currently only getting one or two cars a year!
Our initial take on the RAV4 Prime is that it is a hybrid, so it eliminates any range anxiety while still satisfies any day-to-day trips with a 60km all battery range. We have good experience with our Prius Prime which offers us a similar hybrid experience but with only a 35-40 km battery range.
Toyota RAV 4 Prime
While we continue the wait, it looks like many more electric vehicles (other than Tesla’s) are coming on the scene. There are recent additions from BYD, Polestar, Ford, Hyundai, and KIA. What caught my eye from a recent YouTube-surfing-session is the Hyundai Ioniq 5. This vehicle was introduced last December and is now “available for sale” in Canada. It has comparable range (~400km) and charge speed (350 kW DC) with the Tesla Model Y, sans the hefty price tag.
KIA EV6
The styling and look of the Ioniq 5 was not appealing to my taste. I then learned that the KIA EV6 is essentially the same vehicle but has a more traditional and sporty styling. Also a quick online build & price investigation showed that the Ioniq is a couple of thousand more expensive if we want to match the AWD long range trims.
So after much YouTube and online research, today I placed another car reservation for the KIA EV6. I opted for the trim named, AWD Long Range with GT-Line Package 1. I skipped the sunroof and the more fancied seats.
The bad news is that the sales guy is projecting a “three years” wait! He says that much of this will depend on supply chain issues. There is a good chance that it will be much sooner than the current projection.
On a side note, here is something else I discovered relating to KIA quality.
I did not realize KIA ranked so high. The Buick and Dodge brand frankly surprised me as well. I wonder the accuracy on the above report, so take it for what it’s worth.
Nevertheless, I am keeping the RAV 4 reservation to see what options I have in 2023. Today, I also discovered that the Model Y may get a price cut and start sporting the new LFP batteries from CATL.
We will see! Who knew that buying an EV in 2022 is so difficult! This does not bold well for the planet.
