There are tons of churches and temples to see. Road signs are in chinese and portuguese…. somehow I wonder if the people really can speak/read portuguese. Our first welcome in Macau is the taxi driver at the airport. We hopped onto the taxi and showed him the email with our hotel booking and the address. He quickly replied he don’t read English. Oh shit… we dont read chinese either… so we calmed down and try to recall what the name of the hotel Ole London in chinese… “Lon ton chau tim, ng kuoi lah, hai ko koh San San chau tim kat lei”. The driver immediately nodded and replied he knows where’s the place. Once at the hotel reception, we quickly took some namecards of the hotel just in case we need to take a taxi again.

So the next few days were spent walking… going to all the UNESCO Heritage sites like Ruins of St Paul, Senado Square, Guia Fortress, Lou Kau Mansion, A-Ma Temple, Penha Church, Mong Ha Fortress, Lou Lim Ioc Garden, Dr. Sun Yat Sen Memorial Centre, Church of St. Lawrence, Jesuitas and the list goes on….the modern places such as Fisherman’s Wharf, Macau Tower etc… at night, we went visiting casinos…Grand Lisboa, MGM Grand, Venetian, Wynn, Sands etc… we did not gamble a single cent…we just go and see most of the big casinos… Grand Lisboa being the grandaddy of them all.

Eating is part of traveling and to enhance the cultural experience of a place. Forget all those traditional performances, folk dances etc…. eating is like heaven. One important note is that Portuguese food in Macau is for scaredy cat…. Malaccan portuguese food is anytime way better (think Portuguese grill fish/ikan bakar)… our ikan kembung (suk yi) is better than bacalhau. The African chicken I had there is like chicken curry (or maybe I was conned). Isn’t it supposed to be like Nando’s peri-peri chicken? However, their wanton mee, suikau mee is superb. Their porridge (congee) is good but to have it for breakfast is a bit out of place but thats the norm in Macau. When you’re in Rome, do like what the Romans do..

Shopping here is also nice… clothes are cheap due to the close proximity to China… rejected original Levi’s jeans are goin for about RM60.00…. the best thing to buy here is  jacket. You will regret if you don’t get a sweater or jacket in Macau. I wanted to buy shoes… but am afraid that it could be immitations.

So, overall… Macau is worth going – for the historical sites, churches, food, gambling, shopping… 4 days is sufficient to cover most of Macau. I’ll do Hong Kong in the near future.

So, after the movie, me and my Szer went walking around window shopping. Then we came this printing shop called “e-Print” or something. As usual, there will be samples where we can browse through there vast collection of cards ranging from those less than a ringgit to more than 10 ringgit. They have an album for Chinese-themed cards and another one for Malay-themed cards.

I notice that some of the cards are the same, I mean the size, colour and dimension. The differences are the wordings, embossed decorative patterns and of course the price. A plain metallic yellow-gold colour chinese-themed card with just a gold wedding logo the size of 20 sen (without any embossed floral decorative pattern) cost RM1.60 while a malay-themed card of the similar size, colour and dimension and with a slight difference that is the decorated words of “Jemputan Perkahwinan” in gold…. and it cost only RM1.00 !!

I was shocked and asked the malay lady manning the kiosk and she said malay-themed cards are usually cheaper. She just smiled knowing that I cornered her to say it out that the malay-themed card is cheaper. I would have created a fuss there and ask her to tell the reason if not for Szer asking me to go off.

What the fuck? The only difference between the two card is that the chinese card has a logo and the malay card has the words….. no decorative patterns emboss whatsoever.

What the fuck?

Its very nice to eat… the shell is not as hard as meat crab and you don’t need to use a hammer or plier to crack open the shells or its claws (kong).

There are about 5-6 crabs for a kilogram of pondan crab. Here it was cooked with salted egg yolk.

Here’s the bill for our dinner during the first day of CNY. They surcharged of 20%.

Kai May Seafood Restaurant
No. 49 Jalan 9/62A, Bandar Menjalara, Kepong
52100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: +6012-9802963, +6012-9802996

Most of theboys there are of Indian descent and  there are 2 chinese boys… who speaks fluent Tamil. Woah…. I myself who wished I could speak fluent Tamil could only salute these 2 Tamil-speaking chinese boys. The volunteers who took parts today are some international student volunteers from China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Holland and also June’s friends.

We took them for bowling at Cineleisure in Mutiara Damansara and later to a lunch at New Paris Chinese Restaurant in SS2, PJ.

There will be more outings to come…. and I hope more volunteers will join to give these kids a smile and happy time.

Then, we’re back in our hotel/apartment on a high rise building and we’re on the either 3-5 floors and there’s a balcony that we can lookout to the sea some 500-1000 metres away. I was taking photos of my wife with his back to the balcony. I was trying to photograph the sea as the background. Click…click.. chik chak…

Suddenly, I was shocked seeing a huge tidal wave heading towards the beach… “Szer… look !!”, I shouted pointing at the balcony. She was shocked too… but there’s no way to run. Thus we hugged and telling how much we love eash other… and all that kind of thing. When the waves hit…… luckily i doesn’t reach up to our floor. I saw the walls cracked and the building was trembling.

After the first wave, it quickly came to my mind that a second wave may be coming…. therefore i instructed my wife to pack some importang things. I quickly grabbed a sling bag and got all the things we may need to survive the second wave – the rope I used during the days as a scout, my swissarmy knife, belts, bottles of mineral water and (thats all I can recall).

The we ran downstairs and out of the building….. and quickly find a coconut tree to hang on to…. using the belts and ropes….. and the second wave came and I woke up with my shirt wet of my sweat.

Good morning. I quickly lookout the window and there were sounds of motor vehicles from the highway nearby here. Phew.

Does anyone knows what is the message behind this nightmare? Will there be anything bad gonna happen??

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The opponents of the use of the word Allah in reference to God have argued that the term “God” is usually translated by Malaysians who follow faiths other than Islam as “Tuhan” in Bahasa Melayu, not “Allah.” They insist that “Allah” should only be used to refer to God in Islam. This argument is contrary to both Islamic understanding and practice.

The Qur’an is quite explicit that Muslims worship the same God recognized by Christians. The Qur’an commands Muslims to declare that the God they worship and the one worshiped by the followers of revealed books, including Christians, is one:  “… and say: We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our God and your God is One, and to Him do we submit.” (Qur’an 29:46)

With regards to actual and historical practices, Christian Arabs have been using the word “Allah” to refer to God in their religious sources since the inception of Islam, and have never been challenged by private Muslims or Muslim governments on this ground. Islamic law is clear that followers of the Christian faith have the right to practice their religion according to their own religious teachings.

Malaysia has long been a good example of Islamic tolerance and we call on the Malaysian government to maintain the tradition of tolerance and uphold the religious freedom of Christians and to let the court ruling stand. We also urge Muslim NGOs to respect Islamic teachings and long-held Islamic traditions, and to withdraw their opposition to the use of the word “Allah” by their Christian compatriots.

Contact:
Louay Safi, Director of Communications and Leadership Development
317-838-8130
louay@isna.net

Source: http://www.isna.net/articles/News/ISNA-Commends-Malaysian-Court-Ruling-that-Affirms-Religious-Freedom-of-Christians.aspx

The year 2009 will be gone in 18 minutes. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Happy New Year 2010 and hope you achieved something this year. May you achieve more in the coming new year.

This year I finally changed my marital status to married, I’ve set foot on Australian soil. I also received the dip and now certified/qualified pratitioner in my field of practice. These are the 3 achievements I made this year.

Good luck. May the Force be with you.

endroo G

P/S: Oh yeah… we will surely miss Michael Jackson.

Its awesome.

The crest is gold in color and black background. The 3 stripes has its meaning…

I gonna buy it !!

This is the first time I’m breaking some news of my change of status. Great. 2009 is coming to an end…. and this (ROM) could be one of the notable achievement this year, the others being the awarding of the professional Dip and the economic advantage it brought me and having set foot on Australian soil (finally). I couldn’t ask for more. Its been a colourful year I may say.

Hopefully next year will be better… and the resolution is to complete the Assoc. if possible and  have a great wedding. Another aim is to go gallivanting to as many places as possible in this short lifetime of ours. Next year will be a football year…. Germany’s gonna win the World Cup. Ha.

What can I do for my part to help address this issue? Well, first ,we Malaysians just won’t give up our cars…. because public transports is still in a sorry state. A car is a necessity. I remember many many years ago there was this TV ad urging us to carpool and not to drive single occupancy vehicle (SOV) but if you’re stuck in a traffic jam on any given day….you’ll notice everyone drive SOV.

Trust me, if public transport is better, I dont think many people would want to drive and what is the current average price for non-designated season parking in KL? I am currently being charge RM230.00 per month and my company is subsidising RM50.00 ONLY since the last seven years. When I first joined, the price was RM100/month. You do the math. So, for Malaysian government, the first thing they need to do if they want to do a part in addressing this issue is to take the cars off the roads. The more the better. Impose congestion fees so that fuckers who goes for a morning ride in downtown KL would be detered. Sometime it is because of these fuckers, there is  a crawl tailing it behind. Charging a heavy congestion fee is the only thing to ensure people dont drive around KL aimlessly and create traffic jam. The existing, light rail transit (LRT), monorail and KTM Komuter should be revamped and expanded. Just do something like Singapore’s MRT.

Any of you ever tried catching the LRT or monorail during rush hour? I gotta miss a 4-5 trains before I can get onboard one. Too much of people squeezing into a train and the train itself was already fully stuffed. Our monorail and LRT train is just too fucking short and small in size. Let me dare you: go and take the monorail on a weekday around 5.40pm at Raja Chulan, Bukit Bintang or Bukit Nenas station in Kuala Lumpur. That will be enough and lets not talk about the taxi and bus service yet at this point of time.

Ok, back to the climate change issue… with that kind of inconvenience to catch a train…. isn’t it a wise move to buy a car? For RM400 a month, you can reasonably own a Perodua Viva….. small and compact and easy to move around town… Monday to Sunday. The more cars on the road, create more traffic jam and more trees have to be chopped down to build more roads to cater these cars. More cars on the road means more risk i.e. risk of cars getting flooded, collision, loss of lives etc. More traffic jams will burn up a lot of fuel unnecessarily and this leads to carbon emission. Emission is ever increasing and there’s lesser trees to control carbon pollution. Then, we see a lot of changes in our climate as compared to a decade or two ago. Places that have never been flooded before in history got flooded… just look at the not-so-recent major flood in the state of Johor. We are getting more rain, drought, landslide etc in a year. The government then have to fork out money to help those affected by flood…. insurance companies and the financial market in a whole are the most unhappy one at time of such catastrophe… the government would just tai-chi some of its responsibilities to insurance companies i.e. they instructed insurance companies to pay for claims which otherwise is not their liability…. and the insurance fraternity obliged as to protect their operating license issued by the Central Bank. Cost is ever rising…

Who then are the happiest at time of catastrophe and loss? Well, go guess it.

So, everything is in a loop and related. The above is just one of the example that I can think of. If the root of the cause is tackled, then the rest of the things will not crop up. Right? Technically yes but there’s a “but”.

Even in the corporate level, companies can start to adopt paperless system which I think is a very small step but a big leap in helping to reduce trees being chopped.

Well, I hope something can be achieved in Copenhagen soon to address this issue.

Here’s something to ponder:

Westerners in the past drove cars, now they cycle to protect the environment. Asians on the other hand, cycled in the past as they have not much money to own a car then, are now driving cars of all sizes as they have money now.

Well, Melbourne was great and nice. The beaches was great… I just love the view at the Great Ocean Road. Maybe I have not been to any other similar place and this is the best I’ve seen so far. Imagine the time when Cpt. James Cook arrived in Australia, it must have been very nice. After going to Australia, I can now relate to the scenes I saw in Australia (the movie) like the farm houses, vineyards, wranches etc. A nice place for emigrating to. Life they is so laid-back and you can go home after 5.00pm. No need to do overtime whatsoever. No one gives a fuck. They’ll just tell the customers to come another day for they are closing.

Till today, the debate still goes on…. people would say Australians are a bunch of convicts…err decendants of convicts. Well, Uncle Robert said not all of them were convicts. They were many prison guards as well. He may be right. Eyeing for Sydney now.

Life is just too short to not travel around… hoping to just go anywhere within budget…

Lets look at some brighter things of life. I’m off to Melbourne next week for a week break from shit-stuff in KL. Lets make it a point to enjoy life and go see the world a bit. No mattter how much we earn…. we should enjoy life according to our budget. You’ll never know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. You might just wake up in the ruins and rubble of an earthquake aftermath in Malaysia (0.38 probability?). Maybe with all these “goals” you will have the motivation to grind.

Well, am looking towards the realm of matrimony which is getting closer than I’d realise… we are looking at some unconventional ideas to cut cost and of course for simplicity sake. I’m not revealing anymore. Everything is still in the early stage of planning. I dont want to see the projected cost sheet yet or else I’ll have another sleeplessness period.

Alright… just let it be. I’m trying to get back the blogging mood after lying low for so long. I’m going down under. Yay.

Wow… now this kind of exhibition is something that should be held more often in Malaysia. Last year when I visited Florence where Leonardo created all his masterpieces, I was hoping that I would have a chance to see his artworks and inventions. Sadly, I missed all that. I only saw this statue (above) of the man. I also missed the statue of David. Then while in Paris, I went to the Louvre solely for Mona Lisa. Sadly, the whole world flocked into that room and we can only see from afar and there’s a protective glass covering it. The painting is a small portrait and not as big as you would ‘ve thought. I think its somewhere of a A1 sized paper.

Ok. I’m not gonna miss this chance in KL!

Please refer to this official URL  for more information: http://www.davincithegenius.com/kuala_lumpur/

Alternatively, you can also check out Daniel Franklin’s blog for related Leonardo’s info.