Travel – Page 31 – sixthseal.com

Mandarin Oriental Hotel, KL

September 21, 2004 by HB

mandarin oriental

This is the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. It’s located right in the middle of KL and is considered a 5 star hotel.

rrma invite

I was staying there courtesy of MAC (Malaysian AIDS Council – more
about that later) and when I arrived there, my gf’s brother told me not
to open the car door – someone will do it for me.

mo door.jpg

…and sure enough, someone did. It’s become something of an inside
joke since. 😉 The reception was fairly opulent and the receptionist on
duty asked me if I wanted a queen or king sized room and told me it’s
all paid for by MAC.

mo room 1

Thus, I went for the queen sized room (MAC is a charity organization, non-profit).

mo room 2

The queen sized room was nice, with a welcome fruit basket (which I only ate the green apple, as I’m not a big fan of fruits).

mo fruits

The fruit array, with cutlery for the more refined ones amongst us to use.

mo view suria

The view is towards Suria KLCC…and you will notice some suspension
wires in the windows. Management left a note to apologize that they’ll
be doing some window cleaning the next day.

mo bathrobes

Bathrobes! Slippers! Why, I’ve never had these in my life. The luxury! 😉

mo bath

The bathroom seems very nice.

mo wash

There is a shower and a soak tub in there too. I found the porcelain throne to be very pleasant to sit on.

mo toiletries

The toiletries are very complete – sewing kit, razors, toothbrush and I finally got to know what an enamel board is.

mo toothpaste

I was about to think of the questionable logic of providing toothbrushes but no toothpaste, until I found it inside.

mo work desk

This place makes me feel like saying, “Go away, I’m a very busy man!” 😉

mo minibar

Here’s a look at the mini bar – a select range of mini liquor bottles and Mandarin Oriental’s own bottled water.

mo pringles

Heck, they even had an agreement with Pringles to have Mandarin Oriental Pringles.

mo suria link

Mandarin Oriental is also linked to Suria KLCC, the shopping center beneath the tallest twin towers in the world…

suria klcc

…and the shopping opportunities it offers.

Mandarin Oriental is a nice place to stay in…if you don’t have to
pay for it, of course. 😉 I’ll write about the Red Ribbon Gala next.

Ranchan pool

March 17, 2004 by HB

Taman Recreasi Ranchan

I remember going for daytrips to this (natural) pool when I was
little and living in Kuching, it was a fun place to be with lots of
running water. It’s not exactly a pool per se, it’s just the name we
used to call it when we went on our weekend family trips. It was
probably during that time that I started to love going for trips (no,
not that kind, I only got to love the other kind of trip when I was 16)
and traveling.

ranchan pool

This time, I went with the usual suspects – Ah Lung, Miriam, Ah Ming
and me headed down after going to the hot spring. It’s now called
Ranchan Recreational Center but I still remember the view as we first
stepped into the place. It was just like the way I remembered it, and
the last time I went was before I was 7 years old! It has rapids and
waterfalls and all that.

ranchan view

Anyway, like I mentioned, it’s not a “pool” but a full blown natural
water park before the term water park has been coined. There’s a cold
stream (river?) of water running from the top to the big pool at the
base. The big pool is deeper but dirty, obviously, due to being
downstream from the picnickers and their debris and grease that
inevitably get filtered down.

ranchan grease

Behold the greasy water! Look where the sun shines through the water
– there is a slick of grease on top of the pool and cigarette butts,
snack wrappers and other garbage at the sides. It’s much cleaner
upstream, but we went for a dip here first. The water was as cold as I
remembered it to be…

ranchan beng

The downside to this place is that there seems to be a lot of Ah
Bengs smoking and throwing their cigarette butts into the water. Look
at that guy sitting on top of the rock in the middle of the pool! Damn
beng, want to act cool, sitting on rock and smoking. Tiu! Knock that
guy upside the head for me if you see him. 😉 All jokes aside, it
should be noted that I do not smoke, I was just holding the cigarette
for someone. *cough* It was hard getting up to that rock, one of the
girls sitting on top helped me up, but she couldn’t pull 60 kgs so I
used the other easier way up.

ranchan dfa

Which reminds me, I had swallowed a significant amount of the dirty
water in the big pool (it makes me retch just thinking about it) while
attempting to guide Ah Lung across to a waterfall. He was the only one
who couldn’t swim and I was covering his back and Ah Ming was covering
the front, but we stalled in the middle and it took both of us to get
him back to shallow waters. It should be noted that benzodiazepines
acts as muscle relaxants so you shouldn’t be swimming for two under the
influence.

I thought I was a good swimmer but it took two of us to get him
back…you could call it a near drowning, but thankfully Ah Lung didn’t
panic and pull the both of us down. I’ve encountered such an experience
several years ago – the girl was barely 40 kg and I was an even better
swimmer then (meth haven’t got all my muscles then ;)) but damn if I
wasn’t scared shitless coz she was panicking and pulling me down with
her. Never underestimate the strength of an oxygen starved person.

ranchan fishing

There’s another smaller pool yet downstream from here where you can
see people trying to fish using a…damn benzos, what do you call those
things? Those little nets with a handle?

Anyway, here’s a shot of us at the bottom pool:

ranchan us
L-R: Ming, me, Miriam, Lung.

ranchan upstream

We walked up to the higher water areas. There are plenty of small pools upstream. The photo below shows one of them:

ranchan up

We opted to go further upstream for cleaner and cooler waters. We
finally found an area with a mini waterfall that suited our fancy. The
water was clean here and you can see to the bottom of the riverbed.

ranchan rapids

We played slick and slide on the mini rapids (watch out for rocks –
genitalia < rocks any day) and bounced stones off a rock, much to
the dismay of the group of people a little downstream from us. Haha!
The rapids there was like a mini natural water slide. We also got some
burgers to eat while submerged in the water. It was perfect, soaking in
the water and eating burgers…

ranchan lung me

This is me and Ah Lung with our burgers. I don’t remember much due
to heavy benzodiazepine consumption but my burger was missing so I
postulate that I’ve already finished mine.

Hello, my name is Huai Bin and this is tandem white water rafting with no raft. 😉

ranchan slide

Ranchan pool is a nice place to be, perfect for a Sunday afternoon swim and general R&R.

ranchan woosh
Woosh…

Annah Rais hot spring

March 16, 2004 by HB

annah rais hot spring

This is Annah Rais hot spring in Kuching. Please be warned that the
“Hot Spring” sign is pointing the wrong way. The correct route is not
straight through, as the sign would lead you to believe, but on the
turning to the left into Kampung Annah Rais. It’s the third bridge
after you make the turning, there’s no other signage to indicate that
there’s a hot spring here.

annah rais trail

It’s one of the best kept secrets here…not many people actually
know about this place. We had a hell of a time finding it too, we
aborted the trip last Saturday due to other commitments, but we were
dead set to find the damn hot spring this Sunday. The picture above
shows the trail that leads there…there is no parking, basically you
just park beside the road and walk down that unmarked route.

annah rais parking

You shall behold this sight when you reach the actual hot spring:

annah rais party

It’s a running river that seems cold, until the party that was just
leaving informed us that the “hot spring” is a little nook opposite the
river. There’s the obligatory Caucasian in the photo – he’s from
Amsterdam and he came with the group of tourists.

annah rais river

This is the view of the running river. It’s quite shallow and has a
moderate current which would carry you downstream if you float on the
water – very nice. Here’s a photo of the actual hot spring pool:

annah rais hot springs

It’s basically a warm nook by the river surrounded by rocks. The
water and sand is truly hot, as I unfortunately found out when my
gonads came into contact with the hot spring. There are some places
where it’s extremely hot and there are bubbles and a smell of sulfur
permeating the area.

annah rais sand

It’s fun to dig up the sand and see the contrasting colors of the
rocks. It gets hotter when you dig deeper. There are some parts which
are visibly bubbling in the hot spring:

annah rais bubbles

We thought it’ll be nice to bring some eggs and bury it into the hot
spring sand and eat it later, but we forgot to bring eggs.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to soak in the hot spring and then switch to
drifting afloat in the cold river while blissfully sedated. Highly
recommended, it’s about 70+ km from Kuching. Here are some other shots
from that day:

annah rais leg
OMG, the goo has got my leg!

annah rais me
Please do not attempt this unless you want to decrease your chances of producing offspring.

annah rais ming
Ah Ming

annah rais miriam
Miriam

annah rais lung
Ah Lung

Hot springs! Hot spring? Hot tires!

March 10, 2004 by HB

borneo hl

Our adventure to the only (?) hot springs in Kuching began at
approximately 15:30. It was an on the spot decision to go and off we
went to Borneo Highlands (which was the original destination).
Unfortunately, we were told that we needed tickets, which can only be
bought in Kuching town, which is 29 km or so away from where we are.

hotsprings

This was on Saturday afternoon, and I remember vaguely seeing
something about hot springs some 2 km away, so we decided to go for
that instead. With a lot of guesses, intuition, outright trial and
error and 15 mg of Xanax, alcohol and hydroponics produce, we managed
to get our asses pretty fucking lost.

indon link

We took a wrong turn that cost us 1 whole hour under less than
optimal road conditions (think steep inclines, mud and gravel single
lanes). We turned back and noticed that the Hot Spring sign was
pointing right instead of left. Duh. Off we went again, and this road
was way more complex then the last.

piling bridge

There was thrown together pilings as bridges (with one piling missing in the middle).

piling bridge right

piling bridge left

piling bridge far left

There were fucking rotten wood bridges. We didn’t know where we
ended up but we knew that the fuel was running low and according to my
calculations, we used up more gas coming here, so I was thinking we
wouldn’t be going back to Kuching tonight.

pitcher plants

I was actually looking forward to going to spend the night at a
longhouse and drink some tuak and all that. 🙂 There were no cellular
lines (we all carry different mobile operator SIM cards, there just
isn’t any coverage there) so we couldn’t very well attempt to call
friends for gas rescue.

wrong sign

Thus, at one last wrong turn, as it was getting dark, we decided to
leave, on account of the low fuel. I thought it would have been a real
adventure to spend the night in a longhouse with the locals, but alas,
we had plans for that night as well (next two posts will be about the
night part of Saturday night). Thus we tried to drive back (well
everyone except me, since all the three substances together does not a
good driver make).

muddy incline

I said tried. There was this steep incline and we were in a van and
we simply could not get the better of the hill. The wheels were caked
with mud. There was no friction. It kept stopping at some point near
the top of the incline. There were many, many attempts and all three of
us (including Miriam) had to push the van to give it more traction. No
go.

muddy clothes

Look at the tire burn on the rocks.

tire burn 1

tire burn 2

I imagine a lot of tire material was lost to this hill.

tire burn 3

There was even smoke coming out while revving the engine in order to try and fucking own this hill.

tire smoke

All seemed lost until we remembered something Ah Boon had said last
time. Same situation, they used a back weight to compensate for the
traction required to overcome such gnarly situations.

backweight trick

Here’s passing along the advice: Get everyone except the driver to
sit at the back, the back most part of the vehicle. Worked like a
charm. There were at least 10 aborted attempts to get past this
obstacle, but with this backweight (us three), we went over in the
first try and it was onwards, ho!

salam van ahoy

We drove back to the place with the piling bridge, and not satisfied
at not being able to play around in hot springs, we went for this cold
running water instead.

cold spring 1

cold spring 2

It was clean and used for drinking water at the village downstream.

drinking water

It felt cool, but it was dark (nightfall already, spent several hours on the road) so we headed home after a few minutes.

the adventurers

Thus ends our adventure.

We shall try again next Saturday. No hot springs will be the best of us, no sir!

Bako National Park

February 23, 2004 by HB

bako
Bako National Park

Bako. It was when we were drinking at a coffee shop (discos and
other entertainment venues raided in a show of We Are Doing Something
(TM) to Badawi) when a Drunken Inspiration (also TM) struck – Let’s go
to Damai! Thus, we drove around town (well, not all of us obviously, I
never drive on Saturday expeditions coz I aim to get fucked as) and
went to several hotels and finally Holiday Inn, Kuching to ask for all
the numbers.

bako jetty dark

Damai (both resorts) were fully booked due to the long weekend
(public holiday on Monday) and so was Santubong. It was suggested that
we go tomorrow instead for a day trip. Obviously, being in enough such
situations, I knew we weren’t going anywhere tomorrow if we didn’t
leave now, so “Off to Bako!”, I said. =D Despite it being close to 5 am
and boats probably start at 7 am, off we went to pick up Ah Ann. The
four of us arrived at the jetty for boat pickups around 5:30 am.

bako dawn

It was dark still and we sat there stoned, I mean, drunk, while
waiting for the first boat to depart. It was beautiful, the sun slowly
coming up and brightening everything slowly, the scene was an amazing
work of art by nature. I was looking forward to taking photos of Bako
National Park. Please note that no substances were consumed besides
plenty of alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and wheatgrass
*cough* juice for sustenance. I think it was amazing that so many
sedatives could be taken and still keep us up for so long.

bako speedboat

Anyway, the first boat came at 7:15 am and off we went to Bako. It costs RM 80 for a return trip for 1-5 passengers.

destination bako

The speedboats did not go as fast as the name suggests, but it did serve its purpose and got us there in about 20 minutes.

bako structures
There were a lot of interesting structures (by nature) that we passed on the way to the national park.

The boat driver dropped us off at the jetty:

bako jetty

This jetty is only accessible during high tide, the sea water (South
China Sea) recedes far below this point during low tide. We had the
munchies really bad so the canteen was the first destination. There is
only one canteen in Bako, imagine that!

bako breakfast
They had sausages, eggs, roti canai (like it with milk), pisang goreng etc and I had two big plates of that.

bako tickets

We then went to get registered – it costs RM 10 per person for entry
to Bako National Park on top of the boat fare. We then went on one of
the trails that leads to a viewpoint towards the sea. I noticed that
most of the shots I took were blurry due to a lack of sobriety. It
should be noted that walking on Bako trails while not quite sober is
not exactly the safest thing to do due to the sharp dropoff inclines.

tanjung sapi

This is the view from the top of the Tanjong Sapi trail. We then decided (unwisely) to go on another more challenging trail.

bako trail

bako trails

It involved walks around huge boulders with a feet of leeway between
the boulder and a 200 meter drop into the jungle. However, massive
benzodiazepine consumption tends to lead to a nonchalant attitude and
general suppression of any fear triggers (which is where the
therapeutic use comes in) and alcohol leads to a pugilistic attitude,
so off we went (I wonder how many times I’ve used this phrase in this
post).

spines

It should be noted that most plants in the jungle have thorns! Fuck.
Many a times, I grabbed into a benign looking vine only to feel my
flesh penetrated by spines. The trail didn’t lead anywhere (think we
got off it at some point), so we went back to base to go on the
waterfall trail. It was too far (5 1/2 hours return trip) for our
scheduled 2 pm pickup so we went on to the mini waterfall near base.

mini waterfall

I nearly fell in if not for one of my friends grabbing me while taking photos. You drink, you walk, you spill. 😉

Here are some other notable photos taken at Bako National Park:

A wild boar roaming through the park. I wonder what it’s thinking.

godly statue
There was some kind of divine statue carved into the limestone that the natives seem to worship.

bird hatching
The best photo of the day (week, month even). A tiny featherless bird
hatching out of an egg with another egg by its side. Anyone who takes
or uses this photo without due credit or compensation will be promptly
castrated.

Watch out for falling coconuts!

me fat
Obligatory photo of me at the Bako National Park sign. My gf tells me
that I must be fat coz if I get thin, she would assume I’m using
methamphetamine again, giving in to the siren calls of “faster,
stronger, better”, “sleep is for the weak”, “be all that you can be”
and all that, thus I have to carry excess baggage…

Naughty monkeys around. Watch out.

Monkey family on top of the roof of a chalet. Dominant male not too happy that I was eying his mate.

Low tide sea view.

This is us at Bako National Park. Monash University should pay me for all this product placement. 😉

bako sea meeting

Everyone has to walk through knee deep sea water to reach the boats
coz low tide recedes the water level to beyond the jetty. We got on the
speedboat and it was back to Kuching we went…

bako boats

Melbourne: Day 4 – Melbourne Changes (Part I)

January 1, 2004 by HB

Day 4 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

Part I: Melbourne Changes

Queen Victoria (QV) complex

The QV site is one of the changes I noticed – the development work
has completed for some buildings and there were several shops already
open. This is the area beside the State Library and used to be the
Queen Victoria Hospital site before it was demolished. I remember
seeing the QV block being in development for a long time, last I saw,
it was a huge pit in the ground and now the QV complex has sprung up.

There is a bowling bar called Strike bordering the edge that faces
the State Library. I would assume a bowling bar is a bowling alley that
has a liquor license, but I didn’t have time to drop in and check. I
had to cover a lot of places before the convocation later in the
evening.

This is the other end of the QV building – it has banners proclaiming the opening of Big W and Safeway.

The escalator goes straight down into Big W (a department store
chain). I had to navigate through the store before exiting to the main
square.

I later found out that this side alley beside the escalators leads
directly to the central area and to Safeway (a supermarket chain).

This is the central area/food court. There are several food outlets
here – off the top of my head, I remember seeing KFC, Wendy’s, and some
fruit juice shake franchise.

There’s also a bakery called Breadtop. I misread it as BreadTalk at first, found that funny.

Melbourne Central

I found out that Melbourne Central has undergone development work as
well on the first day I arrived. I saw that the escalators from
Melbourne Central Station has been boarded up and redirected to another
entry point.

Prior to that, signs of construction work can be seen – the area
after Nando’s on Swanston Street is covered up until the newsagent’s
opening.

There isn’t much going on inside either – most of the mall seems to
be closed and boarded up with a notice about development. The newsagent
is open, as well as several shops on the ground floor. The upper floors
seem to be devoid of commerce though as can be seen from this photo:

Melbourne: Day 3 – McDonald’s Salads Plus

December 28, 2003 by HB

Day 3 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

I woke up after a solid 26 hours of sleep on Monday. This is the
third day I’m in Melbourne and I realize that I’ve technically wasted
one whole day sleeping. 🙂 I woke up feeling famished and went
in search for food again and to take some photos of Melbourne city. I
went pass a McDonald’s and saw that they had this Salads Plus menu with
healthier options. McDonald’s in Australia has been pitching this angle
for quite a while now so I decided to sample their Salads Plus menu.

The Salads Plus menu consists of a variety of low fat and more
nutritious options that have 10 grams of fat or less each. I’m not
watching my weight or anything…people say I should gain a couple of
kilograms, but work and the related necessities to maintain
productivity has the effect of suppressing appetite and increasing
metabolism at the same time. I digress. The reasons I’m attempting to
eat the entire range and review it should not be foreign to long time
readers – I just want to. 🙂

Chicken Foldover

This is touted to have only 9 grams of fat per serving. It’s made
with Bega So Light cheese and has roasted chicken breast meat and
veggies on a herbed toasted flatbread.

I didn’t expect much from it, but was pleasantly surprised to find
out that it actually tastes good! It could be the 26 hours without food
though, but still, it’s pretty good.

Vege Burger

This one has 10 grams of fat per serving and it’s Sanitarium vege
patty in a herbed foccacia bun. The patty is made from chickpeas,
vegetables and spices a.k.a. fake meat. It also has a piece of beetroot.

I didn’t like this one…the patty tastes like potatoes. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that, but generally vegetarian meat
substitutes tastes unpalatable to me. The only thing that saved it is
the sweet chilli sauce inside. I couldn’t have chocked it down without
that.

Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch

It just says 97% fat free on this one. It looks like ice cream, but
it’s actually yoghurt. There’s strawberries and blueberries in it
though, and it’s topped with oats. They use Nestle low fat yoghurt.
McDonald’s partners up with other food manufacturers in the Salads Plus
menu if you haven’t noticed.

That was what I had in the first sitting. After walking around and
taking more photos, I passed by a different McDonald’s and decided to
see if I could eat through the whole Salads Plus menu. 🙂

This McDonald’s has a fridge at the counter with the salads and other stuff:

The salads occupy the first two layers and the third one has yoghurt
(including the Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch) and fruit juice. It looks like
the Berrynice Yoghurt Crunch is prepared and packaged instead of made
during your order. I decided to have a salad this time, since after
all, this is the Salads Plus menu. There are two salads – Garden Mixed
Salad and Roast Chicken Salad. Naturally, I went for the second one.

Roast Chicken Salad

This salad features roasted breast chicken, Bega So Light cheese,
lettuce, tomato, and cranberries. It’s 97% fat free and there are three
dressings to choose from – French, Low Fat Italian and Mango and Sesame.

It’s served with bagel chips. The above shows the salad with the
small container of bagel chips and a packet of dressing. Here’s a close
up of the bagel chips (croutons?):

This is the dressing I chose – Mango and Sesame:

The salad looks like this after everything is added in:

No, I didn’t toss it because I wanted to eat it like this. It tastes
surprisingly good (again). I was puzzled to find that I actually
enjoyed eating this salad. The mango dressing is really good, goes well
with the salad and complements the cranberry pieces well. It’s also
very filling, but that could be due to the fact that I’ve already eaten
two hours ago…

Orange & Poppyseed Muffin Lite

This is also 97% fat free and it tastes like the normal McDonald’s
muffins…I could barely finish this one. It’s quite large. It’s a
muffin, can’t describe it much more than that. It’s had orange pieces
in it and crunchy poppyseeds on top. I reckon I’ll have an excuse
should I test positive for opiates at customs…”Officer, I swear, it
was those damn poppy seed muffins I had. I hear they produce false
positive for opiates in urine tests”.

That’s true by the way – poppy seeds have morphine and codeine which
(if you eat enough) will cause you to fail a drug test. You’ll still
have explain away the cannabinoids and amphetamines positives though. 😉

Anyway, I didn’t manage to eat through the Salads Plus menu…I
didn’t go to Melbourne just to have McDonald’s everyday. However, the
only items I missed out on is the Garden Mixed Salad, Raspberry Muffin
Lite and the Granny Smith red & green apples (which you could get
at the supermarket anyway). My apologies for not eating though the
menu, but I covered the meat (no pun intended) of it, so this ends day
three of my Melbourne trip.

Melbourne: Day 2 – The Paramount

December 25, 2003 by HB

Day 2 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

The Paramount

There was a change of accommodations on the second day to The
Paramount Serviced Apartments at Exhibition Street. I didn’t know if I
should go to Unilodge or The Paramount when I got back from the doof. I
wasn’t sure if the rest of my family (my sister flew in around
midnight) had already checked out. I tried looking into Unilodge and by
a stroke of luck, there they were – right at the reception desk to
check out.

We checked in at The Paramount after that and the facilities here
are much better than at Unilodge. There are washing machines, dryers,
dishwashers, a full sized fridge, and even a nifty food grinder in the
sink. Here’s a couple of shots of the interior:

The lounge area – sorry about the backlight, was too scattered to notice then.

This is the kitchen.

I was so ready to pengsan
[pengsan.com] then, I’ve been awake for a long time by that time and I
was feeling totally knackered. I was ready to sleep for a day…but
before that, the search for food must begin! Hibernation requires food
intake beforehand – it allows longer hours of sleep and you feel better
when you wake up, especially when you’ve not been eating before that.

Food court at The Paramount shopping arcade.

I’ve been to The Paramount’s shopping arcade before, it’s just off
Little Bourke Street (Chinatown) and there’s a short cut elevator that
exits there instead of in Exhibition Street. I got some food at the
food court, just one normal meal, take away, instead of overloading
like I usually do, because space is needed for the other hibernation
prerequisite – alcohol. 🙂

I have a couple of beers leftover from the night, but I wasn’t about
to put my faith in two measly beers so I also went to the bottle shop
at the shopping arcade to grab another six pack. The photo above shows
Burke’s Original Hemp Filtered Premium Ale. I’ve had these a couple of
times before, it’s a good tasting one. It’s filtered with hemp
(cannabis plants cultivated to produce negligible amounts of THC), and
their ads play on that angle a lot like most hemp beer manufacturers.

Burke’s Original Hemp Filtered Naturally Brewed Premium Ale

Needless to say, hemp does not affect the beer in any way. You’ll have to do what veritas did with 95% alcohol and cannabis
[sixthseal.com] for a cannabis/alcohol concoction. Nevertheless,
Burke’s is an easy to drink beer, perfect for chugging. I made sure to
take generous amounts of nitrazepam (a fast acting benzodiazepine with
long hypnotic effects) and some lorazepam (a benzodiazepine with great
anticonvulsant properties) sublingually before the meal. Please note
that I have a legitimate prescription from a licensed medical
practitioner for the two.

This is the dining area beside the lounge where I ate.

Anyway, the rest of my family was heading out for sightseeing so I
informed them of my intension of sleeping 24 hours so they could take
both the keys down. The Paramount has an excessive security framework
that requires the keys to operate just about everything. You can’t even
press the buttons on the lift without swiping the keys through the
scanner first and there are several doors that needs swipe access as
well before you can exit the building.

Well, after that’s sorted, I started drinking and I may have been
too liberal with the benzodiazepines because I nearly fell asleep on
the table. I decided that I would eat half of the food and then go to
sleep because the benzos sure isn’t going to wait for me to finish up.
😉 There are two bedrooms, one with a large queen bed and one with two
singles. I stumbled into one of the singles and passed out.

I slept for 26 hours.

Melbourne: Day 1 – Unilodge on Swanston

December 21, 2003 by HB

Day 1 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

It was around 8 AM when the plane touched down in Tullamarine
(Melbourne) airport. I just had two hours of fitful sleep over four
days and seriously doubted my ability to head to the Deviant Species
doof later that night. Customs was good though, I only had two checks
on my declaration list and the customs officer said I could go through
the Green Exit (no need for checks). Not bringing food along was a good
idea, not that I had any use for that anyway, since I’m just coming
over for my convocation.

Melbourne airport customs.

It’s not readily visible from this photo but Melbourne customs
officials seems to have a certain configuration – there’s the one on
the desk you talk to, a row of sturdy blokes after that, and a third
row of older, and presumably more experienced officers. It’s just an
observation I’ve made, and I’ve been held up at customs before, and it
seems that at least the second and third row have communication devices
with the CCTV monitoring division, which I postulate is for spotting
dodgy or nervous characters. I have several interesting encounters, but
that’s not relevant to the post, so I’ll refrain from mentioning them.
🙂

Anyway, my two checks were for shoes and medication. The customs
officer said dress shoes are fine and asked me what my medication was.
I told him it’s just my benzodiazepine prescription, and he said that’s
fine, just go through the green exit. It didn’t turn out to be a hassle
after all. Oh, and if anyone is interested, there were no sniffer dogs
in sight at either baggage retrieval or customs – I’ve gone through
close to 10 times and there was always a sniffer dog around, but not
this time. Yes, I brought my wallet along, though not my backpack.

Unilodge on Swanston.

Well, I caught the SkyBus to Spencer Street Station and found out
that they had a courtesy shuttle bus to CBD hotels, so I hopped on that
to Unilodge at Swanston Street. We’re staying there for the night due
to a mess up with our booking with The Paramount. They have fully
serviced apartments during uni holidays, and it’s pretty spacey –
here’s a couple of shots of the interior:

This is the lounge area – windows open to a great view of the city.

There’s a full kitchen too.

Melbourne – a bird’s eye view.

This is the view from outside the lounge, there’s a balcony that
goes 3/4 around. This photo is of the RMIT/Hungry Jack’s intersection
right when you exit Melbourne Central Station, except this is taken
from the 12th floor.

I decided to take a walk around town instead of sleeping, figured I
won’t have enough time before I had to get in touch with Liam. It was
Saturday morning and there wasn’t a lot of traffic at that time so it
was good to walk around. I noticed a couple of changes since I was last
in Melbourne (July 2003) – Melbourne Central is under heavy renovation
and the familiar Melbourne Central Station escalators weren’t there
anymore.

Melbourne Central Station under construction.

The escalators have moved into the mall instead of being out front
and the upper few floors of Melbourne Central seems to be closed. I
walked down to Elizabeth Street to see if there’s anyplace I could
offload my CF Cards into a CD-ROM. I could fit about 52 shots into a
128 MB CF Card with my 5 MP Nikon 5700, and my other two CF Cards are
32 MB and 16 MB respectively…which means I’ll need something to store
the pictures in. I found that the best place to transfer from CF Card
-> CD-ROM is at Ted’s.

They charge A$ 9.95 per CD and they use one of those dedicated Agfa
red boxes to do it. There’s another shop nearby that’s A$ 8.99 per CD –
they’re using a standard PC with flash card readers and a CD-RW to do
it though, so I went with Ted’s for the perceived privacy with the Agfa
“black box” (don’t know what’s inside those things), since some photos
were not meant for public viewing. 😉

The new mall beside the state library.

I walked back to Swanston and noticed that a new mall seems to have
sprung up beside the state library. It’s not fully functional yet, but
there’s a bowling alley, a Safeway and some food courts inside. I
didn’t take photos of the interior the first day, since I’ve just
offloaded my CF Card into a CD-ROM and wanted to save space for the
doof later, but I did get pictures before I came back. The mall seems
pretty big – it must be the one that’s under construction before I left.

It’s surprising how much construction work can be done in a couple
of months…it went from a deep pit into a monolithic (okay, I lack a
better term) structure. I went into Safeway to get a 1 litre bottle of
water and went to Dick Smith’s at Bourke Street to get an adapter for
charging my digicam battery. It was past 1 pm by the time I called Liam
and we arranged to meet at 3 pm. I went back to Unilodge, charged my
digicam battery and saw this tempting, tempting sight:

Tempt me not, fair maiden…

I was reminded of my sleep deprivation and decided to try and see if
I could cram an hour’s sleep before I went. It’s something challenging
for me, especially if I’ve not been sleeping in the days prior to the
attempt. I set two alarm clocks, but they both failed me…it was way
past 4 pm by the time I woke up and I didn’t have a contact number so
Liam couldn’t reach me.

Did I wake up too late? Will I make it to the Deviant Species doof? Burning questions which will be answered in tomorrow’s post!

Okay, those are stupid questions since you all know I made it to the doof…check back tomorrow for photos from the event!

Melbourne: Day 0 – Cigar rolling demonstration @ KLIA

December 20, 2003 by HB

Day 0 of the
Convocation: Melbourne, Australia (December 2003)
series.

I really have to applaud the KLIA KL CAT system – it’s a really
nifty concept that allows you to check in at KL Sentral (!) and your
luggage goes direct to your destination (Melbourne in this case) while
you take your carry on into the KLIA Express and ride to KLIA in
comfort, without the need to check in again at the airport. A baggage
check in system and boarding pass issue service in the city! I was
impressed…just made it there at slightly before 7:20 pm so I was
eligible to check in there. You need two hours before the flight time
to be eligible.

Cigar rolling demonstration.

I requested a window seat as usual (good for sleeping, and I don’t
piss that often) and took the KLIA Express to KLIA. The train looks
like the interior of a plane, probably designed that way. Well, I
arrived at KLIA and followed the rest of the herd into the aerotrains.
I wanted to make a short post at the net center there but their line
was down, and the seats were filled with irate surfers watching a blank
screen, so I walked around instead and found a cigar rolling
demonstration.

A nice big leaf of tobacco to start with…

It was organized by Davidoff and the person turned out to be “Master
Cigar Roller – Mr. Ambiorix Pichardo Reyes” from Santiago in the
Dominican Republic. He had leaves and fillers and all sorts of tobacco
around him. It was interesting to watch him roll a cigar, he makes
about one per minute and I was offered a chance to sample his freshly
rolled cigars compliments of Davidoff in the smoking room, but I had to
decline coz my flight was boarding.

Cigar making in process.

It was a bummer, I saw several people took up the offer though, it
would have been a nice opportunity to smoke a freshly hand rolled
cigar, it’s not something that happens to you everyday, at least not
here. 🙂 I think it was freshly rolled anyway, it’s not from the same
batch as the ones Mr. Ambiorix had beside him, and the ones offered to
us by the promoter looks more “finished”, but she said it was “freshly
rolled by the Master Cigar Roller, compliments of Davidoff”.

Pulling some tobacco into the roll.

Nevertheless, it would have been great to have one since the chance
doesn’t come by that often, so I wanted to just grab one, have a quick
puff and then run off to my gate, but doing that just for the sake of
doing it and leaving a perfectly good cigar with just one smoke in the
ash tray seems blasphemous, so I declined. I’ll have to say though, I
would not have declined if this happens again, with hindsight. 😉

Rolling it all up into a cigar.

How many times can you say you’ve smoked a freshly rolled cigar by a
master cigar roller? Not very much…yeah, I’m still kicking myself
over it. Anyway, after taking a couple of photos (very grudgingly
taken, since I wanted to preserve CF Card space and battery power just
in case I couldn’t offload and recharge in Melbourne before the doof),
I boarded my flight and…couldn’t sleep.

Finishing a freshly rolled cigar.

Yes, I took enough benzodiazepines to sedate a small horse. Yes, I
drank heaps of alcohol. No, I did not sleep the night before. However,
sleep just wasn’t forthcoming. Nope. It wasn’t. No sleep for the
wicked, probably. I filled in the declaration card since I was bored. I
only had two “Yes” answers, was hoping to go out the Green Lane. After
that, I still couldn’t sleep so I wrote a post while continuously
downing Bloody Mary’s with a cup of water (can’t be dehydrated before a
doof).

Yes for medication and used shoes.

It was called “sixthseal.com offline (12/12/2003)” and it was
written on pieces of tray liner (!) because the flight doesn’t have
letter pads, sorry. They did have postcards though, which they gave me,
but you can’t very well write on a postcard, so I asked for something I
can write on, and they gave me this. Personally, I think the cabin
attendants were just sick of me pressing the “Call” button and asking
for a Bloody Mary (can you make it stronger this time, please?) and a
cup of water every 15 minutes. 😉

Anyway, the two pieces of paper goes through things I’ve already
mentioned in this post, so I won’t be scanning it as I originally
intended. It had a story about me losing my Valium blister pack, which
I’m lazy to re-write, but yeah, I lost it somehow. There was either a
very sedated taxi driver or a very sedated MAS ground staff that night.
That’s at the expense of my sleep, those were 10 x 10 mg diazepam
tablets…I had to dip into my personal stash of 5 mg nitrazepam and
slept about 2 hours into the next day.

sixthseal.com offline!

Oh, and towards the end, the irate cabin attendant made the Bloody
Mary in front of me. Heh. She poured two shots into the pre-mix in
front of me, probably to stop me from repeating “Can you make it
stronger this time?”. 😉 However, she did not allow three shots,
stating some obscure code they have to adhere to – she said I could
have as many double shot Bloody Mary’s as I liked, just not 3 shot
ones. The trick to get cabin attendants to keep on serving alcohol is
to appear sober and be polite and obviously, don’t slur your words.
I’ve read about some guy assaulting flight attendants coz they refused
to serve him more alcohol, and I’ve seen people being denied more
drinks on previous flights, but I’ve never had the same problem myself.
Their mistake was to be demanding and appearing to be drunk – two
things you shouldn’t do.

As always, retain a sedated composure (it comes with benzos anyway,
that gives off an impression that you’re not a “violent drunk”), appear
to be sober (don’t slur your words, don’t give off any outward signs of
intoxication) and just be polite and friendly. I’ve never been denied
drinks before and I’ve had more than my fair share during flights,
including an embaressing one that ended up with me passing out and
spilling drinks and er…finding myself on the floor when I woke up.
Even with that faux pax, I was still served, so if you aren’t already
aware of the obvious tips, keep them in mind and the free flow will be
free flowing you to sleep. I only had a two hour sleep – but that’s
going into Day 1…coming up soon!