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Archive for July, 2007

Singapore Trip Day 1: Travel, Food And Exercise

Published July 12, 2007 in Personal. 12 Comments

As predicted, I slept throughout the entire 6 hours journey to JB. I woke up only to pee and to have some light snack. One of the stops I visited has this funky looking “garden” that leads to the toilet.

Funky looking garden

Before I left, I snapped a few photos of some flowers found around the place.

White flower

Red Flower

Upon reaching JB’s bus station, my family head straight to a nearby McDonald’s to get some food. We sat at two separate tables with our bags occupying half of the seats and tables while waiting for my aunty to pick us up. She joined us soon after that. After finishing our food, we went to buy some otak-otak from a stall in the bus station itself. If I remembered correctly, it was RM4 for 10 otak-otaks. There were 20 there, so we bought all of them.

After going through the customs, changing buses a couple of times, sat a 30 minutes MRT ride and another bus ride, we finally reached my auntie’s flat/apartment. On the way up in the lift, I saw a sign that says, “Armed with Urine Detection Device (UDD)” with a picture of a camera above it. I wonder how the UDD works. Does it activate and start snapping pictures after sensing the presence of urea?

Urine Detection Device (UDD)

After a long and tiring day travelling, the only sensible way to “heal” the body is to eat. I started off with the otak-otak that I bought earlier. It is really tasty but my uncle cautioned that the “redness” it has could be due to colourings and is bad to health.

Tasty otak-otak

My aunty surprised us with satay for dinner. She prepared the table and divided the satay sauce. Then, out came two plastic bags filled with satay. There were more waiting for us in the kitchen. The 10 of us had 200 sticks of satay to share. I must have eaten at least 30 sticks or more. There were some leftovers that night.

Some of the 200 sticks of satay

After dinner and taking a bath, we took a 10-15 minutes bus ride to one of the malls to buy some stuff. My brother bought a packet of Nescafe 3-in-1 Intense. The packaging is black and you can’t find it in Malaysia yet.

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I Am Back

Published July 9, 2007 in Personal. 2 Comments

This is a short update. I am back from my Singapore trip. It has been a fun, busy, yummylicious, weight-gaining and tiring journey. My stomach was stuffed full most of the time. Occasionally, my legs felt like they might break off anytime. I’ll update more on that later.

I missed last night’s F1 race. By the time I reached home after the wedding dinner, the post-race press conference has just started. I’ll be catching the repeat on Astro tonight at 10.30pm.

I am sorry that I haven’t reply to the comments left by some of you. There are some things to catch up after being away for a few days (watching the F1 British grand prix being one of them ). I’ll answer the comments and update my blog as usual starting tomorrow.

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Singapore, Here I Come!

Published July 6, 2007 in Personal. 11 Comments

In 2 hours time, I’ll be on my way to Singapore for my cousin’s wedding. It’ll be a 6 hours journey to JB before continuing into Singapore. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been there. It must have been a good few years ago.

I’m feeling very sleepy now. I haven’t slept for almost 24 hours — last minute packing. I hope I didn’t left anything important.

I haven’t had the chance to fully experiment with my Nikon F-401x. The problem I had earlier could be due to lack of skill or faulty equipment. However, I believe the former should be the reason. I’ll be bringing my DMC-FZ3 along. At least I can rely on its playback after taking a photo.

I have a couple of things to blog about. I planned to schedule them to be published automatically but was busy the whole day. If I can find the time to blog this weekend, I’ll try to post them up.

I’m sure I’ll be sleeping throughout the journey. I just hope I won’t be snoring too loudly.

Singapore, here I come!

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I Need Help With SLR Focus

Published July 3, 2007 in Photography. 7 Comments

I’ve taken my Nikon F-401x for a “test drive” and the result was really disappointing. For those who are not familiar with the camera, it is a SLR, a non-digital camera (ie. it runs on films). Therefore, I can only view the pictures after I’ve sent them to the shop for developing.

Some of the photos were blur and not sharp enough. Those photos were mostly taken indoors. I believe I need to turn on the flash for those shots. Some other photos were focusing on the background instead of the object. While only a handful out of the 24 photos taken were considered “good”.

Sometimes, I notice the auto focus does not focus on the object I was focusing on. I’m not sure if the auto focus is out. That’s when I switched the camera to manual and started playing with the focus myself. In the end, I don’t remember which photo was taken with manual focus and which with auto focus.

I’ll be using this camera for my cousin’s wedding this weekend. I’m not sure to set the camera to auto focus (which doesn’t focus on the object sometimes), or switch it to manual focus.

Is it possible that what I see through the viewfinder isn’t how the photo will turn out to be? Example, I am focusing on the teddy bear using manual focus and the screenshot below is what I am seeing through the viewfinder.

Focus on object

However, the photo that is taken has the focus on the background instead like the screenshot below.

Focus on background

Is this possible? Or whatever I see through the viewfinder (focus wise) is how the photo will turn out to be?

HEEEELLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!!!!!

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Different Treatment Between VIP And Non-VIP In Malaysia

Published July 1, 2007 in Malaysia oh Malaysia. 10 Comments

While reading the article Tough task against VIP smokers yesterday, I was reminded by the bad experience I had dining in a restaurant a week ago. The food was nice and the price was quite cheap. The thing that spoilt the whole experience was the fact that they allowed customers to smoke in the restaurant.

Didn’t the government enforce a no smoking policy indoors, especially in an air-conditioned public place a few years ago? There I was, sitting in a restaurant where the smoking and non-smoking area was separated only by an imaginary line. I’m not stopping anyone from puffing away but neither should I be robbed off my rights to breathing unpolluted air.

Anyway, back to the topic…

In the article, Perak Health Department director Datuk Dr Ahmad Razin Ahmad Mahir was quoted saying, “We want to respect them (VIPs) by not issuing summonses against them. But if we don’t do that, we’ll be seen as not doing our duty”.

Why does it seem that certain groups of individuals are being treated “differently” from normal citizens? The article mentioned that health officers find it difficult to issue summons to VIPs if they were caught smoking in smoke-free areas. Why is that so? Out of respect? Fear of losing their job? Shouldn’t every individual be treated the same way when they break the law, regardless of status?

In another incident, Khairy Jamaluddin was reported having 17 traffic summonses unpaid that totaled up to RM5,100. 6 out of the 17 summonses were due to speeding. He later cleared the summonses when it was reduced to RM1,740. That is a 65% “discount” (RM3,360) for his offences.

Karl commented in the article saying:

By having 6 speeding summons, its more then enough to get his driving license suspended under JPJ’s Kejara system.

Is it true that Khairy Jamaluddin’s license should have been suspended under JPJ’s Kejara system? I’m not well versed with the law but if that is true, why wasn’t it suspended? Here’s a list (courtesy of Malaysiakini) of the cabinet’s unpaid traffic fines and the discount given as reported last year.

Are there any non-VIP driver reading this that has something to share?

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Archive for July, 2007