Wait, take 3

3rd week in KL, been going around. I had to go down to Kelana Jaya last Monday to get my trumpet fixed due to a minor accident happened earlier. The mouthpiece got stuck when I unintentionally and carelessly let my trumpet slipped out of my hand and hit the carpeted floor. It took me one hour to reach the Yamaha Music there. It is quite a big building that incorporates its show room, music school and office.

This is part of the interior of the music centre.
Trumpets for sale. Their service center is situated at the rear of the building. After days of worries, my trumpet was fixed within minutes, for free yeah. They had this special equipment to unstuck the mouthpiece. It is just a simple tool used by exerting balanced pressure on the mouthpiece to pull the lead pipe out with minimal yet adequate force to minimize the side effect on the trumpet.


The most expensive grand piano in the showroom, drool @@


Can't afford the piano? Read this and DIY one.


Went to Serdang 2 days ago to get my meningitis vaccine injection. Spotted a souvenir shop selling this rubik's cube on the way - 'Broken' rubik's cube for sale. I bet the shop assistant didn't know that a 3x3 cube should have 27 fragments of cube.


Notice: Chilis in Suria KLCC is closed for renovation, spoiled my visit to suria yesterday..


Because Chilis was closed, my friend and I moved to Times Square instead to have our dinner. We went to this gas station to refill our gas tank after traveling all the way from KLCC to Times Square. +U cafe.

The front look of the restaurant. I'm not sure why is the dinosaur there. Probably paying tribute to them for their fossils which have contributed oil.


The interior look of the restaurant, very unique and Japanese-like. But, to be honest, it was a little bit hot and smelly inside there. I suspected that the smell came from the clothes used excessively to decorate the place or its carpet, wash please wash.


The restaurant offered a good variety of food and drinks with very competitive price at Times Square's standard, covering food from chinese cooking to western courses.


My black pepper butter lamb chop, came in reasonable portion and fine taste. The chips were normal, salad was given in generous portion and the lamb chop was well cooked.


Fruit smoothies with special names.

My virgin's honeymoon, orange flavored. Well, virginity tasted normal...

Ended the day with the movie Public Enemies by Michael Mann (The Insider, Collateral), starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as detective Melvin Purvis. It tells the true story of a bank robber named John Dillinger in the midwestern US during the great depression period. In his time, he was marked the nation's public enemy number 1 for the bank crimes he had committed.

The actors and scenes were great but the movie appeared somewhat boring to me. I wouldn't rate it as a great movie, maybe just interesting. The plot started with John Dillinger breaking out his inmates in the prison. After that, he robbed, fell for a girl, pursued by the federal bureau, got caught, got off every time, lived free (he could even walked in and out of the police station freely) and died out of a prostitute's betrayal. Every robbery scene looked almost the same, gun fights were boring with main characters being bullet proof all the time and small casts getting killed everytime, and love story was plain with cool looking villain dating a girl blindly in love.

Overall, the movie lacked depth. The characters in the movie just appeared out of no where as the story needed them and left when it was their time to go. It would be better if Michael Mann developed each character more, especially John Dillinger himself. For example, I'd like to know how did John Dillinger grow into such a person, the transition of him from an unemployed young man who robbed grocery store for $120 to a vicious interstate bank robber, and how did he meet and bonded with his robbing partners in the 12 years inprisoned for robbing $120.


Time is running, but everything else seems stagnant. I feel helpless for not being able to do anything but wait. But, I can choose to believe and be hopeful that everything will turn out fine. I shall do whatever I can work on for now - shop for my traveling necessities and enjoy Malaysia.

Over

So my family trip is officially over already, everyone got back safely and hopefully happily, with holes burned in the pockets and memories filled in the minds. Also, predeparture briefing and INTI are almost history now. Most importantly, the week long curfew is over~ Is it? Shouldn't be? Were the smses and call my illusion? I'll find out after waking up in the morning.

Anyway, let me update a little bit on the recent happenings. Before that, one thing I have learned and decided not to do in blogging is to cram a lot of unnecessary photos in a post, that is what facebook's photo album is for. So here are some entrancing encounters that I deem worth sharing.

Again, I stayed at the Tune Hotel, but this time at downtown KL. The rooms there are a little bit more spacious than the Tune at lcct. Other than that, everything is basically the same, clean and satisfactory. There were advertisements everywhere and this is the one in the elevator (Why purchase the chips when guests are not allowed to consume? =.= )

This is the Saturday morning at Petronas Twin Towers' lower ground floor. There were hundred over people of different nationalities including me queuing up to obtain the tickets to visit the twin towers skybridge. Nobody wore a mask despite the fact that h1n1 influenza is spreading like hot fire right now. I was there for almost 1 hour and I am not sure if I am still safe cause symptoms will only appear in a few days time? lol.

The engineering of the structure is certainly impressive but there is nothing really striking about the bridge's looks. One desperate foreigner in front of me even attempted and succeeded to cut queue. His actual nationality is unknown but really, shame on his country. Just for anyone's information, the ticketing counter opens at 8.30am but the queue started as early as 6++ am. Each visitor in the queue is allowed to take up to 5 tickets out of 1700 given out daily.


After the bridge visiting, we went to the Aquaria in KLCC as well. The ticket costed us RM28 per adult, which is not cheap but not too bad also for its educational value. For example, we get to see the sea creatures mating. Lol?

Interesting fact about some female moths.

Never knew this.

Angler fish. Please read the following photo for more info.

On Sunday morning, I traveled in the wrong direction on the monorail lrt and wasted 15 minutes walking to nowhere. Spotted a big and tall building named wisma KFC along the way tho, KFC's headquarter?

Up & Down

....
Another update on the run. I'll let the photos do the talk first, will come back for more details maybe, on my family trip to New York. NY? That was in my dream. I just went up and came down from Genting Highlands. It's really easy to go up there, just take this genting express bus at puduraya, kl sentral or terminal putra (gombak) in KL.

It was one misty afternoon, travelling in a cable car can extremely mystifying and intriguing, especially in one with records of accident.


Who would have thought of building hotels and resorts up on a highland in the middle of jungle for the monkeys, birds and insects? Well Lim Goh Tong did that, now his effort and innovation paid off well. What's next then, under the sea? Outerspace?

The main attraction up there is of course the casino, Genting casinos are the only place we can gamble legally in Malaysia, correct me if I'm wrong. It is also a discriminative place that commits prejudice on age. I am one of those who was victimized for being underaged, by 2 months! I wasn't too keen to enter anyway, since I was not able to find any patron or treasure chest to do my show hand.

Also, there are many other entertainment facilities available in the theme parks. Due to the slightly high average age of the participants involved, we didn't go for the theme parks. Instead, we went to other lighter recreational facilities such as the snow world, the one where i took the photo in snow above. The place is a big refrigerator cooled down to -4~5 celcius, fabricated with artificial snow. The cold is no kidding and has definitely intimidated me, snow = romancic + beautiful +++ wet + dirty + freezing + killing. Now I'm not sure if it's a good choice to go to New York, should have chosen California instead @@

And of course, none of them is free. Everything comes with a price, which is certainly not cheap. The unfortunately me even lost some tickets when I was walking around the park. Luckily I wasn't allowed to enter the casino, else I would have lost my cash also.

In short, Genting is a great vacation spot for its one of a kind weather and environment, but please make sure that you bring enough cash to really enjoy the stay, savor all the food and utillize all the facilities.

On the run

It has been a while, welcome back to me and everyone. I'm currently writing in the hotel's computer room right now, it actually feels fun to write while travelling because of the many things I encounter.

This is the second day of my family trip, a full member trip that we haven't had one for years alread. Spent 5 hours on public transportation yesterday, particularly on the trains and buses, which could really be cut down into 2 hours if I had a car. Anyway, there isn't anything much yesterday as well, picked them up at the airport and took them to INTI after that. Had a dinner of what I had been eating in the past 2 years. INTI still looks good, and deserted.

Pulled up a night at the Tune Hotel LCCT while waiting for my sister to fly in at the midnight. Let me warn you all not to be deceived by the photos on tune hotels website, as described, they operate at minimum cost and maximum utility. The rooms are extremely packed and you will be charged for anything extra like air conditioning and even hair dryer. However, they are clean and comfortable if you don't cram the room, reasonable at its price.

Received a terrible news at night - My I-20 which was supposed to be mailed to me 2 weeks ago does not even exist yet. Even though it is understandable that the counselor had a misfortune happening at home, I can't escape from being frustrated. Now my planning and schedule are all screwed, came to KL too early and the date to go back is .... Worse, there is no one to be blamed except the only one to be blamed but cannot be blamed, who is also the only to be depended upon. I pray to you, God @@