Londonderry is the city’s official name, but most locals call it Derry, intentionally omitting the ‘London’ part of it.

To cover a little bit of history (adopts lecturer’s tone), Northern Ireland is virtually torn between two groups of people – the ‘republicans’ who want the country to join the Republic of Ireland (mainly Catholic), and the ‘loyalists’ who want the country to remain in the UK (mainly Protestant).

There were some military conflicts that happened in Derry between the republicans and loyalists several decades ago and it was a bloody, terrible time.

Even today, there’s still some tension between the two communities and the city still has a traditionally ‘loyalist’ and a ‘free’ (republican) side.

Obviously, there weren’t conflicts or anything on that day but our guide told us that it was still prudent for us to not say anything or wear clothes that suggest us taking sides. Makes it all the more exciting!

So naturally, republicans in Ireland prefer to strip ‘London’ off the name and call the city by its pre-1613 name ‘Derry’.

We had a nice tour along Derry’s city walls, which is the only remaining completely intact one in Ireland.

Derry is also the last walled city to be built in Europe and is certainly one of the finest!

The city within these walls are some of the rare few in Europe that have never been breached, ever. It even withstood the Siege of Derry in 1689 which lasted 105 days!

Derry’s history as the site of many significant political conflicts has also left some of the most famous political murals (wall artwork) in the world.

The one below, along with the ‘Free Derry’ photo above, are located in Bogside, which was the main place for many events during the Northern Irish conflicts, including the infamous ‘Bloody Sunday’ incident in 1972.

The Bogside area is a Catholic (nationalist) area and is very peaceful and beautiful. It is hard to imagine that this place was the focus point of such a bloody event four decades ago.

The mural above depicts the Battle of Bogside (1969).

Twenty years after the events of Bloody Sunday, a sculpture was erected at the heart of Derry that symbolises the spirit of reconciliation.

It depicts two men standing on walls separated by a divide, reaching out to the other.

But on closer inspection, you’d notice that the hands, while very close to each other…. do not touch.

It is a symbol of hope that both peoples are willing to reach out to the other. And that while there may be a huge divide between the two communities, perhaps one day the hands would touch, and Derry would be united in their differences.

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On a lighter note, we also headed out north towards the sea!

There were lots of beautiful spots along the coast of the Irish Sea that one could visit!

Check out this Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge at Antrim County!

It was apparently first constructed by salmon fishermen hundreds of years ago to cross over to fish on the small island of Carrick.

Today, this baby has (naturally) become a tourist attraction and has been modified many times to ensure safety. One of the previous versions was tested to withstand up to ten tonnes of weight!

But of course, it is still adrenaline pumping to step on a shabby piece of wood with nothing but ropes around you and sway your way across gushing sea water a hundred feet below..

The man in charge of the bridge told us that there’d been many cases where tourists had crossed the bridge but were too scared to walk back across so they had to send in special boats to bring them back!

There were even a couple of people in front of us who had purchased the ticket but dared not cross!

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But anyways the view around the bridge was absolutely stunning.

On a fine day with absolutely no fog, you could see Scotland’s shores across the Irish Sea!

Next we visited the Giant’s Causeway.

This magnificently strange area of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns is Northern Ireland’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site! It was created by an ancient volcanic eruption.

These rocks were so geometric and ‘neatly’ stacked that they looked almost man-made! You could even safely climb your way to the top of the mound.

The rocks were initially littered with tourists but after patiently waiting for 15 minutes, they all mysteriously disappeared! So up we went!

Legend has it that the Giant’s Causeway was built by an Irish Giant Fionn mac Cumhaill to cross over to Scotland and fight a giant who had provoked him.

Imagine how long the Scottish giant would’ve needed to wait for Fionn to build the bridge and bring on an epic fight if the legend was true?

Last we stopped by for a photo shoot of the ruins of Dunlace Castle – a five-century old fort built on crazy steep cliffs on all sides.

You’d need to cross a bridge to get to the castle so just one slip and you’re so dead.

In general I think really love coasts with huge cliffs and stuff. They somehow make me fantasize how great it would be if I were to be washed ashore from a wrecked ship or something and find a place as beautiful as this!

I would then start a civilization here and build a glorious empire!

Ahh, but of course… In order to start a civilization here I shall need to have at least some food and clothes from the wrecked ship until I start finding (or producing) them on the island.

And of course I don’t want to be the only person to have survived the shipwreck. I need some people too of course – to be friends.

And servants.

And ahhh… to reproduce.

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Erm, so where was I? 

Because RMS Titanic was built here and this year (2012) is the 100th anniversary of the birth (and death) of Titanic.

… and because I haven’t been to Northern Ireland before.

Titanic is remembered in several ports – Liverpool where it was registered, Southampton where it departed for its maiden voyage, but it seems that Belfast – the place where it was designed and constructed, takes the greatest pride in the world-famous (and infamous) liner.

In fact, this year, Belfast is going to throw a great event to celebrate Titanic’s 100th birthday and the development of a new Titanic-themed area called Titanic Quarter.

This is the Titanic Belfast signature building:

Built on the land that was once part of the shipyard that constructed the Titanic, the Titanic Belfast is scheduled to open this month.

The building is supposed to look like three enormous ship bows pointing in different directions, presumably commemorating the three renowned sister-ships: Olympic, Britannic, and of course, Titanic – all built in this harbour.

Locals, however, feel that it looks like the white, sharp, deadly iceberg that sank the Titanic… so much for remembrance LOL.

A stroll along Belfast harbour was such a relaxing experience. We also went on a Titanic boat tour the first thing after our plane landed.

There were lots of ‘Titanic’-ish tours in Belfast – from walking tours to bus tours to dock tours. But we chose a boat tour because, well, this is a maritime city after all!

Our boat:

We sailed through Belfast harbour, visiting the many ships docked there. Our guide was very knowledgeable and told us lots of history about the Titanic… it’s conception, construction, completion and… destruction.

We were also told the ‘Belfast version’ of who was to blame for the Titanic’s disastrous end!

Some people said it was the builder’s fault for not including enough lifeboats etc but obviously the Belfast people thought otherwise.  

The gigantic yellow crane below is one of the two gantry cranes named ‘Samson’ and ‘Goliath’ that have become Belfast’s most famous landmarks!

The ‘H&W’ letters on the crane stands for Harland and Wolff, the ship-builder that built, among many other huge projects, the Olympic, Britannic and Titanic.

Speaking of the three ships, only the Olympic survived until the end of her career when she was dismantled. The Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912 and the Britannic struck a sea mine in 1916 and sank. Poor things!

We also visited the very slipway on which the Titanic had stood exactly one hundred years ago:

The waters in front were the very first waves that had smashed onto her hull on the day of her maiden journey to Southampton.

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At night, we heard that there was this Queen’s Film Theatre that’s rather famous (at least according to Tripadvisor and Wikitravel)… so we went!

The theatre was located within the precinct of Queen’s University Belfast, a reasonably good UK university that looks like a royal palace at night! 

It was a Saturday night and the campus was almost empty so we spent the evening roaming around the campus waiting for our show to start.

Speaking of the show, we were given a list of films to choose from whose titles we had never heard of. The synopses indicated that most of the films were, you know, of the artistic and abstract drama type…

But we were determined to watch a film in this theatre! So we simply chose the one whose title sounded most like Belfast – a film called Bel Ami. 

NO.

I swear I had not known that Robert Pattinson was to star in that movie and that it had a very disturbing, twisted, erotic-political plot involving your favourite Twilight star having sex with, welllll…. several slightly old women I shall say.

And the irony! Most of the audience in this very traditional theatre were silver-haired, well-dressed OLD ladies. You know, the kind wearing flowery hats and stuff.

Imagine how we three Asian students must have stood out!

Also found a statue of Galileo Galilei in the university, as a (former) physics student I cannot help but pose for a photo with one of the greatest physicists of all time… 

… only to realize that I’d been touching Galileo lap!! Bloody inappropriate.

On the third day we went into Belfast City Hall, a magnificent structure with beautiful monuments and statues around it.

We were brought on a short tour inside the building, which was huge!

The tour lady was a staff in the city council and she knew lots of people in it. There was this occasion when she was explaining to us one of the portraits of a former Lord Mayor of Belfast and an old man joined in and listened silently and at the end said: “well explained!”, chuckled and left.

I looked at his face. Then the portrait.

Holy shit.

A former Lord Mayor of Belfast was standing next to me and nobody noticed!

Anyway, we were later led into the grand council chamber and allowed to sit on the councillors’ seats as we listened to our guide tell us stories about the city’s history and stuff. Made us felt important for 20 minutes just by sitting on those seats!

But that was nothing. In the end, I was allowed to sit on the Lord Mayor’s official seat instead. Me Gusta!

I wish to mention one more place – Belfast Castle.

The name says it’s a castle, but I think it’s more like an extravagant mansion!

Located on top of a hill overlooking Belfast, I think this place is an ideal wedding venue!

Being a ‘castle’ with a large banqueting hall, rooms for accommodation, mountain view and most importantly – a very, very beautiful garden… which girl doesn’t fancy getting married here?  

This is the Cat Garden – yup that’s the real name. It has nine ‘cats’ (in the form of statues, drawings, trimmings etc.) inside and they are supposed to bring luck if you find them!

Check out this uber awesome spiral staircase that I presume is used for the grand entrance of the bride and groom during a garden wedding ceremony!

Apparently they do cater for weddings in this castle. A ten-hour rental of the place (excluding accommodation and food and stuff) costs just £815! Girls it’s time to send my blog’s link to your bf’s.

Yup, that’s right.  

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In my opinion Belfast is a great city but most people now know her only for her links with Titanic. I think the city is more than that. I say it’s James Cameron’s fault.

… or Jack and Rose’s.

Here’s me with the Royal Liver Building:

Tee has been to Liverpool once, having stayed so near to it. But I managed to convince him to make a 2nd trip! It’s a very wonderful city after all.

Personally, I think Liverpool is just like Bristol, with all the essentials of a very comfortable city – moderate temperature, a major river, harbour, gothic buildings, an ‘Eye’ (as in London Eye, Bristol Eye…) etc.

… only that Liverpool has things on a relatively bigger scale.

I’d say Liverpool is famous for A.B.C.D. Let me explain:

‘A’ stands for architecture.

When I said Liverpool has things on a grander scale I generally meant buildings. Its long history as an important English port gave it the wealth and motivation to build (and maintain) many of the finest buildings across many eras.

I don’t study architecture, so I won’t pretend to be an expert and tell stories about them… So just see the pictures and judge on your own.

By the way this is my friend Tee at St. George’s Hall:

Just found these superlative praises for St. George’s Hall by some famous people on Wikipedia:

“The finest building in the world” – Richard Norman Shaw
“The most perfect hall in the world” – Charles Dickens
“Worthy of ancient Athens” – Queen Victoria
“The finest neo-classical building in Europe” – Nikolaus Pevsner

Walker Art Gallery and County Sessions House:

Port of Liverpool Building:

Museum of Liverpool:

Aaaand… The Liverpool Cathedral:

I must say something about the Liverpool Cathedral…

… and that it’s HUGE, HUMONGOUS, and friggin’ GARGANTUAN.

Just look at it and you can almost see God standing on top of the tower amidst the clouds:

The Liverpool Cathedral is currently the second longest church building in the world, second only to St. Peter’s Basilica… and the latter is where the Pope has his ceremonies in the Vatican City!

Moving on, ‘B’ stands for The Beatles:

When a city’s international airport is named after John Lennon, you know that The Beatles is very important to it.

I am not a great fan of The Beatles, but I know that this Liverpool band is the best-selling band in the world (yes, I checked) and its members some of the most successful musicians.

Names like John Lennon and Paul McCartney claim legendary status in Liverpool (and indeed around the world). There are a number of museums and exhibits that tell the  story of The Beatles, and souvenir shops are stuffed with their merchandise.

Not excited about The Beatles? It definitely is to your parents! They were HUGE back in the sixties.

Next, Liverpool is famous for ‘C’, which obviously stands for… Club!

Their football CLUB – Liverpool F.C. baby!

Liverpool is home to Liverpool F.C. and Everton F.C. Since I am a fan of neither (my home ground is named after an airline ), I simply decided to visit the more famous of the two…

… Everton fans don’t shoot me.

Anfield Stadium is some distance away from the city centre and we had to board a bus to get there. It was quite a long journey but totally worth it.

I’ve already got an official Arsenal necktie from Emirates stadium, so for collection’s sake, I got an official Liverpool tie here as well!

I know nobody buys neckties as souvenirs at football club stadiums, they buy jerseys. But unfortunately, we Asians are generally too tiny and jersey manufacturers typically expect much larger, beefy-shouldered, beer-bellied customers.

So my jersey size – small (you don’t say?), is always out of stock whenever I visit, hence the necktie.

Moving on to the last letter, ‘D’ – stands for the Liverpool Docks!

As I’ve mentioned, Liverpool was one of the most important trading ports in the world. In fact, Liverpool was the port of registry of the great RMS Titanic, which err… sunk.

The most famous of the docks in Liverpool is indisputably Albert Dock, a part of Liverpool’s UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Many important museums scatter within the vicinity of Albert Dock, among them the Maritime Museum and the Tate Liverpool. There was also a small wartime house (styled after the World War II era) and the Liverpool Eye!

It was a rather gloomy day and the great River Mersey was clouded in fog. This is the river’s mouth and it empties directly into the Irish Sea further down.

This was definitely one of the most beautiful waterfronts that I’d ever seen, despite the fog. If anything, the fog gave it an element of mystery that simply added to its appeal.

Hmm… Perhaps I should have considered the University of Liverpool?

Haha perhaps not… I shall retain my loyalty towards Bristol.

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Anyway, before I end – three random facts:

1) Liverpool’s is home to the oldest Chinese community in the entire Europe. It’s Chinatown is therefore one of the oldest:

2) A very popular and recognisable symbol of the city of Liverpool is the Superlambanana, yup I repeat, the Superlambanana. It is a fusion of a lamb and a banana:

3) Third and finally, as a finance student, simply can’t resist…

… I’ve found Wall Street!

… in England LOL.

Having gone to the same classes together since second year, Tee and I worked in the same lab for our FYPs, applied for university admissions and received the same scholarship together. Tee now studies at the University of Warwick and last week, we planned a reunion trip to Chester!

Shuyi had been to Chester and highly recommended it. I think Chester is one of those last small cities in Britain that are bursting with history and attractions and yet not suffocating under the deadly weight of tourism.

It’s like one of those hidden jewels to explore in Britain… It’s funny how lots of students hadn’t heard of Chester when I told them I was going!

One of the main features of Chester is her ancient city walls. When I say ancient I mean like almost two millennia old!

The Romans started the construction of the city walls back in the 1st century A.D. And now, after so many years, the walls are still quite intact (there’ve been frequent restorations and constructions, of course) and Chester is one of the best preserved wall-cities in Britain!

Looks like a miniature version of the Great Wall of China.

These walls surrounds the ancient town centre of Chester, which was founded as a Roman fort in the first century A.D.

I wouldn’t say that the city walls were incredibly high, but it shouldn’t matter. From my experience from playing Civilization, attacking walled cities can be extremely annoying LOL!

There was a tower on one side of the wall (now under renovation) called the Phoenix Tower or King Charles’ Tower. This was apparently the tower on which King Charles I stood on as he watched his army being defeated by republicans during the English Civil War.

You know what happens when you are a king and you see your army being defeated?

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You’re dead.

King Charles was eventually executed, like, beheaded.

Anyway, it was a very chilling day. There was cloud cover for almost the entire day and temperature was close to zero. Nevertheless, with the help of my faithful TripAdvisor.com iPad app, we were able to see most of the attractions!

One particular interesting attraction was the Roman Amphitheatre:

Built by the Romans again back in the first century, this is the largest amphitheatre ever uncovered in Britain!

There were probably gladiators fighting on this thing two thousand years ago lol.

Today, this place is a listed building and scheduled monument. This protects it from being demolished or changed or anything without special permission. So that’s how you suddenly get a huge piece of land in the middle of the city with ruined stones and destroyed structures. Classic!

Had a stroll along the peaceful bank of River Dee, the main river which flows through Chester (originating from Wales).

I really love how there is almost always a ‘main’ river in every major English city and they are so well maintained! You almost never see floating rubbish or anything but instead see seagulls and swans and ducks etc.

Another interesting thing about the Chester city centre that I must mention is the Chester Rows.

These are basically multi-storied shophouses that date back to the medieval era. On the street level there are shoplots and on top of these there is another walkway with a whole new row of shops along its side.

Two-storied shops! Talk about capitalism.

The Chester Rows are unique to the city of Chester and nothing precisely similar exists anywhere else in the world. True story.

At night, I finally did the thing that I had painfully regretted not having done in Edinburgh… go on a ghost tour!

Not all cities are ideal for ghost tours. Only those that have ancient and perhaps brutal medieval histories like Edinburgh, York and Cardiff are great for these things. London? LOL too many Prada and HSBC branches to be scary.

Chester’s not bad too, when it comes to ancient history. We went in a small group with this nice old chap:

He basically took us on a 90-minute stroll around town in the dead darkness of the night. Climbing the dimly-lit ancient walls, visiting chilling graveyards and old churches… all the while telling ghost and mysterious stories…

I must admit that sometimes the tales weren’t that scary, and you’ll be left with your mouth dangling open as you pretend (out of courtesy) to be horrified by the ending…

But in other times, some stories really did send chills down my spine, and a few of us kept looking behind to quell the feeling that someone/thing was observing us out of the darkness.

I remember this scene where we were standing in total darkness underneath the ruins of the old St John’s Church, shivering in the cold and dry air, when we were suddenly told to look up and there was an ancient coffin on top of our heads!

There was a chilling story behind it and the man told us that if somebody asked us for directions ‘home’ later that night, and we felt something odd about that person, it would be safest to stay calm and point towards the coffin, to which it would ‘return’ and not disturb us…

…

zzz

…

Yeah… I know I suck in telling ghost stories.

So let’s move on to the next, bright morning!

We spent the entire day at Chester Zoo! It was out of the city centre and we had to take a bus ride to get there.

But why the ZOO, you ask?

Because Chester Zoo is no ordinary zoo. LOL. It is the most visited zoo in Britain and ranked as one of the top 15 zoos in the world!

It was rather unconventional for anybody to visit a zoo on a day with near freezing temperatures. But who cares? I was in Chester, and I wanted to visit the damn zoo!

I admit. A zoo’s target visitors are usually children. So I had to tune my mind into that of a child’s too!

So look at Sonic:

Dumbo:

Pumbaa:

Mumble with Happy Feet:

A black cat? No… a panther! … NO, it’s Toothless, the Night Fury:

Timon:

Simba and Nala:

If you are around my age and have no idea what I was talking about… Jeez, what happened to your childhood?

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I shall end this post and leave you with an evil grinning lizard we found at the zoo.

We will be going to switzerland for new year’s celebration next week so we thought we wouldn’t be going anywhere for Christmas.

But one does not simply stay in Bristol for Christmas! So we decided to stay in London for the week.

We intended to stay for six days but felt it would be too shameless for us to crash over and stay at cousin Rebecca’s place for the whole week. So we found this cosy little studio near Paddington for rent!

Considering the perfect location, this studio was not bad at all!

With a bathroom, microwave oven, fridge, induction stove, cutleries and kitchenware (all pots, pans, dishes, glasses etc), LCD TV, free wifi, two closets and a study table… I could almost live there forever!

We required a place with all these facilities because we expected London to be completely shut down on Christmas day, literally.

Unlike Malaysia where Christmas Day is a busy, ultra-commercial day, the 25th in the UK is more of a family reunion day and most shops will be closed and public transportation completely shut down (no buses, no tube, no trains).

BUT… The days before and after the 25th were ultra awesome and extremely exciting!

We had a few ‘core’ things to do for Christmas – going to the South Bank Christmas market, visiting Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, Oxford Street shopping on boxing day, visiting my cousin, and in our last evening watch a Nutcracker performance.

But other than these things, we were free to just enjoy the Christmas atmosphere!

We’d already visited a large portion of London’s attractions in our last visit back in March, so we hunted for the smaller, but equally interesting, ones!

… such as 221b Baker Street – Sherlock Holmes’s home!

Everything in Sherlock Holmes Museum was modelled after Sherlock Holmes era. Here’s a Victorian metropolitan policeman guarding the entrance to the museum. His duties were real: no ticket, no entry!

Do you want to work as the Victorian policeman? The job is vacant! 

When the Sherlock Holmes books were published in the late 1800s, Baker Street was a high-class residential district and houses along the street did not go up to number 221b. (That was probably why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author, chose that number)

In the 1900s Baker Street was extended and 221b finally existed! Since then Sherlock Holmes fans have been writing real, physical letters addressed to the detective at this address.

And cutely, the owner of 221b (and later the museum) has employed a ‘Secretary to Sherlock Holmes’ to actually reply to these letters!

Anyway, the entire museum is styled after Sherlock Holmes’ late-nineteenth-century apartment exactly as described in the novels:

I found Prof. Moriarty staring at me so I stared back at his face. Hehe. Problem?

Anyway the museum was such a joy to visit. Although I wasn’t a great fan of Sherlock Holmes, I  had watched the films and I loved their depiction of his place. There was even a girl dressed as a Victorian maid to tell us stories about the place and answer questions!

So I decided to buy the book! Haha actually it’s Shuyi who decided to buy the book for me!

It was drizzling that evening, but we ignored the rain and moved on towards South Bank and found the Christmas market!

It was quite a scene! With landmarks such as London Eye and the Houses of Parliament in the background, the  market stretched along the bank of river Thames and included a carousel!  

Some of the most popular products in Christmas markets are German. This is because the whole Christmas market concept can be traced back to the German-speaking part of Europe.

It was cold and windy, but you can’t help but smile when you hear the cheerful Christmas songs being played on loudspeakers and the sheer variety of stuff on sale!

Check out the novelty items:

… but most importantly, the food!

Steaks:

Bratwurst (German sausage) and Gluhwein (hot mulled wine):

Churros and cholcolate:

Marshmallows and candy apples:

Liquorice:

And of course… roasted chestnuts!

We bought almost something from each and were so damn full afterwards. Totally worth getting fat for all this!

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On Christmas eve, most of the shops were closed early and we simply loitered around the city until sunset. We just spent time together and it really didn’t matter if we had no destination in mind… Our main (and most anticipated) activity of the day was at night…

Oh just for the record:

Back in March we were at University College London, having stayed literally across the street of one of its schools.

In our previous trip to London to see Shuyi’s parents off at the airport last month, we visited Imperial College London:

And so this time we stopped by The London School of Economics! Being an economics student, one couldn’t help but admire this school! I’d wanted to apply to LSE earlier this year but dammit their international student fees were just… astronomical.

These three constituent colleges, along with several other, form the University of London.

So who cares about academics when night came and we headed straight to Hyde Park!!!

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for….

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WINTER WONDERLAND!!!

Even from across Hyde Park, it looks like a goddamn alien city!

I think this is the most famous Christmas theme park in the UK and has been set up every Christmas since 1996.

To me, Christmas has been really important since childhood, so what better place to go on Christmas eve than an ultra awesome theme park!

The other reason we chose to visit Winter Wonderland on Christmas eve had been that since the temperature was freezing and people would usually stay home with their families on Christmas eve, the theme park wouldn’t be so crowded. Or so we thought…

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… we were so damn wrong.

The place was absolutely flooded with people… not just with people, but also with excitement and screams and merry music!

Thrill rides were everywhere… Gentle rides were filled with gleeful kids… Stalls selling hot food and drinks were all over the place… Every here and there were Christmas trees, snowman and Santa figures and decorative presents! This was INDEED the most Christmasey of all Christmasey places!!!

I must confess that it’d been a long time since I was this excited about going to a theme park.

Of course almost all of the usual rides and attractions were present, but this theme park also had lots of other special stuff! My jaws drop and eyes widen in excitement with almost every corner turn… I think for those few hours I was suddenly a five-year-old kid all over again…

Check this out: there are no kinds on this carousel. Why? Because it sells beer and liquor… a revolving bar!

Everybody gathered around this old tree that moved and talked and made cold jokes LOL.

The usual but brightly decorated game stalls:

A Winter Wonderland must have an ice-skating rink!

The usual tower for people too chicken to jump off a real building (not that I have the guts to do it).

But I think the most special of all was this ‘barrel of laughter’!!

Four years ago, back in Malaysia, I wrote about a theme park ride with rapidly spinning and rotating arms that almost made me puke. I called that ride the ‘washing machine ride’ in this entry and described it as the dizziest ride that I’d ever been on.

Today, I look back and say: LOL bitch, please.

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… Welcome to the REAL washing machine ride!!!!

I knew that was going to mess up the dinner in my stomach, but I had to try out this ride.

Basically, there is this huge barrel in the middle of the ‘house’, you enter the barrel, and the barrel starts spinning…

… like… real… bloody… FAST!!! Can’t describe – so I recorded a video from the outside:

So halfway through the spin, the floor is lowered and you will be vertically stuck to the wall by centrifugal force! How awesome is that??

In fact, the outward force was so insanely strong that we could hardly even raise our arms! Simply felt like a super strong magnet sucking you onto the wall and you were at its mercy.

Haha I actually have a video of the entire process while we were spinning in the barrel and here’s a screenshot of the people beside me with their feet off the ground.

I am, however, regrettably unable to post the video online because I was screaming like a totally retarded guy.

I think they should rename the ride to ‘barrel of dizziness’ or ‘barrel of pukes’.

… or just ‘Panasonic VX3 with Washnavi and tumble dry’.

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Entry getting much too long… Splitting into two parts!

It was intended to be a free-and-easy trip. We would just spend a long weekend here in the Irish capital, stay in a decent hotel and explore the city spontaneously.

I think it’s precisely because European countries are so very tightly clustered around each other that trips within the EU are not so tiring. The 1-hour flight from Bristol-Dublin went hardly noticed and before we knew it, we were in Ireland!

To add to the relaxation, our twin room was automatically upgraded to triple room for no reason! Lots of space. Lucky!! 

It was one week to Christmas and everything was so christmasey! There is simply no better time to travel and breathe in the (albeit super cold) festive air!

I get so totally excited whenever I see a nice, Christmas-decorated room. Our hotel gave me just that pleasurable pump of endorphins:

We spent our first day just going through the streets in the city centre. There were several Christmas markets around town and you could find street performers playing Christmas carols on almost every major street.

And since it was a long weekend, people were flooding the streets to buy last minute Christmas stuff!

Dublin, just like almost every major European city, has got a beautiful river cutting through the heart of it.

River Liffey serves this capital. Further down the river (below) the historic Ha’penny Bridge (now simply Liffey Bridge) is visible.

The reason the bridge was historically called Ha’penny Bridge is because, two hundred years ago, people in Dublin had to board ferries to cross the Liffey. When this bridge was finally built in 1816, the company imposed a ‘half a penny’ toll charge on whoever using it – hence the name.

That’s interesting! If this naming convention was used in Malaysia, our LDP would be called Wa’-ringgit-sixty Road.

Crossing the river and heading south, we found ourselves in Trinity College Dublin, an ancient university founded in 1592 and is currently the number one university in Ireland.

A friend of mine studied here but has since graduated and returned to Malaysia. According to a 2010 survey by Forbes, Trinity College Dublin was voted to have the 6th most beautiful campus in the world.

Well, I don’t doubt! Just look at it:

We visited two of what arguably are the college’s most amazing assets:

The Book of Kells:

We had to pay 8 euros each to see this! But it is understandable – the Book of Kells is widely regarded as Ireland’s finest national treasure!

Created by Celtic monks more than a thousand years ago, the Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript (meaning certain parts of the text is extravagantly decorated) of the four gospels of the Bible’s New Testament.

As usual, we were not allowed to take photos of anything within the exhibition, which according to my Asian mentality makes no sense.

Let’s analyse the three reasons why in certain situations photography may legitimately be disallowed:

1) Copyright issues – Unless I am to fail my Law & Economics paper this June, I am pretty sure that EU Directive 2006/116/EC made it clear that copyright term in the EU is life of author plus seventy years. These authors died 1,200 years ago. No copyright infringement here.

2) Art protection – Okay I concede that theoretically, photons from a camera’s flash will collide with the particles on the artwork and over (a long, long) time, fade them. So all we need to do is limit FLASH photography, not making it a sin to even touch one’s camera!

3) Annoyance – It is true that flashes coming from cameras (especially repeated ones from huge DSLRs) can be very annoying in dark rooms such as this one. But again, just ban flash photography!

Ahh, whatever. Google images always comes to the rescue!

If you look closely at each of the initials, you’d find that it is delicately drawn with very intricate designs and strokes. This applies to all the text in the whole book!

So moving on to the other (greater) wonder of Trinity College Dublin:

The Long Room of the Old Library:

Holy God… Would you just look at that! Dumbledore’s library.

Again no photography here so thanks to Google… again.

Those, my friend, are books on either side of the hall!! Two stories high!!

The tall oak shelves, the oversized books, the white marble busts of ancient to modern philosophers on both sides of the library… I felt so damn intellectual just by walking past them.

If there was a fire in this place, the world’s human intelligence would probably plunge by half or something…  

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So after that we went back to O’Connell Street.

This is the place where we had to step foot on several times, every single day.

It is the most central and busy street with very handsome commercial buildings on both sides. I think this street is intended to be to Ireland what Oxford Street is to London and Champs-Elysees to Paris.

At the middle of the street is the O’Connell Monument, the memorial to Daniel O’Connell – the Irish Nationalist leader who championed Catholic emancipation in Westminster and later campaigned for Irish independence.

Right behind O’Connell Monument is an extremely tall steel rod. At 121 metres tall, the Spire of Dublin is the tallest sculpture in the world.

Interestingly, the Spire of Dublin, which dominates the skyline of central Dublin, serves no purpose. I was continually baffled by what such a huge rod could be for in the middle of the street – not for telecommunications, occupation, anything! Just plain decoration!

Or it could be a gigantic lightning rod.

It was just so damn tall and straight that if you stood at its base and looked up, you’d think it pierced straight into outer space (or heaven).

Another landmark on O’Connell Street, the general post office, which despite its present modest function, served as the headquarters of Irish nationalist leaders during the 1916 Easter Rising, which eventually led to the Irish War of Independence.

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The next day, we visited Christ Church Cathedral:

Dating back to the 11th century, this is officially the oldest building in Dublin.

Several particularly interesting things in the cathedral include the purported effigy of Strongbow (not the cider), a lord famous for his leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland.

But most famous of all is the cathedral’s underground crypt!

Not only is the crypt older than the cathedral itself, it is also the largest crypt in both Britain and Ireland!

Haha, unfortunately crypts open to visitors such as this do not have bones and skeletons and skulls on the walls… Instead, this was pretty well maintained and lighted!

There were plenty exhibitions to see in the crypt and this one gave me a long lasting impression:

It’s a true story of a cat chasing a rat and both got stuck in an organ pipe in the church back in the 1850s. Unable to escape, they were eventually mummified in these positions and their bodies preserved until this day!

I tried to put myself into both the cat and the rat’s minds but couldn’t decide which was worse:

To die of starvation with a ferocious predator stuck in front of you trying to tear you apart; or to die of starvation with a tasty, juicy dinner stuck in front of you, squeaking but just out of reach.

-

Oh just let me die.

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You can hardly visit a European city without going to a castle, so that’s what we did! Dublin Castle:

During the days when Ireland was ruled by the British, Dublin Castle was the primary place of administration. Of course, Irish nationalists hated the building and saw it as a symbol of tyranny and forced rule by the British.

Typical to many buildings with judiciary functions, Dublin Castle had a statue of Lady Justice on top of one of its gates. While Lady Justice was traditionally depicted with a blindfold (representing objectivity and impartiality), this had not.

Furthermore, despite standing on the top of an entrance, this statue faced the interior of the castle rather than the exterior, giving the people of Dublin an impression that they had Lady Justice’s back turned against them.

None can put it more boldly than our humorous guide: “Lady Justice was built to have her eyes on the English King (the castle) and her arse against the nation.” LOL.

So with the castle tour we visited the grand, modern, renovated state apartments for government functions…

… and the ancient 13th century parts of the castle that laid underneath the present castle:

It was also surprising to learn that the Irish Crown Jewels had been stolen from this very castle in 1907 by some thief and had never been recovered.

Treasure hunt anyone?

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At night, we had dinner at one of the – no, probably the - finest nightspot in Dublin!

Temple Bar is an area that is promoted as Dublin’s cultural spot. Although one would not help but notice that lively bars and nightclubs and and pubs dominate the district.

… IRISH.

We had dinner at a very nice restaurant in Temple Bar…

What do you have for dinner in Ireland? Irish lamb stew!

And the next day we had some Irish Coffee in The Temple Bar itself.

Let me explain: The Temple Bar is a bar in Temple Bar in Dublin. Yes, confusion done on purpose.

Everything was decorated for Christmas, and this almost two-hundred-year-old business would not lose to any of its competitors!

Just check out the bar!

We had an Irish Coffee and a Bailey’s Coffee. Bailey’s Coffee is made of Baileys, arguably Shuyi’s favourite liquor; and Irish Coffee is made of… well.. what the Irish like most – Irish whiskey.

Also check out the Irish smoked salmon and trout platter… Seriously, we wouldn’t have ordered this if there had not been the word ‘Irish’ at the beginning of its name.

On our last day, we visited the birthplace of what probably makes Dublin so famous in Malaysia (and the world):

… Guinness.

It was probably a sin to walk into a pub in Dublin and order anything other than Guinness. Our dear Malaysian blogger-turned-businessman Kenny Sia raved so much about Guinness while he was in Dublin.

So here we were! The St. James’s Gate Brewery!

Even for student price we had to pay 10.60 euros to enter. There was a complimentary pint of Guinness for us, of course, but to pay for a propaganda session?! Come on! Haha…

But the whole exhibition was really quite impressive.

From raw barley, hops and yeast, we journeyed through the entire process of brewing – malting, roasting, milling, mashing, boiling, fermenting, clarifying, maturing and packaging. 

Of course, throughout the entire process they wasted no time brainwashing us about how they only used the very finest possible ingredients, process and technology known to humankind in brewing the world-famous black stout.

Every step down the brewing process you’d find your mouth watering and taste buds demanding to taste the heavenly water that was being described.  

They must have precisely engineered the experience because at the end of the tour, our dreams came true and were served the liquid that we’d all been yearning for.

Not sure if it was due to all the indoctrination earlier… but the pint of Guinness tasted absolutely heavenly…

We also went on a little lesson that taught us how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. I think I did horribly, but who cares?! Got an official certificate from the official birthplace of Guinness = OWNAGE.

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It has always been an absolute joy travelling with Shuyi. It really does make a difference when your travel companion is someone who plans a trip with you, think of places to go, solves problems together, and doesn’t simply leave everything to you.

Cardiff, although technically in another country, is just less than an hour by train from Bristol. Several of my friends did their undergrad in Cardiff University and highly recommended that I visit the city.

Shuyi and I’d been quite excited because we’d managed to book an incredibly nice guest house that had like the highest rating we’ve ever seen on Booking.com for this type of accommodation!

For just £50, we got this nice little room:

… equipped with coffee-making facilities, snacks, an LCD TV, and a decorative fireplace!

Our bathroom (which we shared with another room) was humongous and very well equipped:

The facilities and room were great, but nothing beats hospitality. We arrived at the doorstep shivering (it was December, early morning) and were greeted with a warm smile of a staff who knew my name before I even opened my mouth.

After some niceties, she immediately produced a Cardiff city map and started suggesting places that we could visit. All without us asking for it!

The guest house was about a 15-minute walk away from the city centre, but it didn’t really matter – because what laid between the two was the spectacular Bute Park!

Every morning, after we had our breakfast, we would wrap ourselves in warm scarves and enjoy a very relaxing stroll across Bute Park into the city centre. You cannot have a more relaxing start of the day than that!

Bute park is the principle park of Cardiff, and was once part of the castle grounds.

Since I was young, I have always imagined Wales as one of those mythical countries that captures the essence of medieval European fantasy.

You know, things related to King Arthur, wizards, castles, knights and stuff!

Of course, England would probably fit my imagination better but well… let’s just say London is simply too modern and commercialised that the mythical air is totally gone.

Why Wales, then? I’m not sure. Maybe because the name of the country sounds like ‘whales’? Or perhaps words in Welsh have awesome spellings? Or… it could be that their flag has a ferocious red dragon with a spiky tongue!  

Anyway precious few countries have got an extremely well-maintained medieval castle right in the middle of the city centre. Cardiff’s got one!

It’s difficult to emphasize how very much ‘central’ the castle is. In Malaysian terms, I think it would roughly be equivalent to having a 2000-year-old castle right next to Masjid Jamek or something LOL.

And the walls, man, the walls!

You’d just step out of a bar or modern shopping mall in central Cardiff, listening to R&B music and typing on your iPhone 4S… and you turn around the corner and suddenly what looms before you are the great ancient walls of Cardiff Castle!

Holy god! Pay respect to the king!

LOL you can’t blame me. If your teenage years were filled with Age of Empires, WC3 tower defense, Magic the Gathering, LoTR etc just like mine, you’d be so damn awed with medieval castles too.

Anyway one of the main surviving structures inside the Roman fort was this Norman keep. It was built almost a thousand years ago and looks like it’s been partially consumed by a monstrous fiery demon from Khazad-dum.

There were lots of interesting stuff around the castle grounds, such as a this great catapult (or trebuchet, as Civilization III, IV and V have taught me).

It requires 8 people to load and fire this destructive baby and I think the castle staff do run demonstrations. But unfortunately there weren’t any scheduled at the time of our visit.  

We climbed up and entered the Roman keep, and also joined a tour in the Victorian mansion, which was extravagantly redesigned by the 3rd Marquess of Bute and renowned Victorian architect William Burges.

Each of the rooms in the mansion was extremely intricately designed, complete with art and motives and whatever art slang that artists call them.

Our guide took us through countless state rooms, all pompously furnished, and told us stories about the architecture and art on the walls, which were extremely interesting!

The rather famous Arab Room, which although small, has a grandeur that baffles the mind:

Before exiting the castle, I couldn’t help but notice:

Centuries ago, the castle gates must have been guarded by menacing soldiers and mounted knights…

… today, it is armed by two unarmed dudes with a ticket-scanner:

Defence budget has fallen.

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Cardiff city centre is quite famous for its ‘arcades’. Right outside the castle, across the street, you can find lots and lots of arcades!

Arcades here have nothing to do with games, instead they are covered walkways with stores on both sides… They can range from the relatively small:

… to the bloody enormous:

Shopping paradise!

Shuyi and I’d wanted to do some Christmas shopping here but pretty much failed. Instead, we were distracted by the very cute Christmas market nearby:

It was a cold and wet day, but nothing can stop you from smiling when you hear the joyful Christmas songs and dozens of warm little huts selling lots of Christmasey stuff!

Check out this gigantic whole roasted pork!

We spent one of our evenings in Cardiff Bay, which was accessible through land transport or boat. We chose to take the river taxi as it gave us a fantastic view of the riverside and around the bay.

We were lucky as the entire boat was empty except for the two of us! Haha exclusive service! The boat conductor was very friendly and gave us a map of Cardiff bay and gave us some advice on places to go.

Okay, how do I describe this? The moment I stepped out of the boat onto the Cardiff Bay dock I was like…

… totally overwhelmed.

… Well, there in front of me was a very, very beautiful and relaxing scene of waterfront night life… shops, restaurants.. everything was decorated in the most Christmasey-manner possible.

It is no secret that Christmas has long been my favourite holiday of the year! And yes we have loads of holidays in Malaysia to choose from.

The December breeze was cold but not freezing, but with all the Christmas trees and lights, who cares about winter? It’s Christmas baby!

To cap it all, there were two young ladies performing an extraordinarily good keyboard-flute duet of Christmas songs.

It was early evening, standing there in our scarfs and coats, listening to the warm flute melody, watching the gentle waves lap against the harbour, smelling the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee from a waterfront cafe…

… ahhhh…

IT DOES NOT GET ANY MORE RELAXING THAN THIS. ‘NUFF SAID.

This area is called Mermaid Quay and is a specially developed waterfront area that greets visitors coming in by boat.

There were lots of places to go around Cardiff Bay and we could’ve spent a whole day here!

This magnificent building is the Wales Millennium Centre and is home to the Welsh National Opera. Lots of fine performances were held and just by looking at the brochures and posters was enough to make us drool.  

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Food talk:

We went into this quite famous (recommended on Wikitravel) traditional Welsh bar called The Goat Major to try out some Welsh pies and faggots…

… yes, faggots.

Haha this is no derogatory term but is a type of meatballs made from pig’s heart, liver and other off-cuts. Unfortunately, this bar doesn’t have them so we just settled with the pies.

It was quite embarrassing at first because after a little chat, I asked the barman if they sold faggots.

The guy was like ‘huh?’.

-

Another meal that I must mention is the one provided by our lovely guest house!

For breakfast, we could use this small but extremely cosy-looking kitchen:

The lady offered to make us some tea and toast, which we gladly accepted. After that, everything in the whole kitchen was left for us to indulge in!

Fruits and nuts with milk…

Cheese and butter…

Meat to go with the toast…

… and a supermarket’s variety of cereals, fruit juice and pastry!

I seriously think that this meal can beat a £10 breakfast in a major hotel… Plus the social interaction.

Shortly after we began our meal, a couple of other guests came into the kitchen and we had a nice little chat around this small table for eight!

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Love Cardiff! But more trips coming up! Hehe…

Today, it is world-famous as the place where newly-wed Prince William met Kate Middleton!

We decided to make a separate trip out of Edinburgh during our 4-day visit to the Scottish capital city.

Browsing through the tours departing from Edinburgh, we had to make a choice between Loch Ness (the home of Nessie the monster) and St Andrews.

Shuyi had been to Loch Ness and testified that no living monster dwelled in the lake.

She was certain of her observation. So with that piece of crucial information we therefore, wisely, decided to choose St Andrews instead!

St Andrews is home to… University of St Andrews! Where the royal couple first met each other!

Did you know that Kate was once William’s flatmate?

Can you even imagine, you know, getting out of your room one afternoon to cook some instant noodles in the kitchen with the frickin’ future King of England???

Anyway, many businesses in St Andrews promptly took advantage of the free publicity provided by the royal couple, such as this cafe:

We actually went in to grab a latte and we realised that they were really quite proud of their ‘royal connection’!

They seemed to have a rather good claim that their cafe had been frequented by Prince William and Kate. Whether their claims were accurate or not didn’t matter – the advertising effect worked! We walked into that cafe simply because of the intriguing sign!

It was coincidence that the weekend happened to be ‘Raisin Weekend’ in the University of St Andrews. This annual tradition is several centuries old and was originally intended to be a day where new students pay their respects to academic seniors who will guide them through the rest of their academic lives in the university.

Nowadays, however, the Raisin Weekend has evolved into a foam fight. Yup, a foam fight!

Check out the university grounds after the fight!

Near the university entrance, there was a very special spot on the pavement marked with the initials ‘PH’. This marked the very spot where a member of the university, Patrick Hamilton, was burned at the stake for teaching Lutheran doctrines almost five hundred years ago.

Yes, the university is more than 600 years old and is the third oldest in the English-speaking world – after Oxford and Cambridge.  

According to our guide, there is a legend in this university that although this sign is on the pavement right in front of the university entrance, students were NOT to step on it, ever.

Because allegedly, whoever steps on the accursed spot on which the first martyr of the Scottish Reformation died would be cursed – and he would FAIL HIS EXAMINATIONS.

…

I was convinced that the curse would only apply to St Andrews students and its effects would probably not reach as far as Bristol… so I stepped.

OK THAT’S IT. I’m doomed in January.

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St Andrews was quite a small town, with the town centred around the university area. As with most royal ancient towns, St Andrews boasts a castle and a cathedral. But unlike many others, these two are in ruins.

These 900-year-old ruins, however, were absolutely picturesque. Just look at St Andrews Castle:

I think a wedding ceremony held in the castle grounds would be absolutely fantastic. This was the birthplace and dwelling place of medieval kings!

Personally, I think St Andrews Cathedral is even grander:

Like seriously, how can something that is ruined be so, damn majestic? Just by standing on the cathedral grounds gives you a feeling of awe, almost… magic.  

We spent a lot of time roaming the castle grounds, taking loads and loads of pictures.

You can simply see from these pictures why I think that Scotland is one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been to.

Of course as I’ve mentioned, St Andrews isn’t all about royalty and history. It’s also about golf!

Scotland, specifically St Andrews, is widely regarded as the ‘home of golf’. Golf-playing has been recorded in this town for over five hundred years, and the Old Course of St Andrews (below) is the oldest golf course in the world.

The R&A, based at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club here, is the world governing body for golf (except in the US and Mexico). In fact, one of Tiger Wood’s most famous photos was taken during the 134th Open Championship at Old Course.

I don’t own this photo. Photo by GETTY IMAGES.

I found the small stone bridge thingy that Tiger Woods is standing near to!!! Wahaha…

Anyway I really can’t emphasize enough how beautiful Scotland is. I’d got tonnes of great photos in Edinburgh, but I took even more here.

St Andrews is in a region called Fife, and we’d stopped by several places in the region on our way to our destination. Check out the stunning Forth Bridge, which connects Edinburgh with Fife:

Driving along the coast of the East Neuk of Fife, we encountered scenery literally worthy of fantasy movies. It were absolutely, totally breathtaking. 

You would imagine yourself growing old here, working in an orchard by day, sitting by the sea by evening, and commune with nature… ahhh the comfort!

Just let me die here.

We also stopped by a small fishing village called Anstruther.

This village is home to the award-winning Anstruther Fish Bar (you know it’s damn famous when a family business like this has a Wikipedia page!)

This restaurant has been voted best Fish & Chips shop in Scotland for four years, and in 2008-2009 won the UK Fish Shop of the Year, officially branding it as serving the best fish & chips in Britain!

Apparently Prince William was also among their customers.

The fish was soooooo good!! I mean, the meat was thick, juicy, fresh and firm. I think the most important part was the firmness. You know lots of these fish pieces will literally disintegrate once you start eating them right?

… but these pieces remained solid as a rock even after you’ve bitten away a huge chunk while holding in you hand. Imagine that.

I am so damn tired now but before I end this entry I must spare a few sentences to comment on our tour guide and her company – Rabbie’s Tours.

I’m giving free publicity because this was absolutely the best tour guide EVAR!!! I have never met a tour guide this energetic, engaging, friendly and talkative – both entertaining and informative – in my entire life.

She literally wouldn’t stop talking all the way from Edinburgh to St Andrews, bombarding us with interesting information, stories and even quizzes.

She was also a multitasking superwoman.

While driving, she could tell stories animatedly, laugh, ask questions, respond to questions, and even point accurately at a huge map of Scotland pasted above her her head whenever she referenced a city or place… all without killing us.

I think she almost covered the entire history of the Scottish War of Independence, as well as that of Mary Queen of Scots. It was a shame that I’d not watched the movie Braveheart before going on this trip. After listening to her stories and under her personal encouragement, I am so gonna watch the Mel Gibson film again and again and again…

In my opinion, she’d made one of the best decisions of her life to be a tour guide. She was brilliant and seemed to be absolutely enjoying herself while doing it.

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I Scotland so much that I’ll be damned if I do not return again some day. Byes!!

This is probably the first time that I went on a trip with Shuyi’s parents, so it was a little different… and special. I mean, usually people dress up and prepare for a long time before meeting their bf/gf’s parents right?

But Shuyi’s parents had to suffer my puffy, whole-night-no-sleep eyes, long and ungroomed hair etc. In fact, when I look back at the pictures of this trip, I think that my hair was an EPIC fail, having not cut it for almost two months. I expect to look back at these photos 20 years from now and be absolutely horrified by myself.

Anyway Edinburgh is an enchanting, ancient city. As the capital city of Scotland, there are so many fascinating stories about the country’s history that could be relived in this city. I have a certain amount, but limited, knowledge of the country’s history, having read about the Scottish wars of independence and some of their famous monarchs.

However, with only three days in Edinburgh, we could experience only a small fraction of what the city had to offer!

Something that I would consider myself to have really missed is a ghost tour.

Apparently, Edinburgh is one of those few British cities that offer immensely spine-chilling ghost tours (given its long, brutal history), with participants claiming to have had ‘unexplainable’ experiences…

Anyway, the City of Edinburgh is divided into the ‘new’ and ‘old’ city, and the latter is dominated by the majestic Edinburgh Castle.

Whenever I look at this castle I cannot help but marvel at the size of the ego of whichever king who built it LOL. I mean, right in the middle of the city there is a reasonably sized, steep hill… Not too big and not too small, perfect for a castle of a scary king lording over its subjects!

Haha technically it’s not just a ‘hill’, but rather an extinct volcano! All the more intimidating! Haven’t we all learnt from the Dark Lord Sauron that building a fortress near a volcano is very bad ass?

If this was Sauron’s castle, then we would all have been Orcs! On the first day we marched straight to the gates of Edinburgh Castle and entered without being killed. We had to pay the Dark Lord a tribute ticket of 14 pounds each but that was fine.

Behold the entrance:

Certain parts of this castle were almost a millennium old, and the area within the fortress walls were huge – like a small town of its own!

In ancient times, I bet nobles and servants to the king would live in the fortress during peace times, and during war times civilians would be kept within the fortress walls while defending against a siege.

How would I know that? Because Orlando Bloom did that in Kingdom of Heaven and Theoden King of Rohan did that in Return of the King LOL.

Imagine sieging a castle like this! You would need to bring your army and go around and climb the hill, trying to get to the entrance with your battle rams and stuff while being showered with arrows by archers and (later) cannons from the fortress!

You would have 25% of your army dead by the time you reach the entrance.

AND that’s not all! Building a fortress on high ground (such as a hill) gives you another tactical advantage and that is enemy range attacks from below suffer a 10% chance to simply – MISS!

I know all this from years of personal experience defending castles against sieges.

No?

Anyway I know all this is childish but I can’t help it. We haven’t got many castles in Malaysia (Kellie’s Castle?) and as I walked on the castle grounds I imagined what it would have been like around me back in the Medieval ages.

For instance, this path must have been trodden by heavy horses of knights and riders rushing up to the king’s hall to deliver some news of war or famine…

This small hut must have been where a servant of a powerful lord lived with his deaf sister.

And Archers would line up along these walls and rain death onto the enemy’s army below!

…

…

LOL anyway, back to reality. Here’s a fantastic view looking down to central Edinburgh from the heights of the castle.

There were several exhibits and displays within the castle and to visit them all would probably take half a day or more (our ‘days’ were quite short as the winter sun started setting at around 3.45PM.)

One of the more interesting exhibits that we visited was the Prisons of War, where prisoners ranging from captured enemy soldiers to women accused of witchcraft had been held! Evil!

It’s interesting how the prisoners were made to sleep on these hammocks which look like those that you find on Pangkor Island beaches. Apparently this is to save space in the prison as the hammocks could be placed over above each other!

Many of the stuff on display here were real and actually used centuries ago.

There was a board detailing rations of food (and alcohol) that each prisoner was to be given, a small but detailed warship model built by (I presume) really bored prisoners, and even counterfeit money used to pay for extra food!

Imagine the freedom and time that these prisoners had in the dungeons that they could do all these things! If I were a prisoner I would probably start a food trading company and get rich!

Let me focus on what probably is the primary exhibit in Edinburgh Castle – the Royal Palace!

This, obviously, was the residence of many Scottish kings and queens of old. There was a lot of educational displays describing the various kings and queens of Scotland and their lineages.

Accordingly, I sought out King James I.

Also inside the castle was the King’s Dining Hall and the Birth Chamber where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to yet another King James, but the Sixth.

King James IV was perhaps the most famous James’s of them all, having survived Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot, sponsored the King James translation of the Holy Bible, and united Scotland and England under one crown after ascending to the English throne, which eventually led to the formation of Great Britain as we know today.

This is all very interesting but perhaps the most fascinating part of the royal palace was the Crown Room!

The Crown Room houses the very precious Scottish Crown Jewels – the Crown, Sceptre and Sword of State of Scotland! The Crown of Scotland was worn by several kings of Scotland and the Sceptre and Sword are gifts from Pope Alexander VI and Pope Julius II, respectively.

The Crown Room was extremely well guarded and the high-security transparent case that contained Crown Jewels looked like those in Mission Impossible movies.

Photography was naturally forbidden in the Crown Room and I dared not cross the guards! Haha therefore credits to the Edinburgh Castle website for the photo above.

After we were done with the castle we headed out to the street right outside Edinburgh Castle – the very famous, very beautiful, and very touristy… Royal Mile!

The Royal Mile is about a mile long (of course), and connects the two historically important places in Edinburgh – Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace.

I remember hearing from someone that Holyrood Abbey was where coronations of kings were held. Kings would be crowned in the Abbey and then parade up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle to be robed.

Today, Holyrood palace is the official residence of Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland, which makes sense – if I were the Queen, I would not want to seem so insecure as to live within the cannon-lined walls of Edinburgh Castle.

Anyway, there were many attractions along the Royal Mile such as the The Writer’s Museum (featuring several famous Scottish writers), Witches’ Well (where over 300 women had been accused as witches and burned at the stake), and  the Scotch Whisky Experience. Scotland is famous for scotch whisky, and regulations make it compulsory that all whisky in the world bearing the name ‘Scotch’ must be distilled in Scotland. Interesting!

Besides all that, fantastic architectures and marble statues of famous Scottish people could also be found along the Mile.

Can’t possibly talk about all of them but one extremely popular attraction is Mary King’s Close. We wanted to visit this place on the first day but tickets for the guided tour were completely sold out! So we had to purchase the following day’s ticket.

Mary King’s Close is one of the many ‘closes’ in the Edinburgh – streets with tenements or multi-storied apartments on both sides that were built several centuries ago for housing purposes.

Due to many people living close to each other, these closes were especially vulnerable to plagues, such as the bubonic plague which was responsible for the Black Death in Europe back in the 14th century.

Many, many people were infected in these closes and died during the plague. There are also rumours that people who got infected were eventually thrown into the closes and left to die. Later, the entire Mary King’s Close was allegedly sealed with walls (on all sides and above) and the rumour goes that the plague victims were simply walled in and left to die in their now dark, underground apartments.

New roads and buildings were constructed on top of the entire seven-stories of underground tenements sealed underneath its floors. Imagine being left underground in a sealed, abandoned building while people above you simply build new buildings on top and forget about you!

All these myths and history give rise to a large amount of ghost stories, making Edinburgh an internationally famous destination for ghost and paranormal activity hunters.

In fact, I think several paranormal-hunting TV shows featured Mary King’s Close in their episodes!

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And so moving on we also found, in Edinburgh – the University of Edinburgh!

The University of Edinburgh is one of the universities that kindly offered me a place earlier this year. UoE is an ancient and highly reputable university in the world. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like studying here in this fascinating city had I accepted the offer.

Would I visit the castle everyday? Would I have learned to play bagpipes? Would I have seen the Loch Ness monster?

Ahh, anyhow I still love Bristol more.

Other interesting things that we found around Edinburgh include this statue of Greyfriars Bobby, in memory of a world-famous dog with a very touching story.

According to the story, Bobby’s owner, John Gray, died of Tuberculosis and his dog Bobby guarded his dear master’s grave until he died himself after fourteen years.

It is a fact that John Gray and Bobby the dog both did exist. In fact, their graves are right behind the row of shophouses in the background.

The story’s authenticity, however, cannot be confirmed.

A few hundred metres down the road from Bobby’s statue is the Elephant House – the cafe made legendary by J.K. Rowling herself having frequently visited and sat for long periods of time at the start of her career, writing the first few books of the Harry Potter series.

I would have gone in and sat for a long period of time trying to get inspiration to write a blog post worthy J.K. Rowling on James-Chow.com, but the cafe was closed by the time we reached.

So in the evening we ascended Calton Hill, one of the most famous and picturesque hills in Edinburgh.

Calton Hill was used as a place of public execution in ancient times and even in later times still remains a place of great political significance.

But I couldn’t be bothered with history anymore and you wouldn’t too if such an incredible view were in front of you.

There were several very important monuments on Calton Hill and the two that you see above are the Nelson Monument and the National Monument of Scotland, respectively.

The National Monument of Scotland has an interesting bit of story behind it and I’ll briefly tell it before I end this very long travel log (which I am lazy to split into parts).

The construction of the National Monument of Scotland was proposed back in 1822 and it was envisaged to be a grand and momentous project – to build a monument after the Parthenon in Athens!

Long story short, all the rich lords in the city supported the proposal by promising money for its construction, but after the construction had actually begun, the rich guys decided that they would rather keep their money in the bank and earn interest (I presume).

And thus the construction could not be completed due to a lack of funds. A rumour was told that the neighbouring city of Glasgow offered to pay for the remaining costs, but Edinburgh – you know – being Edinburgh the capital city, was too proud to accept the offer.

And so without money the monument construction is abandoned and the structure left as you see today! Bad ending!

Moral of the story: When people offer you money (especially huge sums), swallow your pride, grab the cash and run.

**********

All in all, Edinburgh as a city is such a nice place to visit and I will definitely be back again!

But in this trip:

I should have bought a Scottish kilt (the male ‘skirt’) as a souvenir.

I should have tried playing a Scottish bagpipe.

and I really should have cut my hair.

But anyway ladies and gentlemen, it is my tremendous pleasure to announce – the fifth anniversary of James-Chow.com! YAY!

Yes, it’s already been 5 years!

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t expect my blog to survive this long. I have always committed myself to maintaining this website as a personal diary of the important events that I’ve gone through… but STILL – this is great milestone to be celebrated!

It all began in the first month of my first year in university – June 2006 – when I finally registered the domain name – James-Chow.com.

It was more of a fun experiment back then. A housemate of mine and I had been doing some simple websites and hosting a forum board back in my foundation year (2005), to cater to an online game private server that was hosted on my computer.

The administration of this forum board gave me the inspiration and know-how to create a blog of my own and before I know it… it’s five years old now! *teary eyes*

Let’s look forward to lasting another memorable five years.

Dubbed ‘Operation malaysia’, the operation is seen as an international response towards the government’s recent announcement to increase internet censorship.

So far (4.13AM Malaysian time) 24 sites have been successfully exploited, according to this website which has been tracking the entire hacking operation.

I made some quick checks and holla! Those government websites ending with a “.gov.my’ are either defaced, DoS’ed (not responding), or temporarily shut down.

Check out these sites knocked out by DoS attacks:

Official Malaysian Government Website: www.malaysia.gov.my:

Malaysian Parliament: www.parlimen.gov.my:

Malaysian Treasury: www.treasury.gov.my

Information Ministry: www.kpkk.gov.my

Election Commission: www.sprm.gov.my

Ministry of Education: www.moe.gov.my

… and some that are switched off by their own webmasters and a temporary site down message was put up, such as the Sabah Tourism website:

Land Public Transport Commission:

Some other unluckier agencies’ websites are even defaced!

Such as the Social Welfare Department: www.jkm.gov.my

Johor Biotech Corporation: www.jbiotech.gov.my

Poor UiTM Penang’s website has a very funny birthday song!

The Sabah Tourism website is probably hit worst because not only did they hack the website, they leaked all the internal server information and private user information!

Peoples’ names and emails all laid bare!

So far, the three government ‘stronghold’ websites, internet watchdog Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (www.skmm.gov.my), Prime Minister Najib’s www.1malaysia.com.my, and state broadband provider (www.tm.net.my) are the only three survivors of the internet carnage, although the 1Malaysia site is already snapping under the HUGE amount of ‘visitors’ from DoS attacks and I have seen it gone inaccessible several times in the past one hour or so.

**********

… And so I joined the terrorists team, pressed B-4-1, bought some 39mm rounds.. and… BOOM!! HEADSHOT!!

*Yeah I know I’m holding the rifle wrongly*

LOL.

Please excuse the CS language. Haha this was the first time I fired an AK-47… or any live firearm for that matter! It was pure pwnage!!

Everybody knows that in CS you can easily headshot with an AK – both long and short range.

It was one of the primary activities at the Cu Chi Tunnels that I’d been really looking forward to… firing a rifle!

We could choose between the AK-47, M16 and M60 rifles (all of which were historically used at the Tunnels during the Vietnam War), and fire them AT WILL at the shooting range!

Of course, you had to pay for the ammo and we paid 300,000 Dongs (approx. RM50) for just ten 39mm rounds.

I chose the AK-47 over the M-16 because most people who had been to National Service (although myself not included) have fired the latter before.

The AK-47, however, is quite exotic and widely perceived to be used by terrorists (LOL thanks to CS) and is therefore more bad ass. 

My rifle’s magazine loaded by an officer:

The firing range was at the end of the Cu Chi Tunnels tour.

So back to the very start, we were made to sit in a comfortable hut in the middle of the jungle and watch a short film documenting the history of the Cu Chi Tunnels and how they were used by Vietnamese guerrillas to fight against the American forces during the Vietnam War.

The story was fine but it was really interesting how much the short film felt like an organized propaganda effort. Many ‘adjectives’ were skilfully used to imply how cruel the Americans were, and video clips illustrating how pitiful the Vietnamese peasants had been during the war… thanks to the aggressors.

After the video our tour guide gave us a short lecture on how the tunnel systems worked and then we were off!

We climbed into these narrow, dimly-lit tunnels that were once used by the Vietnamese guerrillas to hide, communicate, store and generally transport soldiers and supplies without having to risk getting killed over ground.

These tunnel systems were very huge and span many, many kilometres across the area.

And what’s more, the Cu Chi Tunnels are just a part of an even larger network of tunnels existing across the entire country!

It may look easy but it was very exhausting crawling through these bloody tunnels… Your thigh muscles get really worked out as you will need to be duck-walking all the time…

You can imagine the life of the Vietnamese soldiers in these tunnels… what a tough training!

And yeah… here’s a handsome, muscular and manly soldier fearlessly emerging from a tunnel vent.

The tunnels aside, there were also lots of other war remnants on display…

… such as booby traps! If you were an American soldier and you accidentally stepped on this:

AHHHHHHH!!!!

… and many other brutal traps that you’d think you’re watching a SAW movie…

Other stuff to see include American tanks that were captured during the war:

Bomb Craters:

HO BOM!~

As well as bombs…

… and landmines recovered after the war:

If so many landmines were used in the war will not help but think if there are any more live ones hidden in the forest grounds of Cu Chi… LOL… So we watched our step!

At the end of the tour I brought back some spent shells of the three rifles available at Cu Chi as souvenir. Left to right: Rounds of the M60, M16 and AK-47. Wahahahaha!!

**********

The next day we went on another tour, by the same company, to the Cai Be Floating Market.

Cai Be is about 3 hours from Ho Chi Minh City, in the Mekong Delta region. We were brought on a boat and off we sailed towards the floating market.

The floating market is, well… a floating market! Traders basically own their own trading boats, and they would put up goods for sale every morning… just like a regular market!

And buyers would buy from these traders either from the river bank or from their own boats.

I’m not sure why they would prefer to trade this way compared to a physical, landed market. The only two reasons that I can think of are:

1) the dominant mode of transportation in this village is by boat, so it is actually more convenient to do your shopping by boat than by car/bike/foot.

2) Traders don’t have to pay rent! LOL (or do they?)

It was a little late in the morning when we reached there but apparently the river would have been extremely crowded with boats and market-goers earlier in the morning!

To advertise their goods, the traders would put up a ‘sample’ on a long pole so that prospective buyers can see it from afar.

This boat below, for example, sells turnips:

Imagine someone selling chickens…

… or pork, LOL!

I wouldn’t say it was an incredibly exciting trip but it was certainly worth the experience.

We got to see the not-so-busy side of these traders’ life. In fact, we could see some of them taking a nap or even cooking on their boats… yes, for some of the traders, these boats are also their homes!

It is interesting that a majority of the boats on this river has got a rather ferocious pair of eyes painted in front of them (see pic below). According to the tour guide, they’d been drawn as part of a traditional practise to deter attacks from alligators in the river!

Apparently, the Mekong river had been teaming with alligators back then.

Well I think the practise makes sense. If I were an alligator and I see a huge pair of eyes on a bloody red face cruising barbarically towards me… Well I would just shut up and pretend to be a piece of log.

Incidentally, the Mekong River is the 10th longest river in the world, with a length of almost 5,000 kilometres spanning across six countries.

After we disembarked, we were invited to visit one of the factories that produce local confections. While I will not dwell in the specifics of the rest of the trip (this entry is getting to long and I want to sleep), I must mention the snake wine:

Snake wine is rather famous in Vietnam and China. It is a gruesome infusion of snakes in alcohol and is claimed to bring lots of health benefits to the drinker, including increased sexual performance!

The wine was drunk in a shot and tasted horrible. The feeling in my stomach became much more horrible when I investigated what was in the jar:

Layers upon layers of dead snakes lie quietly in the jar along with herbs and other stuff.

I simply took the other ‘stuff’ in the jar for granted and was walking away happily when Tom, a British guy whom we became friends with, ran over to me and asked me to go back to the drinking table and check out what he had ‘discovered’.

On opening the jar, my stomach turned:

HOLY SHIT.

There was a fuckin’ dead bird in my wine!!! Why?? With feathers and all…

1. Did the poor bird hit a wall and fell into the jar?
2. Did the guys run out of ‘exotic’ things to put into their almighty-tourist-attracting exotic wine and decided to put in a dead bird as well?
3. Had the bird been swallowed whole by one of the snakes and upon the snake’s death got regurgitated undigested?

I don’t know!! WHY IS THERE A DEAD BIRD IN MY WINE?????

I couldn’t believe what kind of torture I’d just subjected my stomach to, but we simply felt a wave of nausea and wished each other best of luck and that we would still see each other alive the next morning.

Well, technically we were told that we would be drinking snake wine. That was  a grave misrepresentation, wasn’t it? It should have been snake-infused-with-disgusting-dead-bird-with-feathers-and-lots-of-shit-looking-things-wine.

**********

We dedicated our last day in Ho Chi Minh City to visit the many fine museums and historical buildings within the city centre itself.

The first was the War Remnants Museum:

Having just finished a major war less than 40 years ago, Ho Chi Minh City has got lots of war stuff to display.

Within the compound of the museum exterior was a large arsenal of artilleries, tanks, war planes and helicopters. Many of them were captured from the Americans during the war and still bear the US Army label, such as this Chinook, which you should recognise if you play C&C Generals LOL:

The War Remnants museum was fascinating, although personally, I felt it was more of a propaganda centre.

The museum basically informs and reminds its visitors of the horrors and atrocities of the Americans during the Vietnam War. With a complete lack of journalistic neutrality, it also featured a major department almost exclusively documenting how ‘evil’ the Americans were.

The whole exhibition was very dramatic and rhetorical, and at certain points bordering on comical. It began with a tongue-in-cheek display of an excerpt from the US Declaration of Independence, which outlines universal human rights:

… Immediately followed by a photograph with the caption:

“The father of this little girl arrested by (American) GIs. She Implores them: ‘Don’t kill my father’.”

I’m not sure if the ‘don’t kill my father’ part was indeed recorded by the journalist or was simply added in later for dramatic effect.

Right next to it is a photograph of an old man (cropped to show an M-16 rifle held in front of him for maximum rhetorical effect) with the caption:

“A Vietnamese civilian pleads with the 101st Air Cavalry Division soldier who is interrogating him during a ‘search and destroy’ operation in early 1968”

While I sincerely sympathize with the plight of the Vietnamese civilians and concur that the Americans troops were definitely not angels, I utterly fail to see how these photos along with their cheesy captions qualify as ‘war remnants’.

In fact, the incidents, while tragic, are not very historically significant and the whole presentation seemed to exist more for the purpose of generating anti-American sentiment (and love for the newly formed Communist government) than to educate the public on concrete historical facts.

And then all of a sudden it gets much, much more gruesome:

(WARNING: GRAPHICAL IMAGES AHEAD)

There was even an entire gallery dedicated to showing the horrible effects of Agent Orange, an extremely toxic chemical that was used by the US military to clear large areas of forest and track the guerrillas.

These chemicals caused severe biological deformities among victims and the gallery makes sure that you see the most horrific examples:

Yea, I know how you’re feeling. I am not feeling very well too at the moment.

…

So let me stop posting disturbing pictures and instead turn to some REAL, physical remnants of the Vietnam War…

… A real Bazooka, baby!

And Claymore mines! Oh we’ve seen this already in the Cu Chi Tunnels.

Alright, so moving on we went to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum:

It was a rather short stay as we were short of time. The museum basically emphasizes the history of the city itself, rather than the entire country.

Naturally, a large part of the museum is dedicated to showing how the Communist party was formed, their righteous struggle for independence and noble sacrifices etc.

I noticed something interesting at the exterior of the museum:

It would seem that there were so many war machines left in Ho Chi Minh City after the war that they could give one to EACH museum for display!

Here’s me with a real F-5 Fighter in front of this museum:

**********

And finally we went to our last destination in Ho Chi Minh City – the Reunification Palace.

This can probably be referred to as the White House of Ho Chi Minh City.

Once the palace of the French governor when the city was a French colony, it became the office of the head of the State of Vietnam after World War II.

After the Vietnam War, the palace again changed hands into the ownership of the current Communist government.

Many state functions are held in the palace and the President of Vietnam also has an office in the building.

We could tour most of the state function rooms in the palace for a small fee.

… Found a very iconic bust of Mr Ho Chi Minh in the middle of the banqueting hall! Paid my respect to the man who made this country great!

We also visited the ‘underground’ parts of the palace, which was used by the previous administration to coordinate troops and run the government during the war.

It was more like a military command bunker with shady corridors and narrow walkways:

We found ‘the War Room of the President’. I guess this is where the President sat and gave orders during wartime:

And this is the ‘Combat Duty Bedroom of the President’ (Well he could’ve used a table lamp instead of TWO bloody telephones):

Yeah so basically that’s it. There were lots of other interesting stuff in the Reunification Palace but I don’t think I can cover them all in this blog post.

Annnnnnnnnd yes, have to mention this one though…

Didn’t I say that there are war machines (fighter jets, helicopters, artilleries etc.) in almost every museum?

There were TANKS in this one!

Apparently these were the tanks of the North Vietnam army which had barged into the Palace in 1975 and ended the Vietnam War.

I can vividly see how the war ended.

If I were the South Vietnam president at that time and there were enemy tanks like these ridding through my walls and pointing their badass cannons at my room… I’d SOOOO surrender thank you very much.

**********

Before I end this super looooong entry (my laptop is lagging), a tribute to the unbelievably tasty, authentic Vietnamese beef noodles.

I seriously can’t get enough of them. Love ‘em!

Specifically, we went to Saigon, which was the capital city of South Vietnam and the preceding French colony. Today, there is no more South Vietnam, having been unified with North Vietnam to form, well… Vietnam!

The city’s name was also changed from Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City, in memory of the the great communist leader (pic above) whose shadow I can be seen hiding under to escape the scorching heat!

It was weird because coming from Malaysia, a country much closer to the equator than Vietnam, I was supposed to be well accustomed to the heat… but this was different!

Your skin literally roasts under the sun! I could remember that the mere 10 minutes that my brother and I took to take pictures with Mr. Ho’s statue was sufficient to give us sunburns!

Or maybe it was just an unusually hot day!

Saigon was one of the cities that were most heavily sieged during the Vietnam war some 40 years ago.

Because of this, one would inaccurately think of Ho Chi Minh City as a relatively underdeveloped and inward city.

I’d expected to arrive in a city where everything was to be complete unfamiliar – language, food, signs, culture, retail brands etc.

I’d also thought that everything would be rather traditional and old-fashioned.

-

I was wrong.

Hah! Nowhere in the world escapes western capitalism and consumerism!

A stroll around the beautiful city centre dispels whatever notion that communist controlled Vietnam is out of touch with the outside world!

This city is the most important economic centre of Vietnam and its residents are some of the richest in the country.

We spent the first day just exploring the city centre.

One thing about the city that really caught my attention was, despite its development, Ho Chi Minh City still retains much of the cultural and more primitive side of things.

It was absolutely lovely!

For instance, we couldn’t be bothered to visit nice restaurants but instead were drawn to these little street vendors who sell very interesting local food and speak utterly zero English.

We couldn’t communicate at all, but were determined to try whatever it was that they were selling!

This extremely friendly lady tried her best to describe in Vietnamese what her product was, but we could only smile and nod. We understood nothing but decided to try it anyway!

Well, that’s what traveling is all about right?

In the end we were given a delightful bowl of what looked like soya bean curd with glutinous rice – and it was delicious!

The lady was doing business right in the middle of the footpath and there were absolutely no tables and chairs. So we simply put our bags on the floor and sat on them while we ate.

We also tasted many special and rather exotic food that were sold by these little portable stalls sprouting out of literally random places.

This is a multi-flavoured glutinous rice with a variety of coconut toppings (didn’t like it really much):

What looked like and probably was roasted pigeon (very yummy):

and a fusion of French baguette and what looked like Malaysian SATAY: (tasted quite good!)

We were a little concerned about the hygiene of such street food that were prepared with uncovered, bare hands and literally sold beside the main road with hundreds of motor vehicles passing by every hour.

But well, neither my brother nor I got food poisoning after that, so I guess they were fine!

The food aside, the next thing that I immediately noticed around the town centre was political imagery.

This is the first time that I visited a communist-governed country, and was rather taken aback when I saw this symbol placed literally all over the city.

The media that I grew up with was predominantly western-oriented, and as we all know western countries dislike communists.

So here I was facing the hammer and sickle – a symbol of Communism. It was a strange feeling as I had immersed in war movies and games like Red Alert that actively portray these symbols as the ‘enemy’ and yet here I was in its territory and still loving the place.

The third remarkable thing about this city that you will immediately notice is – the sheer amount of motorcyclists!

The number of motorcyclists in the city was absolutely staggering! I made a quick estimation and I think I can safely say that the ratio of motorcycles to cars is approximately 20 to 1 – that’s 95% motorcycles!

We were on the road a couple of times and the taxi driver was like Brad Pitt being chased by a dozen CIA agent cars in a Hollywood movie. He was sounding his horn all the time and even driving onto SIDEWALKS just to avoid the massively overwhelming amount of motorcycle traffic in the city.

Well, I guess if you live in a metropolitan area with a population of 9 MILLION, motorcycles are indeed the best way to get around.

Anyway, there was a huge market at the middle of the town centre called the Ben Thanh Market. It was really huge and is one of the icons of Ho Chi Minh City.

Since it is an icon, you can expect lots of tourists to visit this place.

Since lots of tourists visit this place, you can expect the prices to go off the roof.

Since opening prices are exorbitant, you can expect lots and LOTS of price bargaining.

… and that was exactly what happened.

Now I think this happens in most countries, not just Vietnam, and I’d had my fair share of experience in price bargaining at tourist-infested places.

But this was different.

In general, the sales girls here were extremely friendly and approachable, and I would say that they really, really wanted us to buy their stuff.

And due to this reason, price bargaining was actually quite, err… fun, over here.

Let me explain:

First of all, none of us could understand each other.

So all we did was tapping a price figure on a calculator, passing it to the other, the other would widen his/her eyes in apparent horror at the absurdity of the price, scream ‘noooo… no no no…’, laugh, key in another number, and pass it back to the other person.

This process would repeat for half a dozen times or more before a deal is reached.

This sounds tedious BUT the good part is that you would use the universal language – laughter – A LOT, and they will be laughing all the time as well!

It was very interesting how they tried to do all sorts of things to make us believe that the goods were worth more than the price we offered!

The girl at the store told us stories in simple, broken English about where the clothes were imported, how good the quality was, and how we wouldn’t be able find it anywhere else in Vietnam… She kept going and going until she contradicted herself at some point, realized that we noticed, and then we all laughed.

We both knew that the product wasn’t as good as she was trying to portray as, and we both knew that none of us believed it. But it was still good fun!

At night, we had our hotel book for us two tickets for a water puppet show!

Water puppetry is a traditional form of entertainment that is particularly famous in Vietnam.

In this approximately one-and-a-half hour performance, wooden puppets were attached to long rods underneath and controlled by puppeteers behind a screen. The rods were invisible beneath a pool of water and the puppets would appear to be moving over the water.

This tradition is many centuries old and was historically done at impromptu ‘stages’ on flooded rice fields in Vietnam as a form of entertainment among farmers.

The puppets acted out a series of traditional Vietnamese folk stories and legends, and we were each given a booklet that tells the synopses of the stories in six languages. What a fantastic way to learn more about a new culture!

The puppets were cute, the stories interesting and the acting humorous. This might be nothing more than a puppet show, but the performance was by absolutely no means juvenile or childish.

All music and conversations in the show were produced live on both sides of the stage, and man… everything was so professionally done!

Don’t be fooled by the ‘wooden’ look of the puppets! The puppeteers behind them were masters in what they do and the puppets were made to move so lively and full of expression!

There were even fighting scenes where water was actually splashed onto the some of us on the first few rows, but it was all fine!

After the show ended, the puppeteers emerged from behind the screen to tremendous applause.

After the show we took a night stroll across the town towards the Saigon river.

Ho Chi Minh City was not at all a quiet and lonely city at night. In fact, there were lots and lots of nightlife venues that were extremely lively and busy!

We also noted the high amount of police presence in the city centre – was this because it is a tourist area, or was it that some big event was coming up?

Vietnam was a colony of France, and so the French built a Notre-Dame Cathedral in Saigon! Named after its famous counterpart in Paris!

All the original building materials for this church were imported from France. Why leh? Don’t trust our south east asian materials?

The Virgin Mary statue in front of the cathedral became famous in 2005 when it was reported to shed tears! Tears were reported flowing down the right cheek of Mary and caused a tremendous influx of people (literally thousands) that year to gather around the basilica and witness the ‘miracle’.

Despite being night time, we could still see believers gathering around the statue of the Virgin Mary and praying… right there. What a peaceful sight!

The next day, we went on a day tour to two famous destinations located to the north of Ho Chi Minh City – the Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh, and the Cu Chi Tunnels. I’ll talk about each of them.

The Great Cao Dai Temple, also called the Tay Ninh Holy See, is the seat (sort of like the religious headquarters) of the Cao Dai religion.

While you may not have heard of it, Cao Dai is a relatively new religion (established in the twentieth century) founded in this very city in Vietnam. It currently has several million adherents across the globe.

I don’t really have a good idea of what this religion is all about. All I know (from the 2-hour tour of the temple and Wikipedia) is that it is sort of a fusion of several religions and political figures.

For instance, Jesus is regarded as a Buddha and the ‘saints’ include an all-star mixture of Mohammed, Napoleon, Jesus, Buddha and Shakespeare (?!). No kidding.

According to Wikipedia, the ‘holy spirits’ of Cao Dai include Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Lenin and Victor Hugo.

I have no idea how and why, but it is so.

Here’s a large portrait at the front atrium of the temple depicting ‘The Three Saints’ signing a covenant ‘The 3rd Alliance’ between God and man.

The Three Saints are apparently Sun Yat-Sen, Victor Hugo, and a Vietnamese poet called Nguyen Binh Kheim. Beside the picture is a sign explaining the meaning behind the portrait.

At the very end of the temple is an altar with a huge, green, watermelon-like globe with an eye at the front.

This symbolizes the Divine Eye of God overseeing the universe and the Cao Dai adherents basically pray and worship towards its direction.

I can think of a million way to make fun of this subject but in the spirit of respect for religion, I shall refrain.

We were there just in time for the noon mass. At precisely noon, Cao Dai followers entered the temple dressing in flowing robes and began the ceremony. There was a high-ranking priest in front leading the congregation through the prayer chants and hymns.

Those dressed in white are lay followers and those in colour are priests.

We didn’t stay in the temple for too long as it was a place of worship and we were eager to continue to the next destination of our tour – the Cu Chi Tunnels!

I had heard of the Cu Chi Tunnels before I went to Vietnam, of its wartime tunnels, deadly booby traps, and most of all – there’s a shooting range where you could shoot an AK-47 or M16 rifle, or even an M60 machine gun!

**********

This travel log is getting too long for a single post, so I am splitting it into two parts. Click here for Part 2.

I was quite nervous when I entered the British Council Kuala Lumpur building to collect my results… But well, I didn’t do as bad as I’d thought! Received an overall band score of 8.5 out of 9, with 8.5 for each of the Writing, Listening and Speaking modules, and 9.0 for Reading.

In fact, it’s not bad at all! This score satisfies the conditional offers of all the eight universities that I’m choosing from! Yay! Now my admission is guaranteed!

I didn’t really have time to blog about the IELTS test day as I was quite busy and also worried in the two weeks after the test. Worried because I believed that I’d screwed up the Writing and Reading papers… especially writing!

The time given for the writing test was one hour, with two questions. We were supposed to spend 20 minutes on writing a report on some chart given to us, and spend the remaining 40 minutes writing a much longer argumentative essay on a selection of topics.

I spent 45 MINUTES on the report (I’d always got this fatal habit of checking and rechecking every sentence I write) and spent the remaining 15 minutes zooming through the second essay. I guess five years of essay writing in university and on this blog helped LOL.

I remember being quite satisfied with the 15-minute express-essay, but as I wrote the words “In conclusion,” at the beginning of the last paragraph, the invigilator horrifyingly announced: ‘stop writing please!’

I hesitated and simply rubbed of the two words… handing up an essay with NO CONCLUSION!

Well, as for reading, I didn’t have time to do the last 4 multiple-choice questions (out of 50), so I simply circled ‘C’ for the remaining questions and laid down my pen. None of us dared to continue writing beyond the time given after witnessing an earlier incident in which a girl had refused to stop writing and the invigilator marched straight up to her desk and literally snatched the answer sheet away from her!

The girl ended up crying at her desk after the incident.

So I really didn’t expect my reading paper to get a perfect 9.0. If I was told that one of my papers got a 9.0, I would’ve expected it to be the listening paper – which I believed I got every answer correct – but it turns out I didn’t.

The speaking test was an absolute joy to attend. We (the candidates) took turns entering these small rooms which felt remarkably like confessional booths in cathedrals! The only difference between confessional booths and our rooms was that we could see the examiner, in my case a cheerful British lady with a most encouraging smile.

The only scary part about the speaking test was the recording. The examiner would start recording at the very beginning by declaring a solemn statement to the recorder, something like “This is the speaking test of Mr. James K. H. Chow, on the seventh day of May, the question set is 4B and the examiner is XXX.” It sounded like an interrogation and was initially quite scary!

However as she started asking questions it wasn’t so bad after all. In the beginning I was asked to talk about the city in which I lived, whether I liked it, which place I liked best, blah blah blah. She would keep inserting questions to keep me talking.

In the second part she asked me which newspapers I read. That was an easy question so I gladly responded by giving free publicity to The Star, The Edge and the online news portals of BBC and CNN. She asked me what influenced my choice of newspapers and the type of news that I liked to read about. She was so friendly and engaging that I felt like I was taking to a friend! I couldn’t really stop talking and I recall there was one point when I started talking about politics. LOL. Perhaps I shouldn’t have… but she didn’t stop me and kept smiling and nodding patiently…

I think she should change her job and be a psychiatrist instead.

Anyway for the last part of the test, I was asked to describe, in two minutes, a recent news item that I had just read about. I was given one minute to prepare for this ‘mini-speech’.

I could have talked about Osama Bin Laden’s death or a recent development in Anwar’s sodomy case… But since I was talking to a British lady, I decided to talk about the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton which had happened just a week ago. She seemed exceptionally interested in what I had to say. Luckily I’d watched the entire ceremony live on the internet and the memory was still fresh in mind!

I think the third part may be a little difficult for certain people as the topic given can (potentially) startle you and render your mind blank for the entire one minute that you’re given to prepare the talk. Well for this part I think I should thank my involvement in Toastmasters – guess the Table Topics sessions really helped a lot!

All in all I think my IELTS journey was quite a smooth one. I didn’t really prepare too much for the tests as they coincide with my final project presentation in my university (just days apart). But who cares! Now it’s over and I’ll need to focus on my FYP and final exams!

I had been toying with the idea in my mind since last year, but it was not until March when certain circumstances changed that I made up my mind that I was going for a postgraduate degree in the UK.

It was a tough decision.

In fact, it was a several-hundred-thousand-ringgit investment decision. After all, I have, all my life, been advocating the notion that experience, not academics, determines the success of a person.

Besides money, this decision also involves taking more time out of my life and delay the start of my career. After spending 4 years in Engineering, I am already lagging behind graduates taking 3-year bachelor’s degree courses… and, as they say – getting there first is everything.

Finally and not least, Shuyi and I will literally be swapping locations (UK-Malaysia) by year end and that means that we will be having a long-distance relationship… again.

I’m not keen to disclose the exact reasons that made me decide on this because they can be slightly controversial. However, I have considered my options for over 6 months and I believe that my decision is informed and rational.

**********

Anyway, *kills the solemn mood* and so I started my insanely long and stressful period of applying to universities!

First, I immediately registered for an IELTS test. This was crucial because test slots in April to September are pretty full and you’ll usually have to book at least a month in advance. And while waiting for my test date to arrive, I started targeting universities.

I knew exactly what I wanted to study for masters. To complement the scientific nerdyness of engineering, I wanted to study something on the other side of the academic world – economics, accounting, management, finance etc.

I decided that if I was to go for a master’s degree, I would study something related to business, since that is what I ultimately want to do.

Now that I knew what course I wanted to do, the next step would be to choose the institution. There are several hundreds of universities in the UK, and I had little time to research them one-by-one!

… so the easy way out was to simply look at the rankings. Times Higher Education has one of the most respected university world rankings:

And by sorting the world ranking by region, in this case Europe, I extracted the list of European universities that made it into the Top-200 World Ranking (out of the approx. 4000 universities in Europe). And by picking the top universities from the UK only, I got myself a good list of prospective universities!

Fortunately, there were also two UK education fairs in KL last month, one organised by the British Council, and the other jointly by Imperial College, UCL, LSE and KCL, the four major constituent colleges of the University of London.

I went to both fairs and after bugging the representatives from most of the 15 universities, I learned all I needed to know about the universities and was finally confident to make my choice.

So according to the Times Higher Education list, the top UK universities are:

1) University of Cambridge

2) University of Oxford

3) Imperial College London

4) University College London

5) University of Edinburgh

6) University of Bristol

7) King’s College London

University of Sussex

9) University of York

10) Durham University

11) London School of Economics

12) University of Manchester

13) Royal Holloway, University of London

14) University of Southampton

15) University of St. Andrews

…

…

Oxford, Cambridge and York had closed their applications way before March (some application deadlines were last year!) so those were out. UCL, KCL and Sussex didn’t offer the course that I wanted; and LSE was simply too, friggin’, insanely expensive. So those were out too.

In the end I applied to the five universities highlighted in bold above, and I added in the popular University of Sheffield, University of Birmingham and University of Warwick. These three did not make it into the top-15, but they are well within the top-30.

So in the end, I applied to EIGHT universities! As my lecturer said, you only get one chance to apply so have some backups… you never know, right?

The application process was gruelling.

Not only were there an average of 10 pages of application forms PER university to fill in, there were also essay questions like ‘describe your long term goals in 350 words’ or ‘why do you think you are suitable for this course?’ etc. Which took me like days upon days to compose.

And I haven’t even started with the personal statement.

Writing personal statements is the most stressful task on earth. Not only will you wonder what in the world are you going to talk about, you will also be super paranoid about missing out points and important stuff AFTER you’ve finished it. So the reviewing of the statement actually took more time than writing it.

And finally comes the reference letters.

All universities require at least two reference letters each from an independent referee who has had significant contact with, and could provide an objective opinion about me. That’s the UK universities’ requirement.

Now MY OWN requirement is: at least two reference letters each from an independent referee who likes me… a lot.

I can’t have a reference letter that bad-mouths me, right? Haha but fortunately my Final Year Project supervisor, who was also my lecturer, and a Maths professor came to my rescue. Both referees satisfy the universities’ requirement, and both referees… well… had been in pretty good terms with me during my four years as an undergrad.

Hehe so… DONE! (To be fair, my conduct in uni was actually quite good kayz…) No cheating here.

So with all my documents ready (academic transcript, reference letters, personal statement, application form, certs and other supporting documents) I nervously submitted all the applications, and wished for the best!

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Looking back, the four weeks following my application submissions were absolutely nerve-wrecking. I can remember myself rushing home everyday just to check my email and kept refreshing my Yahoo inbox every few minutes when I’m in front of my computer. Imperial College also conducted an interview with me through video conference and I was absolutely blown away by the questions they asked. I remembered waking up everyday with butterflies in my stomach, telling myself “maybe today is the day I receive a response!”

A week later, University of Sheffield replied with an offer. I was thrilled! This was my first offer! I hung on to my seat and waited patiently… maybe there would be more coming!

In the second week, both University of Manchester and Royal Holloway, UoL replied with offers. Although both were not my top choices among the eight, now I’ve got two more alternatives!

In the third week, University of Birmingham and University of Bristol replied with offers! This was spectacular news and I was literally jumping with joy in my lab. University of Bristol has my favourite Master’s course so far. Not only is the university high up in terms of ranking, its programme structure is also very flexible and I love the subjects offered. Birmingham is not bad either, but I’d like to keep it as a backup.

In the fourth week, University of Edinburgh and University of Warwick replied with offers. I was astounded! Now I am beginning to get spoilt with choice! University of Warwick is the upcoming star in business studies and UK employers in particular seem to like Warwick graduates a lot! University of Edinburgh, on the other hand, has almost five centuries of outstanding reputation, is the oldest university among the eight, and is situated in a wonderful, historical city.

Most universities promise an offer/rejection within 4 weeks, and by the end of the fourth weeks, I received offers from seven out of the eight universities I applied to! Yay! (Technically, these were offers conditional upon my graduation with a certain CGPA and obtain a certain IELTS band score. But blah… who cares about that now?)  

On the fifth week, I received nothing.

On the sixth week, I checked my email one fine day and voila! I struck gold. My eighth and final university, Imperial College London sent me an offer! Imperial is like top ten in the world and top three in the UK (after Oxford and Cambridge) and I had never really expected them to accept me.

Anyways now I am presented with a problem that I have never really anticipated – I have to make my choice among all the eight universities I applied to. A month ago, my original plan was to just take whichever university that accepts me… but now this is an entirely different dilemma.

I love all the universities very much (that’s why I applied to them) but I particularly favour Imperial College (obviously!), University of Bristol (for the reputation and course structure), University of Edinburgh (for the city and historical roots), and University of Warwick (for the fame of its business school).

I’ve decided I would give myself several weeks to seriously think about it, research, and make an informed decision. This is a multi-hundred-thousand ringgit investment and I want to make the best choice.

Meanwhile, I have to focus on getting an ‘A’ for my final year project, as well as prepare for my IELTS! Without these two I would fail my offer conditions and all the work would be for nothing!

Work work!

-

Ah, where were we? Yes, number five.

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#5 – Notre Dame Cathedral

At almost 900 years old and kids around the world know about it, the Notre Dame cathedral absolutely deserves its reputation of one of the most remarkable cathedrals in Europe!

The cathedral is extremely famous for many other aspects e.g. architecture, culture and religion etc but I, along with many other younger people I’m sure, got to know about the Notre Dame through Victor Hugo, or more accurately… Disney!

Who doesn’t know Quasimodo, the dear Hunchback of Notre Dame?

So anyway here’s us visiting his home.

It is interesting to find out that the row of statues above the ‘portals’ (entrances) in the photo above were originally intended to represent the 28 kings of Judah in the Bible’s Old Testament from whom Jesus was directly descended.

The Gallery of Kings – as it is named – however, was ‘attacked’ during the French Revolution when the then French king was overthrown. The revolutionists apparently mistook the 28 kings as the ancestors of the king of France instead and beheaded them all – literally.

The statues that we see now are, of course, restored later on and some of their ‘original’ heads were recovered and displayed in the Musée de Cluny.

The interior was extremely huge and while there was a sermon going on and worshippers were sitting and praying, tourists were allowed to walk at the side and observe.

The building architecture was absolutely amazing and there were many shrines and exhibits that we could feast our eyes on. Impossible to cover all in a blog entry… so let’s move on.

Oh, before that, we saw what looked like a statue of the King of the Dead from Lord of the Rings at the entrance! Him and the Dead Men of Dunharrow!

Haha of course it isn’t. Middle Earth is very, very far from France… I think.

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#4 – Avenue des Champs Elysees

Don’t be fooled by the old signboard, this is one of the most famous (and most expensive) street address in the world.

Home to the biggest and most lavish French specialty shops, cinemas and restaurants, no tourist (or filthy rich lady) will ever want to miss this avenue of extravagant expenditure.

Not only is this street sandwiched by two ultra-famous Parisian landmarks (the Luxor Obelisk and the Arc de Triomphe) at each end, it is also home to flagship stores of ultra-luxurious fashion brands like Hugo Boss and LV.

I’ll face the facts. I only came here to marvel at the building, walk in, and declare that I have just visited LV’s flagship store in Paris. (and left empty-handed)

Apparently, because it is cheaper to buy stuff like LV handbags here (no need for import tax, perhaps?), there is a restriction on how many items a person can buy per visit.

Apparently a person can only buy like two items of the same kind. I’m not sure if this is just a rumour or if it applies only to the Champs Elysees store or something. But it doesn’t really matter to me… even without tax, the smallest wallets cost like 2,000 to 10,000 euros and I can literally finance a four year degree course in Malaysia with 10k euros…

But not to worry! I promise I’ll be back within 10 years with millions to spend!

… hopefully.

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#3 – Louvre Museum

Probably nobody knew about the Louvre before The Da Vinci Code.

Haha of course not!! The Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world! … As well as one of the largest.

But The Da Vinci Code really made the museum like 10 times more famous than its original already-extreme international fame.

The museum is so extremely huge, divided into god-knows how many sections, that it is absolutely impossible for anybody to finish touring the museum in one day with reasonable attention paid to the artwork.

In fact, we were in there like for five hours and with our feet sore and tired, only went through like one-sixth of the galleries. It was that huge.

Here’s us in the famous glass-pyramid entrance to the Louvre:

Two things to note when visiting museums in Paris:

1) Bring your student card (if you have one) – Shuyi’s entrance ticket for all museums (and many other tourist destinations as well) were significantly cheaper than mine because she could produce a student visa. In fact her ticket was free at Musee d’Orsay. I think this is valid in the entire European Union, not just in France.

2) Buy a damn English multimedia guide

The French have no pity on anybody who does not understand their language – ALMOST ALL art descriptions displayed beside the paintings and exhibits are in French and absolutely French only. If you can’t read French, that’s too bad.

An example is this 2nd centure B.C. sculpture of Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory, which has an incredible story behind it. (I can’t tell the story here due to the length of this post)…

… However, I would not possibly have not what this headless winged figure was all about if I had just depended on the description panel next to it.

100% French. Even when this is one of Paris’ top tourist destination!

Anyway, here’s the Grand Gallery:

Some famous stuff: Madonna of the Rocks:

Venus de Milo:

Aaaaaaand, literally the most famous painting in the world – the Mona Lisa… imprisoned behind a no-entry barrier and protective bulletproof glass.

Besides the ultra-famous stuff, there were also many other interesting stuff as well! Such as the magnificent ceiling:

This painting of David and Goliath that has – literally three dimensions. The front:

… and the back!

A truly HUGE painting of the Coronation of Napoleon at the Notre Dame. This painting is almost 10 metres wide and is the second largest painting in the Louvre.

… and many, many nude men paintings:

Why do people fight battles without any clothes on?

More nude men.

Ahaha I know art lovers will be cursing my ignorance in art appreciation. Therefore I shall stop commenting on the artworks now.

Oh but before we move on, here’s the inverted pyramid underneath which, according to The Da Vinci Code, cryptically contains the secret tomb of Mary Magdelene.

Scary, huh?

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#2 – River Seine

I believe many tourists flock to Paris’ glamorous attractions and museums without paying adequate attention to the great river Seine.

Gracefully flowing through the heart of Paris, the 776KM-long river flows from as far as Burgundy in the east, into the English Channel in the west.

Just like the Thames is to London, the Seine has been the lifeblood of Paris since a long time ago. Together, the Thames and the Seine are some of the most famous rivers in Europe.

And great rivers within great cities are always a great scene to behold.

Many important buildings such as the Louvre Palace and Notre Dame Cathedral are built along the northern bank of the Seine, and tourist boats and ferries regularly cruise along the river.

The famous French Martyr Joan of Arc’s ashes were thrown into the Seine after she had been burned at the stake. Napoleon had also requested in his will to be buried on the banks of the river.

But to us tourists, Paris is the City of Love. And couples arriving at Paris simply cannot leave without leaving some kind of trace or ‘footsteps’ in the Romantic City.

And so some ‘geniuses’ started carving the names of themselves and their partners on padlocks and securing them over the fence of the many bridges across the Seine.

This, apparently, symbolizes the couple’s undying love being ‘locked’ and secured forever in the City of Love. The keys to the padlock, naturally, is to be buried forever in the waters of the legendary river below.

Romantic as it may be, this practice has, of course, annoyed the Parisian authorities for years. And rumour has it that the lovelocks on this bridge were removed on 2010, although the authorities denied involvement.

Check out some very creative lovelock designs:

‘Safer-than-others’ lock:

Probably a law enforcement couple:

And finally, this is my hand with a pair of keys – over the Seine.

I did not ‘expressly’ admit that we polluted the Seine with one extra pair of metal keys. My hands were merely hovering over the river and I may not have released it.

Of course, I may also have done so but I the photo does not constitute as an confession. So please don’t sue me – this was Paris, for heaven’s sake.

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#1 – Eiffel Tower

What were you expecting, the Paris airport? Haha of course the Eiffel Tower reigns as the #1 place in my list.

Paris would not be the Paris it is today without the Eiffel Tower.

At the same height as an 81-storey building, the Eiffel Tower is the tallest building in Paris, and was the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1889.

Shuyi and I vowed that we would make it onto the tower before evening to watch the sunset. At at one hour before sunset, we were still at the Arc de Triomphe, and so we literally ran our way to Champ de Mars, where the Eiffel tower was located.

We could easily see it from afar. But although it may seem that it is right in front of you (the pic above), the tower is still a 20-minute walk away.

Finally, we made it.

The sun had started setting when we reached the base of the tower. Quickly, we queued for the tickets and got ourselves on the first tram headed to the tip of the tower.

There were three levels on the Eiffel Tower, the first and second were located less than halfway up the tower, and the third was near the very tip of the structure.

It was a Sunday evening and there were quite a number of visitors, but not too many. We could easily find spots to view the scenery and take pictures.

Here’s a picture of the Seine from the second level:

There were also two gastronomical fine-dining restaurants on the first and second levels of the Eiffel Tower which, naturally, also charge astronomical prices and require reservations.

I’ll be back for that, next time… Hehe.

Anyway, here’s us on the very highest level of the Eiffel Tower, looking down at the magnificent river and surrounding city of Paris at night.

We also managed to capture a deadly alien laser beam fired directly from Mars to destroy the city of Paris and all mankind.

According to the official Eiffel Tower distance display on the third level, Kuala Lumpur is 10,433KM away so we’re quite safe!

Anyway, back to reality, there was a really small apartment built on the tip of the Eiffel Tower by its designer, Engineer Gustave Eiffel.

Can you even imagine living so extremely high up – alone – on the Eiffel Tower BEFORE it was opened up to hoards of tourists?

Here’s the apartment itself, in its original location looking in from the protective glass windows:

The two figures depicted inside are Mr. Eiffel himself and Thomas Edison, who visited the apartment to discuss some scientific stuff on 10 September 1889.

Anyway, it was insanely cold that night (1-3°C) and you can imagine the freezing wind on the tip of the tallest building in Paris. So after some camwhoring and looking around, we descended to have our dinner.

We went across the street and had dinner in a nice little restaurant. This was to be our replacement Valentine’s dinner, which we had missed a few weeks ago.

The most awesome thing about this restaurant is that right beside our table – is a direct view of the entire, glittering, magnificent Eiffel Tower, which glitters brilliantly at the strike of every hour, constantly reminding you that you made it to the great City of Lights!

Our meal was incredibly tasty. I have no idea how to blog about them so I’ll just post photos:

To complete the French dining experience, we were also served bread and champagne for starters, and wine with the dishes.

The waiter who served us must be complimented and absolutely deserved to be tipped. Not only was he extremely pleasant and patiently explained the menu to us in English, along with personal recommendations, he was also very entertaining when he would come around and ask whether we liked the food and taught us some random French phrases.

All in all, his French accent and jolly attitude reminded me of Lumière from Beauty and the Beast… when he is performing the song ‘Be Our Guest’.

Lovely chap!

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Well I guess the top-10 list concludes my visit to Paris as most of the good places have been covered. Yay!

Bottom line – While the actual Paris may not live up to everybody’s wildest expectations (thanks to the media), it definitely lives up to its reputation as one of the must-go destinations in the world.

We see it daily in Korean dramas and Taiwan soap operas… A pretty female character whose life’s dream is to travel to Paris to pursue art or music or something, and this handsome male character comes back from studying/working in Paris and all the girls in the show would drool over him.

And I, being East Asian, am naturally no different.

Since young Paris has captured my imagination. The magical city, the romantic city, oh… the City of Love!

So when Shuyi and I had the opportunity to choose a European city to visit in March, we had no difficulty deciding!

Nonetheless, much effort had to be put in to plan the trip. Since both of us were students, our spending money comprised of many months of savings plus a generous donation from the Mum and Dad Charity Foundation (MDCF), and even so our budget was tight!

One thing that we had spent lots of time researching into was accommodation.

Hotels in downtown Paris are notoriously expensive. After nights of painstaking research and stingy comparisons, we got ourselves this nice little 3-star hotel at a very reasonable price!

It is considered cheap for Parisian standards, but still with the money spent you could stay in a deluxe 5-star hotel room in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides accommodation, there was another compulsary area of research – “EVERYTHING”.

From Metro MRT lines to places to visit, and food and currency exchange, everything had to be carefully thought-of beforehand… thanks to the grisly warning given to us by our friends who had been to Paris:

“French people DO NOT like Tourists, least of all English-speaking ones!” 

We were told that apparently the French were very proud of their language, and any tourist that does not even try to speak their language has no business in their country.

Well, it’s kinda hard to blame the French. If Kuala Lumpur had 42 million tourists flocking in every year, I would damn well hate tourists as well! *evil laugh*

So we brushed up our bonjour’s, s’il vous plaît’s, and merci’s and bulked up to face the scary legion of dark-faced, unwelcoming French people…

… only to find them to be extremely friendly and helpful!

Although they were visibly happier when you spoke to them in French, most of them were glad to help or serve you in English.

And while there were people in smaller shops and restaurants who did not understand English at all, we successfully communicated with them using an impromptu mixture of hand gestures, body movements, and wildly invented Eng-French-ish phrases…

… Bottom Line – we didn’t starve in Paris! A cause for celebration!

Unlike some other of my travel logs, I intend to keep this entry simple and sweet – no parts 2 or 3 – just one single entry.

So instead of writing down every food I eat and every corner I turn, I’m just gonna do a top-10 list of what I feel are the ten most awesome places that I’ve visited in Paris.

So here we go!

Disclaimer: This top-10 list does not represent the best ten attractions Paris has to offer, but merely the best ten that I have visited in this trip.

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#10 – Luxor Obelisk at Place de la Concorde

This 3,300-year-old gigantic structure is one of the two original obelisks marking the entrance of the Luxor Temple, founded in 1400BC in ancient Thebes.

Because it is so old, you will wonder if there is some kind of magic locked in its ancient inscriptions… Perhaps it can warp in alien ships? Communicate with evil pharaohs of the past? Shoot lasers or… glow in the dark, at least?

It is simply too big (75ft tall) and grand to do nothing more than just decorate that old temple in Egypt. Trust me, I know these things.

Given as a gift to France by Egypt almost two centuries ago and since then placed at the eastern end of the world-famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the Luxor Obelisk is indeed something not to be missed!

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#9 – Luxembourg Gardens

The Luxembourg Gardens is the garden of French Senate, as well as the second largest public park in Paris.

The park wasn’t so nice as it was filled with leafless trees when we visited it in March. But it absolutely deserves mention here as it is (apparently) extremely beautiful in spring and summer!

Many local people bring their own foldable chairs and simply sit around the huge pond right in front of the senate building, reading a book or just chatting away.

Besides very beautiful just-planted flowers and blankets of grass that had been freshly rolled onto the soil, the garden is also home to numerous marble statues…

… monuments…

… and bird houses!

It is perfect to schedule a visit to the Luxembourg Gardens during lunchtime (as we did) for a peaceful and beautiful picnic place in downtown Paris. Just grab some fluffy French pastry from across the street and just enjoy the surroundings as you rest your tired feet!

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#8 – Basilique du Sacré Cœur

The shining white Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the hill of Montmartre is the highest point in the city of Paris.

We don’t see domed cathedrals everyday, do we? In fact, coming from a Muslim country I would easily mistake this building as a mosque if not for the three mini crosses on top of the domes…

… and now that I think about it, the building kinda resembles the Taj Mahal… (Look ONLY at the three domes from the front)

Anyway, the surrounding district of Montmartre is something of a nightclub / red light district. Coupled with the popularity of the Sacre Coeur among tourists, security in the region is super tight!

Check out the rifles…

The white statue standing near the armed officer on the right is NOT a statue! I’m sure most people have seen this before, but this is my first time seeing a real-life statue!

These ‘statues’ are people who’ve had themselves painted chalk white and would pose for a picture with you if, err… given some financial incentive.

Besides the statue-people, there were many other street performances as well, such as this gentleman playing a harp.

That’s really something, isn’t it? Have you EVER seen anybody playing a harp near Pasar Seni or anywhere?

Located at a height of 130 metres, the cathedral grounds offer a hazy, dreamlike view of the city below.

Having a cathedral on top of a hill is awesome. But wouldn’t it be extremely tiring for worshippers to hike the hill every Sunday?

I’d imagine a family of young and elderly huffing and puffing up the slope just to reach the great wooden doors of the cathedral.

But it doesn’t matter. Once you step inside the cathedral doors, Jesus himself greets you with open arms… Literally.

Haha technically nobody is allowed to take photos inside the cathedral, but there’s always somebody who managed to flout the rule.

The painting on the central dome ceiling is HUGE! Just compare it to the miniscule people sitting beneath it.

The interior was very beautiful and there were lots of mini-exhibits around the main worship area. But since I have no other photos to talk about we’ll just leave it here.

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#7 – Musée d’Orsay

This is arguably the second most popular museum in Paris, after you-know-which museum (thanks to Dan Brown and his The Da Vinci Code).

Housing the spectacular station clock (above) on one side of the building, the Musée d’Orsay is proud of its century-old history as a railway station, before being converted to one of Paris’ premier art museum.

The Musée d’Orsay is extremely famous for its impressionist–styled paintings on display. Being trained in engineering, the only thing that I know about impressionist paintings is that they do not come fitted with loud electrical motors.

Ah, and yes, one more thing that I know of is that Vincent van Gogh is one of the master titans in impressionist painting.

I bet those who study art totally thinks he’s god.

Because whenever there is a Van Gogh painting, people with thick glasses and sketch papers always surround and stare at it for ages…

I mean, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! I think people with an artistic background would benefit so much from this museum. Even I, without a thread of knowledge in art, found some paintings so beautiful and absorbing that you can’t help but stare.

There were hundreds of wonderful artwork on display at the Musée d’Orsay and I ignorantly knew only three of them: van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone, Édouard Manet’s Olympia, and James McNeill Whistler’s Whistler’s Mother (above), which I knew from Mr. Bean’s destruction of the painting in the 1997 Mr. Bean movie.

They did not allow any form of photography in the museum halls but we managed to sneak a snapshot of the main exhibition hall (although the angle is slightly tilted lol):

A little caution note though: Most artwork on display at the Musée d’Orsay have descriptions written in French – only. Well actually almost everything everywhere in Paris are in French only. No English translation. So I would recommend anybody who plans to go there (and do not understand French) to get a guided tour.

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#6 – Arc de Triomphe

The Arc is probably the second most iconic structure in Paris.

It is interesting how somebody could come up with this idea of building a gigantic arch that has no obvious practical use in the middle of a busy (probably busiest) junction in town, isn’t it?

Looking at it always reminds me of a scene in a movie (forgot which one) in which a huge meteor from outer space crashes through the arc and utterly destroys it.

Haha that is why I have such a strong impression towards this monument!

Did you know that there is another (identically named) Arch of Triumph in, of all places, Pyongyang, North Korea?

And that the one is North Korea is actually the largest in the world, making the (significantly more famous) twin in Paris only second largest!

That is actually what infuriated Liberty (winged figure below) to heroically call the French to defend their nation…

… No lah…! Haha but that is indeed a sculpture of Liberty calling the French to defend their nation… against her European enemies, not Kim Jong-Il.

In fact, the entire arch was commissioned by Emperor Napoleon to commemorate the victory of France and the soldiers who fought and died during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is laid beneath the arc to, along with an eternal flame, forever remember the countless unknown soldiers who died for France. 

I’m not sure how they picked which soldier’s body (perhaps by random?) to be buried here but this is sure one lucky guy!

Waaaaayyy too long of an entry! Gonna have continue in Part 2. 

]]> http://www.james-chow.com/2011/04/05/passionate-paris-p-1/feed/ 0 http://www.james-chow.com/2011/03/30/serene-st-albans/ http://www.james-chow.com/2011/03/30/serene-st-albans/#comments Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:21:00 +0000 James Chow http://www.james-chow.com/2011/03/30/serene-st-albans/ I may be having my semester break when I flew over 10,000 kilometres to visit Shuyi, but she sure wasn’t having hers!

In fact, she had to go to class on Mondays and Tuesdays. Yup, just two days a week! What a wonderful privilege for those studying a degree in law!

While she stayed near the main university campus in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, her law school is actually located in a city approx. 10 miles east called St. Albans. 

So instead of sitting home and doing nothing while she goes for classes on Monday and Tuesday, I followed Shuyi to St. Albans and spent the time exploring this beautiful English suburb.

St. Albans is a refreshing breath of fresh air and presents an entirely different view of England from the bustling metropolis of central London. 

The serene, quiet environment, old buildings and cathedrals, cosy cottages, small footpaths with greenery in every direction…  To me, this is the the more England-ish part of England!

Everything, from this park…

… to this mossy-walled back alley…

… to this peaceful graveyard beside a church…

… simply look like scenes taken out from some old English drama!

Anyways, there is a huge cathedral, also named St. Albans, at the other side of town. This enormous structure is the second longest (of the many hundreds of cathedrals) in the entire United Kingdom!

Before entering the cathedral’s great wooden doors, I took a stroll around the building and found this HUGE park sort of place right beside the cathedral.

The field was SO incredibly huge that you couldn’t even see the end of it.

There were people there simply walking their dogs and playing frisbee. But what lies beyond the wide expanse is simply up to the imagination. (perhaps Hogwarts)

I had not really intended to enter the church but it was getting freezing outside. To defrost I slowly pushed open the grand doors and stepped into the a reception area. Apart from a few staff and a couple of visitors, the huge place was completely deserted.

A church staff member smiled to me and I took the liberty to assume that I was welcome to look around as a visitor.

I carefully looked around and found the history behind the name of the church. The story dates back in the 3rd century when England was part of the Roman Empire and Christianity was not allowed to be practised. St. Alban sheltered a Christian priest in his house and when the soldiers went to search his house, he exchanged cloaks with the priest to protect his visitor and was promptly arrested. The furious Roman courts then demanded that St. Alban declare that he was not a Christian but he staunchly refused, leading to his execution by beheading. Legend has it that after the executioner did his job, his eyes dropped out of his head. Eww…!

The cathedral is said to be founded on the very site of St. Alban’s beheading. It even has a shrine that contains a shoulder blade bone believed to belong to St. Alban himself!

The church is so huge that it had its own mini-museum detailing its over-1000 history throughout the ages!

There were also some nice exhibits like this replica of a 14th century mechanical clock, created by Richard of Wallingford, who was the head of the St. Albans Abbey back then.

The clock is said to be one of the earliest and most advanced mechanical clocks in that time.

Another fascinating thing that can generally be found in old cathedrals is the floor tomb.

I’m not sure if it is disrespectful to walk on top of these polished, human-sized tiles on the church floor with inscriptions of the person being buried underneath, but I avoided stepping on them nonetheless. Who knows, right?

Anyways, it was getting late when I got out of the cathedral (late as in 4.15PM late, it was already getting dark at 4.30PM in the afternoon in winter!), and I had to wait for Shuyi’s class to finish at 5PM, so I stopped by for some coffee at this very nicey coffee house.

It was kinda Starbucks-styled but with a cosier feeling in it… Well perhaps it was the warmth that I appreciated deeply after all the cold outside… And a MUCH larger building.

Before heading back to Hatfield, we had dinner at this very nice place called O’Neill’s pub and grill!

I’m sure that you guys studying in the UK see this like everyday but to me, this is special!

Dudes just sitting around with a beer, with soft music and smell of chips…

The English bar whose imitations can be widely seen everywhere in the world…

Nobody ever goes to England without eating fish and chips at least once!

The place also had these very cool gaming machines (I wish they had some vintage pinball machine too) and a cigarette vending machine in the middle!

After exiting the premises and as we were walking down the street, we discovered that the exterior view of the building looks like it’s been a school or library or something…

… and if you look closer at the space above the entrance, you can actually see faded engraved letters saying ‘PUBLIC LIBRARY’!

Englishman 1: Alas, the number of townsfolk visiting the public library is declining.

Mayor: Who needs a library? Let’s build a pub.

-

… And so it came to be.

-

Nobody goes to London without posing with the Tower Bridge. So here’s mine.

The Tower bridge is often mistaken as the London Bridge (as in London Bridge is falling down…), but the truth is London Bridge is a relatively common-looking bridge upstream next to the Tower Bridge.

At night, the London Bridge has bright colours illuminating its body:

While beautiful, it is nowhere as alluring as its world-famous neighbour at night:

The Tower Bridge got its name from the nearby Tower of London, the ancient castle used by medieval kings of England to imprison, torture and execute traitors and heretics.

LOL I guess it was roughly an ancient equivalent to our Kamunting Dentention Centre in Taiping… Only that the medieval kings did not need to cook up legal excuses like the ISA to send prisoners there as our politicians do!

Today, the Tower of London has (as usual) become a major tourist attraction showcasing, among others, the Royal Crown Jewels and centuries of Royal Armour.

We had a relaxing stroll along the River Thames that late afternoon. As evening came and went, the lights along the river bank lit up and I realized that there was no better place to be in London at that moment!

Looking across the river were some of the most fantastic sights that you could see across a body of water.

London’s financial district (officially the City of London, also known as the Square Mile) resides within the the ancient boundaries of London and is now, along with New York City, the world’s leading global finance centres.

One of the iconic buildings in the Square Mile is the Swiss Re Building (a.k.a the Gherkin), the rocket-looking building across the river.

We took a water taxi on the River Thames from the London Bridge Pier heading west towards the Waterloo Pier, where the London Eye is.

Cruising on the River Thames at night was amazing! The cool late-winter breeze and dazzling night scenery on both sides made the ride absolutely unforgettable.

Although it was still quite cold (about 3 – 6°C), it felt good freezing myself in the evening river breeze. There were proper seats in the cabin for each passenger, but we simply couldn’t allow ourselves to sit still while cruising on one of the world’s most famous rivers!

Not that I’m advocating it, but it is interesting to learn that Tower Bridge was once a popular suicide site, and even now, once a week, a dead body is found washed ashore somewhere along the entire length of the River Thames^[1]! Creepy!

Haha but who cares about dead bodies in the river when you’ve arrived at the London Eye?

Probably the most famous Ferris wheel in the world, the London Eye is 135 metres tall. It was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world when it was first built, but the record is now held by the Singapore Flyer near Marina Bay.

The London Eye is an absolutely awesome sight to behold even from its base:

Malaysia had its own version of the London Eye – the Eye on Malaysia – which was opened in 2007 but later dismantled in 2010.

A standard adult ticket on the London Eye costs £18.60, which is around RM93. Haha frankly I think this is the kind of ride that you will only go on once in your life, and only when you’re with a partner.

I mean, while the sight from above was utterly spectacular, RM93 for a Ferris wheel ride is rather expensive LOL.

Each gondola looked like a medicine pill (above) and could fit a small group of people. There were seats in the centre of the gondola but with everybody standing in front of the glass walls, there was absolutely no point sitting down.

I heard that the London eye is a very popular place for guys to propose to their girlfriends. Apparently all you need to do is book an entire gondola, add some champagne and chocolates, and of course an engagement ring, and you’ve got it – the perfectly romantic proposal that your fiancée is gonna boast in their blogs and conversations for years to come.

And the duration on the London Eye is well suited for a proposal as well!

Let’s analyze: one ride takes about 60 minutes – 15 minutes for you to calm down and pretend to your girlfriend that nothing’s happening, 10 minutes to say sweet sweet words to build the atmosphere, 5 minutes (at the very top) to get down on your knees and say: “Will you marry me?”, 5 minutes of speechlessness on her part, 10 minutes for her to finally find the words to say “Yes I do” or whatever, and finally 15 minutes of quickly finishing the champagne and chocolates to avoid waste.

Perfect!

At the top of the wheel, we enjoyed a fantastic night view of the Thames and the surrounding bustling city from above. The Palace of Westminster, where the UK Houses of Parliament meet, had a very different look when viewed from above.

Of course, being a couple we cannot possibly not pose for a photo on this ride.

After getting down from the Ferris wheel, we crossed the Westminster bridge and took gazillions of pictures with the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. There is absolutely no reason for a tourist to not hang around the this building even in the freezing wind. Gosh, trust me, it was chilling to the bone standing on that bridge!

Something was odd, though. If you look at the brightly lit Houses of Parliament below, you’d clearly see that a portion of the right corner is not lit. One part of it is just much darker than the its neighbouring parts.

At that time, we assumed that it was probably due to some shorted fuse / snapped wire / forgot to pay electricity bill etc. but after I reached home, I googled for images of the Houses of Parliament and I realized that every single picture online, even those on travel websites and official London postcards, have got the same, exact part of the building unlit!

So this is no mistake! That part of the building is intentionally left darkened! Can anybody tell me why is that?

Or is that dark, inglorious part of parliament specially reserved for opposition MPs? LOL.

Anyways, we later walked on to the entrance of the Westminster Abbey.

This immense gothic church is definitely one of the most famous in the UK. Besides being the coronation site of kings and queens of England as well as the traditional wedding venue for the royal family since almost a millennium ago, the church is also the preferred-burial-site (if there is such a thing) for English kings and queens.

A significant number of hugely famous English people were buried – no, sorry… interred – in Westminster Abbey. These people include Charles Dickens, Ernst Rutherford, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton… LOL didn’t you read The Da Vinci Code?

Perhaps it was a mistake that we visited the church at night. While the building looked absolutely majestic during daytime, it looked quite spooky at night! Like some giant haunted castle… but I like!

Earlier that morning, we visited the Natural History Museum, which we had been unable to visit the previous day due to the afternoon queue.

I am not an ardent museum-goer, but I had been looking forward to visiting the Natural History Museum even before I had plans to go to the UK. Many books and novels that I’ve read referred to the museum and it seemed to be an extremely exciting place!

And indeed it was!

Right inside the entrance was a giant Diplodocus, a late-Jurassic period plant eating dinosaur.

While dinosaur fossils are only like a small part of this gigantic museum, they are definitely its primary attractions!

The famous Triceratops!

A monstrous I-forgot-whazzit-called-saurus.

This looks like a mini T. Rex, but it isn’t.

A Stegosaurus, maybe?

Ah, I should have taken pictures of the signs next to the dinosaurs…

Look! Dinosaur eggs! A Maiasaura nest… this is a reconstruction, of course.

Apart from dinosaurs, there were still a whole bunch of other fossils and rare animals! Like the Dodo bird:

This weird, extinct mammal:

A live-size blue whale, alongside skeletons and remnants of other giants like the woolly mammoth, the sperm whale, gray whale, elephants and dolphins.

It’s gargantuan body looks like a submarine hull and makes even the largest elephant look miniscule. I think it’s mouth can comfortably fit two giant elephants…

Being the Natural History Museum, it covers not only the evolution of animals but also the evolution of the natural universe and planets as well. There is a special escalator that brings you straight up ‘into outer space’ where you learn about the birth and evolution of the universe and all the stars and planets inside.

This is absolutely one of the most amazing museums that I’ve ever been to and definitely my most favourite!

I think kids can gain more knowledge here than a whole year of elementary Biology + Cosmology class.

Lo and behold! The godfather of evolution himself was there too!

Sitting regally on his marble throne, Charles Darwin oversees the great Central Hall from the centre of the grand staircase. Like a god.

The next morning, we went to an attraction near the London Bridge called the London Dungeon.

If you are into English History, particularly the scariest and most terrible parts of it, this attraction is for you.

Using a combination of special effects, mazes, rides and live actors, the London Dungeon transports you back to the medieval age and relive the horrors of the most famous historical events!

For example, at the exhibit of the 1665 Great Plague of London, an ‘unlucky’ tourist among our group was strapped to an operation seat by a doctor and got his arm ‘operated’ upon. ‘Blood’ was sprinkled on our faces when lights suddenly went out the moment the doctor’s bloody knife hit the person.

Of course it was all fake! The tourist didn’t die and later rejoined our group in one piece!

After being ’sentenced to death’ by a live and humourous judge in a mock court, we were put on a boat ride with spooky sound effects and sent through a Traitors’ Gate replica into the Tower of London.

Later, among the many scenes, we ventured ‘unknowingly’ into Sweeney Todd’s barber shop and had him ‘cut’ our hair (we could actually feel it!); met the victims of Jack the Ripper and later becoming ‘victims’ ourselves when a terrible figure blasted in through a window with a knife; and had one of our fellow tourists arrested by Bloody Mary for heresy and burnt to death in front of our eyes. Of course he magically survived the fire.

The above is a poster for the Bloody Mary attraction. Not too scary, is it? It’s interesting to discover that earlier there was an advertisement in London Underground stations that featured a much more gruesome, zombie-like Bloody Mary. It was later deemed too scary for children and was banned.

Click here to see. (Warning. Image might shock some readers.)

In the end we were strapped and to be ‘hanged’ at Newgate Prison. After our charges were read against us, the hangman pulled the lever and we literally fell ‘through the gallows trapdoor to our death’! The ride was something like a mini-version of the Spaceshot ride in Genting where we sat on this row of seats that suddenly dropped towards the ground in total darkness.

The stunning visual effects of the displays and impressive showmanship of the actors made the London Dungeon extremely popular – check out the insane queue at the entrance!

You have no idea. The queue was like two hours long, and it was friggin’ freezing in the late-winter drizzling morning. But nobody seemed to care about the rain! People would just put on raincoats and carry umbrellas and queue on!

The tickets were not cheap either! An adult ticket is around £23 (RM115), but you could buy tickets to several attractions managed by the same company (London Eye, Madame Tussauds, Sea Life etc.) in a bundle for a cheaper price.

That morning was exceptionally cold (I think about 3-5°C), so we decided to combat the chilling rain with… ice cream!

Brrr… I feel cold writing this.

Later in the afternoon, we went to three of London’s most famous shopping streets – Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street.

These three streets are packed with branded retail stores and high-end restaurants and cafes – shops that average mortals like me have no business with. Yet, who cares? Window shopping was enough for us!

Regent Street is famous for its curved (not straight) design… or is it called layout? Whatever lah, here it is:

I simply adore looking at this street! For some reason, the curvature of the street gradually leading the shops out of sight gives it a mysterious yet charming feeling… Like in a strangely vivid dream!

We had some great afternoon tea at a nice cafe along the street.

Shuyi and I love toy stores. And there is one ultimate toy store in Regent Street that no Toys ‘R’ Us in Malaysia can beat – the Hamleys flagship store.

From Ben 10 to Teletubbies to Barbie to Disney characters, Hamleys has it all! There is even a special section where you could make your own custom-made teddy bear out of raw cotton, and a dedicated section for LEGO. Indeed, there is almost a dedicated section for every major toy brand!

But among the magic shows, clowns, TV show corners and race tracks, there was one single department that utterly blew me away – the fifth floor.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you would know that I am so totally a Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fan, having written quite a few entries about the latter.

On the fifth floor was the greatest collection of LOTR and HP merchandizes I’ve ever seen!

You can literally buy the wands of Hermione, Harry, Lord Voldemort, Lucius Malfoy, Dumbledore or whichever HP character you like – along with descriptions on the type of wood and feather core!

They literally sell wands as though they are Ollivander’s! Check out their wand stockpile:

Now I don’t even know why Harry needed to search so hard in the wilderness for Godric Gryffindor’s Sword in Book 7 if he could have just bought it in Hamleys for £180.

And a Nimbus 2000 + Marauder’s Map (underneath the broom) just in case you missed the last train home.

The awesomeness of the Harry Potter merchandize collection was only outmatched by its Lord of the Rings stuff.

A replicate of the Evenstar, made of sterling silver, the jewel that Arwen gave Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.

From left to right: Theoden King’s Herugrim, Frodo’s Sting, Arwen’s Hadhafang and of course, Aragorn’s Anduril.

Obviously, they aren’t real swords, just letter openers. But WHO IN THE WORLD opens letters using Anduril, the sword of kings, forged from the shards of Narsil, which destroyed the Dark Lord of Mordor by removing the One Ring from him? WHO DOES?

Ah please forgive me. When it comes to LOTR, I can be a bit… passionate.

Naturally, I almost wet my pants when I saw this:

What is it? You ask?

This, my friend, is the One Ring. Made of 24K pure gold and has the exact Elvish Tengwar inscription:

which, of course, translates to:

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

in the Black Speech, created and used by the dark lord Sauron.

I would have very irrationally bought the ring if it did not cost £280 (RM1400).

Anyway, back to reality, we moved on next to Oxford Street.

Oxford Street is the busiest street in Europe, with flagship stores of many major UK chain stores opened here. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group and my entrepreneurial idol, opened his first  Virgin Records store on this very street when he was only 21.

Remember Harrods from part 1 of this travel log? That’s the UK’s largest department store. And here’s the UK’s second largest – Selfridges.

It was getting late when we were finished with Oxford Street. I have another elder cousin living in London so we had arranged for a dinner in her house.

She and her husband lives in Stratford, about thirty minutes from Oxford Street using the London underground.

We were greeted with an extraordinary, dearly-missed, home-cooked Chinese food!

We had a nice hearty time chatting and were so stuffed with wonderful food that when we were served ice-cream for dessert, we had to politely decline.

The next morning, we visited the one place that I could not have missed.

Being an Arsenal fan since I was in form three, I made a pilgrimage to the Emirates Stadium in London – the home ground of the Arsenal FC!

Being the second-largest football club stadium in England (only after you-know-which-stadium), it was absolutely breath-taking to finally behold the actual stadium in its full glory, after the many years of seeing it on television during live matches!

Unfortunately there were no matches going on in the stadium during the days that I was in London.

I have been staunchly supporting this club since the days of David Seaman in Highbury. In fact, it was Seaman himself that made me support the club in the first place.

There was an ultra awesome team line-up of every single Arsenal player and manager since 1913 – called The Spirit of Highbury.

No Malaysian who has visited his favourite football team’s stadium could return home without an original jersey to show off to his fellow fans at mamak stalls on match days.

I am, unfortunately, one of those sad souls.

Even before I went on this trip, I had been adamant to get myself an Arsenal Jersey from the Emirates Stadium. And now that I finally have the opportunity, the staff at The Armoury (the Arsenal official merchandize shop) told me that ALL ARSENAL HOME AND AWAY JERSEYS WERE SOLD OUT except for XL and XXL sizes!!!!!!

This is thanks to the fact that the Carling Cup final was on that evening at Wembley Stadium (no chance I could have got the tickets, so I didn’t bother) and the jerseys were swept clean by fans.

It was an utter disappointment as I had no idea when will I have the chance (if ever) to come back here again to get it!

Well, although I couldn’t get my jersey, I had to buy something right? So I bought this official Arsenal polo shirt and tie. Still uber awesome!

I should also mention that the Armoury sells everything – related and unrelated – to football in the name of Arsenal.

From Arsenal jerseys, scarfs, t-shirts, socks and underwear, to Arsenal coffee mugs, key chains, wallets…

… official Arsenal dog shirts and collars …

… official Arsenal dinosaur and teddy bear…

…all the way to official Arsenal bed sheet set and baby clothes!

Crazy variety, isn’t it? Haha you can fill your house will Arsenal stuff if you want to!

***** OMG THIS BLOG ENTRY IS GETTING INSANELY LONG!! *****

OK let’s cut things short!

In the afternoon we went to the Covent Garden Market.

Markets in England are very interesting as they have lots of ‘street performers’ –people doing random performances for the public in hopes of getting some public donation. It may sound shabby, but these performers are extremely talented and professional!

It’s located adjacent to my street LOL.

There were magicians performing and selling magic tricks…

Stand-up comedy / talk show…

Musicians playing in mini-orchestras…

… As well as acrobats doing special performances!

These performers gather huge crowds and sometimes earn quite a lot of money!

On our last night in London, we went to Chinatown. Well, as a Chinese I couldn’t really have skipped this place, could I?

London Chinatown is, from what I observed, dominated by Hong Kong nationals. Perhaps that’s because HK is the only part of China that was colonized by the British, so you know, like Malaysia, people tend to flock to where their masters come from.

They say that London Chinatown’s roasted duck is like, world-famous. So we tried it:

The roasted duck was not too bad, really! The down side was, of course, the price. We ordered half-a-duck and it cost us £30 (RM150)! ONE WHOLE roasted duck in Malaysia costs less than HALF of that! Haha but I guess we can’t compare it that way…

An interesting difference between the London roasted duck and our typical Asian roasted duck is the layer of fat. Roasted ducks in London categorically have a much thicker layer of fat compared to those that we find here in East Asia.

We theorized that it is possibly because it is colder in the UK compared to Malaysia, so ducks need more fat to keep warm…?

Ah now it sounds stupid, so let’s just forget it.

After checking out from our hotel the next morning, we visited our last destination in London – the British Museum.

Established more than 250 years ago, the British Museum houses some of the world’s most arcane artefacts, such as the original Rosetta Stone (dated 196 BC):

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient inscription of a decree in three different languages: Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Egyption Demotic (everyday language), and Ancient Greek. This stone allows modern researchers to better understand and decipher the ancient Hieroglyphic script, whose meaning would otherwise been lost forever.

Equally awesome were sculptures from the original, ancient Greek Parthenon, known as the Elgin Marbles (dated about 400 BC).

These sculptures are now being demanded by Greece to be returned to them, but so far the British Museum has been refusing to comply. Of course they’d refuse! I mean, if I had the sculptures in my house and ZEUS himself appeared from the skies and demanded that I return the stuff to Greece, I would probably refuse.

It is very interesting to note that the heads of the human sculptures were always chopped off, and so were their genitals, which were almost always missing, leaving behind a clearly severed rough spot… Can somebody enlighten me as to why this is so?

Check out this actual mummy (yes, actual!) of Cleopatra of Thebes. X-ray photos beside the mummy show that she is still inside, preserved, for almost two thousand years!

Perhaps one night, you know, after everybody has left… under the moonlight, the bandages will loosen and fall off… and … Aaaaaaarrrgghh…

To the history / archaeology uninitiated guy like me, the mummies section of the British Museum was totally the most fascinating. I mean, how can you resist the rows and rows of ancient mummies, sarcophagi, coffins and skulls around you?

There were even actual animal mummies! Inside their own sarcophagi! (See the x-ray photos on paper in the background)

Skulls that are over 4000 years old…

Cute figurines made of bone that were crafted by humans SIX THOUSANDS YEARS AGO! (about 4000 BC)

And… a skeleton and mummified body dating back to 3000 BC!

OMG the amount of creepy stuff in this section is both impressive and bloodcurdling. If a necromancer wanted to summon an undead army, this would probably be an ideal place to start… LOL.

Haha imagine you missed the museum’s closing announcement and were accidentally locked in this – very – section for the entire night… alone… in the dark… I mean, who knows what really happens on the museum floors in the dead, silent night, right?  Woah I would die and probably join ranks with the undead if I were locked in here!

Anyways, later that night we finally arrived at King’s Cross to board our train back to Hatfield.

I made it my final mission in London to search for platform 9¾ in King’s Cross – the famed magical gateway between our Muggle world to Harry Potter’s magical world!

I failed.

Apparently the entire King’s Cross station was under comprehensive renovation ahead of the 2012 Olympics and many, many parts of the station were boarded up and covered from public view..

Here’s platform 9:

And after a long search, we concluded that platform 9¾ was hiding behind these temporary construction walls:

Poor wizards.

Their luggage trolleys would be so stuck in the miniscule space within the walls when they return from Hogwarts for their summer holidays.

**********

Anyway, thus ended my trip to London and also this incrediextremelinsane long blog entry.

My trip to London was an extraordinarily lovely experience. The great places and wonderful people there (the British people that we met were generally very helpful and friendly) made me simply can’t wait to visit again. YAY!

I’d always thought that I could only visit places like the UK or the US if I decided to do my masters degree over there or something… But nope! It seems that a cupid issue is sufficient cause.

Since Shuyi continued her studies in the UK last October, I have always pondered the prospect of making use of this perfect excuse to make a trip to the land of our former colonial bosses. Haha, it worked!

In 1954, Tunku Abdul Rahman led a delegation to London to seek independence for Malaysia for  the first time, but failed. Now I think it was probably because London is just such a wondrous place to visit that our then Prime Minister-to-be and his friends, err… got distracted, a bit.

LOL just kidding la! But anyways he made up with the ‘mistake’ with a second trip in 1956 and settled the independence deal. So no harm done.

This is by far the longest flight that I have travelled on – 13.5 hours! It was horrible, as I have a problem sleeping on planes, buses, trains etc. Listened to music for an hour, read a book for 3 hours, rested for 3 hours… done everything I could, and there were still some 6 hours left!

6 hours! That’s like two friggin’ engineering lab sessions back-to-back…

I made two friends Jonny and Paul on the plane. Jonny’s girlfriend is French so he had lots of very useful advice on tourists spots in Paris, and Paul had a deck of cards – a godsend to burn away time in the cabin!

Back in Malaysia, I was told that our citizens’ immigration records to the British weren’t that good – thanks to irresponsible idiots abusing their social visit passes and illegally staying to work…

And before my trip, LOADS of people warned me that a single 23-year-old Malaysian guy trying to enter the UK claiming for a ‘visit’ is sufficient reason for high suspicion. And the UK Border Agency (equivalent to our Immigration Dept) is apparently quite well known for sending people home straight away if they don’t feel that you’re trustworthy enough!

I was kinda super nervous when queuing at the UK Border after my flight landed. I knew it was unlikely but what if I was refused entry? I mean, after enduring 13 tormenting hours of flight from KL, only to be sent on a 13-hour return journey?! It was unthinkable.

Fortunately, I was greeted by a very friendly Border Agency officer who smiled broadly and bade me a warm ‘good morning’. I’m sorry to say this but our own immigration officers back home wouldn’t even contract their precious facial muscles if their lives depended on it. And now this lady was smiling as though me visiting her country was the most honourable thing that had ever happened to her (of course it wasn’t).

She politely asked me if I came alone, and what was the nature of my visit. I answered everything frankly and courteously, and provided my landing card which included my cousin’s home address in London. The cheerful lady inquired a little more about where I intend visit and stuff and that was it! I was in!

Although it wasn’t snowing, I had been constantly told by my mum and dad to wear more clothes and stuff cuz I was probably gonna freeze to death. I didn’t believe them. The temperature was around 1-4°C, which I thought was nothing since it was even hotter than my refrigerator – and I loved sticking my head into the freezer. Since I had not died in the freezer, I would not die in this weather too, I reasoned.

Wearing nothing more than the usual attire that I wear to Toastmasters meetings in MMU, I stepped out of the airport into the February weather.

I almost died.

I discovered that the chilly late-winter weather was not to be compared with an LG refrigerator – refrigerators cannot accommodate my whole body, and freezers don’t blast ferocious winds to your face. I quickly retreated back into the airport, and put on the huge balloon-like jacket that I had brought but sworn not to use.

Since Shuyi stayed in Hertfordshire, which is approximately 40KM north of London, we took a coach from the airport. The coach’s company name is National Express, and the driver treated us with utmost politeness. Checking our tickets, helping us with the luggage and stuff… all done cheerfully and happily! The coach seats were also in perfect condition (almost brand new), with security pamphlets just like those on airplanes! There was also a very friendly and funny security briefing to the passengers (although there were only 4 on board including us), and the smiles and jolliness that the driver exhibited would probably be ignored as insanity on any express buses back in Malaysia.

Hertfordshire’s county coat-of-arms has two cute Rudolfs!

After staying in Hatfield for two days and fully recovered from the exhaustion of having been deprived of any sleep for the past 36 hours, we headed to London. Actually the London-KL time difference wasn’t that bad. The good thing about living a student’s lifestyle, you know – sleeping at 5AM and waking up at 1PM – is that I was spared of any jet lag during the entire journey. (Coz 5AM in KL = 10PM in London = sleeping time)

When we arrived in London, we first checked into the place that we would be staying for the next five days.

Located in central London, our studio is just adjacent to Tottenham Court Road, and extremely close to the British Museum and the prestigious University College London.  It was a very nice and comfortable double room with its own bathroom and kitchen!

The kitchen was probably the best part of the deal.

With a fridge, oven, electric kettle, microwave oven and stoves, we could open a mini-restaurant here! Did I mention that pots, frying pans, plates, glasses and all kitchen utensils and eating cutlery were also provided?

My cousin David came to London from Oxford (the university! ) on the same day so we arranged a meet up.

Here’s David, Shuyi, me and Christina – a ‘friend’ and colleague of David’s at Oxford.

After lunch, we were brought on sort of a spontaneous tour along the River Thames. On the way we stopped by the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, both of which are located at the iconic Trafalgar Square.

Strolling along the south bank of the River Thames, we reached the Shakespeare’s Globe, which is a faithful reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre built by William Shakespeare’s Playing Company back in the 16th century.

The original Globe Theatre, which was burnt down by an accident with a live cannon while performing Shakespeare’s Henry VIII in 1613, was located just several hundred meters from the new, reconstructed one.

I think William Shakespeare’s awesomeness doesn’t strike us typical Malaysians much because not even one Shakespearean play was taught in our national schools’ English Literature syllabus. As I recall, the only Shakespeare’s work included in our syllabus was Sonnet 18, you know, the “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” thingy? That was the only one! Or did I not pay attention in class?

I think the ultra-conservative Malaysian government would probably ban even Sonnet 18 if they found out that scholars now are suggesting that Shakespeare’s Sonnets may carry a hint of homosexuality… but ahhh yes, they are probably currently too preoccupied fussing over a certain politician’s sexual orientation.

Anyway, next up is the Millennium bridge.

Looks familiar? Yes it does. Because it is the bridge that was destroyed by the Death Eaters in the 6th Harry Potter movie.

Walking on the bridge made me feel that I might be attacked by Lucius Malfoy and a bunch of smoke-trailing death eaters coercing me to join their cause, which I would be more than glad to comply.

Crossing the Thames on the Millennium bridge led us straight to St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of the most iconic structures of London.

This cathedral was built in the 17th century but like many other really old cathedrals, several other St. Paul’s-es were built on the very same site and in this case, the first St. Paul’s was built back in the early 7th century – that’s a millennium before this one was built!

Awesomeness!

The next morning, we visited one of the most popular public places in London – Piccadilly Circus.

While there are absolutely no circus elephants and clowns in this area, Piccadilly Circus (‘circus’ meaning circle in Latin) is one of those places where locals lepak and tourists must drop by for a picture.

Adjacent to Piccadilly Circus is Leicester Square, where you can get great deals on tickets for West End theatre performances! London’s West End, along with New York’s Broadway, is generally accepted to be world’s highest standard of commercial theatre!

It would be an absolute shame to visit London and not watch one of West End’s theatre performances. Featuring extremely talented performers singing and acting to the music from a live orchestra in a beautiful old theatre building… Yay!

There were so many performances but we chose a classic one.

Our tickets cost £64 in total, about RM300. But this was already a bargain ticket, which was cheaper than the original price. Original-priced tickets can go up to £78 per ticket!

Theatre performances do not change as regularly as films in cinemas do. For example, this Phantom of the Opera performance has been performing at Her Majesty’s Theatre for 24 years.

Other performances like Mamma Mia! at the Prince of Wales Theatre has been on show for 11 years, and The Mousetrap at St. Martin’s Theatre has been on performance for 58 years! I mean, actors can spend their whole careers in one theatre!

We spent the afternoon walking along the streets and taking a lot of pictures. I cannot possibly put up pictures of every single place that we’ve visited but Harrods definitely deserves a mention!

Famous for once being the shopping place for the royal family, including the Queen, Harrods is also one of the few department stores in the world with a dress code.

Apparently, the royal family gradually stopped shopping at Harrods after Mohammad Al Fayed bought over the store in 1985. The royal family was also apparently furious at the owner after he accused the them of plotting a conspiracy that led to his son, Dodi Fayed’s death with Princess Diana in the infamous 1997 Paris car crash.

But enough history, this majestic structure itself deserves awe. Hehe although we didn’t bother to check out the price tags inside, at least we’ve been here!

I reckoned that having lunch in Harrods was probably a bad idea since I do not have a queen’s salary. So we had our lunch at a restaurant across the street.

The thing about British restaurants is that they always have this very wide smile on their waitresses’ face and almost suspiciously polite service. I guess this is what happens when there is no service charge unlike certain countries where tips are automatically counted and do not need to be earned.

The food was nice!

Even the prawn shell + other inedible rubbish could be made into another decorative dish!

In the afternoon we visited one of the most exclusively cultural parts of London, nicknamed Albertopolis, in South Kensington. This place is home to three of the most famous museums in England – Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Science Museum – as well other world-famous institutions like the Royal College of Music, Imperial College London, and Royal Albert Hall.

Although the Natural History Museum is probably the most famous of the three museums, and I had been longing to check out its dinosaur fossil collection, we did not visit it on the second day because of its preposterously long queue!

It was kinda unfortunate that my visit to London coincided with their national school holidays. So these attractions were understandably jam-packed by kids from family outings and school field trips!

Regardless, we visited the V&A museum:

Named after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, the V&A is the largest museum of decorative arts and design in the world.

From colourful stained glass…

to towering sculptures…

to delicate glass ornaments…

I am no artistic man, and I have no special talent in spotting the intricate specialties in artwork, you know, stuff that will make your designer friend go ‘wooooooooooooooow’ and start rambling about the excellent tone and perfect texture etc, but I can tell that this is rare stuff – stuff that you can’t afford in your house.

Next, we proceeded to the Science Museum. My kind of stuff.

I’ve actually forgotten to take any photos inside the Science Museum. But I can clearly remember one of the exhibitions was a working example of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine! Dunno what it is? Check back your Theory of Computing history textbook.

One thing odd that I’ve noticed though, compare, say, the grand entrance of the V&A museum:

… the ultra-majestic, palace-like entrance of the Natural History Museum:

… the classical Pantheon-like entrance of the British Museum…

aaaaaaand… the 7-eleven convenience-store-like, puny little entrance of the Science Museum:

Notice that there is actually a blurry sign on top saying ‘Science Museum’… Come on lah! While England is famous for its history and culture, the UK also has also produced the second greatest number of Nobel Prize Laureates in the world! Surely the Science Museum entrance deserves some renovation?

Hehe anyways, we arrived at Her Majesty’s Theatre at night for the show.

The exterior lighting makes the theatre building look either magnificently gothic or simply haunted-looking.

But the interior was pleasantly comfortable. There were three levels (or ‘circles’) in total and the stage was fantastically propped.

Maybe it is because this was the first time I watched a West End theatre performance, but I cannot adequately express how much in love I was with the skill, professionalism and showmanship of the performers! (Sorry no pictures!)

This Phantom of the Opera performance was extremely faithful to the novel and the music from the live orchestra was absolutely breath-taking. After a combination of heavenly singing, fancy costumes, fiery torches, magical illusions, and a gigantic chandelier hurtling towards the stage from above our heads… *gasps* Many of the audience were teary-eyed during the final standing ovation.

It was good. Damn good. This you have to take it from me.

This entry is getting way too long for a regular blog entry, so I’m splitting it into two parts. Part two of this travel log can be found here.

As I have stated earlier, I am now in the midst of doing my final year project, which is basically my undergraduate thesis, and have been camping in our lab for the past 14 weeks.

Naturally, given the comfortable environment of our lab, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in campus.

Speaking of my final year project, it came to me as a dismaying shock when I realized, after calculating my estimated CGPA, that I can achieve my goal of graduating with 3.50 ONLY IF I scored A’s in ALL FOUR SUBJECTS taken this semester, AND the 3-subject-equivalent Final Year Subject.

If you look at it carefully, that is almost an impossible task. Scoring A’s for final year subjects are never easy, but scoring an A for a final year project is almost unheard off. My FYP supervisor, for instance, has told me that he has never given a student an ‘A’ before.

So How???

Anyway, moving on to happier topics… Remember Prof. Riekert? He’s here to visit us again!

The kind professor from Stuttgart Media University has come to pay our faculty another annual visit (as part of his job as external examiner for our major), and wanted to meet up with us, the Cameron Highlands trip group, again!

We have some really ambitious plans to visit the professor some time in the future in Germany! Let’s see when this can become reality!

In the meantime, I am stuck with my final year project, which, although interesting, is also extremely stressful.

Just given my part 1 presentation a couple of weeks ago, hopefully my supervisor and moderator liked it! This presentation accounts for 20% of the entire project’s marks, and is CRITICAL that I get as high as possible if I am aiming for the impossible goal of getting an ‘A’.

**********

Ahaha, another piece of news… I am going to the UK for 2 weeks at the end of this month! Yay!

Updates after I come back.

(Note: For those who do not know what Toastmasters is, we are a worldwide network of public speaking clubs. We do not make toasts.)

At the beginning of the term, we saw three key areas of improvement and set out three specific goals to be achieved by the end of the 1-year term:

1)  The club has never achieved any awards beyond the Distinguished Club award which was achieved back in 2006. Our goal this year is to, for the first time, achieve the President’s Distinguished Club award – the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a club by Toastmasters International. This award recognizes educational and managerial standards achieved by the club.

2) Members are key to the club’s educational capacity and the membership was at unhealthy levels. Our goal is to triple the number of active and paying members in the club by the end of the year.

3) Members were losing enthusiasm from overly procedure-bound meetings and there was a lack of bonding among committees and ordinary members. Our goal is to achieve a sense of deep fellowship and bonding among members and promote livelier and more enjoyable meetings.

So while the first two goals are quantitative and specific, the third goal is qualitative and subjective. But it doesn’t matter, this is what the new committee believe is necessary for the club.

Assessment:

1) The club has achieved 6 of the 9 goals necessary to achieve the President’s Distinguished Club award. That’s more than half way there!

2) Membership growth is 80% as of this month, which is still quite far from the targeted 200%.

3) I think the energy among members is much higher now. YAY! I love it that certain members like to joke around during meetings and that certainly improves participation from the other (more passive) members. Members also start to actively compete for speech slots, which is always a good sign! And…. It’s great that the regular post-meeting mamak supper culture that I tried to cultivate earlier this term is turning out fantastic! Members and committee members bonded well during these casual sessions.

In addition to that, we are having great collaborative meetings with Shell, Dell and DHL Toastmasters clubs, who are always helpful and supportive!

Six more months to go… And we’re there!

Born in 1988, I consider myself and my generation exceptionally lucky to have our childhood coincide precisely with the Disney Renaissance era, in which many of the most successful and most celebrated Disney animations were produced.

In addition to the two that I’ve mentioned, Aladdin, Tarzan, Mulan, The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas are also among the classics produced by Disney in the late 1980s to the late 1990s!

I wasn’t too aware of the creative industry all this while. As I grew up, I watched all these animation blockbusters without being conscious of the immense talent, effort and difficulty in producing these movies.

I just somehow assumed that these cartoons were made in pretty much the same way as how Hollywood action movies were made. You point your camera at Cinderella or Pinocchio, they act according to script, and you sell the film. (Oh wait where did Cinderella and Pinocchio come from?) o.0

This month a group of friends and I worked part-time at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre for a 3-day event called Kre8tif! 2010.

It’s a conference organized by MSC Malaysia to kinda promote and support the creative industry in Malaysia. They’ve got a super awesome line-up of speakers made up of the most prestigious people in the industry globally.

A ticket to the conference costs over 300 bucks but all we have to do it to handle the receptionist counter during registration, handle inquiries, help participants scan their tags during entry, and gain access to the conference for FREE!

Our friend, Pauline, works in the company that handles the registration and reception service of the event, and so for that simple job we get paid a hundred bucks per day, free meals and t-shirts and freebies, and we could literally attend any of the talks that we wanted – free!

… Of course, as long as we finish our job first! Registration starts at 8AM everyday and so usually by 9AM everything is done. And our routine job would be to be at the conference halls before a session starts and scan the RFID tags of whoever enters the hall, for attendance recording purposes. And then after that, we’re done!

During the registration, a number of speakers that we dealt with were actually super famous people in the industry and had specially flew in from the US that morning to give talks. But we, ignorant fools from an entirely different industry, could have just talked to the next great Hollywood producer but not even know it!

We treated everybody like commoners and nobodys! LOL!

One of the first talks that I attended was given by Shawn Kelly, who was lead animator and worked directly with Michael Bay on the Transformers series. He was also involved in animating other many blockbusters like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow!

Kelly was exceptionally audience-friendly and humble, and he even posed for photos with his ‘fans’ in the audience when requested! Not many speakers were willing to do that!

Next I slipped into a presentation by star screenwriter David Freeman, who has written scripts for Sony, Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM and more. Freeman’s talk was an extremely interesting tour on “The Secret Behind Pixar’s Magic”, where he analytically and technically points out the secrets behind what makes movies like Wall-E, Toy Story, and Finding Nemo stick to the back of your head for years.

Other speakers throughout the three days include Jason Manley, who artists and designers will immediately recognize as the founder of ConceptArt.org; Stephen Davis, President of Hasbro Studios, Silas Hickey, creative director of Cartoon Network; Patch Khan, director of digital media at Hewlett Packard, and many many more.

If I write any longer this would look more like a marketing brochure than a blog post, therefore I’ll stop.

One last speaker mention, here’s me with Din Altit, who was creative executive at Sony Columbia Pictures where he worked on films such as Ghost Rider, Casino Royale, and The Fog.

Our chat began with his little confusion over the local ‘nine-layers kuih’ served during tea time… I learned that now he owns his own production studio in LA and is producing an upcoming movie about Thai kickboxing! Haha since I am in kickboxing for over a year now, this is a movie that I would never miss!

Besides, I know the film producer FTW!

It was such a new experience being at an event such as this. After attending three days’ worth of talks, at least now I know a jargon or two in this industry! And not to mention the yummy free buffet meals~~~

On the final night there was an awards ceremony called the Kre8tif! 2010 Awards, which was organized and given out by MSC Malaysia to local talents in the creative industry. Now I’ve learnt more about the companies in Malaysia doing this kind of stuff and the importance of supporting them blah blah…

… and… OK but in the end the free dinner is still what mattered the most!

Honestly speaking, the standards of our local creative companies are nothing compared to what they’re doing in Los Angeles. But hey, we’re still new in this and I think we should all give them our full support. Who knows? Maybe one day our local studios will produce something more than just Cicakman!

Cheers to our very own Malaysian Creative Industry!

I’ve said before that I will not talk about anything technical, academic, or any stressful work in my personal blog, but I would like to show off my FYP lab!

Oh wait, first let me remark that most FYP students will be given some kind of lab to work in. And the lab assigned would be one that is linked to your project title. Being the Faculty of Engineering, naturally most students are assigned to humming, boring, technical labs crammed with wires and zombie machines like these:

*credit: all pics stolen from Faculty of Engineering website*

However, I am simply fortunate enough to have chosen a project that would spare me from all those alien-portal-producing labs. Instead, I am working on an image and video processing project that focuses on designing intelligent features to future smart homes.

Naturally, that would require that I be given at least a fake smart home to work in! Haha, introducing… the MMU Digital Home Lab!

Situated conveniently in one of the labs on the lower ground floor of the faculty, this reclusive paradise is unknown to most students! Sponsored by your timely bill payments to TM, Maxis, Astro, along with partners Intel, LG and government agency Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), this lab spoils us FYP students to the max!

Me and my friends Tee and Ariadne, being the only group of FYP students to occupy the lab most of the time – and even after university hours – this is becoming our favourite hideout for the rest of our final year!

With a nice kitchen with a working double-door fridge for us to store our drinks and snacks, and a comfy bedroom to sle-, err, conduct our research, there is absolutely no more reason for us to hang out or study in the library (like last time) anymore!

And did I mention? This lab has a dedicated, password-protected 20Mbps UniFi high speed broadband dedicated for the exclusive use of its occupants. The internet connection here is literally 20 times faster than my line at home! Ahhh..

Other temptations of this lab include a fully working Nintendo Wii, IPTV which comes with the UniFi, multiple LCD TVs, and a long, soft couch for us to indulge in… what else – our research discussions of course. =)

I wonder if our FYP supervisor would realize after this semester that an account was opened boldly with his name and has appeared on hi-scores in almost all of the Wii games? Hehe… 

Anyway, this is the SOHO area of the lab at which we (really) do most of our development:

Well with all the unnecessary luxuries of this lab (kitchen, bedroom and all…), I think what it really needs is a toilet!

Heading out of this haven into the student-filled faculty corridors just to use the public toilets is a nuisance. But I’m definitely not complaining! This is da-best-place-EVA to do an FYP in this campus!

*********

This morning (Nov 30) there was a symposium for digital home lifestyle in our university and our lab became the exhibition spot for a number of VIPs!

Malaysian Information, Communications and Cultural minister Dato’ Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim was scheduled to visit but due to emergency reasons had to be taken over by the deputy minister.

Err, I’m not a politician, but I don’t suppose it’s too hard to take over an absent minister’s place, right? Hehe I guess all Deputy minister Dato’ Joseph Salang had to do was deliver the minister’s opening speech from a well-script piece of paper…

But we all experienced the deputy minister’s friendliness and humour when he visited out lab, where our lecturers eagerly showed off their research projects!

Here’s my FYP supervisor Dr. Chang, who’s also the leader of the whole digital home lab project, briefing some new technology to the deputy minister, along with our university’s parent company TM’s Chairman of the Board of Directors YBhg. Datuk Dr. Halim Shafie, and MCMC chairman YBhg. Tan Sri Khalid Bin Ramli, who were also present.

*all pictures below are property of Bernama and KPKK. No copyright infringement intended.*

My ex- programming lecturer demonstrating the multi-touch tabletop home control system. This system apparently allows you to control all lights and electricals in the house and even play games on a touch-screen-like table, only that it doesn’t use a conventional touch screen and therefore costs only a fraction of what normal ones do… great for home implementation!

Dr. Kiyoshi Hamaguchi explaining the in-home healthcare monitoring system which monitors your blood pressure, ECG signals, heart rate etc. wirelessly while you’re at home and immediately alerts and streams your health data to a medical officer in case of an emergency.

And here’s me butting into the scene where Signal Processing lecturer Dr. Shima explains about her project, which classifies the human brain’s EEG electrical signals and aims to ultimately use it to control computers and smart homes.

It’s a very interesting project and I almost choose her research field as my FYP project title, but in the end I chose my current title as I felt it is more applicable to my future work.

Hehe standing beside the VIPs is a good choice because the band of reporters were always taking photos from opposite them. LOL. =)

…to study!

Well, considering London is more than 10,000 kilometres away from KL, this is a long, long distance relationship indeed.

Nobody likes a long distance relationship. In fact, according to some random internet statistics, 40% of all long distance relationship break up!

But on the bright side, she is only going there for her final year. Meaning it’s not like forever that we’re gonna be apart… And besides, it’s always better for any law student to study in the UK, right?

Here’s our final pic together at the airport before her departure:

Besides, this provides me with an excellent excuse to make a trip to the UK this semester break! Haha!

Time to save up money!!

**********

November marks the beginning of the second trimester of my final year in university.

This semester would be like just any other boring semester, except for the fact that I am taking SIX friggin’ subjects including one FYP – the most annoying Final Year Project that is worth 8 insane credit hours – alone accounting for almost three subjects’ worth of weight in your CGPA.

When I was a freshman in university, I thought that being a final year student would be unimaginably cool.

If you were a final year student, I thought, you would be king and lord of the campus. You would be revered by every junior and admired by every girl. And having studied all there is to study in your course, you would probably be so good in your stuff that you could just take your own sweet time and NOT have to study and catch up lessons all day and night. I imagined you would be so free that you could be extremely active in clubs and societies lording over the newbies and going out with friends every night!

Life, I assumed, would be so interesting in the final year!

Well now that I’ve become a final year student, I realized that instead of becoming a star, I’ve become a dinosaur. Although I am still president of a club, I realized that campus life just isn’t that interesting anymore. Friends have resigned from their exco positions in other clubs just to concentrate on the FYP and studies. Nobody goes for trips anymore, and in fact nobody has time to do anything anymore! A third of them are doing their internships this semester, a third of them are sucked into the FYP bog, and a third of them have already graduated (non-engineering friends).

And it sucked more when I found out a couple of years back, when I was extremely active in Tourism Club, that final year students aren’t exactly the cool and fun people as I had thought in my first year, but rather on the contrary consists of those that are not active, not spontaneous, and rather always nerdy looking people worrying over the next FYP presentation or submission schedule.

Now I think I can understand why. Time is such a scarcity in the final year and everything seems to boil down to the results that you get now. Although I’ve never thought of myself being a guy who works in an academic-results-oriented industry, for some very peculiar reason, results just seem to matter now. A lot.

God save me from becoming a geek!

It was suddenly time to leave. =(

Although we had been literally counting down every Friday since the very beginning (“ahh… after today seven weeks left! etc.), we weren’t really prepared for the final day to come.

And it came in the form of a rude revelation that we would no longer be working together in the same building, seeing each other, joking, playing games and slacking in the office everyday, anymore!

Looking back at my four months in AMD, the best part was, and has always been, the people.

It  was really a privilege to have found a working environment where we could work and learn as employees, but at the same time still behave like students – noisy, active and restless.

Sometimes I feel that the REAL employees who worked on our floor (although a majority of them work on the floor below us or in other buildings) must really hate us interns! =)

Although we generally do behave ourselves and do our work during normal working hours, but when the time approaches 5PM, or when a really exciting plan like our Genting trip is brewing among us, or when somebody is finishing and having his/her last day in AMD… Almighty chaos reigns.

Nobody cares about the fact that there’s a CCTV right behind us monitoring our behaviour. I guess the security dept. people were just shaking their heads wondering why weren’t we all fired yet.

And that’s because we were doing our job fine! We complete our jobs as told without delay and with minimum mistakes, and sometimes we even produce more! We had no problems contributing creative (and sometimes ridiculous) ideas that helped our supervisors solve real problems!

What’s more, we’re doing our job for a very humble pay (as compared to the permanent employees) for full time! =)

But we were not and will NEVER complain! AMD has given us a great and invaluable opportunity to learn and experience how being an Engineer is actually like! Plus in a fun and enriching way.

And I think none of us would exchange any of that for a fatter pay check.

Although people will say that we are biased because we’ve already worked here, but I would still say that none of us would have wished we had worked elsewhere, other than AMD!

Besides, even the management treats us interns pretty well!

On the final day we basically finished and packaged off all the works and projects that had been in our hands, and spent the rest of the day saying goodbye to the numerous levels of workers in AMD – managers, engineers, technicians, vendors and operators, all of whom we had formed a close bond working together in the silent, freezing production line.

I realized that some engineers and operators do not communicate well and generally say nothing more than work instructions and reports to each other.

We interns were something in the middle, and we were able to be good friends with both sides of the divide – and were naturally not deprived of a great deal of gossips and interesting stories that could only be exclusively revealed by either side.

After saying goodbyes and settling all our reports, paperwork and presentations, the only thing left was the exit interview that would be conducted by our manager regarding our experience in AMD.

Our manager was a charming, friendly gentleman who firmly believes in the power and genuine competitiveness of AMD microprocessors and graphic units. We chatted light-heartedly and he was delighted to hear that I was using ATI graphics in both my laptop and PC. He was eager to listen to my views about the good and bad sides of AMD and ATI products and how they could be improved. As our conversation progressed to the comparisons between us and Intel, I showed off a bit by injecting some technical knowledge about the internal architectures of microprocessors and fortunately he was impressed. (Luckily I had just took the subject ‘Advanced Microprocessors’ last semester in university and was loaded with technical stuff to bullshit at will LOL)

After the longest interview among all the interns, we were given our job completion letter! YAY! Industrial Training completed!

I’ve specially reserved this last portion to dedicate it to my dear supervisor – Mr. Jalil. (Although he’s insisted that I drop the ‘Mr.’ since the first day), who has been so kind and helpful, who has never once looked down on us because we were interns, but treated us with the friendliness of a true friend.

He may look unsmiling and scary in photos but he is really, really gentle and kind! We talked about everything from football to my Toastmasters club to ranting about which colleague he disliked and gossiping about which manager we both feared. He has even given me the password to his PC and printer!

I was Mr. Jalil’s only intern at that time and he was so patient and understanding when explaining long and tedious engineering stuff to me. Throughout the internship period he has given me a lot of freedom, to the degree that I only had to meet him once per day in the morning and later even this was not needed.

By doing this Mr. Jalil was neither lazy nor irresponsible, but he had chosen to not assign me with dull and repetitive ‘operator’ work as some other supervisors had been happily giving their trainees. Instead, he gave me real projects, real issues to ponder and solve, and then the freedom, authority and contacts to implement directly into the production line; After my design was approved, I was tasked to draw up guidelines and OPLs based on my design, and conduct official briefings to the operators on the new implementations. I was then required to follow up, evaluate, receive feedback, and if necessary improve on the implementations.

I consciously reminded myself to appreciate the freedom that was given to me and never take it for granted. In return I gave my best endeavour to produce the best results. Although I may slack in the office every now and then and do nonsense with the other interns, but I always made sure that the lost time was made up, deadlines met, and finally results produced.

My supervisor has tried his best to help me, to teach me; and I did my best to make him proud, to produce results for him so that he can produce more, for his superiors.

I can only hope that I have done enough. =) 

On the last day I was so touched when I found out that my supervisor wanted to buy me a farewell present, and he took me down to the AMD shop and got me this really nice AMD collar T-shirt and key chain. My friends joked that he wanted me as an walking AMD billboard, but I loved and treasured the two items as jewels.

Before we left my supervisor gave me a signed and company-stamped performance evaluation form, which was a mandatory document to be submitted to the university…

… I was the only one among interns to receive a full 20/20 overall evaluation score.

I am pretty sure nobody’s perfect and I for one am definitely not close to one, but I whole-heartedly appreciate and am humbled by the gesture of faith that my supervisor has shown me.

It was truly a sad day that we will no longer be working together – my supervisor, colleagues and friends – but hey, we’re all engineers right?

Maybe we’ll meet again some day in the industry. =)

Although not everybody was able to attend, it was an amazingly memorable trip!

We conducted a mass intern disappearance where (almost) all the interns in AMD took leave all at once on the same day! It was utterly shameless, but haha our awesome supervisors were sporting enough to allow it…

We took leave on Friday and departed early (like 6AM early) in the morning. Nobody wanted to drive so we took a gruelling FIVE hour bus trip from Penang to Genting!

There was another small group of our friends who had left AMD a few weeks before us coming to join us on this trip. But while we were enthusiastically willing to take working leaves, they, who were back in university – were unwilling to skip CLASSES!

Since this other group could only join us on the next day, we did not enter the theme park on Friday, nor could we do pretty much anything, since they begged us to wait for them before having doing anything fun.

After giving out generous donations to the Uncle Lim Evil Casino Foundation in the afternoon, we indulged ourselves in lepak-ing and camwhoring in and around the hotels at night.

Lepak-ing for REAL on the streets… ‘mao 街’

Homeless beggars!

Bullying another poor beggar…

Acting cool on the walkway…

And then we realized that wearing our hoodies we look like undead Acolytes in Warcraft 3, so we decided to summon some buildings…

and summon some minions too…

… all in the name of finding entertainment while waiting for our friends to come!

Lame >.<

It’s great to be around people as shameless as myself that we can do stupid stuff in public with utter disregard to other people’s stares.

As per all student trips, late night is reserved for playing cards in the hotel room!

We’ve brought some vodka and mixers with us too but again, its all reserved for the full rendezvous tomorrow.

Later we’ve filmed a footage of Alvin losing a game and having to yell some pretty obscene stuff out of the hotel window. =)

We went to bed at 2AM, hoping to get some hours of sleep…

… before all hell broke lose when the second group (taking a late night bus) arrived at 5AM and slammed into the room, switched on the lights and TV and jumped on our beds…

Reluctantly we woke up and bathed, and prepared to try out the so-called ‘super early morning gambling luck’, which our friend Lenx insisted was real!

Still all groggy and blur, we found that the ‘morning gambling luck’ was quite true! We won more than we did the previous night and the entire casino was VERY less crowded and not to mention the table minimum bets were smaller.

At 8AM sharp, when all the kids and families are still having breakfast, we hit the theme park!

It is always an important rule to follow if you’re going to the theme park and that is enter at 8AM sharp.

There aren’t that many rides in Genting’s outdoor theme park so you should be done with all of them (plus multiple rides of Corkscrew and Space Shot) by 11AM – without much time spent on queuing.

However, if you entered at, say, 11AM, you would spend the whole afternoon in the theme park and may not even be able to ride on everything! Because you’d spend hours just standing there in the queue wishing that the roller coaster would just crash out of its tracks and explode in a gigantic fireball to break the boredom.

Having not slept much the previous night, the ‘first’ group of us went back to the hotel for a quick nap after lunch, while the second group went out for some walk. Everybody knew there’s not gonna be much sleep that night anyway, so we needed the energy!

I must mention that we had excellent meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) mostly at rather expensive restaurants  – all thanks to Alvin, whose parents had some Genting shares, provided us with a generous supply of Genting restaurant vouchers with up to 50% discounts in almost all of the major restaurants!

After dinner we went for a walk around First World Plaza and a few of our gambling addicts again figured they had too much cash and needed to dispose of some. So it was one last casino session before we went back to the hotel and commenced our own ‘gaming’ session!

With the gang of crazy people, stupid games, and some liquor we were soon laughing our heads off witnessing some really insane stuff that we would never find ourselves doing normally, and some were forced to do there and then…

… And the night passed quickly. =)

(Unfortunately nobody had the sense to take photos of the ‘stuff’ that happened that night in the room, and now we have one less thing to look back and choke on…)

**********

The next morning we had an incredibly good breakfast… again thanks to Alvin (I mean his vouchers)!

Alvin confessed that we were actually helping him earn more world points on his Genting card so he wouldn’t mind giving us the vouchers. Besides, apparently he had more vouchers in his house that he can spend. So he was gaining anyways. =D

**********

Hmm… I’m graduating soon… Will trips after I start working be as fun as those that I have had during my university years?

Long distance relationships suck and her being here is wonderful gift by itself. So we thought, since I’m working here in Penang, why not tour the island as tourists? =)

I have been to Penang several times when I was very young, but somehow I don’t retain a lot of memories about it. This 2-day tour served as a great refresher!

We literally found ourselves a tourist map and drove around town, stopping by randomly to eat and visiting places that Penangnites will claim “aiya, these places only tourists will go one la…”

The greatest ‘sweet’ problem of the city, however, is the food. It is so good, so damn good, that I just realized that two months into staying here, I’ve gained 5KG!

That’s a huge thing for me, you know, as my weight had always been, err, very non-volatile!

And the most wonderful food on this island are those that are sinfully fried with tons of oil and you really can’t stop eating once you’ve tasted it.

Have you ever heard of the stalls in food courts in KL or elsewhere named ‘Famous Penang Healthy Bread’ or ‘Famous Penang Fruit Salad’ or just something plain like ‘Famous Penang Mee Hon Soup’?

Of course not. Because it’s all ‘Famous Penang Char Koay Teow’,‘Famous Penang Fried Oyster’, ‘Famous Penang Loh Bak’ etc.! ALL FRRIIIIIEEED!!

Haha of course there are stuff that are not fried too, like this unbelievably appetising jelly coconut!

My friend Ariadne’s mother first recommended us to try out these jelly coconuts during our first trip to Penang back in May, and we’ve been hooked and have gone back to the very stall to buy them every time we’re in town!

During the trip we’ve also visited tourist sites such as the Botanical Garden, which is an exceptionally scenic garden that has taken 29 ha. of Penang’s precious prime real estate.

I guess with Penang’s exorbitant real estate prices, the Botanical Garden site could be worth hundreds of millions of Ringgit. But well, I guess it’s the duty of every responsible government to allocate some land for greenery…

And this particular greenery is occupied (well I was about to say infested) by scores of monkeys! Much like one of the temples in Bali last time!

Fort Cornwallis with its Age of Empires-ish castles and cannons…

We didn’t take much photos because my camera was somehow busted. But we were determined to visit purely ‘tourist’ places!

… and so on… This is so unlike me last time where I kept snapping pictures wherever I go… nowadays I’m lazy to even bring my camera out except for travelling and events… =(

Yup, I know technically the term ‘medical doctor’ doesn’t yet apply to somebody who has just graduated with an MBBS degree. Apparently in Malaysia, you have to go though several years of public service before you can be legally called that (correct me if I’m wrong), but who cares? Just saw some letter from the government addressing him as ‘Dr. Chow’.

And that is very yeng.

You know, circumstances like these give me the kind of pressure that might eventually cause me to impulsively go and get a Ph.D in the future just so that he’s not the only person being called ‘Dr’ wherever we go. =P

But for now, whatever…

… At least I can get unlimited MCs for free! =)

Not only does it mark the glorious passing of another happy year spent with my dear, it also highlighted the day in which I must solve the problem of how to celebrate our anniversary while I am in Penang and she’s in KL!

It would be an easy task if August 4th were a Saturday or even a Friday, but no – August 4th fell on a Wednesday!

A Penang-KL day-return trip would be unfeasible, especially in the middle of a working week where I still have to wake up at 6.30AM the next morning.

But truly, it isn’t really that hard to decide, is it?

I had to choose between two alternate scenarios:

A) To fly back to Subang and spend a loving and wonderful time with the most amazing girl in the world; or

B) To stay in AMD Penang and spend my anniversary with engineers and machines and half-made silicon microprocessors.

I made my decision like within a second but told my dear nothing about it. I subscribe to the philosophy that without surprises a relationship will die. Err… Pleasant ones, of course!

After my decision, which was several weeks before August 4th, a couple of things needed to be done immediately.

I went online and booked my return flight ticket, then took a deep breath and strolled boldly up to my supervisor’s desk to ask for three straight days of leave – August 4th, 5th and 6th – all the way till the weekend.

I was fortunate enough to have scored a remarkable discovery a week ago in the task that I was working on, and thanks to this achievement my boss seemed to be fond of me enough to not ask much about the reasons behind such a shameless request. =)

A day before the 4th, I stopped by a florist in Queensbay Mall to collect a rather fat bouquet of flowers that would later put me in the most uncomfortable centre of attention on my flight back to KL.

I had carefully placed the bouquet deep into a huge paper bag and carried it around my arms like a baby in the airport. Due to obvious reasons, I did not check it in with my other luggage, but my grand plan blew when I accidentally wet the paper bag’s exterior while washing my hands and the bag started tearing apart.

It was only a couple of minutes before boarding and I hastily found a medium-sized plastic bag and cramped the bouquet in.

Unfortunately, the plastic bag was half-transparent and everybody from the flight attendant to the woman sitting next to me, to the taxi driver – gave me wide, obviously-trying-to-be-polite smiles as they looked down from my defiant face to the plastic bag with half-protruding leaves that I was cradling in my arms.

Once I landed in Subang, I took a taxi to my dear’s apartment, only to realize that I did not have the elevator access card with me!(You see, I was determined to make my dramatic appearance in front of her doorstep as TVB-like as possible, you know, the type that makes viewers go awwwwwww to the chorus of a slow, romantic background music… So calling her to come down to get me was out of the question) so I had to wait patiently on the ground floor with my luggage, laptop and the huge bouquet of flowers (now taken out), for some resident to come so that I can piggy-back into the elevator.

When a tall African finally arrived and scanned his access card in the elevator, I zoomed in and quickly pressed the button to the floor that I wanted to go. As the elevator was ascending I took out my phone and stared blankly at the main menu, not daring to look up.

Finally, I dragged my luggage forcefully out of the elevator when my floor had arrived, and as the door was closing I could still see the African guy staring at me and my mountain of stuff…

… Like, who cares? My mission was accomplished…

… Only to realize that I was too used to pressing ‘13’ while staying in my condo in Penang, and back here in Subang my dear is on the seventeenth floor!

As I dashed up the staircase, a janitor with a lot of stuff in his hands appeared on the steps in front of me, and I will never forget his facial expression as he darted to the side to allow this strange, panting guy in smart wear with flowers to lumber pass him.

I felt as though I had just crossed the Himalayas when I finally stood in front of my dear’s door on the 17th floor. I cooked up a story on the phone about what I was ‘busy doing’ in Penang and when the perfect timing came – when she told me she missed me – I rang the door bell. I waited there with the phone still close to my ear. Her footsteps approached the door, and then the lock clicked and the doorknob turned…

-

The rest was indescribable by words. But suffice to say that all the trouble that I’d gone through to be there, at that very moment, seeing her reaction… was worth everything in the world. =)

Not only does it mark the start of my final year as an undergraduate, but it is also the beginning of my term as the leader of what I believe is the most beneficial club that I’ve attended during my four years in university.

Being elected as the president of the Multimedia University Toastmasters Club is an honour beyond any other appointment that I’ve received from the other clubs that I’ve held positions in.

I think this is because, well, I know this sounds prejudiced against the other clubs, hehe but… MMU TMC is not just any other university club.

It is a club that is formally chartered and overseen by an international chartering body.

It is a club that is protected, assisted and governed by governing bodies on area, division, district and international levels and thus forms a huge network of community and corporate clubs, all meeting each other regularly in district events and conventions.

It is a club that has the focused goal of promoting the unique and vital combination of public speaking and leadership skills through a professional and internationally recognized educational program.

Okay I know I sound almost religious about this Toastmasters thingy, but haha… That’s my job now, isn’t it?

Leading a student club that consistently faces problems like clashing timetables with exams/holidays, lack of funds, and ultra-high membership turnover is not at all easy, but I’ve always believed that there is something in the Toastmasters spirit that will take us through the year.

We have been through bad times, really bad times. But every time we’ve made it through the rain. And today, MMU Toastmasters is proud to be the youngest (literally) and one of the most vibrant clubs in the area!

This year, we have a vision to bring this club to much greater heights!

This year, we have set the previously impossible goal of achieving the highest honour that any chartered club may receive from Toastmasters International – the President’s Distinguished Club award!

The award may not be so difficult to achieve for larger, corporate clubs… but for us, it is an entirely different story. If we made it this year, it will be our very first award of any kind in the club’s entire history.

I’m confident that we can achieve this. But still… Wish us luck! =)

**********

After a long torturous wait and checking the online results page almost every single day while working in AMD…

.. finally, last semester’s results are out!

Yay! Not too bad! It seems that my grad CGPA is still going to be OK after all! Happy!

Since a healthy number of people use AMD microprocessors and/or ATI graphics cards, I think there is no need to introduce the company. Instead, let me introduce the workplace!

Apparently there is a policy of not allowing cameras in the office and production areas, so I think more than half of the photos in this post are illegal… but never mind… =D

We interns were assigned cubicles on the top floor while the engineers (our supervisors included) have their offices one floor beneath us!

Being insulated by the solid cement floor under our feet, and populated only by wild and energetic interns, the top floor usually transforms into a very… inconducive working environment near 5PM.  Ahem.

I mean, haha, after a whole day of intensive working you’d totally look forward to 5PM right? Cuz after work means going out!=D How to keep quiet and stay put?

Of course, during hours other than those near 5PM, we usually spend most of our time down in the production facility, where virtually everything engineering-ish is located at – analysis and engineering labs, R&D and production assembly lines… everything!

The very cool (at first, later became very annoying) thing about the production facility is that we had to wear like this before going in:

Being unfamiliar with semiconductor production facilities, wearing some tight top-to-toe attire and stepping into a self-locking ‘air shower’ compartment before gaining access into a huge, bright room with an infinite sea of hi-tech machines and fluorescent lights spanning densely across the floor and ceiling, coupled with the sight of masked people in white smocks walking around inspecting machines and operating mounted computers… *catches breathe* reminded me bluntly of the scene in the film Independence Day:

… where the president walked into the ultra-secret science facility in Area 51 and was shown the place where US government conducted experiments on alien spaceships and dead alien bodies.

LOL.

Anyways I must admit that the best thing about working in AMD is the people.

All of us were afraid when we entered AMD on the first day, apprehensive of how our new working environment would be like. But our supervisors were friendly and helpful, and we interns quickly became best pals among ourselves!

Before long we were going out for movies, karaoke, shopping, drinking and everything that can be done by a working guy in Penang! (Except going to Kek Lok Si)

We made a point to hang out after work and not just work, go home, eat, online, sleep, wake up, work, go home, eat, online, sleep…

The ‘no-life-ness’ of a career as an Engineer is a trap that I am super duper eager to avoid even after I graduate in the future.

I can hardly bear the thought that in reality most engineers do exactly that! I mean, with all due respect to our engineer supervisors, we found that they really go through that very same routine for years! =(

Noooo…!

Let’s hope I do not end up like the me in the picture above ten years from now. Hehe… But for now, I’ve got a great place to work! =D

-

P.S. Haha if you’re thinking why my industrial training consists of all play and no work, I’m afraid you’re wrong, sir, very wrong indeed. But since this is my personal blog and not my training logbook, I intend to keep it work and stress free. =)

So I’ll just fast forward until AFTER the exams! =D

On the very last day of our final exams, and after many exhausting, sleepless nights, nobody was going to care anymore what the Nyquist’s Frequency was or if they knew about the Shannon’s Sampling Theorem or whatever.

It was very difficult indeed to get this group of people (my classmates) out for any kind of outing. Eternally not free and eternally armed with excuses!

But when we were finally free from the satanic grasp of final exams, we had a day when everybody was present and undoubtedly free!

So we went for dinner and movie!

It was also Tee’s birthday this month! Poor Tee! It was very evil of us to celebrate with him only after the final exams! Kekeke…

Tee’s birthday very unfortunately fell on the Friday of our study week. We had actually made plans to celebrate it nonetheless, but in the end due to… Ah… Anyway IT’S ALL MMU’S FAULT!!

But we got him a very HUGE birthday card to compensate!

**********

As I’ve mentioned, I’ll be going to Penang next month to do my industrial training, so this month my Dear and I went to Penang for a pre-work holiday!

Another purpose of this trip is also to hunt for a place to stay during my four months in Penang.

I think our accommodation objective was completed in like the first 3 hours of our 3-day stay. And so the remaining of the 2-and-a-half day was all ours to enjoy!

To me, Penang has always been a holiday destination. The beach, the food, the breeze… everything! I simply cannot imagine anybody would have the mood the work on this island!

Take Batu Ferringhi for example. The beautiful blue sea, the long stretch of golden beach, the large number of ang-mohs, everything reminds me of the destinations my previous club – MMU Tourism Club – used to go every year!

And I happened to be wearing the Tourism Club T-shirt that day! Such memories!

Is it just my naivety or are there no other tourist beaches in Penang besides Batu Ferringhi? Whenever people talk about beaches in Penang they think of Batu Ferringhi… And whenever tourists come to Penang they’ll go straight there…

So concentrated!

If a tsunami hits Batu Ferringhi directly we’ll have a warehouse of corpses to feed the poor fishies and sharks which having suffered so long the invasion of the tourists in the area.

After the beach we had dinner at The Ship. And I thought that The Ship in Jln. Sultan Ismail or PJ was cool, look at this one in Batu Ferringhi!

The Ship is a friggin’ real ship!

Maybe it was a merchant ship that got washed onto the shore a long time ago and the sailors abandoned it for exotic pretty island girls…

Or maybe it was a ghost ship carrying deceased spirits to the underworld but got wrecked…

Or maybe it was a US navy ship mysteriously teleported here through the Philadelphia Experiment, with all its crew members brutally burned to death and their body infused into the ship’s hull by the unstable magnetic force field…

… And then some rich Malaysian Chinese entrepreneur came along and said to his pal: “Eh Ah Seng, see that? Let’s open restaurant on it! Can save restaurant construction cost somemore!”

And thus The Ship was created.

But who cares if it’s haunted? The steak was really nice and the waiters and waitresses were very polite!

And following a little tradition of ours, we always have a bottle of red wine whenever we go on a holiday by a beach together!

Steak + wine + ocean breeze + gal = loud sigh of satisfaction.

Apart from the beaches, this island is also home to the Penang Char Koay Teow. The most evil food in the world that is guilty of causing obesity to uncountable Malaysians due to its devilishly good taste!

I have been in some kind of Char Koay Teow craze for the past few months. I’d always go all the way from Cyberjaya to SS2 just to eat Char Koay Teow. But NOW – Haha… Nobody and nowhere can ever beat Penang on this:

LOL just look at the imba SIZE of the prawn enough said.

Also check out the Fried Oyster:

How much will I weigh when I come back from Penang four months later?

As the Organizing Chair, the preparation works for this event consumed much of my time in April, which was also the month leading up to my final exams early this month!

Fortunately, I was able to juggle my time, albeit precariously, to make sure that both events received sufficient attention.

The event turned out to be a blast!

The Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon is an event where our club encourages six selected new members and special guests to take their glorious first step into the public speaking world of Toastmasters.

The participants had been given a month to prepare their speeches, which were basically stories that revolve around their respective own lives and experiences (hence the name ‘ice-breaking speech’).

To make this experience worthy of life-long memory for the first-time speakers, we managed to invite a very impressive panel of external speech evaluators:

From left to right: Francis Ng, DTM, District Lieutenant Governor of Marketing; Robert Ram, ACS, CL, President of IEM Toastmasters; JON TAN, ATM-G, Creative communicator and advertising consultant; Geoff Andrew, DTM, President of MIM Toastmasters; Sharifah Raudhah, CC, Founder and Managing Director of Face2Face Tech.; S.K. Walia, DTM, HRDC Certified International Corporate Trainer; Hoo Sze Ling, CC, Senior Student Exchange Advisor at Taylor’s University College.

These very experienced Toastmasters and professional speakers were really kind and encouraging to the first-timers!

How I wish my first speech was given in an occasion like this!

As a supremely biased organizer and shamelessly egoistic boyfriend, I shall now do a special mention of only one of the six participants of the marathon.

Participant #2 was none other than Teh Shu-Yi with her speech title “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”. =D

Haha… It was her very first time giving a speech in Toastmasters. Although she kept telling me how terrified she was days before the event, but she turned out doing fantastic!

I daresay I totally understood her fears because after my first ever speech in public three years ago, I wrote this.

Her best friend Felicia from Ipoh was also present to support her, hand in hand!

After the participants made their speeches, the evaluation session kicked in and the evaluators did their job. One-by-one, the evaluators commented encouragingly on the participants speeches, focusing on excellent parts and those that can be improved.

In the end, participants were given a certificate for completing their first ever speech in a Toastmasters environment!

Here’s our President Megat Zahid presenting the certificate to one of the participants. =P Yup, a random one.

As per Toastmasters’ tradition, ballots slips were passed to the evaluators and audience after the speeches to vote for the winners of the Best Speaker of the Day and Best Evaluator of the Day awards.

Participant #2 Shobana won the Best Speaker of the Day Award!

And Robert Ram, ACS, CL won the Best Evaluator of the Day Award.

This is my final event in the 2009/2010 EXCO term. After this an election will be held during the next AGM and we will all have very different roles by then!

Cheers to MMU Toastmasters!

Perhaps it’s the stress, but in the same month, I actually played FOUR games in a go!

First – RESIDENT EVIL 5:

I LOLed very hard when I first heard from my friend a few months ago what the game was about.

In the previous Resident Evil games (Resident Evil 1, 2, 3…), most of which I have played, we fought ZOMBIES, like human zombies that were real slow, gruesome, and always moaning stupidly.

But in Resident Evil 5, these human zombies are extremely sophisticated. Not only had they learned how to carry axes and throw petrol bombs,

… and how to ride motorcycles to chase you,

and even chase after you waving a chainsaw!

And you know what the most unbelievable part of this whole game is?

They made all the zombies black. Like African black. So racist! Even the plot is of the very typical type where a poor, rural village in Africa is being infected by some zombie virus and it is up to the strong, militaristic Americans to go and massacre them and save the world.

LOL!

Regardless, after finishing the entire game, I still feel that it is the best among the four games listed here.

**********

Another game that I played was DEVIL MAY CRY 4:

This superb fantasy-ego-feeding game with a super leng cai protagonist, ultra yeng attack moves and combo, and an incomparably cool attitude (smirking and taunting enemies even when they are 100x larger than you and spouting deadly flames…) that you can share with the main character when you are controlling him.

It really does make your balls feel monstrously larger while playing the game, I can quite guarantee that.

I think this is the kind of game that guys would want to play with girls around (or at least let them know that they’re playing).

Just imagine the scene when that most attractive girl of the gang comes over to your laptop/PC and peeks over your shoulder, “Hey, what game are you playing, James?” and you ‘happen’ to have just finished an ultra-difficult-to-do, super cool perfect SSS (smokin’ sick style) combo in front of her wide, amazed eyes…

Then you look up casually, and say:

“Uh what? Oh, Amanda… No, this is nothing… Just some easy game that I’m starting to get bored with.”

LOL!

I know girls don’t care and don’t find a 20-second SSS combo even remotely cool but unfortunately us guys don’t realize that. =) So yeah, this game is still uber cool.

If you’re still wondering what exactly the ‘combos’ that I’m talking about are, check out this video on Youtube:

If, after watching the video, you have no idea what just happened, or thought you saw nothing more than some flurry moving colours… then perhaps we can just forget it and move on to my third game.

**********

The third game is none other than the legendary LEFT 4 DEAD 2:

An excellent game to let of steam indeed, L4D2 is! After a long and hard day’s work/study, to go into a world where groups – no, I mean HORDES – of mindless zombies charging frenziedly towards you all trying to rip you apart!

That would have been nothing cool except that now, you have a good ol’ pump shotgun / heavy assault rifle with a hell lot of ammo. Merely by holding down the left mouse button and swaying your wrist left and right is sufficient to generate some kind of indescribable ‘high’.

This is in sharp contrast to Resident Evil 5 where bullets are a rarity and every shot must be calculated and accurate.

In L4D2, we shoot zombies Rambo style.

**********

The final (and longest) game that I played in April was…

-

POKEMON DIAMOND!

What? Don’t laugh la…

As I have written in my previous, long Pokemon article, I have been a great Pokemon fan since my pre-teen days. And until today I still find the entire Pokemon franchise bursting with sweet childhood memories, especially the original 151 Pokemon!

Now with Pokemon Diamond, it is absolutely bliss to return to my room every night and have a wonderful, carefree time playing the game before sleeping. Catching wild Pokemon, raising their levels, battling trainers, solving puzzles, winning gym badges… It’s just like last time! When I would cling to my Gameboy Color stubbornly, and sit on the sofa for hours until I was being forced to stop by my mom.

It’s kinda magical, The last Pokemon version that I played during my schooldays was Gold/Silver. And I had thought that I would never have the chance to play any other versions again (since I grew up)…

But then 2007 came and I (again the few weeks before final exams) suddenly started playing Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire version with one of my old friends! It was an absolutely amazing period when tons of sweet, long-forgotten memories from my childhood came flooding back to me just by looking at the screen.

It was also that period when I actually started re-watching the Pokemon series and movies, and actually found my Pokemon trading card game deck and played with it!

And now, I’ve FINALLY played Pokemon Diamond, the latest version. After more than ten years, I’ve actually caught up!

Haha but I’ve temporarily stopped after battling the 8th gym. I’ve still got the Victory Road and Elite Four in front of me but, so far, my Pokemon stand at these levels:

So… There you have it! Four games in a row in the very month before my final exams!

Haha somebody come try and break my record! Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World and other Facebook games DON’T count! =D

You see, for the past three months I’ve not been posting anything, but now I’m gonna shamelessly repost an entry for each of the empty three months, highlighting the major events to ganti balik! Here we go!

Two major events, both Toastmasters related, happened in March.

First, the Area Level speech competition, which was held in SHELL IT International Sdn. Bhd., home to the Cyberjaya Toastmasters Club. This club is the OLDEST Toastmasters club in Cyberjaya, hence claiming the official name.

Remember back in February when I very miraculously won the club level competition? Now this is the next level, to represent the club and compete with the champions of the other Toastmasters Club in the area!

Another representative of our club is Taufeeq, a very respectable and experienced English Teacher.

As I have mentioned in my last post, the type of speech that we were participating in is called the Table Topic Speech, which is a kind of impromptu speech where you are given your speech topic only when you are standing on stage.

Perhaps due to the fact that most Toastmasters members are working adults, I was given a speech topic that I was most UNqualified to speak of.

-

“What is the one advice that you would give to a newly married couple?”

-

Since I was only allowed to offer ONE advice only, I would have blurted out “Mr. Bridegroom juz try not to embarrass us men tonite LOL”, if I had not (in time) looked down at the very serious faces of the Chief Judge, Area Governor and a number of important-looking VIPs and Club Presidents all peering up at me grimly expecting a very knowledgeable and enlightening speech something like that.

I shall not disclose the content of my speech that day but suffice to say I blabbered some utter nonsense (to me), as best as I could, and tried to be funny. The audience very accommodatingly laughed! LOL!

In the end, it appeared that I managed to impress the judges and I, very unbelievably, won FIRST RUNNER-UP!

To add to the pride of our MMU Toastmasters Club, Mr. English Teacher TAUFEEQ got first place and will represent the area to compete in the Division Level!

It was a truly a glorious day for our club as our dear Vice-President of Education, Alia, had also won in another speech competition and our club being a relatively new and the only student club in Cyberjaya, sapu-ing three trophies in an area competition is something that had never happened before!

Haha who said students are noob speakers?

***********

The second major event of the month was the EMCEE WORKSHOP!

After months of negotiations and arrangements, we managed to have prominent creative communicator and advertising consultant ATM-G JON TAN, with more than 25 years of experience as an EMCEE and public speaker, to grace our event as the principal speaker!

Now how great this guy is, is plainly beyond words. The few of us who had worked with him could simply feel the incredible professionalism radiating from his words and actions!

Ariff (Left-3rd above) was the Organizing Chair of this event. Being the Deputy Organizing Chair, I was already nearly suffocated under the intense pressure of Jon’s professional expectations, imagine poor Ariff. That’s just how crazy our speaker is!

In addition, the seminar was attended by delegates from huge corporations across four states in the peninsula like Sime Darby, Shell, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Bank Negara Malaysia, Petronas, and even the Prime Minister’s Department in Putrajaya! Imagine the stress!

A small delegation also came from the Corporate Comms. Department of MMU, showing support from our own university!

Apart from the ‘official’ goals of educating the public and elevating the public speaking standard of blah blah blah, the REAL reason behind this event is to raise funds for our club. Since Toastmasters is a non-profit organization, by-annually dues paid to our club are all eventually paid to Toastmasters International, therefore our club desperately needs MONEY!!

As the official club Treasurer, I was also charged of handling all the financial ins-and-outs of the event. Collecting workshop fees alone made my wallet fat fat happy happy that day… but unfortunately none of the stacks of money are mine. >.<

The event was a huge success and I think I’ve grown a few years older after going through it. =P

Besides having had an extraordinary Chinese New Year, meeting many relatives, and receiving a huge fortune in Ang Paus, PLUS a wonderful make-up Valentine’s Day… I have another FOUR major accomplishments!

#1 – Winning a Toastmasters speech competition.

Having joined Toastmasters for quite some time, this is my very first time taking part in a speech competition!

The club level competition was held on the February 3rd, and by the end of it I was given the great honour to represent my university’s club in an area-level speech competition, which will be held on the 24th of March at the Toastmasters in SHELL IT International Sdn. Bhd., the IT arm of Shell in Malaysia.

The type of speech is called table-topics speech, which basically is an impromptu speech. You are given a topic on-the-spot while you are on the stage, and you start speaking right away.

Being a first-timer, I doubt I’d have any chance of winning in the area-level competition. With so many professionally-trained speakers coming from different Toastmasters clubs in the area, I guess I count myself lucky just to be able to attend and watch and learn!

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#2 – Receiving my very first Dean’s List Award!

Remember my very daring aim to get a four flat GPA in the last semester?

I managed to get it! Woohoo! 

Now OK, I know that there are countless four-flatters out there and this is SERIOUSLY not at all a big deal. And some super nerds/geeks – I mean hardworking good students – probably get it every semester!

So what? This is my first and I shall shamelessly blow the trumpets and sound the heralds! Hmph!

And due to the achievement, the Faculty has awarded me with…

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*cue sound of horns and holy light shining from the heavens*

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Behold! My very first own Dean’s List!

Kakaka… I’ve wanted one of those since my foundation/pre-U years!

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#3 – Being offered an industrial training position in AMD, Penang!

Finally, the labour of applying for internship is over! I received a call from AMD the week before Chinese New Year, went through a phone interview, and a week later was told that I have been accepted!

I was afraid that they would ask me to go to Penang for an interview but luckily they didn’t!

Well, Let’s see… I had my primary and secondary education in Ipoh, foundation studies in Malacca, undergrad studies in Selangor, and now industrial training in Penang! Yay! Where’s next? Sarawak?

Apart from the monthly allowance, AMD also gives us a ‘food allowance’ of RM2 per day, which sounds like nothing initially, but a friend of mine whose sister is working in AMD told me that the food in these giant companies are kinda heavily subsidized, so apparently you really could have a meal with just RM2-3.

Amazing huh?

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#4 – Getting a free HP Notebook!

… From the most unlikely giver – the Malaysian government!

Apparently this is a government initiated collaboration with TM to offer free HP notebooks to university students subscribing to a certain broadband plan. Freebies! Who’s gonna let it slip?

Received my notebook about a week ago, and it is great!

The specs of the notebook ain’t that great, as it is an HP mini. But who cares? It’s free!

My housemates Alvin and the rest are all applying for the plan. In due time, I think all of us will be having one! Thank you Najib!

Is this a good enough reason for us to vote for Barisan Nasional in the next election? Hmm…

As we grow older, a lot of people say, we don’t celebrate our birthdays as much anymore. Especially guys.

It is a sad fact that indeed as you grow older, you find less and less friends who are ‘free’, or think that celebrating a birthday is important enough to take up their precious time! As opposed to more ‘important’ things like doing assignments, clubbing, shopping, watching PPStream at home etc.

But I still count myself lucky enough to have a group of friends who are willing to do just such an unimportant thing! Celebrate with me! Yay!

It was more or less supposed to be a ‘surprise party’, but unfortunately the hidden agenda was pretty much obvious when they asked for a friends’ gathering on a sudden Monday night…

And also when I asked them what we were going to do (movie, dinner, karaoke or something), one of them replied: “Aiya, later when you reach then you will know lor…!”

LOL, didn’t even bother to make up some fake events!

But I am absolutely not complaining, I can’t express how much I appreciate their time and effort. In fact, I was so happy that I could not stop smiling.

That’s just Hanif experimenting with my camera’s smile shutter function.

After the dinner, a few people had to leave, but the remainder of us went to Alamanda.

Originally, we had wanted to go for bowling… but unfortunately there was some kind of bowling competition (10PM at night!) going on and so we changed plan and went for a movie instead!

We happily bought the tickets for the movie ‘Legion’  (which would later prove to be a ridiculously bad movie) and while waiting for the movie to start an hour later, we went to the arcade to kill time.

We spent most of our tokens playing race cars, as they were the only machines that the many of us could play together. Although that was just for killing time, but we had a really great time in the arcade!

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The night before, on the eve of my birthday, my dear had already celebrated with me on a very different scale: just the two of us in a quiet corner in a TGI Fridays, The Gardens.

And she also gave me a wonderful present to celebrate me having roamed the Earth for 22 long years!

… A wonderfully packaged CK Eternity Summer eau de toilette with a very delightful scent! It’s really no secret that guys do not (or utterly rarely) buy perfumes for themselves, and if they happen to have a bottle a two, the fragrances are usually given to them by girls!

I dunno why that seems to always be the case but the only reason that I can imagine is that fragrances are historically feminine and perhaps it strips certain men of their ‘manliness’ to shop for them along the aisles of some beautycare shop.

Anyway, who cares? Happy 22nd birthday to myself!!

Just hope I don’t get old too soon… =)

In a poll by The Star, out of 14,150 Malaysians who voted, more than NINETY PERCENT or TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE think that it is a waste of time having a program to rehabilitate Mat Rempits!

And the most amusing thing is… more than 50% think this particular brand of Malaysian bikers is - beyond rehabilitation.

LOL! Poor fellas! Even drug addicts and terrorists have rehabilitation programs prepared for them. But Mat Rempits are apparently of a breed of evil that is simply beyond all hopes of salvation.

Just received it several weeks ago! The black one is mine, and the red one is my Dear’s.

In the beginning, it was only the Apple notebooks that were shiny and all, but now Dell laptops have managed to gloss up their covers too!

Actually it is so shiny that I feel that even with extra care, it will probably be full of scratches by the end of the year!

LOL I don’t have pictures of my own laptop so I’ll have to use my dear’s. And I can’t take new pictures of it either! My Sony USB cable is lost so all pictures taken lately using my Sony camera are stuck inside and irretrievable!

That, of course, is one of the reasons I have not been blogging for quite some time (besides being lazy).

Now one of the reasons that I chose a Dell as my second laptop is that Dell is DELL. Unlike my previous dear Acer, Dell doesn’t seem to have the notorious reputation of breaking down once the warranty period is over!

Everyone knows that there seems to be some ‘breakdown time-bomb’ installed in Acer laptops. It works this way:

If your warranty period is 1 year, the timer is set to 1 year and 3 months; and if you have extended warranty, say, 3 years, then the bomb is mercilessly set to detonate in 3 years + 1 hour or so.

Once your warranty is over, *click*… booooom~~

All the problems come flooding in. And they have no obligation to repair it for you… without cost.

Anyway, this laptop really not bad leh… For my casual use – Core 2 Duo, Windows 7 and slotted with Graphics Card… What more to ask for?

That’s the business than my group of 15 friends and I are doing for the university subject ‘Cyberpreneurship’!

FYI, Cyberpreneurship is one of the most retarded subjects in the universe as it requires us to form groups of 15 ‘business partners’, think of a business, write up a business plan, do the business preparations, and finally run the business (with profit) … in six weeks!

That’s a running, profitable business in 42 days!

Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and a whole lot of entrepreneurs should totally kneel and learn from whoever succeeds in this quest!

AND THAT ‘WHOEVER’ IS – US!!

Yes! We planned and prepared everything and after just 3 days of running the business, we’ve managed to break-even, sold out all our stock, and even made a modest profit!

And not to mention we had a direct competitor (selling EXACTLY the same product) in front of us! Their stall was like… just THREE METERS in front of us!)

But somehow… There was always hoards of customers around our stall and the sales just kept going!

Maybe that’s because our competition had nothing more than an ordinary long table as their stall, or maybe it’s just because we have 11 *ahem* super leng luis sucking in customers from all directions.

Anyway, our three-day-business was filled with incredible experiences, such as two wire extensions bursting into grey smoke, a guy fainting in the room right behind our stall, and a badly-scalded hand (injured by hot water)!

A little behind-the-scenes:

Sam and Sina, our logistics department guys, cleaning our stall before the business:

Pushing it all the way to our business venue:

Some of us at our ingredients supplier’s shop:

Grace testing if our supplier’s products are up to standards:

Buying other ingredients in Carrefour:

Found the best one!

OMG just realized that Sam is showing his middle finger!  Bad Sam!

I wish we could have taken more photos but I guess everyone was just very busy with the business. It was really a great success and everyone was so cooperative!

And a huge thanks to our great Bubble Bobble customers too!

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Alright now give me my ‘A’ for this subject please!

Check out this mineral water vending ‘machine’. It needs no electricity, no stall owner, no nothing to operate! Lowest operating cost ever.

All it needs is your amanah, and is therefore rightly named: Amanah Kiosk!

You take a bottle, drop RM1 into the metal box, transaction done! No one else even notices!

This stall was found in one of the residential colleges in UM, apparently the university students there are really quite amanah, because I predict that if a similar stall were to be deployed in, say, Cyberia (where most MMU students live), NOTHING would be left, besides the rack.

The stall even says thank you!

Next, is it just me or is this really so cutely weird?

A mini motorcycle! A grown man sitting on it is like shitting on a squat-only toilet while wearing a helmet.

Also check out what’s on the other side of this mineral water bottle!

Remember Fairuz Fauzy, the Malaysian F1 driver? if you’ve been to the cinemas lately you must have seen him in an advertisement where a lameass guy who doesn’t fasten his seat belt drives to the petrol station  and spots this Fairuz guy, who then gives him an autograph and asks him to fasten his seat belt, like ‘Eh, pakailah’… remember?

Well this time he’s here on the mineral bottle asking us to unite and support him with all our combined effort.

But something seems to be really ‘wrong’ with this guy’s attitude!

He’s rolling his eyes!

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Sigh… Aiming four flat this semester! No slacking! T_T

Have you ever imagined what it would be like after you’ve died?

Suddenly thought of this topic and decided to blog about it. Death.

You’ve never thought of what’s gonna happen to you after you die? Well you should! Because if you are lucky, you would have around half a century left to live; if you’re typical, you’d have a couple more decades to live; and if you’re just slightly unlucky, you’d have only a few hours more to live and breathe and talk to your friends and family!

You could die the next time you drive out and some drunkard slams into your car and pierces your brain and stomach with glass and metal shards. WHAM! Done.

And then? What happens?

Do you go to heaven or hell? Why would the creator of this whole vast universe bother to reward or punish one tiny little creature on a typical planet in a typical solar system in a typical galaxy in the entire universe, so gloriously (to live in heaven with god and his angels) or so severely (to burn in hell for eternity), and so personally (every single person to be judged)?

If god created the entire universe, and possibly multiple universes, what makes this particular species of ape, us, so special?

Or maybe according to some others, after you die, you would be punished for your bad deeds and then your soul reincarnated. But then again, why the punishing? Our entire system of right and wrong is designed to increase the overall survival rate of human beings. As if we care about the mass murder of a thousand bees when a ‘threatening’ bee hive is burned or the brutal genocide of the Aedes mosquitoes, just because they were unfortunate enough to transmit certain diseases when they have their food (suck blood).

Obviously, there’s no bad or evil intention in the mosquitoes’ mind. But just because they happen to be harmful to our species, murdering them by all means is moral.

This does not happen to cats and dogs and elephants and lions and whales, the killing of which is illegal and greatly despised.

So I ask this: How ‘moral’ are we when we brag loudly about animal rights and human rights when we mercilessly murder animals that are simply ‘not so good’ to us?

And reincarnation? Well, that’s if god does not have enough souls to spare and does not have the ability to create new ones that he needs to ‘recycle’ used ones.

And perhaps you would just end up as a ghost, or a spirit, that lingers and prowls the world aimlessly and indefinitely, playing pranks and scaring people for entertainment.

If humans do linger as spirits after we die, then I would boldly say that we do not have spirits. Because there would be no reason for the creator to create them in us in the first place. And if spirits were a product of the natural world, then any animal from goldfish to fleas would have spirits.

And if that’s the case, the ‘spiritual world’ would be so overpopulated that spirits of all animals from the ancient past to the present would be either piled up to outer space or crushed into the core of the earth.

So finally, what’s left? Many people would say that we would all lose consciousness when we die, and never regain it, forever. Because our consciousness is in the brain and when the brain dies, it ceases to exist. The body rots and returns to ash and earth, and nature and all universe moves on.

In other words, it didn’t even notice you died.

To me the last explanation makes the most sense. Although it is indeed the most depressing one. Or maybe because it is simply too depressing to believe that we are nothing special and just a species of animal that happens to roam the earth at this particular time in history, that we made up hopeful stories of afterlife, and faithfully believed in them.

And so, if we are to just live our lives, and regardless of how well you lived it, die, and disappear into nothingness… Why the hassle to live?

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P.S. Haha no worries I am not thinking of suicide and never will! =D

As to cause, 250 years later, a poor guy names James to stop studying in the middle of a night, in the last few days of his crucial study week, to go out and have… beer!!

It was Arthur’s Day yesterday! And it’s gonna be my final exams the day after tomorrow! RAWR!

I had been anticipating September 25th for quite a long time ever since the ads of this incredible ‘worldwide celebration’ were flooding cinemas and TVs and websites everywhere…

Friends had been inviting me to join partying with them on Arthur’s day and everything was all hot and going… And then only to realize a month ago that it would be only a mere couple of days before my final exams!

3 days before exams… That’s so great, Arthur. 

But then suddenly, it was announced that the Black Eyed Peas were coming to Malaysia as KL was to be one of the five cities in the world to host this celebration!

And the greatest and most unbelievable surprise of all, our dearest government, who attempted to ban alcohol sales in certain parts of the country, who fined and caned a model and mother simply for drinking beer, and who had initially banned all Muslims from attending the concert, had suddenly gotten to their senses in the last minute and allowed anyone above 18, Muslim or non-Muslim, to see the concert!

(Although it was approved on the grounds of encouraging tourism LOL, but that’s beside the point…)

See that’s the power of the Black Eyed Peas and Arthur Guinness’ black beer combined!

So if a huge miracle like the government compromising and allowing beer concerts and not arresting Fergie for not wrapping herself up all the way from the neck to knee should happen, who the hell cares about exams??

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For two-hundred-and-fifty remarkable years… TO ARTHUURRR!!!

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*Drinks…*

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*knock*

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P.S. Whoever named Arthur should be very happy on Arthur’s Day. When do we get a James Bond 250th anniversary?

(Although this photo was taken ages ago… )

Now all of them, except Steven, are working. And it has been years since we have hung out together.

They may look all good and nerdy on the outside, but believe me, they are some of the craziest people and fun friends I’ve ever met!

Being old-time clubbing kakis, we went to MoS last Saturday night.

With this being a catch-up gathering, I can’t believe that my camera decided to forsake me and refused to be switched on!

Out of battery on this special day where the four of us finally had the chance to go out together once again!

Especially when the venue is a place with extreme low light conditions, where camera phones simply don’t function well!

Anyway, still tried to take photos using camera phone…

I can still remember the first time I came to MoS, I wasn’t even 21 yet, and I was lucky enough to be let in… But this time around, especially weekends, identification checks were all in place, and Steven who totally looked like an under-aged kid was I think being checked twice!

With a stroke of luck, my housemate Alvin and some of friends, including foundation studies friend Soo Wai, were there as well!

Yeah I know can’t see a thing in the picture, but Alvin’s the one next to me and Soo Wai’s the one next to Alvin.

Alvin did something naughty that night! Kekeke… *keeps quiet*

Anyway, Steven, the super insane heavy drinker, totally drank like almost half of all the liquor that we had; and for the record, our experience of drinking with Steven had given us really crazy memories!

Memories like him lying drunk beside a drain while we had supper, confessing to a girl that we didn’t even know too well, as well as throwing an entire guitar from his apartment window all the way down into the public swimming pool on the ground floor while he was drunk!

Not crazy enough? Check this (unrelated) video out. Steven being smacked-down by Jon!

I was to bring the honorable external examiner of my degree course in MMU – Prof. Dr. Wolf-Fritz Riekert, from Stuttgart Media University of Germany, on a 3-Days-2-Nights leisure trip to Cameron Highlands.

Dr. Riekert’s job as the external examiner for MMU is to evaluate and advise on our Degree program’s structure, curriculum, marking schemes etc.

He is also to visit our university at least once during his term of appointment, and during these visits give lectures, seminars, workshops, and finally write a report on the faculty’s progress to the University.

And now he has come to Malaysia to do just that!

Dr. Chang (second from the left), the program coordinator of my course, had been planning a trip around Malaysia for the Professor after the Prof had finished his last task in MMU – an evaluation interview with a few students, where I was also selected as an interviewee.

It was at that time when he thought it would be good to have a tour guide accompanying the Professor on his trip, since he was not familiar at all to our land… and so I was given the job!

Also coming along were some of my good friends: Hanif (the one acting cool in sunglasses), Ariadne (behind the camera), and the terrorist from Arab, Osamah (first on the left).

I was the driver for this trip. And not only that the petrol and toll costs were all paid, I was also thrilled to find that my automatic-geared Wira was totally awesome because it could carry the weight of SIX people (five people plus the Prof’s super-uber-ultra-heavy luggage the weight of a sixth person) all the way up to Cameron Highlands!

We took up three rooms in Equatorial Hotel, at the very peak of Cameron Highlands!

We didn’t do much on the first day because we reached only at seven in the evening.

We all had classes in the morning and the Dean of our faculty, who was also there when we discussed the trip with Dr. Chang, had personally ordered us to attend the classes in the morning before going on the trip – so we obeyed – and thus arriving so late…

That night, we brought the Professor to have steamboat for dinner!

The Professor had never heard of steamboat before! And he was so amazed by the way we simply threw all the raw prawns and fish and chicken meat and vegetables into the boiling pot and just scoop out and eat!

He must be thinking in revelation that this must be the way people in Asian third world countries have their food…

Luckily, he didn’t seem disgusted or anything (or at least he didn’t show it)… Haha

If anything, he in fact seemed pleasantly fascinated with how we could, in his own words, ‘turn a regular meal into an activity’, and tried to learn the names of the various local vegetables and food… Ariadne also taught him her so-called ‘proper’ way to peel prawns! (without using hands, of course!)

Truthfully, we weren’t very sure if he was full or not after the meal! Because all he managed to scoop out of the pot were tiny bits of meat and some veggie, plus most of his time were occupied in taking pictures, chatting with us, peeling prawns, and drinking Chinese tea!  

After the dinner we had a drink at Starbucks. Where he told us that even in Germany, people thought that Starbucks was overpriced given the products they sell – coffee – which could be found in similar quality just anywhere.

The Professor also enthusiastically showed us pictures of his wife, his children, and the place where he stayed in Germany!

The garden outside his house was… like… UNBELIEVABLY WONDERFUL.

The picture above is not a postcard! It is his garden!

Totally makes us wish we could stay there and study there and work there and get married there and grow old there and die there and be buried there and rot there.

That night back in the hotel, after saying goodnight to the Professor at his room, we took the opportunity to tell scary ghost stories among ourselves in our rooms!

Hanif was so not afraid that he fell asleep during the ghost storytelling.

The next day, we had a really nice breakfast in the hotel, and then went out for jungle trekking.

It was a rather easy track and Ariadne even wore slippers! Which however, in the end, caused her to have to stay behind for a particular steep path! Haha!

Easy as the track was, it was nevertheless a tiring journey – climbing up and down the muddy slopes and stepping over huge tree roots and gigantic fallen tree trunks…

It was the first time the Professor trekked in a tropical forest, and he totally liked it!

We ended our jungle trekking at a waterfall where cool, fresh mountain water flew endlessly from inside the forest…

There were also some ‘ducks’… but, haha, never mind…

Next, we had lunch in a famous mamak stall in Cameron Highlands, where we ordered banana leaf rice with curry mutton and roti canai for the Professor. He had said that he was very interested in trying as many of our local food as possible!

We also made the professor eat with his hands, the Malaysian way! (we didn’t actually make him do it, of course, he voluntarily and sportingly did it!)

And we made a video of him eating with his hands!

A really interesting thing with the video is that if you watch it carefully, you’d see the Caucasian woman behind wearing an extremely disgusted look at our direction, where the Professor was eating with his hands!

It’s totally hilarious, the way she looks at us, you know! She’s probably thinking what these barbaric teenagers are making that poor European old man do… LOL!

After the very interesting lunch, we headed off to the one place in Cameron that the Professor declares a ‘must go’ after he had seen it on the internet:

- the BOH tea plantations!

To us, the plantations were nothing but a lot of well-ordered green trees. But to the professor, the scene of infinite rows of carefully-planted tea plants stretching over mountains was truly, utterly amazing.

Like….. this amazing.

Hanif fell to the ground and worshipped the plantation in amazement.

Of course he wasn’t, joking only lah!

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Some random pics at the tea plantation…

After coming down from Mt. Brinchang (yup the plantation was halfway up the mountain!), we went to the Bee Farm, where there were beehives with thousands of live bees all around you – unprotected!

Kinda had a hard time convincing everyone we won’t die after this visit!

It became worse when there were even disclaimers at the entrance telling you that the farm people will not be responsible if you were injured or died or something…

But we had a good time inside anyways.

After that we went to a number of other great places as well, such as the Strawberry Farm where we could pick strawberries ourselves, the Aborigines Village where indigenous people lived, and the Cactus Point where we found cactus with balls, literally!

At night, before dinner, we had a nice long walk at the famous Brinchang pasar malam, where local people sell all sorts of locally-produced stuff – from strawberry umbrellas to cute little pots of cactus!

We also brought the Professor for a treat of a lifetime – something the westerners had always dreaded… Durian!

It was the very first time that the Professor had durian!

Whether or not it would be his very last time, we could not tell for sure… Because we weren’t sure how we should interpret his comment – “well, it was quite nice…” accompanied with a kind, warm smile, slowly nodding head.

The next morning, we made a final stop at the Cameron Valley Tea House, where they served fresh Cameron Valley tea on the spot, before descending the hill.

We all had a lot of fun with Dr. Riekert over the three days on Cameron Highlands, I bet that he felt 30 years younger during the period of the trip too!

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Stuff that we learned from a Professor coming from Stuttgart, Germany (Place where Mercedes-Benz came from ):

We, as well as many people around the world, shamelessly pronounce the names of the top cars manufactured in Germany WRONGLY! (At least compared to how the German people pronounce it.)

For example, ‘Mercedes’ is not pronounced as ‘Mer-SAY-des’ but instead ‘Mer-SEE-des’.

‘Volkswagen’ is not pronounced as ‘Volks-WHERE-gen’ but ‘Folks-VAAR-gen’ (‘V’ is pronounced as ‘F’ and ‘W’ as ‘V’.)

Finally, ‘BMW’ is pronounced as ‘BMV’ – yes ‘V’ as in ‘Bee-Am-VEE’!

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P.S. We happened to see a lot of Mercedes cars all along the roads that we travelled in this trip, as well as a number of Porches, BMWs, and even a  Hummer on Cameron, followed by an impressive sight of over TWENTY FERRARI‘S speeding up Cameron Highlands in a line when we came down… Kinda gives the false impression to the German visitor in our car that the people in our country drives a hell lot of expensive cars and are not stuck with stupid Protons and Peroduas.

We’ll miss you a lot, Professor! Come visit us again soon!

She was on the show ‘Cheer 2009′, aired on last Friday, 14th of August at 9PM!

The interview screenshots on this post were taken from the streaming video in the members’ page on 8TV’s website, so the image quality sucks.

A few weeks ago, she was invited by 8TV to an interview as an ex-cheerleader in Titans – her secondary school cheerleading team!

Titans is one of the teams to make it to the Top 5 in the National Cheerleading Competition 2009 held in Bukit Jalil earlier last month.

We went to watch the competition too this year, as well as last year!

You know what?

The cheerleading competition is one of those rare, fantasy-like places on earth where thousands of young, active, open-minded, and irresistibly-charming schoolgirls gather in a packed place, all just having fun!

And best of all,  the ratio of girls to boys in that place is probably… like…

10:1

And the ratio of pretty girls to not-so-pretty girls:

10:1

Therefore:

Girls (10:1) X Pretty Girls (10:1) = OMG HEAVEN!!!

…

You would totally wish that cheerleading is the national sport of our country…

Back to the interview, my dear and some of her former cheer-colleagues were asked to talk about some of their past experiences and stuff about cheerleading.

Sitting next to her is Chooi Yee, one of her good friends and also Titans assistant captain of year 2005.

My dear has a blog entry on the day she went for the interview.

Two days – 17th and 18th, of last month, were very musical days to me – because I went to TWO music concerts in TWO nights!

On the 17th I attended the performance of the great oratorio ‘The Seasons’ by Haydn, and on the 18th ‘Mass in B minor’ by J.S. Bach.

If you’re bored skip the following paragraph (stuff read from concert booklet):

The Seasons was performed by suprano Sibylla Rubens, tenor Maximilian Schmitt and baritone Michael Nagy, all three of whom were German, music by  the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO), and choir by the Swiss Chamber Choir. The concert was performed in the German language.

And it was performed at the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas just underneath the twin towers!

My brother always attends these concerts and this time, he was so kind that he got me real cheap student-price tickets!

They were only RM15 instead of the usual RM90+ per ticket!

Really great, isn’t it? =D

There’s my bro and his friend, who went to the concert together.

Apparently you had to wear like totally formal to get in. Probably because the organizers were afraid of the Malaysian teenage culture where students would probably buy the RM15 student tickets and wear FCUK™ t-shirts with pasar malam short pants in.

According to my bro, if you don’t have a suit or blazer, you could rent one from them, free of charge!

My dear and her brother went too!

The interior of the concert hall was so architecturally beautiful that they disallowed any form of photography within the concert hall, even before the concert had started.

If you took out your camera and took a photo, the ushers would walk over to your seat, inform you that photography was prohibited, and request (or more like demand) you to delete the photo in front of her eyes.

But, they forgot we had Google Images, so here you go – the interior:

The second concert that I attended, J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor, was held in Menara PGRM, Cheras. In case you haven’t known, the Mass is a Roman Catholic rite, so naturally, the Mass in B minor is a very religious piece of work.

This time, the orchestra and part of the choir is from Yin Qi, a Christian Music Organization that is rather well known in its own industry.

While The Seasons was performed in German, the Mass in B minor was sung in Latin. If you had not paid attention to the translations on the screens or booklets, you would have no idea what they are all spluttering about.

While the hall was huge, the crowd was only average. I guess a RM50 ticket to listen to the work of J.S. Bach, who was indeed the greatest composer in history, loses out to a RM200 ticket to watch Jay Chou live in Stadium Merdeka…

Sad, our new generation, isn’t it?

I had considered not blogging this trip but then I realized that if I really did, I would have not blogged for my past THREE Cameron Highlands trips!

That’s so bad of me! THREE times and I didn’t even bother to record it in my diary!

Cameron Highlands has given us so many sweet strawberries and even sweeter memories – I’ve decided I simply cannot be so bad to it!

On June 28th, I went to Cameron Highlands with my dear!

Also went there in November last year, but didn’t blog… (picture taken at the exact same spot)

ALSO went again exactly 365 days before the latest trip, on June 28th, 2008, but also didn’t blog…

So this time I am totally going to blog about Cameron Highlands, before I neglect it for the third time!

Looking back, it is weird and extremely coincidental that my hair happens to be dyed brown every time I went to this place!

Cameron Highlands is a really wonderful place with wonderful memories!

My dear and I went back to Cameron a few weeks ago for a special occasion which had taken place there.

It was a relaxing trip with no pre-planned schedule. We just went wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

We stayed at Heritage Hotel, a hotel that was excellent in terms of its location which was away from the town areas, and was – despite already being on a ‘highland’ – situated on top of a hill!

Cameron Highlands is one of the most beautiful, scenic places in Malaysia.  If you need a serious breakaway, locally, this is the place!

In this trip, we went back to the wonderful Smokehouse, which was a small, traditional-English-cottage-styled hotel outside the town of Brinchang.

We had visited this place the last time we came to Cameron Highlands, and we had been so fascinated!

This place had an interior of a nice Englishman’s cottage, with fireplaces and comfy couches and candlelit tables and grandfather clocks… but the exterior, the garden, was heavenly!

It was superbly well kept, with lovely bird fountains and huts, and a small, winding path in the middle of the green bushes and flowery plants flourishing all around you… You’d have thought you were in some Swiss countryside or something!

All the gracefulness of the garden, set with a white marble table with warm tea and freshly-baked scones…

Oh… this blogger is drooling on his keyboard…

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We also went to pluck strawberries at a ‘self-pluck’ strawberry farm!

We’ve each been to Cameron Highlands almost a dozen times since we were young and we had never tried out the self-plucking process…

… which turned out to be quite pointless, actually.

Because one of the workers over there seemed to be too free and he got around the farm and kept running back to us with huge, ripe strawberries!

He must have been thinking that we were going to be so happy to receive so many guaranteed-sweet, professionally-plucked strawberries when the fact was that we thought, politely, that he was merely spoiling the fun!

We ended up plucking only TWO of the dozens of strawberries that we walked out of the farm with!

But it was still quite a fun experience, really!

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Also in Cameron Highlands, the bee farm where you could experience being surrounded by live bees:

And lots of cactus shops and centers that strongly tempt you to purchase pots and pots of cactus (what’s the plural word for cactus?) home only to regret buying them later when you got back.

I always ride home with my parents with at least some cactus each time I went to Cameron Highlands when I was young.

And I always abandon them in no more than three days.

And they always live on even after I had abandoned them.

Unbelievable living things, cactus are, aren’t they?

If God Himself were to look down from heaven, He would have wondered what those little humans had done to the hills below that He had once planted with tall, majestic trees:

The lush green blanket of tea plants on the hills has become some sort of an icon for Cameron Highlands!

I think it would also serve as an ideal, spacious, carpeted landing spot for alien spaceships.

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One thing I feel about Cameron Highlands though, is that it is getting a bit too commercialized, really.

The place used to be a small town where people farmed and grew vegetables and fruits, while some other folks owned beautiful orchards and gardens.

But now it has become a bustling commercial town with tourists and price tags everywhere…

Sigh, but I guess whenever a place attracts people, it attracts businessmen, and traders, and Starbucks, too.

Anyway, I still love Cameron Highlands very much and it remains one of the blissful venues of my comfortable childhood memory!

The King of Pop passed away from cardiac arrest this morning in his house in Los Angeles.

Everybody’s got a tribute for MJ today so I wanna have mine too!

But I’ll be brief, hehe.

Strangely, my impression of MJ was that he was a really good guy. I wasn’t really a fan of his, but with some of his songs like ‘Earth Song’, he seemed to me a man with a good cause.

Furthermore, when I was a kid, like really really young, I saw one of his performances on television, where a female fan had ran on stage, plunged onto him and hugged him tightly, and kissed him!

It was to my amazement when I saw that MJ was cool about it, and that he actually hugged and kissed her back!

I was young and when I saw that I was like “wow, this is really a fan-loving guy!”

If I were to see that scene at my present age, I would have thought “OMG after this she can get rich by charging each of the fans $100 to touch that inch of her skin that Michael Jackson has kissed with his royal, sexy lips.”

So generally, I thought good of Michael Jackson… until Southpark came along.

Episode 117 of Season 8 parodied him as a man who behaves completely like a child, has tendencies of molesting children, and ends up having his surgically enhanced nose ripped off his face and his whole ‘artificial’ body gruesomely falling apart.

That, coupled with some previous controversies of him molesting children – successfully planted an image of him as a total freak in my mind.

However, I later learned that the child-molesting charges against him (in real life)  had been dropped and he was acquitted as an innocent person.

Personally, I am not that interested in him being a good person or not, because even if he were a serial killer, I would still admire his sleek moves – the moonwalk, the anti-gravity lean, the trademark yelp – “AW!” and everything else that had been so influential in the past few decades.

He was so cool in his MVs… Can you do his moves? You can’t, so he wins. He’s the man.

His death is a tremendous loss to the entertainment industry. I think the world would never find a substitution superstar who had such a warm, bright smile, such unbeatable dance moves, and such great passion toward penis-grabbing during performances.

Michael Jackson, you will be sorely missed.

OMG!!

OMG!!!

James-Chow.com is THREE YEARS OLD!!

YES!!! On June 21, 2009, James-Chow.com officially turns three!!

Isn’t it incredible?

I’ve been writing on this blog for this many years now, it feels like she will follow me my entire life! It feels like 50 years later I will be sitting on the old armchair with my long, white beard in my long-retired 70s and still blog with a laptop!

For the record, James-Chow.com was created on June 21, 2006, but my blog posts began in December, that’s because I spent the six months’ time designing the blog template and stuff!

So, which is the birth date of a baby? The day she learns how to speak, or the day she was born? Of course the day she was born! Hehe!

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A little about campus…

The first week in the first trimester of my fourth year in university has been really, really tiring me out.

In fact, my schedule has actually brought about a great, unprecedented change in my lifestyle:

For the first time in my entire university life, I am sleeping and waking up at ‘normal’ times (i.e. roughly 12PM – 8AM) daily, voluntarily, consistently and naturally!

No big deal? OF COURSE IT’S A BIG DEAL!!

Previously, my early-sleep-early-wakes had been either involuntary (like exam tomorrow morning), inconsistent (only maybe two days a month), or unnatural (achieved by unnatural means such as relaxants, two days before didn’t sleep etc.)

I’ve always felt that college is the final period of your life to live whatever ‘abnormal’ life you want, because right out of college, you’ll never get to do it anymore without incurring the wrath of either your boss or your wallet.

Anyway, it hasn’t been too bad sleeping and waking up early too! I get to breathe in fresh air every morning and have a proper breakfast (wow, when was the last time I did both of that? Form 5?), not having to dread 8AM classes and rush home desperately to sleep after attending them, and most of all – I get to see a lot of sunlight!

Previously, I was awake for more dark hours than bright hours, now it’s the other way round! Yay!

Sigh, I guess it is also necessary for me to start adjusting back to normal, because I have less than one year before I begin my internship and have to start working – unless I plan to work as a night-shift security guard or something…

And the greatest downside of all the adjustments and busyness is that I do not have time at all for James-Chow.com, at least for this week!

Poor blog!

That means that my scheduled completion date for the renovation works on my blog has to be delayed by three weeks, but I’ll make sure it’ll be no longer than that…

My poor blog must be so angry with me as I am typing this right now on its page. The new renovated version of James-Chow.com was supposed to be her 3rd birthday present by me! And now it has to be delayed!

OMG forgive me milady…

In less than 48 hours, however, I will already be going back to class again!

What is this??

Semester (or what we call, ‘trimester’) breaks in Multimedia University are shorter than a certain erected organ of a guy who is suffering severe erectile dysfunction.

They are so short (they = our sem breaks) that we don’t even realize its existence!

After one hectic study week and two dizzying exam weeks that follow it, we laid down our lecture notes and text books, took a deep, relaxed sigh, had a few nights of much-needed, lengthy sleeps to cover the sleep debt accumulated over the past two weeks; went out for a few days of most-deserving after-exam celebrations, of course, everybody does that after they finished something big and stressful; went back to our hometowns for a few days to be with our family members who had missed us so much – just like what we do during some normal weekends…

… and then the day after tomorrow… we’re having class again!

So, semester break? Har? When? Where got?

Look, a ‘semester break’ of a pathetic length of fourteen days is not a semester break. It should be called an ‘exam papers marking period’.

I think the only reason we were having this ‘break’ of two weeks is because, of course, we cannot start our new semester without the results of our previous semester’s exams!

Come on, can’t ya’ll see it? If they could finish grading our exam papers in three days, then our ‘semester breaks’ would be three-days-long!

Why? Because we used to have 3-week semester breaks, but this semester, our dear University probably thought that we would rot and die in our homes waiting… longing… for the long, pointless 3-week holidays to pass, so they decided that they would do us a favor and shorten this semester break to two weeks!

Because three weeks is like – wow – soooooooo ‘long’, you know…

Whatever happened to the college life where students could go for full-time summer jobs, hitch-travelling around the country, take up seasonal singing, dancing or whatever competitions, or maybe just taking a month-long retreat to some relaxing beachside or countryside summerhouse?

No! We can’t do shit! We cannot even survive a part time job until the monthly salary is being issued!

Sigh… anyway, before the two weeks end, let’s try to recap what I did in the last two weeks of my exam papers marking period.

May 28 – May 30: Finished exams! Watched movies, had some fine dinners, spent time accompanying my dear. She was still having her LL.B. exams until June 2.

May 31 –June 1: Visited Sebastian, Jon and Heng who had just moved from SK to their ‘new’ house in PJ. The word ‘new’ tells you that the house is ‘new’ to them, but the house ITSELF – is by no means new.

Rented at RM1,000, although slightly more expensive than double-storeys in SK, this house is definitely a bargain, considering it being in PJ and within walking distance to the Kelana Jaya LRT station.

There were some really ‘classical’ things that we would never find in slightly newer houses, such as this really antique staircase light bulb socket:

… and this:

There was also an ‘extra’ bathroom on the first floor, in a small corner outside the kitchen and beside the backyard, that was so disgustingly dirty and smelly that they had decided to quarantine it for as long as they stay there!

They swore they would never open the door of the bathroom, use the two other bathrooms instead, and treat as if it had never existed.

They were very firm about that!

Also revisited Blitzone with Sebastian a couple of times to play DotA. It’s been so long, like more than two years, since I last set foot in that cyber cafe!

June 2 – June 5: Celebrated my dear’s and my ‘finish-exam’. Started the long works for the new James-Chow.com template scheduled to complete on June 21 – the day my domain turns three-year-old.

Also went to TM Tower for the first time to settle the billing dispute.

June 6 – June 8: Went back to Ipoh to visit my family.

For the first time I took the interstate KTM train service, which was fairly good, compared to the incredibly scary rides on KTM Komuter trains in KL which are infamous for their great reputation of ‘sardine-ing’ during rush hours – packing huge (and I mean MONSTROUSLY huge) numbers of people in a single train compartment, feet stepping on feet, body rubbing on body (yeah, it’s disgusting), and marinating them in an inescapable, juicy blend of sweat, body odour, bad breath, cheap imitation fragrance, armpit smell, and if you’re extremely unlucky, fart.

The interstate KTM service that I took, however, was better. At least there were seats and the number of passengers were limited to the number of seats.

Although there were a few people eating nasi lemak in the air-conditioned compartment when I first went in, making the trapped air stink heavily of rendang chicken, the train service was, however, generally good.

They even had people walking down the aisle with a trolley selling food and drinks every now and then, just like those flight attendants selling duty free items on international flights.

Only instead of wine and cigarettes, these trolleys were selling Jack n’ Jill potato chips, Milo, Nasi Lemak and other local foodstuffs.

It was also the very first time that I boarded a train from Ipoh!

It was the first time I used the train station in Ipoh, which was a really magnificent building that, unlike the ultra sophisticated and modern design of KL Sentral, had a really grand, ‘olden-days’ architecture, having built in the nineteen thirties by the British.

June 9 – June 13: Came back from Ipoh. Watched some movies and continued on the development of my new website design. Yesterday, I went to a FOREX Expo at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.

Also spent the night playing Mahjong with Jon and the rest. The last time I played Mahjong was in Kukup where I played the whole night, without sleep, and only won one round – lost all the rest!

Luckily yesterday, with Jon’s girlfriend Agnes as my ‘advisor’ I managed to breakeven by the end of the game – no net gain or loss!

Two days ago, my results came out! I passed everything! YAY!

Two days later, however, my new trimester will start. Gotta go class again… SIGH…

*Pics for this blog post are not ready yet because I haven’t been home to extract he photos from my camera.  Hehe give me three days and I’ll add them in.*

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This month is, without a doubt, going to be the most exciting month for James-Chow.com in her entire history!

In slightly over two weeks’ time, ladies and gentlemen, James-Chow.com – the fair domain that hosts the blog you are reading right now – is turning THREE!

Yes, James-Chow.com is gonna be THREE YEARS OLD on June 21, 2009!

Hooray!

Now, I feel that’s pretty awesome for my little blog to turn three – and still being alive – because from what I’ve seen, many blogs die within two years from their creation.

And by ‘dying’ I mean without any new updates or posts for at least three months in a run!

I’m right, aren’t I? Don’t you have a blog that is either dead (no updates for more that three months), half-dead (there was at least a one-month period in the blog’s history in which there were no updates at all), or still growing-up (less than three years old)?

Hehe… Alright, maybe you do have a healthy, grown-up blog – so now you can be happy with me! Yay!

To celebrate this glorious occasion, I have prepared a gift for my blog:

A brand-new hairstyle, the most gorgeous make-up, the latest designer heels, the most glamorous accessories, and the wildest, sexiest dress ever seen by the insatiable blog-viewers on the internet – on June 21, 2009, you will look at James-Chow.com like you’ve never seen her before.

Renovation works has already begun! Hope we’ll make it in time!

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Meanwhile, I went to Menara TM on Tuesday and ‘kinda’ sorted out my TMNet problem!

Before I tell about how it went inside, let me tell you about the outside of the building first. Without a better word – it was parking hell.

The compound wasn’t too big, with very limited public parking space, and that’s because most of the space were purchased by those pesky parking operators putting up signs saying ‘PARKING – RM8 sekali masuk’!

And there were not just one, but MANY of these ‘parking areas’ surrounding the building! More incredibly, most of these parking areas were FULL! Damn crazy corporate people can pay so much everyday working in this place.

I could pay RM10 for a parking spot like this in downtown KL, but not in PJ – not even RM8; more so when all I needed was 10 minutes in-and-out to complain about a friggin’ ridiculous problem that wasn’t even my fault in the first place.

So, I turned into a small path with very few traffic, made sure I was on the left lane and that cars could still pass in the opposite lane; I stopped the engine in the middle of the road and got out of the car.

Who cares.

Stepping into the tower itself made me understand instantly why these people were willing to pay a fortune for parking to work here. The interior was like a goddamn hotel, with a really comfortable and quiet environment as well as convenient points like a San Francisco Coffee outlet in the lobby beside the huge glass pane facing the busy PJ streets outside.

I stepped into the TMPoint there and a receptionist promptly tended to my problem. She ran a check on the system and immediately confirmed that I was indeed still using two packages. She gave me a number and a form, and asked me to fill in the latter.

I think probably the most admirable thing here was that this TMPoint was… empty. By empty I mean no customers, of course, and a counter was immediately available to me even before I could fill up the form!

(Contrary to the standard 2-3 hours waiting time needed in the stupid TMPoint in Cyberjaya.)

In the end, after checking though the records, I was told that the branch in Cyberjaya really HAD NOT processed my cancellation request in March.

Meaning that the lady in Cyberjaya had, despite her promise that she would process my request the next Monday, completely FORGOTTEN about the matter, and made me pay two months of package fees for nothing.

I was slightly annoyed. But they quickly provided a solution for me: they would submit the complaint to an investigation team, who will look into the matter; in a couple of weeks’ time, if they can confirm what I said is true, they would refund the full amount that I had paid for the package in the past three months.

They cancelled my package on the spot anyways. So nothing can go further wrong.

Gotta wait 3 weeks before I get the results of their ‘investigation’, I’ll wait and see… Meanwhile, you should wait and see my website’s new look on the 21st this month!

(This entry is a rant. So no pictures hehe… )

Despite the fact that my university is owned by these guys, I really have a lot of shit to say about this company – TM.

TM, if I’m not so badly mistaken, is one of the greatest companies in Malaysia. And they have improved a lot since the old Telekom Malaysia times.

But, is it enough? No! Hell NO!

Where to start? A couple of months ago, I seeked their support when I lost my TMOnline password (TMOnline is the website where you can view your bills and pay them etc. and you have to create your own username and password on that site to use it, what I’m saying is – you don’t use your internet account’s password but a different password specially created for that site.)

Also, I know it sounds stupid but I lost my username ages ago too, because I’ve registered on that website since the day I signed up for Streamyx and have never used it since then.

Last year, when I finally had the need to check my bills immediately and not wait for the monthly paper bill, I decided to recover my password. Without my username, of course – I could not use the TMOnline website’s password retrieval system.

So I called the TM hotline, they verified my identity, recovered my username and password, spelt it out nicely to me through the phone, and I happily thanked them and hung up the phone… only to realize that it was NOT the TMOnline username and password that I needed, but they had instead retrieved my StreamyX username and password!

My head steaming, I struggled to recall back and was sure that I had made it crystal clear that I needed my TMOnline username and password, not the friggin’ internet login password.

Anyway, realizing that talking through the phone would not be clear enough, I went to a TMPoint (their customer service centers), queued for 3 hours, and asked them what I should do. The lady in the TM-branded coat pondered my problem for a while, tapped her keyboard confusedly, and turned to consult the guy sitting beside her.

Then, she turned back to me, smiled, and asked me to hold on while she tapped on her keyboard. I sat there, expecting some expertly intelligent solution, only to see her browsing to the website and trying to password retrieve my password using the website’s password retrieval system!

I was  speechless. She then asked me for my username, which I promptly broke out of my stupor and iterated – clearly – that I had lost it.

I continued to tell her that I had tried using the retrieval system before but failed because I didn’t have the username. But she tried anyway, and of all things, she keyed in my Streamyx username instead in the login field! As if hoping that I would have been stupid enought to have confused the two! Of course, it didn’t work.

After trying for some time, she then turned to me and said calmly: “Sorry ya, but we really need your username to do this…”

I wanted to stand up and take off all my clothes to show her that I wasn’t hiding my username underneath my armpit or something, but resisted. I  just repeated that I had, very unfortunately, lost BOTH my username and password.

The lady sat stunned for a full three seconds, as if she had finally discovered the earth-shattering truth and at the same time, had never met with such a moronic customer who could lose both his username and password at once. She then looked up and told me blandly – there was nothing much they could do.

I  asked desperately: “Isn’t there some ways that the system can recover, like, both my username and password? I am here in person and I can answer any questions regarding my identity!”

I was, despite apologetically, told that there was none, and that the only thing I could do was to find my username.

Defeated, I decided that I wasn’t going to use the damn system anymore, anyway. Sticking to the old paper bills would be good enough to keep me alive.

That was at the end of last year.

This year however, in late March, I again found the need to use the TMOnline system to check my bills because I had just cancelled one of my packages (The Voice28 package), and the officer in charge had said that my account had just recovered from a suspension that day, so she would have to do the cancellation process for me the following week (because that day was Friday); the following week, however, would have been April already, so she told me that because they would be processing my cancellation in early April, the bill for April would have already been processed by then and I would have to wait until May for the package to properly stop working. She asked me to check the bill routinely to see if my package made it to be cancelled before April’s bill went out.

Despite having to pay 2 months of extra package fee for nothing (I no longer make land line calls), I wasn’t complaining much, because I knew big companies were memang macam tu.

I had also tried creating a new username and password and somehow, even with the new username and password, I still couldn’t log in to TMOnline. I even used the password retrieval system to retrieve a new password for that new username to confirm that the system recognizes my password – still it didn’t work!

I called the TM customer line again, and this time kept reminding myself to make perfectly sure that the operator understands which username and password I was referring to.

I succeeded in making my point! The lady seemed to finally understand, after many rounds of me saying “No no no no no, not the Streamyx username… the one being used on TMOnline, the TM website used to pay bills!”, that I wasn’t looking to recover my Streamyx password…

… But she seemed clueless of what I was ACTUALLY looking for.

She even blurredly asked me for the address of that website that I was talking about. So I spelled out: “t…m…online…dot…com…dot…my”.

I heard her type on her keyboard and clicked. Worrying over her seemingly confused and uncertain voice that she might have never actually seen the website before (OMG, TM employee?), I followed to say: “ OK, now you see on the upper right hand side, right? There’s an orange box with the login button…”

Jeez, I felt like I was the customer service operator, not her.

She tried, and tried, and tried again to log in with my username and password (as if I have not already tried countless times before calling her), and finally, she seemed a bit impatient and said: “Could you please hold on?”

And she left.

LEFT!

I waited bleakly on the phone for another 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes… and as I saw the time counter on my phone reach 10 minutes, I hung up.

I GAVE UP.

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I just received my telephone and internet bill for May last week. Somehow, I was not too surprised when I saw that the package fee – was still being charged to me.

-

OMG

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THREE MONTHS STILL NOT ENOUGH TIME TO CANCEL ONE STUPID PACKAGE AH?!

… so I sent them an email to confirm this absurdity.

After 3 days, I got this:

Dear Mr. Chow,

Thank you for contacting TM. Firstly, we would like to apologise for the late reply.

Referring to your e-mail dated 26th May 2009 on billing issue, upon checking in our system, we found that your Voice 28 package is still active. Therefore, we would like to advice you to refer any nearest TMpoint at your area for termination this package. Kindly visit  http://tmpoint.tm.com.my/content.cfm/ID/9B23CE18-F53B-4088-B8B0FFC3D6BFF971 to check the nearest TMpoint outlets at your area.

We hope the above revert to your query. We truly apologize for any inconveniences caused. Nevertheless, we would like to express our high appreciation for your patience and understanding.

For further assistance or feedback, kindly e-mail us at help@tm.com.my.

Alternatively, you can also contact TM at 100 and select “Internet Services”.

Regards,

Che Ashaliana

Customer Care Support, Internet Services,

Customer Service Management,

TM Retail.

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I’m going to sort this out once and for all in their corporate headquaters building – Menara TM, this week.

Hope it goes well.

Yup, Bali Trip entry again! But thankfully, this is going to be the third and final part of the longest travel log ever recorded on James-Chow.com!

Read Part 1 and Part 2 first ya!

I hate to start this entry with a bad note, but this is really how it went…

Departing from the hotel on the third day, we were brought to yet another temple, only this one was unanimously agreed to be the supreme most boring-est of all boring temples in Bali, ever.

I think it was called Taman Ayun Temple or something…

The only area that seemed a tad more interesting was the centre court of the temple, where most of the impressive-looking ‘towers’ were located.

But that area too, unfortunately, was closed to the public. So all we could do was look from outside the ancient moldy walls surrounding the area!

Although the overall compound of the temple was very large, the buildings were generally dull and the temperature was scorching hot!

I can remember some of us saying we’d much rather cancel this visit and head to the beach instead… By the way, so much for a Bali trip, there was NO beach activity in the tour guide’s official itinerary!

So, in the temple, everyone was just taking photos around and doing things that only people in extreme boredom would do.

And soon we were headed back to the bus and, after lunch… guess what?

That’s right! We were brought to visit another temple!

I can’t even think of anything to write about this temple besides that it was much cooler there and there was a beautiful lake at the edge of it.

We left the place after taking some photos along the lake.

Now, if you thought our temple trips were over, you thought wrong – it was almost 6PM and we were brought to our third temple visit of the day!

Really gotta salute these guys… After going on one of their tours, you’d start to think that Bali has only got nothing but old temples to offer its tourists!

However, this temple was… finally… slightly different.

We were brought to this place called Tanah Lot, and there was a temple built on top of a huge ‘rock’ on the beach.

When the tide rises, the path towards the entrance of the temple would be flooded and the rock becomes a mini island!

Sounds really mystical and sacred, doesn’t it?

I also found this small cave-like place that got abandoned by the people after the tide rose and covered the place with sea water.

I was really curious about what that mysterious little white sign could possibly be pointing at, since there was nothing but a dark, low space beneath a humongous piece of rock.

So I went through the shallow water to have a look.

I was stunned.

Holy shit! I found the Holy Snake of Bali!

Until this day, I still can’t figure out what in the world – is – a Holy Snake. All I can imagine is a huge, talking snake wearing a gold crown and granting people treasures and gold coins and stuff…

LOL!

Back to reality, at Tanah Lot we saw one of the most beautiful sunset views in our lives!

I believe that the Tanah Lot sunset scene will be etched in my mind forever.

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After dinner that night, finally – after three days blundering in Bali, we found it… the gem, the heart, the very soul of Bali’s tourism industry:

No, it ain’t the seaside, and sure as hell not the temples. It wasn’t about the shopping places or any other cultural stuff…

… It’s the clubs, baby.

Lying at the very heart of the buzzing tourist town of Kuta, was a long stretch of street, called Legian Street.

And if you’re on this street, open your eyes… and be awed, as we totally were.

Bali tempts you with one of the best… no, in fact, the – best – clubbing experience that you can never find in any of the clubs in KL!

Why?

Because the clubs here were, firstly, adequately spacious with huge dance floors, the music was damn syok, the DJ was awesome, and the dance floor was never empty, or never even less than fully-packed…

But above all, the clubbing crowd in Bali was, for lack of a better word… perfect.

You could never find a club back in our place where there were so many angmohs from all over the world mingling with each other in such a friendly and open way!

It was as if every single person you happened to be facing on the floor was an old friend! There was very few talking over the booming music, of course, but everyone would see each other and smile, dance, shout, and laugh…

No groupings and gangs scene… no six-guys-dancing-around-one-pretty-girl scene… No girls being taken-advantage scene… No group of single guys acting cool with cigarettes scene… Nothing!

These people were just friendly tourists, just like us, trying to get a taste of Bali’s sweet night life!

And if you think clubbing here would burn a nasty hole in your wallet – it’s free!

There is NO COVER CHARGE – you just walk in and have fun!

Even the drinks were insanely cheap, by clubs standards I mean. While a bottle of Chivas cost us a standard Rp1,080,000 (RM340); a bottle of beer, however, cost only Rp20,000, that’s only like RM6!

Now, there was something that none of us realized when we were actually in the club:

The club that we happened to visit, called Paddy’s Club, we had no idea, was actually the – very – club that was destroyed in the infamous suicide bombing incident in 2002!

See Wikipedia article!

Apparently, after the nightmarish incident, Paddy’s Club was rebuilt and there we were! Standing on ground zero where more than 200 clubbers had been horrifyingly blown to smithereens! And we didn’t even know it!

Holy snake, I mean… Holy shit, dude!

**********

We left Paddy’s Pub at around 3AM, tired but satisfied. For the past 4 hours or so we had danced and danced unstoppably and there were times when it had felt dizzy and wobbly but we just couldn’t stop…

When we finally did stop we were totally exhausted and drained.

We slept so well that night.

The next morning, to treat the hangover and aches all over the body, we went for a spa – no Bali trip is complete without trying out their spas!

A 120-minute spa session cost Rp350,000 (RM110) per person.

I had been slightly reluctant to go for a spa at first, but the moment I stepped into the private room, I knew I had made the right decision.

The 2-hour full-body massage + scrub + floral bath was heavenly!

And with the nice, relaxing music and aromatherapy, plus my super-exhausted and sleep-deprived body… I could have laid there on the soft massage table whole day and stubbornly refuse to leave until they called security.

**********

Our last destination in Bali was Ulawatu Temple – a serious contender against the beautiful sunset scenery of Tanah Lot Temple for the best temple in Bali!

This time, instead of being on the beach, this amazing temple stood majestically on top of a cliff overlooking the sea!

The scene, as you can see, was breathtaking:

The thing about camera shots is that they don’t really look as amazing as they do when you look at the scene in reality.

So if you think the scenes in the pictures are nice, think again – the reality is actually a thousand times more magnificent than what you see in the picture!

I don’t know if the photos make it any clear to you – but it was very, very high up!

And there was no fence or walls or whatever along the cliff, one slip and even the ferocious Balinese gods can’t save you.

At around 4PM, we left for the Bali airport and departed from the wonderful island at 6.30PM.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I had already been cautious about the ‘over-temple-ish’ tour itinerary before I went for this trip itself. And now it has been proven that my worries have become reality!

All in all, I think the only temples that are worth going are the last two – Tanah Lot and Uluwatu Temple. The others would be better off cancelled and the time scheduled for visiting beaches instead!

Really, our schedule was so packed that we virtually had no free time at all except at night, which of course, was not suitable for beach activities as well!

OK, all that’s just my opinion – There could be many other tourists who totally enjoyed the temples so much and had the time of their lives strolling around the moldy old temples admiring cracked walls and terrifying gods.

**********

Complaints aside, I cannot express enough how happy and contented I am with this trip!

The local people were nice; the tour guide was fabulous; the sceneries were magnificent; the prices were unbeatable; the places were unique, and most of all, the friends that we made during the trip were the best!

Although we sometimes complained that some stuff were boring, the trip itself had actually never had a moment that lacked flavor.

Bali – I’ll definitely be back again someday!

But anyway, I guess it’s good to refresh my memory on Bali too! So, here we go, part 2!

After the relatively uneventful first day (really, because it was only dinner and sleep!), we started off our second day with a really ‘special’ traditional performance called the ‘barong and keris dance’.

Why I call it ‘special’, I’ll explain later.

Basically, this dance revolves around a mythical story with, you know, kings and gods and demons and their conflicts and stuff.

.

There was also a ‘talking monkey’ which did not contribute much to the storyline (to me) but was one of the major characters that had appeared since the beginning of the show.

The funny thing is this:

In the end, in a seriously desperate attempt on humor (I think), they staged a scene where, for no good reason, the monkey lied down on the floor and a group of actors surrounded the poor animal and started hitting its penis!

… And they (the actors) were laughing loudly as they hit the shaft of the penis repeatedly (the ‘penis’ was created using the tail of the monkey being erected upwards from between its legs), making it swing elastically in all directions on top of where the private part of the lying monkey should have been… in front of a huge crowd of multinational audience!

I think for the rest of my life I’ll be able to remember clearly – amidst the stunned crowd, there was a shocked, seemingly Australian, young mother who was sitting behind me with her three small kids, gasping loudly in horror and covering her mouth as all three of her kids cried out in disgust before the so-unconventional scene in front of them.

Here’s a close up shot of the monkey’s dick swinging:

You can actually see the blur caused by the swinging…

**********

After the very unusual traditional performance, we next became victims of a special ‘scheme’ arranged (I believe) by the local tour guide and a local-products store to earn the millions and millions of Rupiah that we had brought to spend there!

The tour guide had told us that instead of bringing us to multiple shops to buy and shop for different local Balinese stuff as we had requested, he knew ‘this place’ that had ‘everything under one roof’ and that we didn’t need to waste time looking around!

Somehow, I could not shake the feeling that this was all commission-motivated.

We were brought to this warehouse-like store selling all types of local souvenirs and stuff, and our tour guide couldn’t stop telling us how he had got for us this special ‘just-for-our-group’ 50% discount and why we should buy stuff there etc etc…

Anyway, we did buy some stuff, and were next brought on a three-hour journey to Mt. Batur, which was an active volcano that had erupted multiple times in the last centrury, thus leaving a layer of black, dried lava on some parts of the island.

Of course, we only went around the mountain, not up the mountain itself; but the sight seen from where we were was really beautiful!

A very interesting thing took place at this restaurant where we had our lunch!

The interior of the place where we had lunch was a rather classy buffet restaurant with air-conditioning and everything, but outside the restaurant was a monstrous horde of local sellers, each holding a variety of items ranging from key chains to paintings to chess sets to Harley-Davidson motorcycle miniature models, all trying (very, very desperately) to sell to you!

The way they tried to sell to tourists was as though their next meal depended on the sale. It was as though, if you didn’t buy it, they wouldn’t have money even for dinner!

It was that crazy!

They persuaded and talked and kept pestering you wherever you walked to, and sometimes, begged you to buy their stuff…

… Literally – “Tolong… tolonglah beli… Berapa awak mau bayar…? Tolonglah…”

More interestingly, after you’ve gone into the restaurant and sat down comfortably (we sat at a window-side table), there was a number of these sellers stalking blatantly outside the window, each trying frantically to get your attention whenever you turned your head to their direction!

And if they somehow managed to get your attention, your lunch is half-ruined – these people would actually start an attempt to negotiate prices with you in sign language and refuse to leave for a very, very long time!

The prices that these sellers offer you can be marked-up anywhere from 200% to 1000% or way above.

After the lunch, we journeyed downhill and stopped by a plantation area where we were offered free, freshly-brewed coffee made from freshly-roasted coffee beans!

There was also the legendary Kopi Luwak for sale. A small packet of this most expensive coffee in the world, which makes around 2-3 cups, was sold for Rp120,000 (around RM40)!

If you’re wondering what’s the big deal about this Kopi Luwak, lemme tell ya – it is made from coffee beans harvested from the feces, that is to say – shit, of the Paradoxus Hermaphroditus – an animal that looks like a mongoose.

Apparently, this Luwak only eats the finest coffee berries it could find and after passing through its stomach, the undigested beans (taken from its pile of shit) has superb aroma and taste and is unparalleled by any other coffee bean in the world.

Some of us bought this shit.

Next, we were brought to a temple – forgot the name – and it was the first of the FIVE friggin’ temples that we were supposed to visit in this tour.

Needless to say, the temple trip was fairly uneventful, if not downright boring; but the ancient design and architecture of the place was really unique and would be rather interesting to people in the structural design field.

Here, I also realized that the Balinese Gods were totally fearsome and err… I guess very protective, because if I myself were a demon trying to harm the Balinese people, I would first have my shit scared out by the sight of any one of their Gods!

At night, we had dinner at a fine restaurant in a hotel.

The only thing weird about this hotel-prepared dinner was that we were served a dish of fancily decorated, but unmistakably identifiable… chicken rice.

And we were served only plain water, any other drinks ordered would be charged separately.

Ah… Forgot to mention – the money that we paid to the travel agency had all our meals included. So naturally, it would have been foolish to have expected lobsters and oysters…

After the dinner, we did some shopping, and had our first ever foot massage in Bali!

Most of us had female locals doing the foot massages for us, except for a few unlucky souls, like our good friend Sadra (the guy behind) was unfortunate enough to have a guy whom his colleagues claim is a pondan, touching and rubbing his hairy legs with massage oil… all he likes.

A 45-minute foot massage here cost us only Rp50,000 (around RM16)!

**********

Note: Haha, I didn’t expect this entry to be this long… Seems like we’ll need a part 3…

And this time it’s not some boring cultural or academic event. It’s an event with a magnitude that has never been seen before in this country.

The dream event of all gamers.

Ladies and gentlemen, but gamers in particular, behold – Cyberfusion 2009!

The event is set to break the Guiness World Record for the single longest LAN Party in the world!

The previous record was held by Nvision, a 2008 LAN Party held in San Jose, California, sponsored by graphics cards industrial giant Nvidia.

This year, the record-breaking attempt is, unsurprisingly, sponsored by none other than AMD, parent company of ATI Technologies, and generally seen as a vicious counter-attack by Nvidia’s ‘most-hated’ nemesis in the GPU industry!

With almost 500 computers in a gaming event set to run for 38 hours non-stop, this is an event that’s totally against the disciplinary and academic culture of a university, but who cares!

This is an event that pwns evry n00b hard lol gg.

It’s a friggin’ cyber cafe of monstrous proportions!

Sadly, I did not participate in it, because I didn’t think I would be able to take out the time for it…

You have no idea, participating in an event such as this drains every single ounce of energy from you after it’s over!

You would need, at least, an extra 12 hours just for sleeping – and still feel utterly exhausted after that!

Alvin had gone to the event on the first day, and told me that it was really exciting!

On the second day, to make it a bit more special, we visited the event at 12 midnight on the second day, exactly 24 hours into the event, to see what was really going on after all the initial hype died down!

(For a brief coverage of the first day’s excitement, Alvin has got an entry on it here.)

After gaming non-stop for 24 hours, some gamers simply couldn’t tahan anymore and were taking quick, stealthy naps.

Some were taking refreshing naps openly:

And some curi-curi tidur:

Anyway, besides their own computers, there were also many gadgets and stuff that the gamers brought themselves!

Steering wheels for racing games:

‘Instruments’ for music games :

And control pads… played on a very nice sarung too! I guess at LAN Parties its all about comfort!

And speaking of comfort, since we were there at midnight, we had the entire viewing gallery to ourselves, comfortably watching and taking photos from above!

Haha!

Cyberfusion will officially end tomorrow at 2PM, breaking the world record by two hours. I know two hours ain’t a lot, but hey, it’s still a world record!

Yes, I know what I’ve said before about setting stupid world records but this is simply such an awesome event that I have nothing bad to say about!

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Bali Trip part 2 coming up in the next entry!

P.S. Got new poll on the left sidebar! Go vote! =)

It is really incomprehensible why someone would have the lunatic idea to bomb such an incredible place as this.

Yet someone did! In 2002 and again in 2005! (Click to read Wikipedia article)

Calculating the time interval between the two bombings, it was really a little scary to go to Bali this year, 2009, as it seemed that the next bombing was already ‘due’.

LOL!

Forgetting terrorism, the Tourism Club (yeah, i know the names sound similar) had a wonderful trip to Bali a couple of weeks ago!

This time, except for a few veterans like CK, Pegan and myself, the entire committee was formed by new, energetic members eager to bring Tourism Club’s second ever international trip to its very best!

It was the first Tourism Club trip that I had brought Shuyi with me, and also the first that Abang Ray, the super-cool university officer designated to ‘watch over’ all our trips,  brought someone else too!

For this trip, we boarded Air Asia. Instead of our regular Malaysian pronunciation of ‘Air Ay-sher’, the Indonesians call it ‘Air Aa-sya’.

It was the first time that I had boarded Air Asia, which was lauded as the premier low cost carrier in the region.

Compared to other airlines, they weren’t too bad, except for a smaller and less attractive terminal, free-seating, no free drinks or meals, had to walk right down to the cement ground to board the plane, and their boarding pass looked like the receipt I usually get from the petrol station.

But who cares if their boarding passes sucked, Air Asia is generally much cheaper, which saves up your money for you to spend during the vacation itself!

And fearing the cramped middle seats, some of us paid an extra RM50 for Express Boarding, which allowed us to get on the plane first, and secured the top seats in the very first row in our tickets!

So front that can see flight attendant putting on make-up somemore!  

One important good thing to note about Air Asia is that their flight attendants’ uniform beats Malaysia Airlines’ uniform kao kao, anytime.

I totally like everything from their red suits and white blouses, to their design and color combination. (Red and white is my favorite color combination!)

And yes, I sure like their cute red skirts too, as a protest to some politician who said that Air Asia’s uniform was an embarrassment to women because it (literally) showed too much ass.

Read the news article here.

Cheers to the Air Asia stewardesses! You ladies were so warm and friendly!

After a few hours, we landed in Bali and were greeted by our tour guide and some Balinese people, busy ‘decorating’ us with flowers…

… on our necks, and later during dinner, the ears!

So typically island-ish! Very nice leh!

I had thought that all these ‘flower chains‘ and stuff were only found in places like Hawaii or… I dunno, maybe some Caribbean island place…

but we got ‘em in Bali!

-

After a brief rest in the hotel, we had our first dinner in Bali, which was served on the beach itself – during sunset.

The scene was so beautiful and to have dinner in such a nice atmosphere makes even the lousiest food the finest cuisine in the world.

We had a grilled seafood plate with rice. Apparently the grilled stuff here on Jimbaran Bay was very famous.

One thing to be noted, except for a selected few brands of bottled water, most drinking water in Bali had an inseparable weird taste in them, and drinking boiled tap water (the worst) can seriously cause nausea to me.

I think the weird taste may be due to the possibility of Bali reprocessing its fresh water, either from used water or sea water, as they do in Redang Island.

Anyway, after the dinner, dancers started appearing on the numerous stages along the beach and started performing interesting traditional Balinese dances that regretfully, looked pretty more like demon-summoning to me.

All the pictures that my camera took were absolutely frightening:

Close up:

I dunno why the eyes have turned white in this picture. I swear I did not edit this photo besides cropping it.

And here’s another demon from hell:

Haha, that’s just badly taken image of this… thing:

Which also seems to be some kind of ugly demon in the Balinese folk legend.

Haha, scary stuff away, they were actually very great dancers!

Got the opportunity to take photos with them!

If you’re wondering why everyone in Bali is doing this hand gesture – that’s because more than 90% of the Balinese people are Hindus, and that’s also why the rest of our trip was slotted with so many visits to different temples!

After the wonderful dinner on the beach, we headed off shopping at Kuta Square, where all the biggest international brands like D&G, Versace, Ripcurl and Roxy were gathered!

Not to mention familiar places for snacks like Starbucks, Haagen-Dazs and McDonald’s were all in the square!

Oh, by the way, a cup of McFlurry in Bali cost 5,500 Rupiahs, which was only slightly over RM1.50!! OMG!

And, as every traveler to  Indonesia would surely remark – with less than RM1,000, we could instantly become not just millionaires, but multi-millionaires in Bali!

Oh, I so lurve the feeling!

-

(Except the feeling that they look like ‘hell money’ with so many zeroes on one paper…)

Like this one:

LOL!

-

The shops around Kuta closed at around 11PM, and we got back to the hotel and rested early, because we had to wake up early the next day!

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Note: This is only part 1 of the Bali blog entry… The full story is too long hehe… Part 2 coming soon!

It was a sooo marvelous trip and I’m gonna blog about it in one of the next few posts after I’ve got the other photos from the other friends!

P.S. Unfortunately, there was no bombing in Bali.

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Meanwhile, check this out – I went to the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2009 in Putrajaya!

It was an ‘international’ event, kinda like the International Fireworks Competition held near Merdeka Day every year in Putrajaya.

What’s the big deal about ‘international’ events anyway?

Gigantic balloons from countries like France, Germany etc. were lying dead on the floor at 5PM, and under the scorching late afternoon sun it was not entertaining at all…

… not until the large round thing in front of us started inflating and revealed its green nipple-like thing…

… did we realize that it was an orange!

It was one of the first to be fully inflated and became so big that it looked really menacing to the poor inflating blue balloon beside it.

I think it could crush the blue balloon with a long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sound (like a high-pitched, long fart) if it decided to fall on it.

One by one, as the other balloons were starting to be pumped, everybody was getting pumped too!

There was also the super cute pink elephant balloon! I think it was the balloon that caught the most attention in the entire event…

… because it was really cute and charming!

… and also because the trunk was inflated last. Everyone stared at the long, dangling ‘thing’ and, as the (crowd) ‘excitement’ grew, it slowly became bigger, longer and harder in front of the cute, smiling elephant face.

Somehow it reminds me of the, er… election happening next week.

-

Check out the happy and sad balloons!

Sad balloon being set free into the air…

… becomes happy!

Cute, isn’t it?

Look! A huge Nescafe mug floating in the air!

Seems like a blissful illusion sight of a coffee adict!

Sadly, the Nescafe mug never really lifted off, due to some technical problems. We waited for quite a long time in hopes of seeing the Nescafe mug float up to the sky, but we were disappointed in the end.

Perhaps this could have done better.

Last but not least, there was the grand peacock. Which was the single most enormous balloon of all.

I bet standing under its uh, butt, would feel like an alien mothership descending on you.

Although it lost to the pink ‘errecting’ elephant balloon in terms of cuteness, but this is surely the grandest of all balloons!

It also has the most un-balloon-ish shape ever for a hot air balloon!

Watch the bird fly!

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On that day we also went on the Putrajaya Tasik Cruise, which I had had my eye on the first day I came to Cyberjaya, but had yet to have a chance to be on.

Now I finally got the chance to be on it… really happy! Because  I’m entering my final year in Cyberjaya soon, not many chances already!

The cruise basically makes a tour around the man-made Putrajaya lake with a guy introducing to us the buildings and landmarks that we could see along the ride.

For the boat, there was a choice between the cheaper ‘perahu’s…

… and the slightly more expensive cruise ship.

We chose the latter because the ship had decks at the front and rear for sight-seeing anyway, and it seemed to have less risk of throwing its passengers into the lake.

During the cruise we had the opportunity to see and capture sights that were rarely seen along the river bank or anyway else on land in Putrajaya.

Like the Seri Wawasan Bridge in the close up angle:

and the bottom of it:

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It’s April Fool’s day tomorrow! Watch out!

Lately, I realized that I’ve been writing blog entries a month late of time.

I wrote about New Year’s Eve celebration on January 31st, posted pictures of my birthday on February, and now, February stuff – recalled in March!

It is a sin to have an inconsistently-updated blog, because all blog-deaths are caused by nothing more than this!

So this time, I’m going to write just a small piece on February, and concentrate on March! It’s better to look ahead into the future.

In February, I was:

Rich – because I got a load of cash from selling my laptop for a very handsome price.

Even richer – because I bought another laptop for RM1,000 and resold it for RM1,300 the next day.

Lazy – because in the end, without my laptop I feel lazy updating this blog.

Guilty – because I’m lazy updating this blog.

Enthusiastic – because, to divert my guilt, I’ve set a goal to do very well in my studies this semester.

Demotivated – because I found out I had six monstrous subjects each with long lab sessions and tough assignments to go through the next twelve weeks.

Encouraged – because people close to me told me I could still do it.

Confident – because I knew I could still do it… Somehow.

Romantic – because I had a wonderful, enchanting February 14th.

Happy – because she was happy.

Luxurious – because I’ve had my most luxurious dinner yet, for Valentine’s day in Shook, Starhill Gallery.

Poor – because I paid for the dinner.

Even poorer – because TM sent me a warning letter telling me I had an unpaid balance of RM446.

Sad – because I am poor now.

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Anyway, March is going to be so excitingly different!

I’m going to Bali on March 22nd!

Before I signed up for this trip, my impression of Bali had been that it was a beautiful, serene island where people go for honeymoon on its golden sandy beaches, dive into the clear water flourishing with colorful corals, and the whole place is like totally peaceful and exotic. 

After I signed up for the trip, and before I’ve actually gone to the place, my impression now has changed to that it has a lot – A HELL LOT OF… temples.

When I looked at the travel itinerary, I saw at least three weirdly-named waluwatu-something temples.

If it’s all about temples, then maybe it isn’t worth taking the tour package after all! But we’ll see.

I know, many of you all out there who’s been to Bali are probably laughing at my naivety towards Bali right now, but that’s really my impression right now.

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Next Sunday, March 15th, is going to be a very special day to me.

I am going to celebrate a ‘friendship anniversary’ with the oldest friend of mine. A very special occasion – our 15th anniversary of friendship!

If you think 15 years is nothing, think again – I have only just turned 21 this January, that means I’ve met her since kindergarten!

How many friends whom you have known since you were 6, and is now still your very good friend, do you have?

I have one!

Details in the next blog entry.

My first month of 2009 has just passed.

And the passing of January 2009 is nothing ordinary.

It marks the incredible milestone of me stepping into the glorious age of 21, baby!

Now, how glorious, exactly, is 21 - it’s the age that you are, finally and completely, on your own.

No more age restrictions, no more consent forms, no more nothing!

More practically, no more thoughts of smuggling into clubs and casinos, no more – NOT – being able to do anything just because of your age!

You’ve complete broken out of the last of any age restrictions or supervisions – you can even get married without your parent’s consent! (Not that I condone it )

Now, of course, we all know that these age restrictions were there to protect you. And activities with an age restriction (well, except marriage and arguably, sex) are generally ‘unhealthy’ activities – smoking, drinking, gambling etc.

And at age 21 you’re expected to be mature enough to judge for yourself what is good and what is bad business.

So yes, you’re free to do anything you want at age 21, but if you do screw up, you also lose all the protection afforded to juveniles and face the consequences straight and hard. No chances, no mercy! Bad huh?

Why? Because you’re already a grown-up; no longer an innocent kid or a wild teenager. You’re an adult… A man.

So, moral of the story – try all the crimes you want before you come of legal consent age. That way at least you won’t go to jail!

No, just kidding!

So, back to myself – if 21 is such a great milestone age, and the next milestone age, 55 (the retirement age), is just so far away, I had expected to celebrate my birthday this year, like – very, VERY EXTRAVAGANTLY.

But alas! Check your desktop calendar and you’ll find that January 25th – my birthday, was on, of all days, Chinese New Year’s Eve this year!

What does that mean?

It means I didn’t get to celebrate my precious 21st birthday the way I wanted! Because no one was going to stay back that day! Everyone had to go back to their hometowns to have their reunion dinner! And that includes me, too!

Note: No, this isn’t a photo of my reunion dinner.

And typically, you don’t just leave the house anytime  soon ‘before’  or  ‘after’ the reunion dinner. You gotta stay back and sit in the house for “reunion’s” sake. So there went my long-awaited 21st birthday party, at least that was what I had thought.

Luckily, I can still write right now, that I still had a very, very memorable 21st birthday.

Still having a small number of charming, special friends (and one particularly) putting in a wonderful amount of effort, surprise after surprise, to prevent my 21st birthday from sliding into the list of my most terrible birthdays ever…

I am so, very wonderfully blessed…

…

… but one of the birthday cakes was definitely not!

It was terrifyingly destroyed by our special, barbaric eating method!

The beautiful ice-cream cake, at first:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

There were no plates involved.

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Haha, it’s been a whole month without any updates!

This new year – year 2009, however, is going to be different! Why? Because this year, my New Year’s Resolution #10:

I’m going to make absolutely sure that this blog is updated regularly – and this is no joke. If anything like this happens again (whole month no update) in 2009 – listen carefully – I am going to TAKE DOWN James-Chow.com, as a penalty to myself.

Meaning – I am going to destroy this website, along with the domain name, all the posts, all the photos, – EVERYTHING – if I fail to update for so long ever again!

Now that’s some motivation for me, since James-Chow.com really means a lot to me! Hehe…

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This new year has been great so far… But 2008 wasn’t bad either.

So it was really a happy moment to throw 2008 into the dusty storeroom and welcome glorious 2009 into our lives!

This is the countdown celebration that I attended at The Curve.

The fireworks were magnificent, and the crowd was as though Anwar and Najib were turning up for a one-on-one wrestling competition.

As midnight approached, it was almost impossible to even move through the monstrous crowd!

After the countdown, confetti, streamers and fake ’snow’ were everywhere, the next picture looks like it was snowing over there!

It seemed a crime to be clean without a serious mess on your hair and clothes, and I guess the ‘cleaner’ you are, the more you got sprayed on!

No one had any mercy on my hair:

I looked ridiculously like an old rabbit with fluffy grey hair… and with a very bad haircut. Anyways, that was how 2008 passed me by!

Well, I’m not gonna write too much into this post, since I’ll be updating regularly lah! Can relax a bit on the content…

Trust me. I’ll keep to my word, or else…

Although I may have been shamelessly missing in action for some time now, but you can be very, very sure that I will be back to blog for Christmas!

And here I am! Why? because Christmas is the best and most happening festival of all – for me!

Yes, I know – for many of you, Christmas is but a one-day *only* holiday in the middle of the assignment submission week and a week before the accursed MMU final exams…

Why, me too! I’m an MMU student as well! But that isn’t going to stop me from celebrating!

Let’s not wait – Check out my very own Christmas room!

I think it is so beautiful and comfortable! I really couldn’t have done it on my own!

Compare it with last year, and you’ll see that there are some really exciting improvements! The extra mini Christmas trees, the Christmas candles, and…

… the super awesome structure beside my table is the very same Christmas tree as last year – only that this year it is much, much more awesome!

See the tree!

It is transforming into more of a ‘Toy Tree’, actually… But it feels really warm and happy to see such an innocently decorated tree that reminds us of our childhoods – in my own room! 

The first picture of this entry is my classic Teddy-Bear-hug-tree^TM Christmas tree tip decoration! Like last year!

HOHOHO… It’s 2 days till Christmas! Are you ready for it?

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Last year, I did an entry on Malaysia’s Top 7 Christmas Malls, which resulted in Pavilion KL topping the list with its magnificently tall, occupy-able, Christmas tree structure.

This year, I wanted to find out if the malls kept up their marvelously good work, so we set off on a journey to check them out again! Santa bless us!

Like I said last year, only shopping malls seem to have the ability to deploy massive Christmas decorations  in Malaysia. Yup, not even the most expensive hotels can do as good!

Throughout the December month, we went though many of the most prestigious malls in the Klang Valley, and, ladies and gentlemen – here is what I consider the seven most wonderfully decorated and ‘Christmas-est’ malls in the country:

*drum roll*

Rank #7 – The Gardens

(Visited December 20th, 2008)

A newcomer! The Gardens wasn’t in my list last year because there were hardly any Christmas decorations in the mall save some usual Christmas trees along the walkway… But this year – it’s different!

The Gardens has deployed a three-storey high Christmas tree and what’s really special is its ‘cage’ theme.

Of course, there are many ‘ways’ to see this theme – it could either be:

(a) a tranquil garden in the middle of city filled with tall Christmas trees and gigantic, nicely-lit bird cages,

or,

(b) erm, looking at the human size structure and the multiple entrances into the cages, is it just me, or do they look like dance cages in strip clubs that would do well with a pole added to the middle and having strippers dancing inside? 

LOL!

I think the chandeliers in the cages are really beautiful and somehow, the combination of lights and finely-crafted cages in the middle of the greenery creates a really peaceful yet elegant impression – if that is what the designers had had in mind, then I think they did a great job!

Yes, I know The Gardens Mall is under Midvalley’s management, and by principle its decorations should be counted as part of Midvalley’s… But anyway, I really think the decorations are that nice that The Gardens deserve a separate rank of its own!

The Gardens: A refreshingly new design concept, but still relatively small in size to leave a deep permanent impression. Yes, size does matter, but great job nonetheless!

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Rank #6 – Pavilion KL

(Visited December 7th, 2008)

Don’t be surprised to see Pavilion at number 6, it is really quite a let down this year.

Most malls deploying the same Christmas decorations year after year become boring to us viewers, but few actually become worse - and now we’ve seen one.

The gigantic Christmas tree structure that had proudly stood at the concourse last year probably couldn’t afford the rental fee there, and was thrown unceremoniously out of the mall! Poor tree…

I had walked pass Pavilion a few days before December and had seen the unfinished tree outside Pavilion. I had thought they were just assembling or moving it…

I still can’t believe they actually moved the thing outdoors! They further coated the tree with some white stuff that looks like cotton from afar… and they removed the chandeliers!! (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see last year’s entry!)

The thing that I applauded the most last year – the chandeliers – was completely dumped! And replaced by some gold baubles that looked like they had been placed on last-minute!

Walking into the mall, this came into view:

The concourse area, looking rather bland with the absence of the three-storey Christmas tree in the middle of the symmetrical escalators, was turned into a decorated shop selling Christmas stuff, operated by Tangs.

The wonderful lights above, decorated with long arrays of (again) golden baubles, is really nice – but insufficient to salvage the interior’s otherwise disappointing Christmas atmosphere.

I’ve tried to be very neutral and not let my previous impressions and expectations blind my opinions on any of the malls that I am going to review… but this really isn’t that good – the interior is just so-so, and the tree wouldn’t exactly be a wonder to me either, even if it were the first time I visited Pavilion!

After the lights are on at night, it looks like this:

The structure is still big and impressive, and decorations in Pavilion are indeed renewed every year. Pavilion still deserves the spot at number 6 in my personal Malaysia’s Best Christmas Malls’ list.

Pavilion KL: An admirable effort to ‘bring about change’ (quote Obama!) to Pavilion’s Christmas decoration concept, but changes seem to not always be for the better. An additional note: In my review I am not expressing disappointment at the shopping mall itself, but just the decors. As a matter of fact, it is the reality of Pavilion being one of the most prestigious and reputable malls in KL that empowers us to hold high expectations for its everything – including Christmas decorations.

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Rank #5 – Sunway Pyramid

(Visited November 27th, 2008)

If Sunway Pyramid really did disappoint me last year, they totally made it up with me!

This year, Pyramid’s decors were the first to make me ‘WOW’!

I’ll just make this short: the decorations are simple, they aren’t really humongous and storeys-tall, and it’s apparent that it is not really a super high-budget project – call me childish, but it really brought out the excitement in me! The warm smile etched across my face didn’t fade until I left the area completely. The area radiated a vibrant aura of fun, of joy and of laughter – the spirit of Christmas. They did it!

What’s more, it seems to me that Sunway Pyramid was one of the first malls in the Klang Valley to have its Christmas decorations fully set up! This photo was taken in November!

Sunway Pyramid: A definite improvement from last year. Simple yet joyfully meaningful. I’m sorry for not being able to explain how exactly it is meaningful, I myself do not know why, but it is – at least to me.

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Rank #4 – Suria KLCC

(Visited December 20th, 2008)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! It is still the same!! THE… TREE… IS… STILL… THE… SAME!!

It’s been five or six years already lor!

Petronas must be losing money now that world oil prices are so low… There’s not even lights on the tree this year! Of course, they changed the decorations on the tree, but I still think that the last year’s was way better.

Someone please tell Santa Clause to give Petronas a new tree next year! Tell him a smaller and shorter one is OKAY!

If I were to review this in my own biased, previous-impression-based mindset, I’d think this old tree wouldn’t even make it into the top-7 list… but let’s be fair, I’m not the only person whom they are displaying the tree for.

The fact is: The gigantic five-storey Chirstmas tree bought from Giant Hypermart (yes, just a pun), although being used year after year, is still one hell of a skyscraper to behold.

I came up with this logic: Maybe the guys in Petronas are so proud that their twin-towers is standing as the tallest stucture in the country, they are determined that their Christmas tree should also be nothing – literally, NOTHING – but the tallest.

Suria KLCC – This is one mall that I would not be disappointed if they followed Pavilion’s footsteps; in fact, I had even jokingly suggested it last year – plant it outside the twin towers. It’s time to change to a new Christmas decoration concept, KLCC, you’re good enough for it!

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Rank #3 – Midvalley

(Visited December 20th, 2008)

My first impression was… Oh God, a voodoo ceremony!

In my opinion, Midvalley has definitely played down its Christmas decoration budget this year. This year’s fantasy-like theme is a creative idea – but I’d still go for the previous year’s ‘autumn garden’ concept any time of the day.

Anyway, don’t be fooled, the Christmas tree behind the smiling face is three-and-a-half storeys high!

Midvalley has never been too stingy in decorating its interior. This year, a huge, round stage with this enormous, grinning, joker face stared down at the passerbys in the megamall!

“The Midvalley God is watching… Don’t steal.”

It was very impressive: the play of bright colours, the concept of a population of jungle animals all gathering around in a circle like some ancient ritual about to begin… I’m sure there must be great performances on the stage at some other time as well! Too bad I didn’t get to watch them!

In a way, I liked this ‘fantasyland’ theme quite much, especially with all the animals gathering around the stage! I particularly like the elephants, I dunno why.

Another thing incredible about Midvalley is that apart from its main decorations at the Centre Court, it has so many ’sub-decorations’ all around the mall!

And each of these ’sub-decorations’ are not too inferior after all! Like this one at the North Court (or was it South Court?)

The red, old Santa in the middle looks like he’s being hanged to death! And there’s a soldier beside him!

Midvalley: Impressive large-scale project as expected. Although perhaps not that much to my taste, the decorations are evidently the brilliant product of creative design and tonnes of tireless effort.

(P.S. Please don’t hang Santa Clause, breaking into people’s houses through the chimney is a crime – but not one that deserves the death sentence.)

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Rank #2 – 1 Utama

(Visited December 5th, 2008)

So gorgeous that it is only fitting to have a diamond exhibition underneath these glamorous babes!

A 180 degrees shift from the playful, innocently cute Toy Soldier concept last year, this year’s electric wired-tree display is simple, yet ingeniously sophisticated!

1 Utama had wasted no time in starting to impress me, way before the stage was even completed. Just looking at the construction site in November tells us that something big is coming up, again!

I realized that 1 Utama had always liked the display concept of a center stage with some huge, towering decorative stuff behind.

The brilliantly lit Christmas trees are somehow reminiscent to last year’s acclaimed Pavilion Christmas tree. I find them so nicely lit (yes, there are trees that are lit but not nicely lit) that I couldn’t take my eyes of it for many, many seconds when I first saw it!

However, this year, young kids will probably NOT be so enthusiastic about the decorations. Yes, they are really nice and everything but they simply aren’t – cute – anymore!

Seems that 1 Utama alternates between captivating the hearts of kids and of adults! Last year, kids were probably crying when asked by their parents to leave the area; this year, adults would probably scold their kids for asking to leave!

… or maybe not!

I think that their theme this year is poker cards – an item long associated to gambling. (less children friendly!) But the entire area was surrounded by this beautiful green wall and just across the entrance was a walking path of gigantic poker card pictures.

Even their ‘regular’ Christmas trees had poker cards on them! How unique!

Haha, I don’t mean to offend the good and thoughtful people of the 1Utama management… but well, the theme and glamorous decorations would really make, and be fitting of, nothing but a splendid casino!

1 Utama: Absolutely fantastic display with a very unique theme, wouldn’t have expected anything less from this great shopping mall (just don’t add roulettes and slot machines next year!). Keep it up!

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Rank #1 – The Curve

(Visited December 14th, 2008)

The Curve in Mutiara Damansara reigns as emperor this year for the best decorated shopping mall in the country!

The entire concourse area was turned into a goddamn garden! (pardon me. I couldn’t think of another adjective to describe the incredible awe I had felt at the sight of it)

The area was so vast that I couldn’t even take it all in with my camera, not even in 16:9 widescreen mode!

Everywhere was scattered with brilliant lights and every angle that you turn to, you come face-to-face with beautiful, lush greenery!

With a towering three-storey-high Christmas tree standing proudly at the side, the garden features many really cute animal-shaped trimmed trees!

What’s more, they’ve got adorable Christmas Elves doing the job!

Again, elephant.

I thought Christmas Elves were supposed to be in Santa’s village in the North Pole busy manufacturing presents by now? Or had they taken leave? And it’s almost Christmas already, Santa and his wife will have to do it all by themselves!

People were photographing almost every other step they take, and I believe every photo snap was absolutely worth taking!

To complete the garden picture, there was even a small pool with fountains adding real moisture to the already refreshingly natural environment!

This garden, no doubt, will fascinate both boys and girls, kids and adults, humans and elves alike. And one of the best parts is even when the Christmas display is so magnificent, The Curve has minimal, and really few, commercialisation involved in the decoration area…

… meaning that you don’t see a lot of stalls around the display area. The display is genuinely – just – for display. And we appreciate the intention that the marvelous displays are not there just to attract our wallets, but rather us - as persons – trying to indulge a little in the joyful spirit of Christmas.

The Curve – Uber cool garden themed display! Very fresh concept that is superbly compatible with this relaxing time of the year filled with enchanting dreams of distant fairy tales. Both kids and adults will no doubt adore it! Excellent job!

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Overall, I still think that shopping malls are better decorated last year (maybe due to the financial crisis?) But of course, Christmas this year is not that disappointing as well, it is always a very good feeling to be able to shop or simply walk in places where Christmas atmosphere fluorishes!

There are some other shopping malls that I have visited in the month of December but that did not make it into the top-7 list. Here are some of them that are worth mentioning:

IKANO Power Centre

(Visited December 11th, 2008)

Has a great tree…

… an area with fake snow for children to play with…

… and also a small hut for pictures with Santa and Santarina!

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Berjaya Times Square

(Visited December 7th, 2008)

Dropped out of the list this year… Sporting the same tree as last year:

The most notable decoration was this Santa that looked totally like Doraemon! Cute!

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Cineleisure Damansara

(Visited December 14th, 2008)

Looks great, doesn’t it?

This structure of a Christmas tree and three angels was actually built ON the fountain in front of the main entrance!

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Starhill Gallery

(Visited December 7th, 2008)

There was a heavily guarded exhibition in Starhill during the time that I visited.

There were security guards armed with rifles at every corner!

You had to register yourself with your identity card and scan your visitor pass every time you pass through a different corridor!

As for Christmas stuff, there weren’t much:

Just some huge silver baubles hanging from the ceiling.

I’m not sure if they have added more decorations after the exhibition ended on the 14th, or they are just gonna leave it like that for Christmas.

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The Street

(Visited December 14th, 2008)

I’m not really sure if The Street is under The Curve or Cineleisure’s management (or both), so I’ll just put it as an individual place! (Although I have a feeling it’s under The Curve)

There was no night market but all the stalls were specially decorated for Christmas, and the lighted trees and hanging lights really gives it a distictively Christmas feel!

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Now you know where to go shopping this 25th!

HAVE A MERRY, BLESSED CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

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Please remember that:

All rankings, reviews and writings in this blog entry are entirely my honest opinions based on my findings and perceptions as a customer being present at the shopping malls at their respective dates as stated. My visits to these places are casual in nature and it is possible that I might have missed or overlooked some or part(s) of the decorations in the malls. Please also remember that there might be better shopping malls out there that I have not visited or known; and that the shopping malls listed above may have added or improved their displays after my visit.

Right now, this very second – *tick* – that I am writing this entry, I am supposed to be on a one-day Ipoh trip with tourism club…

Yes, Ipoh is my beautiful hometown and where the irritatingly popular Old Town kopitiams came from… a trip to my own place, but I still signed up for it, because I knew it was going to be very different going with friends.

HOWEVER, I am now – instead – sitting lazily in front of my computer writing this entry because I am sick – got a head-splitting headache, fever and some very annoying sore throat…

… and it has been haunting me for like almost a week already… Huhu…