Hong Kong Trip

It's been a long time since my last holiday. However i manage to get myself into a vacation with KP last month :-) We flew to Hong Kong last month on the 2nd. It was spring at that time so it was kinda cool and it's kinda ideal weather to move around in.

We manage to get cheap flight tickets from AirAsia for just RM450+ (return ticket) and on the first day, we reach there at night. Not so good. What to do, cheap ticket ma. So first thing that happen when we reach HK is to pay HKD300+ for the taxi ride from airport to Shatin. Damn it's expensive. Besides that, other stuffs was okay. The airport direction is straightforward, easy to get a taxi, no traffic jam, got a free room upgrade by the hotel (Royal Park Hotel).





Got our names ;-)

Reaching the hotel at around 10pm, we don't have much choice for our dinner. So we asked around for any hawker food nearby and we found one just below a residential flat with the help of taxi and some walk. Luckily the food was quite nice. At least didn't make us regret for the trouble looking for it.

Okay.... lets go to the POI (place of interest) section, shall we?

basically, i'll go through the places that's worth going.

The Peak + Madame Tussauds.
This is a good place to visit to take some pictures and you can experience the "Peak Tram" ride. The price for wax house and tram ticket is around HKD300 (can't remember the exact amount). There's a shopping complex up there if you want to shop, but that's not the main idea of going up there. You can find more shopping at the island. It's around 20 degree average during my visit and it's cooler at the peak. So it's a bit of challenge taking a stroll outside snapping some of the nice picture of HK night view. Sadly it was hazy that night and we're not able to capture a clear one. What a waste.

At the ticket counter.

Queuing up for the tram.

Some views along the way up.

Damn, she's taller than me >.<
Got a chance to take picture with Ayumi, though it's not really looked alike

Besides able to take pictures with people that you might not possible with, you can even strangle them =D

What so handsome bout this fella? gosh... all the girls.

Funny one.

The Beetles!

Disappointed shot. Hazy and can't get a good location to put the camera (too much people walking around, this is a once in a million chance!).

Outside of the Peak building. Strong wind and cold.

This is where you'll be dropped off if you took taxi up.

Another place was Ocean Park. It was okay there, but nothing to shout about. Just another theme park with some nice view of the sea. However, i wanted to share this XD

We got a ride on this.

KP was so confident this is just a peanut at the beginning.

This was her during the ride. Ha ha ha... (fyi, we sat at 2nd last row)

Steamboat @ Mongkok
This place was recommended by the taxi driver. Indeed, it's nice. The place was rundown, filthy, and the patrons there looked like those gangsters in HK movie. But the food was good.

I can't read chinese, if you wanna go please remember the shop name.
Clear and satay soup base.
HK is famous for its animal intestines.

Secretly snap the patrons behind me. This is how the shop look like. Something you can get in Pudu.

The street at Nathan Road.

EU (Emergency Unit).

Another notable thing in HK is their building is damn tall and packed.

Lantau Island (Ngong Ping 360)
This is another nice place to visit. You can have a great view over Lantau Island and the HK International Airport.

Queuing up for the cable car.

Just took off from the platform.

Relaxing view.

Coincidentally there's a forest fire near by the cable car path and we saw a helicopter is trying to put it off.

Optionally you can walk rather than taking the cable car (crazy).

Reaching the destination. Great view too.

Finally we're there.

This is how the man made village looked like.

Some desert that we tried over there. Tofufa with red beans.

Inside the desert shop.

Another great thing visiting here is you can be a 1 minutes king and queen :-)


Most of people here are tourists.

Some cute stuff i notice along the way.

At the bottom of the buddha hill.


Easy job getting up there.

Yo!

There's shops in the section below the statue. Basically you can shop anywhere in HK. What the hell....

On the way back. Kinda exhausted with all the walking.

Tsim Tsa Tsui Bay
Great view here too. It's a must to take a stroll here. Spectacular night view, plus you can enjoy the (FREE) light show here every day at 8pm.

Apparently there's a live performance During weekends. Lucky us.

Looking at HK island.

Us @ the bay.

Hong Kong Convention Center.

Macau
We decided to have a visit to Macau. Took the First Ferry from Tsim Tsa Tsui.

Taking off.

Food counter in the ferry.

Leaving HK. Geez... can't imagine they're staying in such a high density place. Poor them (I still think KL have a better living environment).

One of the standard (must have) picture in Macau.

The street just below the Ruins (forgot the name la..)

Getting some fish ball. They have curry, tom yam and Malaysia laksa!

Casino at the backdrop.

Macau loves dog.


We had our shark fin soup here. HKD50+

Notice the round thing in the middle? I'm no shark fin expert, but if should be good since the fin still intact rather than what we get in normal restaurant.

Cute billboard.




Nice back alley.


This is what you eat here when you're hungry.

Leaving Macau at 9pm. This is how the bay it looks like at night.

Dim Sum
Food is the main attraction in HK. Basically they have lots of variety and taste good. One of the food that one must try while visiting HK is their Dim Sum. We waited for roughly 15-20 minutes for out seat at the dim sum restaurant, Shatin Shopping Mall.


In the restaurant. Basically you'll be miserable if you can't read chinese character. 80% of the restaurant in HK had their menu in chinese only.

Fish something.


Pork rib.

Chee Cheong Fun

One of the nicest "Har Gau" (Prawn dumpling) i had tried.

Some pork stuff sandwich with oily rich and baked in some leave. Ha ha.

Coffee Shop (Char Chan Teng)
Apparently Hongkies are kinda fond of satay flavour. They have some numbers of food with that flavour.

Mutton Satay noodle + ham/egg = breakfast set for HKD20+

Egg Tart
Another one of the must try.

Located at Wan Chai. The tart just sold out. We need to wait for 5 minutes for a freshly baked one =)

What you can ask more with a freshly baked HK egg tart in your hand.

Thin and soft skin, rich egg flavour with the right amount of sweetness.

Wan Chai Street


Transportation
They have a very good public transport in HK. Using a same payment card (octopus) for all. Purchase the card for HKD150 (deposit 50, value 100). The Bus and MTR frequency is quite high.

The bus condition is better than what they have in Singapore.

MTR (HK) frequency is higher than MRT (SG). But MRT (SG) exit and terminal change direction is better.

Didn't have the chance to hopped on a city tram.

The people and city.
Indeed HK is a mature and interesting city. Though they're quite arrogance and rude. Still we encounter some nice people that offer direction guide to us. Not all eggs are rotten in the basket. Although they're rude, the customer service provided by the sales people in shopping complex is outstanding. Never once i been offer to seat while waiting (standing beside her) for KP to test/buy some products in KL. But in HK, without fail i would be ask to seat while waiting for KP (in every single shop that we visited). If you're in their shop and browsing their stuffs, they'll just inform you if there's any discount and call for them if you inquiry or wanna try it on. That's all, no standing behind you and keep pushing you to buy or try it on. That's neat.

Something to get used to. They're chinese in all type of jobs. Including garbage lady.

The City



That's it.

Ker Chea's Wedding

21 March 2009 marked the day Ker Chea transit to another phase in her life, becoming someone's wife =) 

Cooincidently my colleague Khen wedding falls on the same day and i have to skip his dinner, sorry ya. Congrat to you too.

I'm quite excited too because she is actually one of the closes (non-relative) person that i knew getting married. Since she is my girlfriend's elder sister, i'm quite familiar with the environment and day to day activities of their family. Knowing after today things might change a lot, it give me strange feeling and i'm wondering if anyone in the family can get use to it or not.

The bridegroom will reach bridesmaid house around 7:15am and i suppose to reach there before that or i'll get locked outside together with the groom's "heng dai", unfortunately i woke up at 7:00 and got there after they arrived.... o.O it doesn't matter anyway, it's ok to be at outside. I can take some pictures up close =P

So the game begins with these womans at the frontline.

The PINK team!

Khong Wah "Heng Dai" (with his size i think he can wallop all the games himself)

Lining up to start.

First game, some wasabi cookie.

Everyone must eat!

Some "drinks" is prepared for the guys after eating the cookies (look at the guy face expression after drinking it! got to be nasty!).

Second, eat something that looked like poo served in diapers (holy shit!).

Got to take this. This is one delicious roasted pig!

Third, stick i love KC using angpow.

This is a good one (glad i'm not one of them).

Write i love KC on to the disposable diapers wore by the "heng dai".

Ha ha ha...... this is it lah....

This is going to haunt them for longgg time.

Fourth is pole dancing.

They're actually quite good for a first timer.



The last one before entering the house. Pick up the correct house key by mouth.

Those people guarding the gate.

I think this guy is one of the groom closest friend. He takes most of the challenges from the girls.

Finally got inside. Start the tea serving ceremony.

New family photo.

So... it's complete at the bride's side. Now is the groom turn. According to "kat si" hey have to leave the bride's house at 9am and enter groom's house at 11am. They need to travel from Cheras to Kota Kemuning. So they ended up drive slowly on the highway since they have a lot of time to spare and causing traffic jam along the kesas highway! geezz ... now i know why KL traffic jam all the time. 

11am. Reached.

Me and KP at the groom house.

Ker Shing and Stanly (next on list, end of this year).

Tea serving ceremony to Khong Wah parents.

Bride suppose to return the head and tail to groom. So here's it.

Eddie and Ker Ching.

Buffet time!

The porch.

The wedding reception. (due to the late arrival of kp, i need to become the reception first without knowing who are the guests =.=")

Outside of the ballroom. The wedding dinner is held at Parkroyal. It resemblence with Singapore's version.

Inside the ballroom.

Me and kp at the reception.

Scottish costume with a knife tuck at the socks (if you notice).

Here comes the reason for everyone arrival today.

At the stage.

Toast time!

Yaaaammm SING!

Grandma, Ker Ching and cousin.

Hahaha... me and kp again.

Everything was great that day. Weather is ok, no rain, no jam, and the food is okay.

Hope the newly wed couple will have a happy marriage for many years to come. 

Congratulation Ker Chea and Khong Wah!

Valentine's Days 2009

I did a post on Valentines Days last year, this is the second post =)

We have gone through this special days for four times. It's been my luck to have KP by my side for these few years. I enjoy her company and we can communicate within the same wavelength. I believe this is something that doesn't come by easily.

This year we went to Changkat Bukit Bintang, TwentyOne. I was a bit scared that this place will turn out to be a big let down because i was able to get a booking few days before the v day. One of my colleague tried few restaurants and all of them is fully booked. But it's nice from the picture, so i just go ahead.

The place turn out to be okay. Nice deco, good ambience, good service, decent food (but portion a bit small). Not much people dining there even when we left, maybe because it's classified as Kitchen and Bar. It's kinda place that you go hang out and have a few drinks. Recommended if you wanna have a few drinks with your friends. 

Here's some snap. 

This is nice. Juicy and tender.

Appertiser.

Internet is DOWN!

Lately there's a lots of problem with the internet. Mainly is due to the ISP (TmNet).

This interrupt my everyday activities like checking mails, facebooking, download movie/song, surf for  information, work from home, etc etc...

So that's why i don't have the mood to blog till now. The Internet is getting stable and i thought (at last! back to normal). But... last few days the connection seems weird. i can surf for awhile.... and got totally cut off! can't even ping any website. And this is resolved everytime i restarted my modem. I thought maybe its some exceptional case, so i just ignore it.

This problem still happening after several day and that's IT! It's not something that happen only once in a blue moon. Something must have goes wrong. So after several testing getting my hand dirty with all the several month accumulated dust laying on the modem, router and cables i finally found out that my modem is at the "to be kong(dead)" stage. My modem will just disconnect my router even with DHCP or static configuration.

So i drive all the way to low yat today to get a new modem. It's pretty hard to find a modem only device. Normally they come with router/router (wireless). Since i already have a wireless router, i don't need to spend extra bucks to get one with both.

This is the one going to be dead.

This is the new modem. Linksys AM300 purchase at Sri Computer Low Yat @ RM119.

Gua Tempurung Trip

This is the 1st trip that i have with my colleagues after more than a year in the company, apart from work visit to Singapore. That doesn't count =)

This trip was organised by Joe though he's the person who join latest in our team here. He been to Gua Tempurung before and he's recommending it to us. Actually this is not my first time visiting Tempurung. It's my second time. I had a feel of it when i was 12 years old. ha ha... i don't remember much of it, but things does changed alot here.

We've 10 person in this cave trip which is primarily consists of iHR and TRI team plus Joe's and Teng Foong's friends. The plan was to reach there at 9 and it tooks around 1.5-2 hours journey. I think you can figured it out what time we depart from KL.

We divided into 3 cars, 1 from south, 1 from north, and another one is 1 way trip car(for those going back hometown to Ipoh). I'm from the south, so i'm travelling together with Joe, Joe's friend, and Kelvin. I have to reach OUG at 5.45am (supposed to be) to meet up with them and have a breakfast with them before departing. Um.. well.... i did reach at 6am+, not too late right =)

Taking breakfast @ mamak opposite Shell petrol station (6am).

On north south highway trailing Jimmy's car.

Teng Foong, his friend and Lee Chyee at our back.

The scenery along the journey.

This is what will happen when your age is catching up on you.

After approx 2 hours of driving, we finally reach the place. Exit Gopeng from the highway and you'll see road sign directing to here.

The price list. 

They have 2 types of tour. Dry and wet. Wet will be more adventurous and it'll cover the whole path, while dry only covers till certain section in the cave and which is the one we're going for (since a lot folks not keen on getting their legs wet).

Enjoying the scenery there.

he tour will start at 9.30 am, so we'll need to wait awhile for that.

Inside the cave. Everyone is very excited. The guy in black/orange is our tour guide (even him complaints Sasha talk too much).

The path is long and have a lots of stairs.

It's extremely dark in there and most of the picture that i took in the cave is not viewable =(

This is the bad of PS (point & shoot) camera in low light condition. But atleast Jimmy took some nice picture inside of the cave.

They have spot lights at certain interesting point in the cave and that enhance the beauty of it. Some of the scene inside is spectacular. Even gives you the feel similar to LOTR (the part when they're in the cave). The space in the cave is very huge and it has some drawings left behind from those staying there during the war. Some section in the cave is very windy and some stuffy.

One of the picture took in the cave.

That's all bout Gua Tempurung. Next we're heading for Perak Cave and Kek Look Tong in Ipoh. Teeng Foong is our tour guide now.

We had our lunch before heading to the next cave at Ipoh dai shu giok (eatery place under a big tree). 

Kek Look Tong cave. 

This cave is famous because there's a lake behind it. And well kept too.

This is the place for dating as i can see quite some numbers of couples there. Even Joe been there before with his ex gf.

Nice place to relax.

2 dslr worshipper exchanging techniques.

Leaving Kek Look Tong.

After this we proceed to our last cave of the day, Perak Cave. We couldn't do any more walking after this one. It's freaking lots of stairs!

You can write your name at the tiles. with some donations.

Kelvin got a (siong siong chim) dunno what it called in english. future forcast?

Half way to the top.

Haih, why everyone so slow one... can walk faster or not? 

This is only one of the picture. There's alot of steep stairs. It's very tiring to reach the top.


This is top. Lee Chyee and Teng Foong is enjoying the view.

There's another viewing point opposite our's.

It's already 3pm+ after visiting Perak Cave. and we're heading back to KL and call it a day. We stopped by Bidor for the famous duck noodle and by some fruits before continuing back to KL. The rains accompany us all the way back to KL and i reached my house at 8pm+.

After all the tiring walking and hiking, overally it's a great experince and should do it at least once? Hope Lee Chyee didn't regret following us for the trip at the last minute =)

Cute Bike!

I was heading for gym @ Leisure Mall on Saturday afternoon and notice this cute bike. I don't feel anything special bout this bike at the 1st glance, but after few seconds i was like "eh, how come this bike is like that?" and i quickly snap 2 picture and coolly walk off =D




Look at the body! so cute, haha! even the rim is in pink.

Fullhouse @ NZX

Heard about this nicely deco restaurant from my friends and pictures from their facebook makes me wanna try out this new place Fullhouse @ NZX. For those who don't know what is NZX, it's stands for Niu Ze Xui located at Kelana Jaya. But NZX is an acronym for "New Zealand Stock Exchange" too, so don't get the wrong idea about getting any stock tips or infos here =D

Going to the place is quite "not so direct" because it's like a hidden city similar to those in "Indiana Jones". You'll need to go through all the small residential roads and a tunnel before reaching there. The place is nice conceptually, but it turns out to be a bit of "rojak" and bad location. Imagine you can have a nice restaurant/cafe at a corner, but along the stretch you can get a lousy coffee shop. A very confusing theme i must say. As for the location, a feeling that you'll need lots of efforts in order to reach the place (maybe not for those who stay nearby). You won't have the chance of bumping into NZX (e.g. Mid Valley, Leisure Mall) and have a thought of "hey, why don't we just have our dinner here?". Doing business is all about location apart from your products and services (for retails). They're losing out there.

Anyway, there's still a gem there in NZX =) Nicely deco restaurant/cafe, one of its kind in KL (AFAIK). Lets the pictures do the talking (camera phone, bear with the quality).


Sitting near the entrance.


The cat clinging on the glass bowl can be taken off, it's just hanging on it. How cool is that?


Cappuccino mushroom soup (mushroom soup with foam on top).


Tea on pot.


Upstair, just after the staircase exit.


They're selling accessories and cloth too!


The Entrance.


Coincidentally bump into Becky, she blogged about this outing too.

Conclusion, foods so-so, environtment nice, service good, location bad.

Running Java 5 Compiled classes/Jar on JRE1.4

Most of you might not need and bother to know about running Java 1.5 compiled classes on JRE1.4. Why? you don't need to. Run with JRE1.5 or higher. No issues.

But sometimes, though i admit it is very annoying that you need to run in that behaviour. You might happen to have a set of codes which relies on an 3rd part API that is Java 5 onwards compatible (i.e. Apache Camel) and it's working great and *SNAP* there's 1 client that still running on JRE1.4 that need to have that functionalities. I've panicked for about 5mins myself until i came across this "Retrotranslator".

Retrotranslator enable you to run Java 5 compiled class on JRE1.4 or 1.3 in 2 ways.

1. Transform the classes/Jar into Java 1.4 compatible.

2. Run Java 5 class on JRE1.4 using Just-In-Time(JIT) Retrotranslator to translate Java 5 byte codes to Java 1.4 on the fly.

Personally i'll prefer first option (not knowing how is this Retrotranslator behaving). After using it for some time, i found it's quite stable and have no problems at all =)

Here's how you convert a Java 5 classes/Jar to Java 1.4:

java -jar retrotranslator-transformer-n.n.n.jar -advance -srcjar 

The "-advance" option is to resolve compatibility issues between Java 5 and 1.4. Such as new methods that found in Java 5 but not 1.4. But it has only limited support. After running the Command, the jar file will be converted into Java 1.4 compatible. Now you can use this Jar on JRE 1.4. 

For more information, please refer from http://retrotranslator.sourceforge.net/

Bad Shoes Day!!

I was attending my friend's house warming on friday night and had a crazy night cuz alot of my old college friends were also there. Playing alots of stupid drinking games... really play until you scared. Ok good. Party over. everyone go home... say bye bye to everyone. So drive back lor.... reach home at about 2am+. open the main gate, close it, take off my shoes, open the door, go inside, close it, and straight to bed and dozed.

So everything is great and fine until my mother knocking on my room door in the morning and told me that all of our shoes got STOLEN!!! I was like... WTF? my leather shoe, nike sport shoe, adidas sneaker, GEOX casual shoe all GONE! luckily i left my slippers in my car and that's the only things i can wear on my foot now! Those thieves nowdays... even shoes also want to steal.

Now i can't go to work, gym, or any outings that requires you to wear a shoe! here goes few hundred bucks to get a new leather shoe for work and a sport shoe. At least my working shoe before next tuesday. If not i'll be wearing slippers to work =D

The moral of the story is keep your shoes locked or inside the house and curse you all shoes thieves!!!!