I just made that up and I thought it was quite cool. I’m sure people have made oblique references like this before but I haven’t seen it – although I’m sure the idea isn’t new, I’ll love to have coined it.
I’m don’t think a lot of people would get it, but that’s kind of the point.
Okay, it’s like the day after Christmas when you’re hung over and eating cold turkey sandwiches while watching football. 🙂
Damn, I’m quite good with analogies that makes perfect sense. Heh!
P/S – The movie is really good too, watched it about 10 years ago when it came out.
Morning peeps! I’ve been up for quite a while so I expect to crash pretty soon. I had breakfast at TDH with Pam, which I usually miss coz:
1. I don’t really eat breakfast.
2. I don’t wake up that early on weekends
I’m glad I went today though, coz I ended up sitting in there for 5 hours (!) talking to Pam. She has this really cool tattoo that goes “Carpe Diem”.
Seize the day indeed, something that everyone needs reminding of once in a while.
Anyway, Leanne was in town for the weekend from Australia. I had dinner with her at Jalan Alor and got some interesting insights from her. It’s truly inspirational how she travels while juggling all her responsibilities.
Pam, Jess and Konstandinos joined us for drinks later at Changkat Bukit Bintang. We had originally wanted to go to a gay bar for something different (thanks for the recommendation Lynn) but the place didn’t serve food so we went to another watering hole.
I ended up drinking diet Coke and singing in a jarringly off-tune key to classics from the 90’s – it seems that a couple of us has the same tastes in music. The DJ was constantly inundated with requests by us and the bar was dominated by our playlist of punk, rock and metal classics. Heh.
Anyway, today is a date of some importance to me. I think. I won’t be sure yet for another 28 days but if all the stars align I’ll get a tattoo that says 22/7/2012.
I’ve been sick the past couple of days and now that I’m feeling better, here’s 3 things I did last week! 🙂
1. Got on a talk show on Bernama Radio 24
This is an interview with Gerald during the 9:30 pm slot. I was at Bernama’s studio on the 5th floor and appeared on air for roughly 40 minutes.
I didn’t know where the time went! I expected it to be quite long and started talking and before I knew it, 40 minutes has passed. Heh.
I also met Jun Sern (tall guy at far right), the man in charge of the English segment and bumped into Nadia (blue tee), who’s the first person I met in Malaysia who knows who NOFX is. 🙂
2. Spoke at Nuffnang Blogopolis Malaysia 2012
Nuffnang was kind enough to ask me to speak at Nuffnang Blogopolis Malaysia 2012.
It’s the first one in Malaysia and it was held at Concorde Hotel.
My fellow speaker is none other than Hui Wen – last time I bumped into her was in Singapore so it’s good to be on stage and talking to everyone with her.
It was also the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, that’s another thing done from the bucket list. 😉
3. Watched The Dark Knight Rises Preview Screening
I’ll not spoil this movie for you but it’s an awesome conclusion to Nolan’s Batman trilogy, which is much darker than the previous Batman movies. I preferred the second one with The Joker but this final iteration wrapped up all the loose ends nicely and it’s a very long movie – about two and half hours!
I was hoping there will be a post-credits scene or trailer but we waited and there was none. This is the grand finale of the Nolan trilogy and it’s awesome!
I just watched it a couple of hours ago and I can’t wait to re-watch it – this time in IMAX! 🙂
The glass building behind us is actually a factory for assembling Volkswagen Phaeton. It only does that and the cars you can see are all spoken for – they’re just awaiting for the owner to pick it up. We went on a tour of the transparent assembly plant in Dresden as part of our trip and it was surprisingly interesting!
This is our English speaking guide – you must have a guide with you when you tour the VW transparent factory and no photos are allowed inside.
You can hear her speak a little here.
However, you can take photos outside of the assembly area. This entire factory assembles Volkswagen Phaetons only. It’s fully customizable in Dresden, Germany. This is where people come to buy a Phaeton – you’re guided to an area where you can choose everything from the color of the car to the interior features and get your own customized VW Phaeton.
I was rather astounded by the sheer cleanliness of the factory – it’s totally unlike any other factory I’ve ever been to before. The employees even have white overalls that are spotless! I don’t know how the Germans do it but we could learn a thing or two from them.
The interesting thing about this factory is that it’s one-of-a-kind. The buyer experience it offers and the tall glass building combined with the robots makes this unique. There are automated carts that follows a magnetic path (which can be changed) along the factory floor so parts will be available to the staff when needed.
You’ll probably be wondering how they get the cars out of the tall transparent building – it’s automated! There’s a car lift that goes up to the floor you want and rotates to the segment you want to extract a particular car (always a Phaeton since that’s what this factory produces). Very nifty.
There’s also a huge sphere where you can watch commercials, old ads and so forth – watch out for the latest one, it’s quite funny and targeted towards the Asian market since it’s the largest market now. The Volkswagen Phaeton transparent factory is worth a visit if you’re ever in Dresden. It’s a remarkable example of German efficiency and one of the attractions in Dresden – it’s the only transparent factory of this scale here.
I don’t think the Volkswagen Phaeton luxury sedan is coming to Malaysia in it’s current form e.g. infinitely customizable so purchasing the car is an experience in itself. However, it might be coming (don’t quote me on this) in several preset models – check out the Volkswagen Malaysia Facebook page and ask, they’re more qualified to speak about this than me. 🙂
This is a peculiar structure located in the middle of the old part of Dresden Square. It’s a pole that leans at a 45 degree angle. The oblique inclination of the pole points towards an underground passage that leads to a railway station but the pole itself has no particular significance that I could decipher.
It’s not an optical illusion.
There is no signage to illuminate questing minds as to why the pole is canted.
I didn’t know why it was leaning.
It’s as if the pole had lofty dreams of becoming an attraction equal or superior to the Leaning Tower of Pisa but never quite made it, gave up, started drinking and…well, leaning.
Thus, we dubbed it The Leaning Pole of Dresden and took stupid photos with it. Heh.
I was walking through MidValley on the weekend when I saw that the Sony Center over there had a contest for the Sony NEX-F3. This is exactly the very same camera that I used to take awesome photos like this in Germany:
This incidentally became my profile photo for Facebook, Twitter and my other social media sites. Heh.
I also took quite a few in Sibu, you can see the sheer quality of photos here:
My backyard. It used to be bigger and filled with mango, rambutan and apple custard trees but it was chopped down and paved with concrete to make way for parking. There were five cars at one point before my dad sold one off, junked one and I drove mine to KL.
The biggest temple complex in Asia or South-East Asia. I think it’s the former and it’s located in Sibu.
One large garden snail. We eat this in Sibu. It’s considered a delicacy. I’m kidding, just took a photo of it to show the incredibly low noise in low light conditions. I snapped this after midnight when I went out back for a smoke.
I’m telling you, it sure was hard to return the review unit, I really fell in love with the dSLR quality images with easy shooting modes that the Sony NEX-F3 affords.
Thus, I tried to enter the contest. It’s quite easy, really. Just head into any of the 10 participating Sony Center outlets on a weekend (Saturday or Sunday) and go to the counter where the Sony NEX-F3 is.
You won’t have any trouble finding it – there are promoters there to help you with the process.
Basically, what you do is to take a photo of yourself using the 180 degree tilt function (a camwhore photo self-portrait in other words ;)) and they’ll help you upload it to the official contest website.
I did mine at the Sony NEX-F3 media launch with Kim, Rachel and Shah – didn’t win anything though – and asked the promoters if I can do this again at the Sony Center.
It turns out that you can – just take a self-portrait of yourself and upload it to The Ultimate F3 Photographer Contest. The contest requires you to upload shots taken with the camera at the Sony Center itself. However, you can also bring your own SD card and slot it into the Sony NEX-F3 if you want to keep the photos. 🙂
One of three Sony NEX-F3 units awaits you! I hope one of them is mine, this is really a nifty camera to bring traveling.
I went to Donald’s Durian which is just beside SS2 durian over the weekend to binge on the King of Fruits. The price has gone up since I last went – it’s now RM 10 for the durian buffet…but there’s heaps of people even at midnight!
You don’t get the good durians like Musang King/Raja Kunyit/D197 at that price though – it’s sold separately, was quoted RM 22/kg here which is quite cheap. Musang King apparently means Elvis Presley, an interesting name to call a strain.
The RM 10 durian buffet is everywhere in SS2 now and you can eat to your hearts content on various lower grade durians. It’s a very good deal, and you get tissues and water to go with it. 😉
There’s a lot of the common but relatively premium D24, D101 and Holo/Labu/D163 durians for sale too. Funny thing was, we almost forgot to pay, we were leaving and then I suddenly remembered that we haven’t paid and went back to do so. No one stopped us, probably coz of the crowd. Heh.
I’m looking for Durian Botak (D172) and the Sarawakian durian called Kepala Babi (D170) – anyone seen them around? 🙂
I totally missed this event. It’s the all-new Ford Ranger launch in KL but unfortunately I was overseas at that time. I’m reading the official Ford Ranger Facebook page and it seems that everyone had a blast.
Shake that. There was a lot of beautiful people performing at the launch and the best part was when they towed in a bus with the Ford Ranger.
The all-new Ford Ranger is completely re-designed from the bottom up – everything is new, from the engine to the frame and even the interior of this compact pickup. It is powered by a Duratorq TDCi 2.2L Variable Geometry (BG) Turbo diesel engine with six-speed auto or manual transmission producing 150 PS and 375 Nm of torque. The 3.2L version comes with auto transmission and has a power output of 200 PS with a staggering 470 Nm of torque.
However, despite all that barely constrained power under the hood, the fuel consumption is quite exceptional.
The all-new 2.2L Ford Ranger offers 8.1L/100 km2 while the 3.2L weighs in at just 8.91L/100 km2.
This is one pickup that knows the fine art of sipping diesel instead of guzzling it. 🙂
It’s no surprise that Ford Malaysia has already surpassed 800 pre-bookings for this vehicle.
The higher fuel efficiency and exceptional driving experience is not all it has to offer. There are several active and passive safety features besides the usual ABS and EBD – LAC (Load Adaptive Control) optimizes the vehicle stability when carrying heavy loads, EBA provides additional brake pressure in emergency stop situations and the EBL (Emergency Brake Light) will kick in the indicators when the Ford Ranger suddenly decelerates to alert other drivers.
The Wildtrak 3.2L variant ups the ante by having ESP (Electronic Stability Program) built in so there’s advanced sensors that monitors the road (what road? ;)) or unforgiving terrain the pickup is driving down and compares it to the path the driver wants to go from the steering wheel.
It also has Hill Descent Control (HDC) to make steep downhill descents easier, Hill Launch Assist (HLA) to give a boost when you want to go up a steep climb and Roll-Over Mitigation (ROM) which is quite self-explanatory – it helps prevents the vehicle from rolling over.
The all-new Ford Ranger is also capable of wading through 800 millimeters of water even when fully loaded! Some variants can even pull a payload of 1,400 kgs which is quite impressive and demonstrated by the bus pulling.
There are three variants that’s available in Malaysia:
2.2 XLT 4X4 6-AT Double Cab – RM 95,888
2.2 XLT 4X4 6-MT Double Cab – RM 89,888
3.2 Wildtrak 4X4 6-AT Double Cab – RM 116,888
(all prices OTR for Peninsular Malaysia and private owners)
This is one pick-up that you can really drive anywhere. The all-new Ford Ranger has a comfortable interior too, with user-friendly technology like Bluetooth Voice Control! Heck, in a perfect world with no border controls, I can drive this all the way to China, swing back west and trail-blaze through Mongolia, Russia and Europe.
I only managed to get it right on the third shot and that’s coz I flipped the LCD screen 180 degrees so I could see myself and frame the shot. I was aiming for a dSLR look with a heavily defocused background. I’m really bad in self-portraits – I think the technical term for this is camwhoring. 😉
That’s the most famous Protestant church in Dresden right there. I travel around quite a bit – I just came back from Germany and I went to Jakarta before that. I couldn’t make it to another one this month due to a conflicting date but I’ll be heading to Nepal and the Philippines next month.
I’m what the industry call a FIT (Free and Independent Traveler). Basically, what that means is that you’re the adventurous trailblazing type who tends to go backpacking alone. That perfectly describes my two previous trips to Europe. This is the third.
I’ve had no problems with people running away with my camera, not even in the slums of Sri Lanka (don’t ask) or going on a totally badass adventure in Georgia with strangers. You need someone to take your photos when you’re traveling alone and while I’m not a huge fan of camwhoring, I concede that it’s very useful sometimes.
The picture above is of the Sony Center in Berlin – the only one that has a cinema which shows English movies without subtitles. I brought the Sony NEX-F3 to Germany. All the photos in this post was taken using that. I wanted to see if it would make me take better shots. I have a dSLR but I wanted a more compact camera that I can stuff into my windbreaker pocket. You can try that with a dSLR – but be prepared to get tackled by the London Metropolitan police. 😉
The Sony NEX-F3 uses a large, high performance Exmor APS CMOS sensor that allows it to capture dSLR quality photos even in low light. It has interchangeable lenses and it’s very easy to use.
Let me show you my awesome photos!
This is a view of Dresden late at night. I was surprised at the low noise and incredible detail. I used this as my Facebook cover photo. Heh.
Old school cash register. Appropriately shot in Retro mode. I normally wouldn’t get a good photo in the lighting conditions of the restaurant but this turned out very well.
Hotel Taschenbergpalais Kempinski in Dresden – a view from my room. President Barrack Obama also stayed here when he visited. I doubt it’s the same room though.
I like how you can set manually adjust the Background Defocus, Brightness, Color (compensate for Warm or Cold), Vividness or just let it go on auto in Superior Auto mode. It usually gets it right.
There’s also scenes presets and settings inside to let you easily shoot in a wide range of picture effects with the full time continuous auto focus:
Pop color. Flowers in summer. It was unusually cold for the first few days, which was why I had a windbreaker on and just a shirt for the last few days.
These are all shot on the Autobahn from a fast moving vehicle to demonstrate:
Partial Color: Red
Partial Color: Green
Partial Color. Blue
Partial Color: Yellow
Back-light auto compensation of a faux stained glass window. There’s also a built in flash that pops up if the scene is too dark! 🙂
Videos are shot in HD and you can use the modes available – this is shot using Retro mode. 🙂
Schloss Charlottenburg (Schloss means Palace) in Panoramic Mode. You can also do this in 3D (it saves in an MPO file) and display it on a 3D TV.
Automatic scene detection and Auto HDR makes skin tones amazingly natural. I literally shot this from the hip so you can get a sense of how fast the auto-detect works:
Imagine the stuff you can do with this! There’s lot of customization possible. You can make the sky bluer for example.
Please…tell them, I am God. 😉
Do you want your very own Sony NEX-F3? Join The Ultimate F3 Photographer Contest and get a chance to win one of 3 cameras! It’s very simple – all you need to do is drop by any of the 10 participating Sony Outlets on a Saturday or Sunday, take your own photo using the Sony NEX-F3 and upload it (the promoters will assist you). Click on the link above for the Sony Outlet closest to you.
I love it! The Sony NEX-F3 makes me look like a better photographer than I really am. 😉
Ergonomics is important, particularly if you’re doing something for a long time. You know, like how they have ergonomic keyboards for cubicle warriors. Now, beer lovers in Malaysia will have the same consideration – this is of particular import for those who loves their beer. 😉
Finally beer drinkers everywhere would have a more comfortable bottle to hold on to! I reckon that’s quite thoughtful of Heineken – designing a new bottle that’s not only looks cool, but feels good. The new bottle has an embossed curve on the neck and back with an embossed Heineken logo and the iconic star. It’s also slimmer but don’t worry, it contains the same amount of liquid.
The new bottle of Heineken is going to replace the current ones for a more modern and easy to hold long necked design. I like it coz I can hold the bottle by the neck and not unintentionally warm the beer with my hand. There’s also a thumb groove that gives a bit of traction and grip! Nifty eh?
…and with Heineken being a premium beer, they’re not pinching pennies with the launch. It’s going to be an exclusive party where YOU can get a chance to attend as well. 😀
Let me tell you about the party, my friends. There will be plenty of Heineken flowing to fuel the energy, which is turn in provided by DJ Ferry Corsten (a.k.a. System F) who will be spinning that night with VJ UTT as the host. It’s another money-can’t-buy experience that is a signature of Heineken events – it’s invite only and there’s an extremely limited amount of open spots.
The only way you can score an invite is by participating in the Heineken to.a.star app on Facebook.
I’ve already received a couple on my Facebook Wall. All you need to do is to send your friends on Facebook a virtual new bottle of Heineken. Quick, send one now! Here’s how it works:
Go to the Heineken to.a.star app and virtually scan your palm to pull out your Facebook details.
Toast Your Friends by sending them a Heineken bottle. Choose them carefully coz you only have a limited amount (20 bottles) to send and you want them to return the toast. 😉
Be a nice person and send one back coz it’ll give them points in the form of “bottles”. I currently have 3 bottles.
Collect as many bottles/points as you can, you need to receive at least 10 bottles to qualify and you just might win 2 exclusive invites to the Heineken bottle launch party! DJ Ferry Corsten is coming in all the way from the Netherlands, which is the birthplace of Heineken! 🙂
It’s going to be big. It’s going to be epic. It’s going to be…wait for it…legendary! 🙂
