April 30, 2003
Excuse me sir, your total bill comes to...
an amount of RM730!? The things I could have spent on with that money! Ooh here's one of them, the Kompakt Automat! Grrroaaaaans!
Good news is that the car should be ready as early as this coming Friday. Now that's a relief. It bothers me sometimes knowing that I don't have a car to get around for now, especially after work. Ooerrr... that's right, just how am I going back later on!?
Posted by kahjin at 01:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
April 29, 2003
Destination Redang Di-Ekor Tebu
The party originally consisted of 8, but Esther had to unleash a 777 at the very last minute. Not good at all I first realized. So in the end it was 3 couples, and me! But it wasn't so bad as it turned out to be; I never once played lamp post throughout the trip!
Day 1
Left the house around 5 in the morning, and it was already 9 by the time we reached the jetty. Halfway through to the island, our speedboat stalled, in the middle of the ocean! 1 minute 'sandiwara' there. Smiles almost immediately turned to worried frowns. Not a great way to kickstart your vacation no? Luckily it wasn't serious. According to our guide the engine overheated a little normal than usual, so a check had to be made. PHEW. It didn't take long before we were on our way again.
I've never seen such jade green seas in my entire sorry life! Man, it sure didn't look anything like the ads from Mild 7... it was better! Soon enough, the green became translucent shades of blue. Pure eye candy. You just had to be there to see it. Nothing comes close to the other beaches i've already been to! The sand was so white, it made my eyes hurt just to look at it for a second.
"Oooh this is definately it..."
It was straight for a mad dash to the beach upon checking in to the chalet. Had my trunks on all the while so yes, I was that eager! Snorkeling just had to be given a pass later that afternoon, everyone was beat after all that diving and swimming earlier!
"GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD!!!", my last words before the 5 metre dive ;)
Meals were provided daily, so food was never a problem at all. Not that I remember knocking on the kitchen door in the dead of night anyway. Ooo ooo! I'm telling you, the place is blessed... it had Astro installed! You just knew I wouldn't miss that Manyewww v Real game did you? :D hahah I thought so. Ach, such is the defensive quality of the Mancunians... but overall? Bittersweet.
Day 2
was loaded with stuff to do. Woke up as early since snorkeling was at 10 that morning. Another boat ride was taken to the Redang Marine Park, where the dive was going to be. To be honest after all that underwater sighting, it was kind of a dissapointment. Expectations of a coral reef filled with a riot of colours soon diminished to a dreadful view of dead, broken corals. Good thing the fishes made up for all that eyesore. Came in all sorts of shapes and colours. Flourecent ones were simply breath taking. If only I had some ultra violet light to bask on these guys, what a scene that would have made!
A couple of hours later in the 'Mangrove Pit', it was back to the chalet for lunch and some rest. Oooyeah we were gonna get all the rest we could; reef shark viewing was up next!
This session has to go down as the most exhausting of the lot. Imagine this: the boat had to travel almost 2 clicks away from shore, and from the boat we had to endure a 200 metre swim to make it to the spot, hence 400 metres in all on rough current filled seas! The sharks I saw didn't differ much from the ones that can be seen from aquariums (ala beach club),so it wasn't much of a big deal after all.
Instead, sea turtles (not leatherbacks unfortunately) made it to the big picture. It went something like this:
As we were all swimming to the spot where the sharks supposedly were, the guide pointed to the surface frantically, where there was this rather large turtle resting, nestled among the corals. Quickly, he dived down, and as the poor creature tried in vain to whisk away, our guide caught hold of its shell, and started to swim to the surface. Not wanting to lose my fingers, I stroked the back of its shell, and man was it rock hard! Kae on the other hand did manage to feel it's fins though, soft as they were. Soon after that it was once again back to the chalet, with a little self satisfaction.
As always no beach outing is complete without some beach volleyball! 7 sets later I just knew how much I sucked at it after all these years neglecting this bruising spike and dive fetish. Well at least all of my serves got through :D
I was so tired out by dinner time that lifting a pair of eating utensils became such a workout! Uhhuh you could tell how burned out I was. Crashed right after dinner so I missed karaoke later that night. Heard it was a blast.
Day 3
The flight back home was scheduled at 8:30 that morning so we really had no choice but to leave the island as early as 6! What a shame that we didn't have the chance to spend another evening there. Then again, you wouldn't want to mess with Air Asia's ticket policy, a minute late upon ticket collection and it's auf wiedersehen to your flight. It happened once to me so I should know better :)
All in all the trip was memorable. Till now I still have that scene of the perfect seaside etched in my mind. Though we didn't exactly do just about everything which was possible there, it was time and moolah well spent, down to the last split second and cent :) Also, pictures from the SuperSampler turned out to be absolutely terrific! Postcard picture stuff! I'll have them on the site as soon as I have them scanned. Lol some of the shots looked as though they were taken from a Sunday comic strip. Hurhur and that tan I have, just nice! Hope they don't start peeling off just yet. Meanwhile it's moisturizers all around.
Posted by kahjin at 05:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
And on to the other stuff
Mishaps aside! I've not been spared by my workload. Grrr it piled up while I was away. Thank God I don't need any of those IN/OUT paper trays, that can be such a depressing sight at times! Cool, I finally got my first lomocamera. The fine folks at the Click Project didn't have any of the regular stock left that evening, but after much persuasion I managed to a special edition version of the supersampler. Nothing special about it though, except for the fact that it's black in colour and comes with a free roll of film. Good thing it doesn't cost extra. Durh hope I wasn't taken for a sucker.
"Well there goes the last of our faulty cams"
Before I 'story' you people about the Redang escapade, here's something that happened to me earlier after the trip.
It's not very often that you experience 2 different dreams in a night. Well, at least for me. The first one had a moral to it. Okay, so it's going to sound wacky, but that's what dreams are all about innit?
Apparently I was part of an infantry unit in medieval Europe, engaged in a battle against what looked like orcs (they looked nothing like the ones from LOTR) After the dust has settled, I stumbled upon what looked like a pretty elegant looking sword still sheathed upon one of the piles of bodies.
I remember fiddling with it, but never got to swing it around due to the fact the hilt was missing. All I remember next was having dinner with the royal family I had served. It wasn't a big one, there were around 6-8 of us at the table, and for that matter I guessed I must have been knight's squire? I really wouldn't know. While everyone was ranting among themselves about the victory, I waved to the prince (looked like Charles!) to grab his attention. As I then presented his majesty with the blade, his eyes lit up, and soon everyone's attention were drawn to us. He then began to explain the importance of this blade and its history, and that one day ages ago it mysteriously vanished from a display cabinet which he pointed to not far from where I was.
Okay so here comes that really absurd twist. Before I could catch my breath upon the blade's significance, the Queen (no shit, she looked like old Queen E herself!) out of nowhere comes over to Charles and bluntly suggests that the blade is to be auctioned off for a ridiculous sum of money, and that the earnings would be shared. She didn't say among who though, but I definately could tell I wasn't on the list. Without hesitating the Prince agreed to do so, to my astonishment! The dream pretty much ended on that note, so here's the moral:
some things are best kept to yourself!
I remember having another vision about the Prince and his spouse, but that one is totally out of the picture. No, there weren't any bronco rides involved, if you know what I mean :P and no, the missus didn't look anything like Ms Parker Bowles or Diana.
The second dream which I had were of current state... sort of. I was on the Internet, browsing my highschool alumni's webpage. One of the pages I went to had a list of essays plucked from exams and other competitions. OKay, so what about them? Actually, it was the title of one particular entry by Teik Suan (Saints 97!) which read "Starchildren".
"Starchildren!?", yeah, and all I could think of at that time was the alias Billy Corgan had used for his band. I never got to download the essay to read it, but I had this gut feeling that it would had been plagarised, should the album had been a 'conceptual' one, like what was done for Machina for example. Mmm... is something trying to tell me to give that album a listen?
Oh there was another interesting essay too, it had something to do with Man Utd. ROFL!
Allrighty enough hallucinating already, onwards to those 3 days!
Posted by kahjin at 05:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Crashed...
my car an hour ago just as I was about to leave for my presentation. Nothing really serious though, cracked headlight (arrrgh my new crystal heads!!!), dented bonnet and a broken front bumper. If you ask me it was about time I got rid of that EG bumper.
The guy I bumped was a junior police officer, but he was cool about the whole thing. We agreed not to lodge a report so I painfully gave him the $$$ for his repairs. Things couldn't possibly get any worse than it already is.
Good thing my folks are coming over this Thursday with the other car. Hock needs to look for a place to stay so I'll be helping him to look around for one over the weekend.
Shit really happens when you're in a rush.
Posted by kahjin at 05:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 22, 2003
Redang here I come!
Did some light shopping over the weekend for the trip. What's missing now is my supersampler lomocam. Interested? There's a lomography 'ambassador' here in PJ, Damansara Uptown to be exact. Check out their homepage here. Photography will never be the same ever again. Read on their 10 rules for a clearer picture. Simply made me go "now why haven't I thought of this before?!" Marketing smokescreen or philosophical imagery, I cannot really tell, but my notion tilts for the latter.
This would be my first trip to any east coast island. So, as you can tell expectations are high :) Just can't go wrong with 2 cameras hanging around my neck now can I? So I'm really hoping for some happening landscape pictures.
What worries me now is the weather lately. Really, I'd rather be stung by sea rambutans than letting the rain ruin my trip there. Of course, suffering from both misfortunes wouldn't do me any good either.
Kay, gotta go get that supasamplah. Will write about the trip when I return! Hopefully all nicely tanned :D
Posted by kahjin at 03:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
April 18, 2003
"We will kill them all........most of them."
No guesses on who that quote was from :D Here's one of my favourite reads from the site, an interesing anonym sent in by a reader.
"I recently suggested a word to pseudodictionary.com
al-Sahafism
noun
The speech delivery method and mannerism of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf where he states a lie so defiantly that the listener begins to question whether it is himself or the speaker who is crazy.
Also
verb
al-Sahaf, al-Sahafed, al-Sahafing
To lie with the utmost defiance.
noun
al-Sahaf
A lie that is so unbelievable that it becomes a piece of fictional art.
Usage example:
Michael Jackson said in an interview that he had only one plastic surgery.
That was a good bit of al-Sahafism.
-- Dyske"
Don't al-Sahaf me lar...
Posted by kahjin at 06:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
April 17, 2003
Excessively Pulsating...
are the words that would best describe the match this morning. Had to stay up late, but it was so worth it! The match had everything... great goals (Henry's second really shouldn't have counted though), Campbell's ejection and a great comeback by Man Utd!
While I was still fuming at the linesman's decision not to flag for an offside (really damn tension, clenched fists were already cracking my knuckles... c'mon he couldn't even tell between an inch and a mile!) the camera shifts focus to Solskjaer's run on the right. Before you know it he swings in a deep cross, and Giggs levels it!
Heh the usually calm and composed Arsene Wanker was so full of expressions after that goal. It really caught the pundit's and TV station's attention! All that swearing and cursing... rofl lip reading can be so fun.
I don't think i've seen a championship title decided by goal difference, assuming that both teams win their remaining games. Arsenal has the upper hand by a goal for now, but all that will change in weeks to come. Check out the table at Soccernet here.
Posted by kahjin at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 02, 2003
Today...
will be the first day for the rest of your life. Nice one Spacey... procastinations aside.
All that needs to be done now is the way the blog index looks.
And then I have that photo journal of my last trip to Tokyo to manage. ..
Posted by kahjin at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)