Ipoh (Extended)

Departing from home at about 10:30am on Saturday morning, with a stop at Tapah rest area in between, we arrived in Ipoh around 12:45pm.


Quite a lot of road construction going on

Upon arrival, sis called up my BIL (brother in law) but couldn't reach him, so she called his 6th uncle asking him where should we meet. After determining the place to rendezvous, I drove there with the help of an Ipoh map I've printed earlier. Ipoh roads are not very complicated, so with a little help from the map, we managed to meet up with the uncle in no time.

6th uncle then proceed to bring us to a restaurant for lunch. This restaurant is famous for noodles and porridges. He ordered noodles with crab and abalone, seafood porridge, garoupa hor fun, and a few others. According to him, the cook's skills are nothing to shout about, but he uses very fresh ingredients, which is why the food tastes good, and so is the price (expensive). And indeed the seafood noodles was really tasty.


A sign in the restaurant

Halfway through lunch, I got a call that some of our relatives has arrived in Ipoh. So I went off with the FIL to guide them to our place. So I missed the seafood porridge and garoupa hor fun :(

In the evening, my BIL have a buffet dinner over their place, so we went over to join them. We ate and chit chat and did some catch up with the relatives. Around midnite, we went back to the rented house to get some rest.


The gowns and the shoe

The next morning, 6th uncle was kind enough to "tapau" some dim sum and noodles for our breakfast. The eggtarts are just fabulous. I was too busy eating and forgotten to snap some pictures of the food. Gotta ask him where he got those. I bet he'll ask me to go visit them again :)


Dawning of a new day

After breakfast, about 9am, the makeup artist showed up to help my sister with her preparation. We had ample of time because the groom is only coming over at about 11am. A pro camera man also came by at around 10:30am to snap pictures.


The tools of the pros

About 11-ish am, the groom convoy came. We didn't give him a hard time because mom want it simple, so someone just asked him to say 50x "I love you" to my sis... hehe. After that we proceed with the tea ceremony and then followed them back to the groom's place. Then it's the usual stuff over there as well... tea ceremony. After everything is settled, we went to the restaurant for the wedding lunch.


The convoy sign

I thought this was going to be the usual wedding lunch, but apparently it wasn't. The FIL invited some veteren karaoke competitor friend of his to become the MC for the day. He arranged such that the wedding becomes some kinda karaoke singing performance or something. I've lost count how many jokers he sent on stage (probably 6 or 7 including himself) to sing. And mind you, he calls them "king of songs", "queen of songs", "[some artist]'s sifu"... etc. but some of them kept singing off key. *sweats*


The wedding lunch venue

After the dinner concludes, we hang around to take some photos. Finally we left Ipoh at around 5:30pm and got home close to 8pm.


Leaving Ipoh


Saw an accident near Tanjung Malim, where a lorry overturned

After hundreds of KMs, 160+ shots, and 4 hours of sleep...

... I've been to Ipoh and back. Got a tour around town for a bit, but because of time restrictions, didn't manage to explore Ipoh fully. Tried a number of good (and expensive) food, but didn't get to eat "nga choy kai" (the locals claim Ipoh people don't eat it :P)

Wedding was quite okay... except that some people decided to kinda make it into a karaoke singing show -_-" ... Queen of songs of the East (东方歌后) my arse! (Pardon the language). Singing until off tune, not just for 1 song but 2-3 songs...

Well anyways, hope to visit Ipoh again in the near future. This time with enough time for a proper "tour" around town.

Now gotta go get my pictures and videos sorted. :)

PS: On a side note, a friend forwarded a mail to me... and it says "Lack of sleep can send your blood sugar levels skyrocketing, contribute to weight gain, lead to depression, put you at risk for diabetes, and cause brain damage. "

Damn... I guess I need to get more sleep :P

Ipoh, here I mali :P

Tomorrow I'll be travelling up North to Ipoh for "nga choi kai" and all the other goodies. :P

Seriously, my sis will be having her wedding lunch over in Ipoh this Sunday. So we're gonna leave for Ipoh early morning tomorrow. Will be spending a night there and be back Sunday evening.

Will try to post some pictures of me snap snap with me F50fd when I'm back. :)

Testing Macro Mode

Shot at 12mp, then shrunk to 20% with Photoshop.


My funky cow mouse wristrest sitting on a keyboard wristrest
Mode: Aperture Priority, F2.8, ISO200


My old faithful first generation Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Mode: Aperture Priority, F2.8, ISO200

*ADDED*



Flower in mom's garden
Mode: Aperture Priority, F3.2, ISO100

Karaoke and a new Camera

Last Friday, I went to Neway Puchong with a bunch of ex-colleagues to have a farewell party with one of them who is going to HK. Her husband is in HK on a contract job, so she tags along and applied for spouse working visa as well. We started at around 7pm and was supposed to end at 11:15pm. But since there wasn't many customers, they allowed us to extend the session until they are closed (which I think is around 4am). Of course, with everyone quite tired after work and stuffs, we stayed until 2am only. But then, this is already a record shattering 7 hours of continuous karaoke-ing for us. LOL...

On a separate note, my sis is back from Japan for 2 weeks to settle her marriage ceremony. This weekend we'll be traveling North to Ipoh where the wedding lunch will be held. She also brought back a Fujifilm F50fd for me which I asked her to help me buy from Japan. So now I can start taking better picture as compared to my N73 shots (I hope :P). Well one thing for sure, now I can take more night shots (N73 is quite cacat with night shots because the LED flash wasn't powerful enough, and flashless shots shouldn't even be attempted as there's too much noise)

Time to start learning about Aperture settings and stuffs... ^^

Confusing...

Was having a chat with a friend earlier today. Talked about some stuffs and then it moved to the fact where I always thinks to much, and in the end I end up doing nothing and the thoughts just remained as over-exercised thoughts.

So, we sort of came to the conclusion that I should not think too much, and instead should be more spontaneous and just do it. And I should really start doing that this year, you know, now being the start of a brand new year.

But just now I read a famous Feng Shui celebrity's prediction for 2008, and she says:
"Curb that impulsive trait of yours as it will not serve you well this year. It is even better to appear indecisive than to jump headlong into something you will regret."

Damn...

So now what? Should I heed the warning and remain my existing self? Or should I just go right ahead and make the change, and not worry about the possibility of a "crash, boom, bang" later on? Maybe this REALLY ain't such a good year for me after all?

Waaaaaiiitt a min... did I just think too much again? Haha... I guess I just did. What the heck, I'll just believe in myself and my decisions. Screw the negative predictions... hehe :P

Aqua what?

Yesterday I got the chance to try this drink, Linie Aquavit, courtesy of a Norwegian buddy from Facebook. He told us that he had this when he's back home for Christmas, and I mentioned I was curious, thus he brought a bottle when he came over for us to try it out.

Taken pretty much from the web:

Aquavit derives from the Latin word "aqua vitae", which means "water of life". It is a potato based liquor flavored with herbs like caraway, dill and cumin. Some variants have a somewhat fruity hint. It is a popular drink in Scandanavian countries, but only the Norwegians have this "Linie" variant.

What's so special about these "Linie" ones is that they have a high mileage on them. "Linie" refers to the equator (in Norwegian) and it means that these liquors actually travelled across the equator to Australia and back.

What sparks the creation of the "Linie Aquavit" goes all the way back to 1805 when Jorgen Lysholm (the signature you see on the bottle's white banner) sent a batch of the Aquavit in oak sherry casks to Asia (in this case, Australia) to market it. Unfortunately it didn't sell too well and 5 barrels of it was sent back to Norway. Then Lysholm found out that these well travelled Aquavits actually tastes better and smoother after sloshing in the cask throughout the journey.

To date, as mentioned on the website, all "Linie Aquavit" will spend four and a half months on the sea before going into the market. The back of the bottle would indicate the dates of the journey and even the name of the ship it was on. (I didn't check on that when I drink it though).

Interesting indeed.

PS: This is not a paid post. :)

On my way home today...

and saw this at the toll booth...


I was wondering... what's going on? Doesn't seemed like a road block to me. Then as I move in closer to the queue for toll payment, I barely see this:





Yea it's not too clear, I guess you can't really see what's going on. Apparently a car rammed right into the toll area (SMART tag lane) and seems to have hit on the divider stone. The car is badly damaged, virtually wrapped around the divider.

As much as I don't like lunatic drivers (assuming he/she is one...), I do hope the person survives the crash... o_0"

Spoilt?

Been thinking about this... but never took an effort to actually organize my thoughts until now:

I think I've been quite spoilt by the computer and internet. Back in the early days where information is not so easily accessible and nobody have the habit of storing information in digital format; I used to cram up my brain with knowledge and information I've picked up from various sources. For example, whenever I browse through my cousin’s collection of computer magazine, I will go through the details of the articles and remember the facts and info. Of course, at times I will also make notes of important points, in case I forget.

Nowadays, because of the convenience of the internet, I have become less attentive on details. Most of the time I just skim through whatever that I’m reading, because I know very well that I could always come back and refer to it again. Other times, I just mark down the link or keep the softcopy on the PC, telling myself that I’ll come back and read it up when I’m free.

And guess what, after some time, I got this whole pile of backlogs that I’m supposed to read up, but I’ll just procrastinate and wait for another day. Sometimes when I have the time and the mood, I do try to clear up the backlog. But still, at the rate that it is going, the backlog just keeps on increasing, almost exponentially.

Now I’m trying to make it a habit that I’ll read anything that I should be reading and don’t allow myself to leave it for another day unless absolutely necessary. Talk is cheap, but doing it is not easy at all. :P

Happy New Year 2008

How time flies... goodbye 2007, hello 2008.

Someone asked me what is 2007 to me, I thought about it real hard but couldn't really remember anything significant.

Well I guess 2007 marks the year I'm finally out of a programming career and moved into pre-sales instead. So far haven't have any regrets of my decision. 2007 is also a year which sees me hopping through 3 jobs (changed once on Feb - into my first pre-sales job, then again on Oct because of crappy boss - into my second pre-sales job).

I'm also getting back into clubbing scenes (not that I've ever been much in it) towards the end of 2007 after joining a group of happening people in Facebook. Only thing is that somehow I've kinda lost interest in alcoholic drinks lately. Well I still drink them, but I usually have like a drink or two only.

Overall, I didn't think it's been a spectacular year for me... but I guess it's not too shabby either. New work environment, new bunch of friends, seriously looking into some investments...

I'll be looking forward to a better 2008 although horoscopes say it won't be a good year for my sign. I'm sure I can make 2008 a good year for me. Yeah!