Voyeuristic Tendencies...: August 2005

running around in malacca... (UPDATED!!!)

had a "study" trip to malacca with my class and my 4 lecturers... personally it was good trip for me... only because i set myself to be positive about the whole trip i guess... so here is how it went... roughly...

couldn't sleep the night before leaving... had to pack my bag... couldn't decide how many t-shirts to carry... and as it will happen, i underpacked... but my bag was already huge from all the other stuff i had to carry... 2 sketchbooks (which ended up not being used at all...), 1 clear plastic folder and 1 big pencil case... add on a huge digital camera to that and you get the idea... my video camera and tripod were not included inside... so you can imagine that i looked absolutely crazy... so i ended up with only 2 hours of sleep... but i figured i can get some shuteye in the bus...

bright (shades on please... ) and early (yes! early!) at lavender mrt station where i met some of my classmates and mustafa... apparently he had been there since 7 and we were supposed to meet at 9... no thanks to someone he says... so yah... so there he was, kept awake by 3 cups of coffee it seems... trudged down to lavendet street to take our bus... everyone else was already there... so... despite being early at lavender mrt, i was as always, fashionably late... hah!

the bus was already there... the red one on the right of the picture... but why we had to wait i have no idea...

uneventfully waited for the bus... there was some camera crew doing something... but non-consequential... boarded bus... sat beside faizal... bus moved off... went through the motions of customs and checkpoint... over at the malaysia side, they actually moved the customs and checkpoint for passenger coaches to another place which is a damn good move on their part so we literally breezed through the entire process since it was... well... empty! (well done malaysia!) slept through the first leg of the trip... woke up when bus turned into yong peng... i still despise the fact that they have to go to such shitty places as a stop-over... for goodness sake, the rest stops along the highway are just fine... even better than most i guess... and thay have to get out of the highway to go to some shitty place just because these places pay them to do so... what the hell! and worse part is that there were 2 of such places... and we actually went to shittier one! goodness...

shittier place but heck... smile!!!

was awake for most of the second leg but everyone was more or less tired so not much happened...

it would be interesting to note that this shot took some degree of patience as you can see that i somewhere in the middle-back of the moving bus...

so we arrived at Melaka Sentral which is as they put it, a terminal, pasar (market) and bazar... not too bad a place... discovered on the trip back that the 'departure' hall looked like airport in cairo... minus the armed guards... but as with most things in malaysia, nice idea, not too well done/executed and bad maintenance... which is a shame as they have alot of nice things... well... we shell see for this one... prove me wrong please!

how grand... keep it nice ok?

now... here comes the irritating part... apparently it was so damn bloody obvious that we are tourists... so the "standar" fare from the bus station to where we were going was RM$15... which i didn't mind paying but some were quite adamant that we could get to where we were going for as low as RM$6... so yeah... because of that... we went out of the cool bus terminal and into the hot, hot, hot sun... it was quite dusty too... silly valerie fell on the steps in front of everybody and provided much laughter... we proceeded to the place where we were apparently going to take the waiting cabs...

so here we were... moving away thinking that we had a cab for 20 people... when there was just 1 lousy cab waiting for us... what the heck! apparently this cab would come back again and pick the rest of us up... but it never did... oh well... we were being very hopeful weren't we? so the cab never came back and we had to wait for 4 more cabs who didn't rip us off out RM$15... mustafa looked like a streewalker while waiting for such cabs but i have thank him for waiting the cabs in the hot sun... so we had to wait...

and we're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting...

so here we were... waiting for the cabs which went below RM$15 on a road named, of all things, Jalan PMS... which obviously provided much content for jokes...

ridiculous road name...

waited and waited and waited some more... we got bored... we did silly stuff... as evident in the video i took... but here is an example of silly stuff we did...

right... we took pictures of our shoes... the guy with the white socks is garry... he got alot of rubbish for wearing those... with bermudas... hahaha!

ok ok... i got to go and eat now... will continue this... later...

and by the way... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! 23!!! WOOHOO!!! urgh...

ok... so i took 2 weeks to get back to this post... hahaha... busy lah... assesment week... but it was good lah... needed the rush after ambling along for so long... hah... anyways... here is malacca continued...

so yah... we waited for the cabs... i took the second last one with 3 other people... faizal, garry and someone else and maybe samuel... so when we got to the hotel, we got our rooms... samual was already with soemitro, faizal was already with rayyan... so i got garry... hmmm... ok... so we went up to our room which we had some difficulty finding... we were at the very end of the hotel with a balcony outside that was facing out onto the roof... how 'nice'....

the view... or lack of it...

samuel, at the other end, definitely had a better view...

the room was ok lah... but it had no windows... imagine the claustrophobia... not that i am claustrophobic or anything... but we cannot really complain as the room was very cheap... not that it mattered since the school was paying for it... so went around visiting others... got some funky stuff on the video cam... blah blah blah... unpacked... got more stuff on video... then we went down for a briefing of sorts at the courtyard which is the air well, which i find very interesting...

here come the pictures... thing was, i am still learing the intricacies of the camera... so the photos i got were not that satisfactory...

yian sann said something which i didn't really catch since i wasn't paying attention and after that, we were left on our own... running around in malacca...

went to mahkota parade... which was not too bad a mall... most already had shopping on their minds but a more pertinent matter had to be resolved first... we needed food! and lots of it...

so after much thought and consideration, we broke up into smaller groups since not many places could accomodate all of us... some went to some japanese restaurant... me, i went to a pizza place... which was ok... but i was hungry and finished up everything that was meant for me... garry was an absolute glutton...

then the realisation that we were supposed to be back at the hotel at a certain time dawned upon us and we made out way back to the hotel... i was walking around with a pounch...

arrived back at the hotel fashionably late... then went out again with our lecturers to take a look around at the night market... place was quite cool but my main gripe was that everyone was moving along too fast for me to see anything... so i ended up getting left behind... but then i hooked up with mustafa and anusha who were like me, more intent on going around slowly... mustafa, quite like me, was obsessed with taking photos too... so i guess it was a good thing that i hooked up with him... so it was basically just the three of us although every now and then, we'd bump into little groups of my class...

the night market, flea market, whatever...

lanterns...

cannot get shots like this walking around very fast...

we actually had a cufrew... we had to be back in our rooms by 11pm... so at 1030 i started moving back to the hotel (rest house actually)... along the way, bumped into garry... went back to our room, left our stuff and went back out again to get some stuff to eat (ie.groceries)... came back at 1130... hah! so much for the curfew... later that night, a buch of us hanged out in samuel's room... did silly stuff, watched psycho on the tv and ended up scaring ourselves... i came up with a a silly concept about an empty chair which garry is still trying to formulate until today... it rained that night... that just added to the scare factor of the night... i slept thinking that the room was spinning... some... didn't get that much sleep at all... hmmm... i wonder...