damn tourist

Its almost a quarter past 4, I'm not alone and I need sleep now. I was thinking what title to give this post and 'how to get to kl in one try or less' came to mind but I decided to stick to tradition and finish the post before coming up with a title.

So i'm in Kuala Lumpur, finally. No i'm not here to play but i could given the right conditions. My flight was suppose to leave yesterday but didn't happen. I went to the airport at 5.30 in the morning only to be informed the flight has been delayed to 11am, then at 11 we all boarded the plane, the ground crew were still fixing things, they actually turned off all electricity on the plane, (so no lights and no airconditioning) for about 5 minutes and after it came back on we were asked to disembark and then given transit pass slips with no information whatsoever on the next course of action. We all individually had to go to the counter to negotiate our flights. I felt sorry for the ground crew, I think they were overwhelmed by people just clueless on what to do. At the same time i'm disappointed at the way Malaysian Airlines handled this situation. I expected more.

I was fortunate to be with my friend Dhiren who helped us negotiate a flight the next day. Ironically it was suppose to be his last day in Miri, so naturally he had no place to stay, I still had my house but he was homeless and so was able to convince the MAS office to let us stay in ParkCity Hotel not far from the airport. I thought he handled the situation rather well. He kept making demands :) I wouldn't have been so brave. But we got the Hotel along with lunch, dinner, breakfast and taxi to and from the airport all paid by the Airline. Thank God for the brother. I asked him during lunch if this was the first time he had experienced this kind of delay and he recounted the time when they all went to Turkey for holidays and got similar deals. Experienced guy. I learned to claim what is rightfully mine *evil laugh*

I'm not a city guy, i like the country so KL has been a bit daunting. It certainly will take a lot of getting used to. The KLIA express counter was temporarily closed when we arrived so I went around looking for another one. I did notice a few people buying tickets near the arrivals gate but didn't read too much into it. After running around looking lost like a damn tourist, I decided to go back to level 1 and try again. The train had already arrived and as I made my way to the counter, was told I could pay when we arrived. The train was about to leave. I guess i expect things to work a certain way and they don't and thats my struggle here. It was equally difficult finding the KTM counter. All these makes me want to buy the touch and go card like in Singapore.

So after all the hubbub I'm in Subang Jaya and needing rest. Tomorrow will be interesting :) Oh yeah some pictures.


transit pass


my room


another shot


balcony overlooking the beach


what the other balconies look like


the beach+sunset


swimming pool


it rained this morning


hot chocolate. the airport was so cold

-ONWARD

live writer

So Microsoft has the windows live essentials on beta and they are great, I think you should try it out if you are on windows especially if you are running on vista or windows 7. I ‘m not sure they support windows xp. So if this works I’ll be updating the blog from here. No more typos =)

-ONWARD

lets make new friends

It took me three tries to get to blogger. I kept typing it wrong, bogger.com then bloger.com both parking sites.

Anyway, its almost like a tradition every semester to have a small gathering where we send off those who are leaving for Perth or graduating and its always a unique event. On the one hand its sad to see friends leave on the other its probably one of the few occasions (i always struggle with the spelling for occasions) where you get to look back on how you have grown to know them and be a part of their lives. Its always good to see the changes, to look through the good times and the not so good times but in the end, all ills are forgiven and we are all friends, brothers and sisters.

Yeah there's always the few that you don't really know that well, and its hard, always hard for me to give speeches in these occasions (ok i seriously need a synonym) but instead of speeches I think the event is one where you get to speak your mind because there's a possibility that you won't meet these people again.

For those leaving, sure they will be missed, and well I wish them all the best in their future, and hope though don't expect them to keep in touch. For those that remain, its time to make new friends.

The whole point of this post, well not the whole but part of it is to wait for my movie to load on pps. My line is so slow so I have to leave it to buffer. Going to watch Seraphim falls after this. Oh yeah, will be in KL from Monday, so lets hang :)

-ONWARD

whats so great about christianity

Google has this thing where they try to fill out the sentence you are typing with possible matches based on how frequent that particular search term has been searched. Its usually a fun exercise to see what they come up with so yours truly was well not bored but curious and searched for "whats to great about" and hit the i'm feeling lucky button.

Its raining now, and I like. Hitting the button took me to the amazon site for the book with the same title as the title of this post. The folks at amazon were nice to let people read a few pages from the book and it turns out to be an interesting book. I won't say much but if you are curious, take a read and lets talk. I know I'll be looking for it. After my exams :) I still haven't figured out what to do with all the books I have.

-ONWARD

Anchor

Anchor by satellites and sirens. Love this song.

-ONWARD

looking out for me

Its been a while. I've found out one of the most difficult thing, at least for me is staying true to yourself. Let me explain.

We're all different in our own special ways. We have certain views of life and people that to a large extent, at least in the beginning is pure and right. For example, overtime you learn that even when you are nice to someone they may not return the favour and there's a certain disappointment when that happens but does it make you change, stop being nice to people? I don't think so. One way of thinking about it is to conclude that they have a problem they have to deal with but maybe the issue is how people's behaviour or reactions affect me, or you.                         

In the past few years I can see the difference in my life. Everyone says you have look out for yourself but sometimes that's not the right thing to do. Its this struggle between doing what's right for you versus not being selfish. Holding back when you should give, even if its not enough, is usually not the right thing to do, especially when the heart confirms.

Father you know me, I pray that I will not hold back when you're asking me to give. Help me not to always avoid awkward situations but to trust you and have faith that you can bring something good out of my fears. Thank you.

-ONWARD

Quote from a friend

Sometimes you have to push and refuse to take no for an answer.

-ONWARD

drained

I'm tired of slow progress. Body can't take it anymore, mind can't absorb anymore.

Its study week and just like that three days have gone by. We've been fortunate to get empty classrooms to study in but so far my strategy is not working. I've not been able to cover as much as I would have hoped. So tomorrow we're going to try something different.

The room is untidy and I don't care, at least for now and i think its time we give facebook a break.
-ONWARD