I think I'm getting OCD!, but hey the country is close, not a complete dump, and some places are genuinely lovely.
Due to the advent of Miss Hart's visit to Singapore, the Chad, Miss Hart and I enjoyed a lovely weekend in Sarawak, with a brief interlude of a few hours in uninspiring Johor Bahru spent transiting and waiting in traffic jams (please don't flame me JB residents) .
I learnt that Asian budget airlines were not designed with Asians like me in mind, there was bugger all leg room, the other two had a better time of it all, being distinctly more Asian in stature than I :D.
I like Kuching, its fairly compact (at least the interesting bits are), we spent Saturday wandering around Kuching visiting museums, doing all the touristy things and terrorising the locals with enthusiastic Asian-ness (the hand thing in photos) and having Chad either thrust at me, or at attractions in the manner of Hard Gay (HAADO GEIIII.. FUUUU!!!). Note however that "Hard Gay in Kuching" was not any of us. We're not that crazy.
With all the crazy silly touristness out of us by Sunday we proceeded to check out Kubah National Park, lotsa nice jungly nature things, and you get rewarded with a dip in a small pool created by the waterfall at the end of the trek. What I found interesting was that you can actually drink from the waterfall in Sarawak, its New Zealand and its crazy farming that causes all its rivers and streams to be rife with Giardia and Chryptosporidium (according to Chad... he seemed to know what he was talking about... and I haven't got the runs... yet).
Photos this time are courtesy of the Chad and Miss Hart. They went on to Tioman, so expect them in a few days time. (YAYZ they are up http://picasaweb.google.com/klatchy/Sarawak and http://picasaweb.google.com/voiceinsideyou/KuchingPulauTiomanMalaysia/)
I think I might try and tackle Mount Kinabalu next, probably have to start exercising and shed a few kilos first ;)
Monday, July 24, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
A Special Post just for Marcel!
I hear that due to a mix up in the tour dates, Wellington has been completely left off the DJ Shadow tour :P. Shadow's tour dates confirm this, can you confirm this Mr. Cordes?
Did you journey up to Auckland like a die hard fan? If so I am very impressed.
We get him in Singapore on Aug 5, my minions have reported that he was "O for Awesome" when he played in Auckland ;).
I might give you a call on Aug 5 once he comes on, just so you don't feel like you're missing out :P.
Incidentally, any +65ers reading this blog goin' to DJ Shadow?
Did you journey up to Auckland like a die hard fan? If so I am very impressed.
We get him in Singapore on Aug 5, my minions have reported that he was "O for Awesome" when he played in Auckland ;).
I might give you a call on Aug 5 once he comes on, just so you don't feel like you're missing out :P.
Incidentally, any +65ers reading this blog goin' to DJ Shadow?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Malaysia... again :P
Mum has just left after a weeklong holiday here, to make sure she didn't get too bored I took her around Malaysia, KL again, then up to Bukit Fraser (Fraser's Hill) for some good old fashion NZ trekking, and finally a couple of days in Tioman.
Photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/klatchy
Photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/klatchy
Sunday, July 02, 2006
The interweb distresses me
So I got myself a google analytics account after having read about it on Kim's Blog, pretty easy to set up and I've left it to gather stats on visitors to this blog over the last week.
One of the reports it provides is based on what key words people use on search engines to get to your site. These were the search queries:
"lake karakul religion" (Google)
"stuff racoon" (Google)
" ian ren" (Google)
"free photos of asian women wet & messy looks" (Yahoo)
Googling the first three queries all resulted in my blog being the first or second results. As expected when I Yahoo'd the last query I got a whole bunch of porn sites
It probably says more about Yahoo's crazy search algorithms than anything else...
In other news, Google Web Albums is great! Much more intuitive than hello, and you can actually do batch uploads properly, unlike bebo and flickr. The free account only gives you 250MB though :(
One of the reports it provides is based on what key words people use on search engines to get to your site. These were the search queries:
"lake karakul religion" (Google)
"stuff racoon" (Google)
" ian ren" (Google)
"free photos of asian women wet & messy looks" (Yahoo)
Googling the first three queries all resulted in my blog being the first or second results. As expected when I Yahoo'd the last query I got a whole bunch of porn sites
It probably says more about Yahoo's crazy search algorithms than anything else...
In other news, Google Web Albums is great! Much more intuitive than hello, and you can actually do batch uploads properly, unlike bebo and flickr. The free account only gives you 250MB though :(
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Kuala Lumpur - Sin City
A few weeks back we decided to visit our dear Irish friend Rob in KL, oh what a trip! Drunkeness, near death experiences, tall buildings, 50 year old women pimping out young men that look like women, street fights, dodgy taxi driver pimps... oh and 5 star luxury :D
The trip started out harmlessly enough with the arduous task of getting a cab in Singapore in the rain, luck fortunately was with us this time and we didn't miss our luxury double decker bus to KL. (Exhibit A below)
Exhibit A
Outta Singapore in a flash, and across the border to the outskirts of Johor Bahru(JB), our bus took the new crossing and we weren't stuck in a throng of people. We were on our way soon again after immigration.
We were greeted by the distant sights of the Petronas Towers around about 3 in the afternoon, and it took another half an hour for the bus to finally drop us off. To our excitement our hotel was just across the road, then... to our dismay we learned that the road was virtually uncrossable, high speed traffic, scooters and motorbikes that were bent on killing you, I had the additional burden of having Catherine Zeta Jones with me, so that added another 5 minutes onto the crossing at least. 5 near misses with motorbikes later, I was across the road and in the hotel.
Biker Gang ^_^ similar to what we faced getting across the road
It was ridiculous, for only 215 Malaysian Ringgits per night (less than $SGD100/$NZD100) you get 5 star treatment, admittedly we weren't staying in the presidential suite... or even the club level, but hey allow this bumpkin some excitement over his first stay in a luxury hotel. Oh, and this was the view from our room :P
GO PETRONAS TWIN TOWERS!!!111
We went on a wander, our original destination was to go down Jalan Sultan Ismail (which we later found out was perpendicular to our street), except due to Chad's inquisitveness and unique sense of direction we ended up on the opposite side of the city... :)
We ended our misguided tour about 3 hours later having explore much more of the city than we'd anticipated (although we'd still not gone down Jalan Sultan Ismail). I was happy though, and my emotions are perfectly captured by the following photo:
The night ended outside Zouk (yay they have one in KL!!) watching the Germany vs. Costa Rica game and imbibing some cheap beer for a change. I had free flutter courtesy of the bar, but didn't manage to get any free drinks :(.
The next morning, we were sorely disappointed by the Petronas Towers, free entry to the Petronas Towers dictated that we would not be going up the towers, most people line up for tickets at 8 in the morning, I was still contemplating whether to get out of bed at 11:30.
All was not lost, as we ventured on to Menara KL (KL Tower, a broadcast tower thingamee)
, the view is much better and they have a lame culture show at the bottom :P. Snapped a few pics, and Chad tried to get some dodgy perspective shots in.
Met up with Rob at about 7 in the evening, and the night of debauchery began..., having been subject to harsh Singaporean liqour taxes for the past two months, it was time to loosen the purse strings (no I don't actually have a purse :P) and indulge in some good old fashioned NZ styled binge drinking!! After picking up some of Rob's friends we made our way to Passion nice wanky little club in the middle of KL's party area (JP Ramlee), massive main room playing RnB and party hip hop and the top floor / mezzanine playing prog. Great club, nice setting and we got very very drunk, drunk enough to lose two hot Swedish girls that Rob's friend found earlier in the night :'(.
Abruptly, things ended at 4, we were ushered out of passion and onto the streets. Soon a street fight involved when I witnessed the Fastest Indian In the World! Some Indian fella got in a fight with a bunch of people, was soon outnumbered, had a few punches landed on him and then promptly ran for his life. Scary? YES! Amusing? Also Yes :), I'm such a bastard.
Karma came and kicked me on the arse soon after for laughing at other's misfortunes when I was accosted by a ladyboy, I'd mistakenly made eye contact in my drunken state with someone who I thought was an incredibly beautiful GIRL, as she/he walked close, I realised that he/she was much taller than me and had certain manly features, I smiled sheepishly, broke off eye contact and walked away as fast as I could. I was drunk... but I wasn't THAAT drunk!!
A few hundred metres down the road, an old lady (must've been 50+) tried pimping out another ladyboy to me! Grabbed me on the arm and even resorting to speaking Mandarin with me to get me to spend what she described as a night of bliss with this um... person! :O
Somewhat sober now by the previous sobering experience, I got her to remove her hands and contemplated on telling her I was gay, then decided that it may have potentially worse repercussions, I made some excuses and began running back to the hotel. O Karma, I will never laugh at another's misfortune again!
As expected, Sunday was totally written off, visited Rob's palatial residence in the evening, and back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
Finally did some more sightseeing further afield at the Batu Caves on Monday, numerous Macaques and Hindu sculptures provided an afternoon of entertainment. Back on the bus by 6:00pm, safe and sound in Singapore away from all the scary encounters by midnight monday. Its good to be home :D
The trip started out harmlessly enough with the arduous task of getting a cab in Singapore in the rain, luck fortunately was with us this time and we didn't miss our luxury double decker bus to KL. (Exhibit A below)
Exhibit A
We were greeted by the distant sights of the Petronas Towers around about 3 in the afternoon, and it took another half an hour for the bus to finally drop us off. To our excitement our hotel was just across the road, then... to our dismay we learned that the road was virtually uncrossable, high speed traffic, scooters and motorbikes that were bent on killing you, I had the additional burden of having Catherine Zeta Jones with me, so that added another 5 minutes onto the crossing at least. 5 near misses with motorbikes later, I was across the road and in the hotel.
Biker Gang ^_^ similar to what we faced getting across the road
GO PETRONAS TWIN TOWERS!!!111
We ended our misguided tour about 3 hours later having explore much more of the city than we'd anticipated (although we'd still not gone down Jalan Sultan Ismail). I was happy though, and my emotions are perfectly captured by the following photo:
The night ended outside Zouk (yay they have one in KL!!) watching the Germany vs. Costa Rica game and imbibing some cheap beer for a change. I had free flutter courtesy of the bar, but didn't manage to get any free drinks :(.The next morning, we were sorely disappointed by the Petronas Towers, free entry to the Petronas Towers dictated that we would not be going up the towers, most people line up for tickets at 8 in the morning, I was still contemplating whether to get out of bed at 11:30.
All was not lost, as we ventured on to Menara KL (KL Tower, a broadcast tower thingamee)
, the view is much better and they have a lame culture show at the bottom :P. Snapped a few pics, and Chad tried to get some dodgy perspective shots in.
Met up with Rob at about 7 in the evening, and the night of debauchery began..., having been subject to harsh Singaporean liqour taxes for the past two months, it was time to loosen the purse strings (no I don't actually have a purse :P) and indulge in some good old fashioned NZ styled binge drinking!! After picking up some of Rob's friends we made our way to Passion nice wanky little club in the middle of KL's party area (JP Ramlee), massive main room playing RnB and party hip hop and the top floor / mezzanine playing prog. Great club, nice setting and we got very very drunk, drunk enough to lose two hot Swedish girls that Rob's friend found earlier in the night :'(.
Abruptly, things ended at 4, we were ushered out of passion and onto the streets. Soon a street fight involved when I witnessed the Fastest Indian In the World! Some Indian fella got in a fight with a bunch of people, was soon outnumbered, had a few punches landed on him and then promptly ran for his life. Scary? YES! Amusing? Also Yes :), I'm such a bastard.
Karma came and kicked me on the arse soon after for laughing at other's misfortunes when I was accosted by a ladyboy, I'd mistakenly made eye contact in my drunken state with someone who I thought was an incredibly beautiful GIRL, as she/he walked close, I realised that he/she was much taller than me and had certain manly features, I smiled sheepishly, broke off eye contact and walked away as fast as I could. I was drunk... but I wasn't THAAT drunk!!
A few hundred metres down the road, an old lady (must've been 50+) tried pimping out another ladyboy to me! Grabbed me on the arm and even resorting to speaking Mandarin with me to get me to spend what she described as a night of bliss with this um... person! :O
Somewhat sober now by the previous sobering experience, I got her to remove her hands and contemplated on telling her I was gay, then decided that it may have potentially worse repercussions, I made some excuses and began running back to the hotel. O Karma, I will never laugh at another's misfortune again!
As expected, Sunday was totally written off, visited Rob's palatial residence in the evening, and back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
Finally did some more sightseeing further afield at the Batu Caves on Monday, numerous Macaques and Hindu sculptures provided an afternoon of entertainment. Back on the bus by 6:00pm, safe and sound in Singapore away from all the scary encounters by midnight monday. Its good to be home :D
Friday, June 02, 2006
Settling down
Well... no exciting excursions to report, but I am getting back into some of my old habits.
Finally found a place to learn Spanish again, stumbled across this school www.laslilasschool.com on the interweb one day. I enquired, applied, sat and exam and got in :), the best part of it all is that the school's across the road from my condo! To top it off my broken Spanish and incorrect verbs got me exempt from the beginners classes and some of the elementary ones! Go ME!! Makes me feel so much better after failing my Finance Exam.
Will be likely to take up Salsa lessons again, checking out this place with about 15 others from work tomorrow. If the instructors aren't incompetent, and they have constant air con, I guess I'll be signing up.
Still have to get a credit card... hopefully I won't get rejected again. I'll be so friggin angry if they still reject me :-/, me bomb and bank comes to mind :P (I'll probably get sent to jail for this comment ^_^).
And finally.. Malaysia next week... maybe... probably... if I get tickets and places sorted. I've booked leave already :O.
Finally found a place to learn Spanish again, stumbled across this school www.laslilasschool.com on the interweb one day. I enquired, applied, sat and exam and got in :), the best part of it all is that the school's across the road from my condo! To top it off my broken Spanish and incorrect verbs got me exempt from the beginners classes and some of the elementary ones! Go ME!! Makes me feel so much better after failing my Finance Exam.
Will be likely to take up Salsa lessons again, checking out this place with about 15 others from work tomorrow. If the instructors aren't incompetent, and they have constant air con, I guess I'll be signing up.
Still have to get a credit card... hopefully I won't get rejected again. I'll be so friggin angry if they still reject me :-/, me bomb and bank comes to mind :P (I'll probably get sent to jail for this comment ^_^).
And finally.. Malaysia next week... maybe... probably... if I get tickets and places sorted. I've booked leave already :O.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Small Asian boy found near Merapi
Nah, I didn't actually go and see the volcano, but I did goto Indonesia over the weekend.
Pulau Bintan is great!
We hurriedly left work on Friday so that I could get home and pack as much useless stuff into Catherine Zeta Jones (watch The Terminal if you have no idea what I'm ranting on about), hopped onto the MRT and hoped like hell we would make the ferry across to Bintan. After much queue waiting and general cussing we got through customs and onto the ferry with about 15 minutes to spare.
After about an hour on the choppy waves between Singapore and Indonesia, we reached Bintan, was pretty dark already so much of the scenery en route was lost to us. The first order of business was to find food and beverages, we lingered on beverages until midnight, then decided that a romantic moonlit walk on the beach was in order :P, the romantic atmosphere was dashed however as Chad had the tendency to stub his toes one every twenty seconds.
I attempted windsurfing the next day, it was a dismal failure... not really due to my incompetence, more so the lack of wind... in any direction. But hey, at least i know how to position myself and balance myself for less than 5 seconds on the board :D... I'm keen to go back and have another crack at it though...
Final day was good despite the set backs the weather provided. We had intended on this five hr trek, however due to the incredibly risk averse nature of the Singaporeans that ran the operation, they deem the conditions too wet and thus too dangerous... like WTF wet and dangerous is when Kiwis go tramping. We substituted the trekking with a few hours of snorkeling, which I was competent at for a change :), mucho tropical fishies and coral to look at, would've continued for longer if my feet didn't get so tired from kicking.
After lunch we decided to give the upper body a bit of a workout, hired an ocean kayak and generally kayaked around the bay, we got quite a ways away from the shore and both decided it was a good idea to leave the kayak and go for a swim... getting back on was quite difficult :D.
I don't have any photos alas, Chad was the photographer of the trip since I stupidly forgot to charge my camera before the trip :-/... next time eh?
Pulau Bintan is great!
We hurriedly left work on Friday so that I could get home and pack as much useless stuff into Catherine Zeta Jones (watch The Terminal if you have no idea what I'm ranting on about), hopped onto the MRT and hoped like hell we would make the ferry across to Bintan. After much queue waiting and general cussing we got through customs and onto the ferry with about 15 minutes to spare.
After about an hour on the choppy waves between Singapore and Indonesia, we reached Bintan, was pretty dark already so much of the scenery en route was lost to us. The first order of business was to find food and beverages, we lingered on beverages until midnight, then decided that a romantic moonlit walk on the beach was in order :P, the romantic atmosphere was dashed however as Chad had the tendency to stub his toes one every twenty seconds.
I attempted windsurfing the next day, it was a dismal failure... not really due to my incompetence, more so the lack of wind... in any direction. But hey, at least i know how to position myself and balance myself for less than 5 seconds on the board :D... I'm keen to go back and have another crack at it though...
Final day was good despite the set backs the weather provided. We had intended on this five hr trek, however due to the incredibly risk averse nature of the Singaporeans that ran the operation, they deem the conditions too wet and thus too dangerous... like WTF wet and dangerous is when Kiwis go tramping. We substituted the trekking with a few hours of snorkeling, which I was competent at for a change :), mucho tropical fishies and coral to look at, would've continued for longer if my feet didn't get so tired from kicking.
After lunch we decided to give the upper body a bit of a workout, hired an ocean kayak and generally kayaked around the bay, we got quite a ways away from the shore and both decided it was a good idea to leave the kayak and go for a swim... getting back on was quite difficult :D.
I don't have any photos alas, Chad was the photographer of the trip since I stupidly forgot to charge my camera before the trip :-/... next time eh?
Sunday, May 14, 2006
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