It’s about 1:28am here in hot, humid Kuala Lumpur. I’ve just finished a nice bonding session with the family whilst sipping on a long island ice tea (because I am a real man) and talking about random stuff while we listen to some live music. I’ve tasted a couple of long island ice teas in my time and this one is exactly average. I biggest plus i guess was the ability to still taste the scotch.

The trip in Malaysia so far has been, interesting (from the lack of any other applicable term) if I may say so myself. There are many aspects that mirror the conditions and attitudes of China, whilst juxtaposed with the wide ability of citizens and locals to communicate in English. Taxi rides have been both entertaining and bitter (with the odd driver attempting to somehow rip some extra money off us, but failing in the process). Food is excellent here (and for those who care, the best meals are at the stores usually on the side of the road or out in the open with people trying to hawk you in) and shopping is quite cheap comparatively to both Singapore and Australia itself.

We visited Sunway Pyramid and Lagoon today, which turned out to be extremely good fun. My brother and myself had went to the Lagoon for a day of wet and wild water fun, going on various water slides; racing each other down the “Congo Trail”; or sliding down blind with my brother and an inflatable tube in the “Carribean Trail”. There were various parks to visit with probably the most memorable being the “Xtreme Park”, which featured Paintball, Go-Karting and a great adrenaline pumping Flying Fox (how these even remotely relate to a water lagoon, totally beats me but hey fun isn’t really meant to make sense does it?”). The Flying Fox had a fairly small line but took an age and a half to actually reach the end to begin the air gliding fun. It started at a tower about 30-40 metres from the ground and descended down to the overlooking “beach” area (well I say beach, but it’s just a large pool of water with a wave generator and a mass of kids floating around). The flight probably only lasted max about 5 to 10 seconds but it sure did get the blood pumping.

Once mid afternoon hit, so did the rain; and boy did it hit….hard. But that only just added to the fun of wading around in the water and going back to the waterslides. Lines weren’t too bad, despite experiencing the couple of annoying and SLOW ASS chinese mainlanders that don’t understand the concept of a LINE. Instead they either stand there not moving when the line had already progressed massively, or they would attempt to cut in front and a quick tap on the shoulder would be needed to set them straight. Unfortunately, my D300s isn’t 100% waterproof and especially neither is the lens, therefore I let my parents keep hold of it whilst my bro and I went and had some fun while they have a nice day in the shopping centre inside Sunway Pyramid.

By 6:00pm all the waterslides and rides had closed down and off to the pyramid my bro and I went. We had dinner in a Laksa specialist restaurant, which was excellent if I may add. I had a curry laksa with some weird pink drink that had this black jelly strings inside (sort of reminiscent of the whole bubble ice tea experience). Did a spot of shopping and came back with a T-shirt and red skinny tie from Top Man for all of about $20 (much cheaper than I would’ve if i found it in Singapore or anywhere else…not Australia thought because this store doesn’t exist there…). I’m still keeping my eyes out for an MB-D10 battery grip for my D300S and shopping around for the cheapest price I can get a nice fast prime lens. AND I’m still on the lookout for the original black Sk8 Vans Authentic that I’ve wanted for the past couple of months now.

Tomorrow we check out of the Sheraton Imperial (if i haven’t already mentioned that I’m staying there in KL) at 12:00am. We’ll be searching for this great street of restaurants for a final meal in Jalan Alor before embarking back to SG and subsequently Australia. I’ll be posting more photos up soonish, but this apparent 5-star hotel isn’t even decent enough to supply their patrons with free Wi-Fi connectivity…and we thought Asia was one of the leading continents in connectivity and technology (although I am using a HP touch smart to type this all up…and it isn’t that great at all…the screen could be better, and sensitivity and responsiveness could be improved but I could bitch about this machine for a long time).

Okay, it’s almost 2:00 am now so I’d better be off, even my brother who’s next to me is getting slightly bored. Time to return to the bedroom and crack open some new Top Gear! Go the epic trip to the Pacific Ocean!!

Me love you long time.

The second day of Singaporean adventures included a walk around Marina Bay, a visit to the Supreme Court, the Parliament building and finally a bout of shopping (not that I bought anything).

We got on the MRT from Somerset station towards Marina Bay station. On arrival, we immediately noticed that the station is actually surrounded by construction and nothing of real significance could be seen. This was added with the fact that it was pouring with rain at this time. We decided to instead go back to Raffles Place and make our way to the 2nd Merlion (the 1st merlion was seen at Sentosa Island yesterday) and progressively walk from intended destination to destination. I don’t actually understand the concept of the Merlion but it was definately a sight to see. Many happy snaps were taken there and it is so fascinating to see just how many people walk around with DSLRs (whether or not they are tourists).

We moved from the Merlion park to the Esplanade – Theatre at the Bay and saw some really cool examples of unique architecture. The theatre is alos known as the two bug eyes and my parents refer to it as a durian (which they actually do look like one). We chilled here for a while as by this time we’d already done a bit of walking in the heat with 90% humidity.

The next stop was the Singapore civic centre, supreme court and parliament building which alike pretty much 90% of Singapore architecture, were splendidly designed with really well balanced features (examples seen in photos that i will upload later).
On the way, we saw so many nice cars ranging from BMW M3s, M5s to 35 GT-Rs and even the elusive FD2R Civic!! These Type-R Civics that we don’t see in Australia really are beautiful things in the flesh and sound absolutely exquisite when revved (or not even revving). While on the note of cars, Singaporeans really do love their modding…we’ve seen all types of modifications done to cars, and despite how random the cars chosen for modification, they’re actually done real tastefully (unlike the fully sick wog mobiles we see in Sydney/all of Australia).

Anyway, after all of this we started to do some looking around in shopping centres. We visited Funan Centre for all things IT and digital. The first two levels are dedicated to cameras, whilst everything else is computers. I had a quick look at the camera stores and my god…a bog standard D300s costs 2999$! They’re still selling the D300 as well and those are still going for 2499$! I couldn’t believe it, I actually thought camera gear would be cheaper here in the Asian continent (also considering almost every second person owns a DSLR). Afterwards we visited various shopping centres around the area and I found a nice TopMan Hoodie/Jacket for about 89$ and a nice purple cardigan for 29$.

Dinner was had at Boat Quay, eating Singaporean style curry with fish head, Spicy Stingray, Dry Butter Prawns and some Satay chicken on skewers…all on the waters edge. It was definately a beautiful scene and was great to have dinner in the atmosphere.

Photos will be uploaded later but for now…time to watch some cricket and football highlights (free cable tv woot!)

It’s 2:02 am in Singapore with a relative humidity of about 89% and all I can say is, from what (or little of) Singapore I’ve seen so far Singapore is actually a really nice place to be despite the huge humidity.

Come time to board the plane and the trip began with the entertainment system requiring two full restarts before everyone could watch on demand videos without glitch. Inflight dinner was average as expected, it was some beef thing with mash potato and peas (not that different from college food actually) with a very average side of salad with balsamic vinegar – which tasted off by the way – and a bread roll with butter. Other then that, the flight was relatively standard – watched some Top Gear, tried to watch Julie and Julia and failed, finally watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and I think it was again another massive failure (just quietly). The highlight of the flight was probably having a nice chat to one of the air hostesses about what to see and buy in Singapore and drinking cans and cans of heineken.

Landed at Changi Airport at about 10:00 pm Singapore time and I must say, the arrivals terminal is quite average aesthetically and a far cry from the “Best International Airport in the world” rank that was given to it. However, cabs came in quick and we were on our way to the hotel in no time.

The trip to the hotel was an interesting one. Like most of Asia, there seems to be no real adherence to road rules with cars crossing over lanes without indicating and speeding when wanted. The next point I’d like to make is how mixed and diverse the place is. Both in culture and cars. There’s a huge mixture of people from 100% yellow asians, to caucasians and I wouldn’t have a clue of how to differentiate the tourists from locals.

We’re staying at the Holiday Inn, which turned out to be quite a nice place to be and we were lucky enough to have complimentary internet access (hence i’m able to post this tonight before I sleep).

I’ll post a couple of photos of what we briefly saw when we went for a walk after checking into the hotel later!

For now though, I need to sleep

Denny Crane:

Gregory House:

Mmmmmmm…if only life was as awesome as these two make it.

I forgot to talk about the little trip to Blue Hole I took with some year 1 medical students. It was a warm day (VERY warm actually) and the actual Blue Hole was a good 10-15 minutes trek (possibly more). It was nice to sit on rocks and just relax, sipping on warm coke and munching on crackers with dip. With all the great surroundings and environment, it was a great chance to snap away and in reality I had snapped up over 250 shots with the little D60.

Here’s a couple of shots that I took on the post-exam trip to Blue Hole.

Just thought I’d share a couple of items I would like to purchase before I go back to uni next year

Nikon D300S:

Bose® Companion® 3 Series II Multimedia Speaker System:

Dragonball Z – Dragon Box:

 

Will upload some photos of Blue Hole and other various photos from other outings soon! And possibly other items on the wish list

Denny crane.

No but seriously, Boston Legal is a very good show. Maybe being a lawyer isn’t so bad. Nah, medical profession for me…unless i fail in which i’ll be pretty much screwed.

So far I haven’t done much these holidays, just chilled back sitting with a lemonade whilst watching some old school Dragonball Z and now Boston Legal. My life is pretty boring at the moment. Still missing Sim…

Still craving money to buy stuff on ebay – a crumpler, a D300S, a new MacBook Pro, a new iMac, a 24-70mm Nikkor f/2.8 AF-S lens… Even a new HD camcorder with a large image sensor. But I literally have no cash money, and hence must work with kids till christmas.

Speaking of work, training day from yesterday was longer than expected. We will be working with a Nikon D70 with a 18-75mm lens, an umbrella flash bounce system, an iMac and some other gear. I’ll be in charge of the store on Wednesdays (also known as 2IC Wednesday as all supervisors tend to take their days off on Wednesday). The next issue is the actual Santa set, we’ll be working with the theme of “Aussie Santa” and as a result we’ll not only be working with Santa’s throne…but also Santa’s UTE! We don’t even know how we can really integrate the ute into these photos…Should be interesting how this all goes when my first shift starts on Saturday.

By the way…

Denny Crane.

Apologies guys, I guess tumblr won’t be happening…not enough availbility for content. So wordpress it is!

Santa photos is starting soon…I’ll be meeting with Kylie tomorrow at 10:00 am at Top Ryde Shopping Center…should be fun hey?

ok so the name seems a little lame, and i know it’s still really early in the relationship….but i have found someone better to talk to about all my thoughts and someone to share my memories with. It’s all found here.

Catch you round guys. (At the link above…)