gloomy sunday

last weekend, frankie was in town so we were out shooting.
here are some photos that were taken.






i like this "i am shooting you shooting at me" shot by frankie.
taken using nikon d70 50mm f1.8.

hajimete no lesson

i'm totally worned out...now i know how hard it is to look after kids...i salute my grandmama for that and all the women out there who are super! i guess cos i never really moved about so much at work my legs are killing me. other than that, some kids were very cute, naughty, loud but i hope i can handle well when the current teacher leaves. i think i will sleep very well tonight, no doubt.

p/s: kids ask the darndest questions! めちゃめちゃかわいい~ やばい！！~~~

omedetou gozaimasu to me! haha...i'm starting a new job on monday. it's very new to me and i hope i can cope with it. it will be very different from my previous jobs as i have to deal with children. yes, very challenging! especially for a noob. wish me all the luck i can have!

もっと強く! もっと もっと強く!!

liu liang

it's the time of the year again...

some things are better left unknown.
the fact will remains the same no matter how much we try to deny it.
sometimes, i do think life is unfair.
but so what. life IS unfair.

helpful travel tools

i never really like planning in advance when it comes to travelling or backpacking. it's the thrill and fun when it comes to it but for those of you who prefer to book your accomodation in advance, i recommend these two Hotels Combined and Wego which helps you save all sorts of hassles of time and what's not.

hotelscombined.com and wego.com like any search machines provide an easy platform to find your ideal accomodation/hotel especially those on honeymoon trip. all quotations are in ringgit so you don't have to crack your head calculating. all major currencies are available too.



the good thing about hotelscombined.com and wego.com is that it provides descriptions of the hotel you are staying, it gives you map of the area, photos, reviews by past customers and also attractions around the place with prices quoted so you can have an idea what and how you want to plan your time there.



for those of you who is always on the run, it helps eliminates time wastage. i guess it's time to plan another trip again!

bali - day 4 + 5

on the forth day, it was chilling day for me as it was also my last day in bali. since the first 3 days was packed with activities, i didn't have a chance to surf yet so it was official that i must surf! as no one was there to look after the cameras, it was only right not bring along. too bad there was no surfing shots of me or rather get washed up by the waves.

so allen and i walked to kuta beach and we rented ourselves two surf boards. i sort of briefed him how surfing is done...lie on the board, paddle into the wave and wait for the wave to come and start paddling...well, i'm not good at it but that's how i remembered from my surfing lesson 5 years ago in perth. LOL...yes, that was a long time ago.
as it was such a long time ago, i couldn't recall much but somehow i managed to paddle myself into the sea and wait for the next wave to come. the thing is, i waited quite a while for the wave and when it did come, it was big and i washed me up good...yes...i was washed up like inside a washing machine. it didn't help when the tide became low and the wave got bigger. there was this one time i was caught in the wave and i sort of crashed into this white surfer chiq...our surfboard leash got tangled up and had to walk up to the shore to untangled them. yes, shame on me. there was this local balinese kid laughing his ass off at me. crap. what a day but i was very happy i surfed again. i will be back for the wave. i will.

in the afternoon, it was window shopping and souvenir hunting. i didn't get anything except some local coconut candies. after the shopping, we headed back as allen wanted to try some balinese spa. the thing is, we couldn't find the type of spa he wants so we headed back to our hotel miserably. as i was tired from the surfing, i didn't bother anymore and asked for the hotel's very own traditional balinese massage. RP50,000 (RM16) for an hour of pleasure. allen on the other hand didn't enjoy it because he thought the masseurs were hot balinese babes which turns out to be the same fleshy girl who served us breakfast, do the house keeping and what's not.

lunch and dinner was the same as day 3 (bakso, soto kambing + satay kambing).

we had to get up around 4am the next day as we need to rush to the airport before 5am (our flight was 7.50am). luckily the night before, we got ourselves a good deal right in front of the soto kambing stall where these two motor-"taxi"-guys were trying to get us to ride in their motorbikes to airport. yes, in bali, motorbikes are also transformed into "taxi" where they charge without the metre. so we bargained our way till they agreed to give us RP40,000 (RM13) for two person. good thing we had our "rides" to fetch us to the airport early in the morning as we didn't see any taxi in the early morning hours. it was all good.

if my financial allows me, i will be back for second round. to explored the unexplored and to surf the awesome wave again. till next time, the island of gods.

photos here!

bali - day 3

every morning, we were served with toasts, eggs, fruits and tea or coffee. it's as good as it gets. the place to go today is ubud and tanah lot. ubud is hailed as the centre of art and crafts. it's a much quieter town compared to bustling kuta.

bali is also famous for the layers of paddy fields. although it's not as evident enough in this photo. you can see tons of them in the country side. at ubud, we visited two main museums, neka art museum and the blanco renaissance museum.

neka art museum has heaps of collections on balinese day to day lifestyle and dates back to many decades to modern days style of drawings.

as there was no photography allowed inside blanco renaissance museum, i have to dig out some photos as reference from the world wide web. antonio blanco on the other hand is a spanish artist that uses women as his main painting subject. in his mansion, you will see heaps of nude women paintings and he is also a poet as poems were combined in his paintings.

the late antonio blanco (google search image)

one of the many blanco's piece (google search image)



a must eat at ubud is babi guling. the infamous ibu oka stall. you won't miss it as the place is always packed. surprisingly, the workers here too speaks fluent mandarin and japanese too! man, i guess they have heaps of chinese and japanese customers. babi guling actually tasted much like our roasted pork. the vege that comes with the rice was a bit spicy for me.


sitting next to us was this japanese lovely old couples from kyushuu. they were very nice and friendly. i managed to chat with them a bit with my broken japanese and manage to get away with it. really makes me miss my japanese friends whom i stayed with in nz. don't exactly remember how much this meal was but i say it was roughly about RP90,000 (RM15 per person).

next stop was tanah lot. what can i say about this place. it was swarm with tourists. like too many if you ask me. most of the tourists are from indonesia, lots of chinese from china, some japanese and few europeans? not much to say about tanah lot except it has way too many tourists.


after a tiring day, we headed back to kuta and indulge ourselves in soto kambing (soup), rice and satay kambing (lamb) for RP20,000 (RM3 per person). this stall is located at the corner of Jalan Kuta 1. it's the exact some stall that sells bakso during the day time.

the truth is, we had bakso for lunch and these for dinner twice.


more photos here!

bali - day 2

kuta beach

second day started with a stroll at kuta beach, enjoying the breeze, feeling really grateful to be alive! to be able to enjoy mother nature in full glory. watching awesome surfers hitting the waves remind me of the good old snowboarding days in nz. we had two lunch. initially allen wanted to try out this stall at Legian so we got into this metred taxi (not all taxi in bali is using metre so you have to look out for the blue swallow icon/logo. all the others are rip offs and doesn't run on metre.) later on we realised we were taken a ride because the place we wanted to go is within walking distance like 10-15 mins away from our hotel. well, there's always a first time right? when i got off from the taxi and looking endlessly but couldn't find the shop and decided to just eat at any local stall that looks authentic.

bakso

we found one stall selling bakso (meat balls) so we decided to give it a go. the coconut drink was awesome with heaps of soft coconut meat in it. it was very refreshing as we were both sweating from the heat and walk. we sat down together with this elderly man which later told us that he was from perth. it was really nice of him to show us his black and white photo if not mistaken looked like a sailor from the second world war. i think he is probably in his 60s or older? he also told us that he has been to malaysia 30 years ago and he has been to penang 3 times? if i didn't hear him wrongly. the meal cost us RP18,000 which is like RM3 each!! dirt cheap right? meal + drink. after the meal, we walked around in search for something else as the bakso was not filling enough. the aussie man had 4 bowls!! we only had 1 each so we can try out other food.

as we were walking aimlessly, we found this restaurant called Made's Warung that i heard from friends that it a must try. the price on the menu is pricier than i thought but the place was fully packed. the food was just alright, nothing to shout about. we ordered pork satay, fish satay, and something that taste similar to otak-otak that comes with rice. the other dish tasted a bit like indian rojak. i think the bill was around RP96,000 which is about RM16 each. so now you can probably tell the difference when you dine in a restaurant and any local stalls in bali.

dreamland (a.ka. new kuta beach)

the afternoon schedule was half day tour to Dreamland (also known as new kuta beach) and Uluwatu to watch the sunset and Kecak Dance. the beach and water are much cleaner compared to kuta beach and you can see why surfers will travel in their motorbike all the way here. yes, motorbikes are for rents in bali and most of them are modified version with special metal holder to hold the surf boards. really kickass if you ask me! surfers on motorbikes! with the sunnies riding to the next surf destination.

uluwatu

kecak dance

uluwatu temple was nothing fancy but the place was really packed with tourist from all over. the kecak dance is based on balinese "romeo & juliet" storyline. the play was good and very entertaining. everyone was wow-ed by white monkey god jumping in and out of the flame which at times was very funny as he will sit on one particular audience and make fun of them. dinner at jimbaran was a bit cut throat but the bbq prawns were delicious and has the char grilled after taste. the seafood was not as fresh as they claim. we had white snapper, sea prawns and mussels (with additional rice and kangkong). it all comes to a total of RP340,000 which is around RM55 per person.

on the way back to kuta, we talked about how same different malaysia and indonesia is. the government. the corruptions. the languages. how much similarity there is to it. that boys will be boys. we talked about girls. that the driver and i share the same kind of preference on girls.

more photos here!