Legendary adventurous trip

In summer 2009, I went Sabah to visit Stephanie, one of our coursemate. The reason why I am only blogging about it now is that I just got the photos!

Remember the awesome to Arthur video? It was during this trip. The trip lasted about 10 days. During these 10 days, we went from learning how to dive, to climbing mount Kinabalu, and to getting an advance diving license.

Ah if I haven't mentioned, Stephanie is this person below, she is like the princess of Sabah!

By the way, if you have a very good impression of Sabah paradise beaches, I can tell you, Sabah's beach looks like this:

Oops.. actually this is one of the crappiest beach in Sabah by the roadside. Sabah beaches are really pretty!

Before I go into the beaches..... If you are hungry, I am sorry, but I have to spoil your appetite, because what you are eating now, might be just shitty as always. Welcome to the seafood heaven!

Lots of fresh living seafood caught from the ocean! Most of it you wont even see it in the peninsular.

Still not spoilt for choices?

Garoupas, prawns, shells, all types of seafood!

Look at this type of shell prawns? Its RM 100 for 1 kg. But we got lobster, which was double the price...

Now time to eat!

Buttermilk lobster!

Soft shell crab. Have you eaten this amount of soft shell crab like eating a huge tin of cookies? And we had a 7-star grouper fish too!


After filling our stomach with heavenly seafood for our welcome night dinner, things went serious the next morning as its our first day to dive!

We started off from Sutera Harbour.

Suit up!

Went to an island around the Taman Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park to confine water training near the beach.
In the afternoon, we hop on the boat to go for real diving in deeper waters.

Sadly, there was no underwater camera to take the pictures in the water.

Stephanie with her equipments..

A swim after an exhausting dive...

Thats the expression when you become pro.

Besides, we spend alot of time on different islands as well, sunbathing and playing volleyballs.

But sometimes you get distractions when you are trying to relax...
For example :

When you are happy happily sunbathing....

Suddenly you see...

Then the outcome...

Forget it if you see nothing in this 3 pictures story.

After diving into 20m underwater, we set foot to conquer the 4095m above sea level mountain the following day. Climbing mount Kinabalu requires a lot of training and determination. Even though before that I ran Menjalara park 10 times up and down the hill, going up the 1st 1km trail of the mountain has already got me draining all my reserved energy. All left was just the mind, to collapse and give up, or to thrive every one step further. And finally you step on the highest ground and shout: "TO ARTHUR!!". I was so proud to never giving up, carrying an extra 1kg bottle of Guinness up 8km of the mountain trail!
(the Guinness was a challenge/bet/joke.... when I brought out the bottle on the peak, people took photos of us..haha.... " What? You brought a beer !!?")

Because of the popularity of this Mountain, climbing it actually cost a lot. If you think you could train hard and give it a go, think again..... One night accomodation costs at least RM450 + guide + everything will round up to about RM600, even if you book early. So should you have this ambition, remember to save while u train!
The whole mountain was crowded with non Malaysians. It felt like I was in UK. I can tell there were lots of british, Americans, Japanese, HK, Singaporeans....

We started our journey all pumped up with "energergy", a special form of energy derived from our kind.

We were trying to do a chant to absorb some energergy.

And off we went.

The one little girl in the middle of this picture didnt follow us up.

This the begining of the trail, green,wet rainforest.

As you ascend, less and less vegetation.

They have pondoks (stops) every 1 km of the trail, each with different names. Like this one, pretty sure you are little dizzy when you reach here.


It took us about 3 and a half hour to reach the resting house and settlements. Faster than normal people do. It was more than exhausting. We took a nap and had a buffet in the evening, sitting and chatting with a New York couple.

The next morning, we woke up at 3am to continue, normally people start from 1 or 2 am, but with our overwhelming confidence and energery, we made it 3am.

It took us another 2.5 hours, again faster than normal to reach the peak and catch the sunrise at 6am.

Its the spot everyone takes a picture! See, we reach before sunrise, so energergetic!

And its time to celebrate!

Cheers!

After gulping down Guinness and got drunk...
We sat for 10 mins.....

And found out that it was actually very cold with all our wet clothing on this peak.

After a stunning and beautiful sunrise, we headed down. (we were lucky that the weather was really clear)

Down we went... rolling down..

And because we still felt energergetic, we did some stunts.

This is the view from the last "pondok", 7km up the mountain trail. The view of the villages and settlements down there could be seen clearly here.

We took an adventurous package, which include descending this part of the mountain like abseiling.

The people in this picture might seem to be in an awkward position, but its really steep and hard to maintain an upright position.

The descend only took like 2 hours, they were literally running downhill like a reward is waiting for them.
Tired and sluggish, we head back to the ocean the day after to complete our advanced diving. Walking and especially going down stairs had never become so hard. Our quadriceps and calf felt very painful. It made us hesitate for some time when we were going down steps.

That was, the legendary adventurous trip I had this summer. Never had combine so many adventurous activities within a trip.


Last but not least, let me introduce here a new award....
The Queen of sleeping.

She could sleep anywhere from land

To sea

To the mountains

Sweet dreamz..

Pre Halloween

Now I found out that if kids come for trick or treat and you refused to open the door, the trick would be putting in 2 maple leaves into your mail.

Lecture was suddenly canceled last friday, leaving me the whole day free! Since I didnt feel like working or mugging whole day long, I decided to make a dinner and invite my coursemates for mingling session.

Seems like its a pre Halloween night, and so I made a western themed meal. I know its very lame having a "Halloween" doing nothing related to it, we ended up that night playing "killer", was it Kim Hung's favourite game?

Let me show you what I got for that night, I carried like tonnes of food from the local market nearby...

Firstly I got 2 corn fed chickens and of course 2 lemons to shove up their asses! The roast chicken is one of our "signature dish". In fact, the actual use of the lemons are to suck up the smelly juices from the cavity of the chicken, leaving a clean roast chicken. Some people just hate the smelly chicken smell do they?

Mussels! Really fresh mussels from the local fish store. These cost about 5 pounds.

And some greens for the day. On the left is something that looks like coriander, a herb widely used here, namely Parsley. (Why do I spend time explaining these? I doubt my readers know about herbs, besides ginseng, or "I cant think of anything so common anymore", or...... ) If you don't know what is on the ---> right..... erm.... you should knock your head with a hammer! Its a mini tree! You know when you walk in the fantasy land, those trees that will grow... those kind... yea a mini tree!

Next, its time to clean the mussels. Cleaning them is no easy job. They got beard like fibre that is stuck in the shell. And the most disgusting thing is .............

Can you see that there is some white calcium deposit on the shell? It looks like those little things you always see growing on a shell right? Well, examine carefully, you will see that its shaped like a hollow curvy tube. And WORMS live in it!!!

The red earthworm like parasites live on those shells! I pulled out quite some of them. eeew... Do you still wanna eat mussels ? hahaha


After all the cleaning and preparing, its time to cook!
Presenting my final awesome product!

OOps... This was what I ate before cooking for the real dinner, so hungry.

The mussels are cooked with butter, bouquet of garni (ok its just some random herbs), celery, leek and white wine.


Er an obscene dish, but.....

Roast chicken with lemons in the ass!

Some mash potatoes and roast potatoes as carbo source.

Guys, start sharpening your knives today. Cooking can be fun!

Walking on the streets....

As I mentioned before, this year I spend about 1 hour 30mins walking on the streets everyday.

If I would have do that in Malaysia there will only be a few consequences:
- I get a skin cancer resulting from intense sunburn
- I got robbed
- I got killed because I tried to fight with robbers.
- I got killed because some snatch thieves kill you before you try to fight.
Trivial right? Because, nobody actually does that. Even if someone does it, he dont live to tell.

So far, I encountered some incidents while walking on the streets on London. Some quite dodgy but I must say there are really interesting to share.

First you might think London is a really safe place to be in. Occasionally you still get muggers on the streets, less violence than those in Malaysia, but they would still beat you up if you rebel.

Its rare to met up with those muggers because they only appear in the night. Unlike Malaysia, everything is 24 hours like mamak, convenient stores and robbers, they all work hard for a living.

What I met on the streets are professional beggers. They dress well and they dont sit on the floor with a cup. They come up to you with interesting pick up line like:
" Hey, you look good today, can you please give me some money to get a cool hair cut just like you? "
Ok, that was just a joke, they dont say that.

But I got some lines like:

" Hey mate, I need to get a hostel tonight but I am lacking a pound, could you just please spare me a pound for the night?"

Brian paid for this. But LOL, the next day the man came to us with the same line again.

" Hey, I just got lock out my house accidently with my phones inside. Could you please spare me 50p for a phone call?"

"Hey, could you just give me 20p please? I dont need much, I just want 20p" 

So far, I have only given the 20p because that guy seems older and its a reasonable amount. I got even teenagers trying to get money from me.

Then there was this car incident.  Last Tuesday while I was walking to play futsal, a guy rolled down his window of his car...

" Excuse me, are you Japanese?"

"No, I am Malaysian."

"Oh, hi there, I am Italian. I worked for Harrods, do you know Harrods?"

"Yes...." (thinking that he would ask for directions)

"I am going back to Italy, and I am driving to Heathrow now. I got a few jacket from Giorgio Armani. I need to give them out for free because my luggage is too heavy. "

"What size do you wear?"

"Er... M "

Then a horn of a car behind him.
Suddenly, I got this "survival in Malaysia" instinct that we run from scenario like this instantly.

"Errm I am actually rushing for some events.. See ya!"

Funnily enough when I was sharing this incident in my friends birthday dinner later on that night, I found that my housemate encounter the same thing that very same day when he was on the bike. Then, one of our HK friend say he even went onto his car!

So, our conclusion for the night was, lets start our thai boxing class next wednesday!

Science and Art

All my final year friends are busy applying for their job lately....

The problem with our degree course is that it is not widely recognised or needed. Come on, who the hell knows what biomedical engineering is? If you do happen to be that one in a million, why on earth do you need to recruit us anyway, we dont make money.

Yes, we face this fact, and accept that this is what we are. When things come into your 3rd year or final year, you get really materialistic and realistic. Don't give me bullshit like "Oh, I like my course, I am so enthusiastic about learning how protein is synthesised in the cell..." bla bla ... It is now all money first! To be fair, people like us now are pups going into the wild, finally set free, we'll need to hunt for food (money).

If you think this guy here

is your daddy, fine dream on !

People like us will get hungry very soon, and our degree is not a solution. All my coursemates are therefore joining what we call the "dark side". The finance and business sector. Yay!!

That is what a biomedical engineering/engineering degree brings you:

- First, there is no fuckin' firm that want to employ people in this discipline

- If you somehow, managed to get into a research team say Imperial college for example, you will do something like making a cost free but efficient prosthetic for really poor people. (ethical!)

- Or, get a normal engineering job in Malaysia, work for whole life also cannot repay the cost of studying spent.

Finance and business sector brings you:

- More chicks 
- Alot of job opportunites from all around the world.

- High paid job

- A huge variety of majors and discipline

- At least when you go to Merrill Lynch and say, hey I do a BioEng degree, they will say ok send in your CV. Unlike when you go to Siemans, they would say, I am not sure about that, check our website....

That is why I choose to do 2 business modules this year.

The first one is entrepreneurship.

I liked it so much, because the first lecture slide of the course is this

Yes!!! straight to the point. How to turn idea into money....Woo

And I think business people think better than science people. A diagram of a business module might look like this

But a diagram for a analogue circuit and systems module look like?

The first one is so easy to understand as long as you know english. The latter, dont ask me, I dont know what the f*ck it is also.



So I tried to convert the diagram into a simpler art format with paint, and this is what I got.

Understandable ?

Come my friends, lets join the Dark Side!

What I do on a regular Thursday

 Today is Thursday.
And this is the first time I do live blogging, actually blogging instantly.

Just now, I woke up at ... look at the clock:

If I were back then last year, it would be SHIT !!! super late.

This year, its ok, chill man.

Then....
I did some push up.

Damn freaking cold !! Must warm up the body, if not you would just be shivering whole morning.
Next, its time for breakfast.

Had some cereal that I always used to have.

Today suddenly got the mood to drink some coffee, so I stole a spoon of nescafe.

Not to forget to check the refrigerator.

Of course, I need to do some business as well....

Finally, time to dress up !!

And And.... .wait for it .......

GO TO PASAR (Market) !!

The reason I checked the fridge just now is to see what to buy.

I went to the local meat store too.

WALAO Eh.... no need go school 1 ar ???


hmm... ok maybe I should start preparing to go college now.
3rd year damn nice !!