Sybreon Ones Nought

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Alright, as promised. Here are some of my photos from Singapore! You can also go directly to the album by clicking here. I tried to take different shots of Singapore. On this trip, I managed to exercise my new 50-200mm lens to the fullest. I had only switched over to the 18-55mm lens for a single shot, when I had to shoot something on the ground.

As for the photos, none of them were post-processed, besides merely some simply white-balance adjustments and inserting my little signature brush here and there. Aside from the obvious long exposure shots, the rest of the photos were taken hand-held. I truly think that this long lens was a good buy. It produces excellent shots, even at a distance.

Even the various Night Safari shots, were all taken without flash, hand held and with the long lens. I am quite surprised that as many of them turned out as good as they did. You have to understand that the lighting was barely enough to see by, much less take a photo with. I could not even see much through the lens and had to use a lot of guesswork to manually adjust the zoom and focus.

Enough about the photos. Just go look at them and leave comments if you so wish to.

I have always been telling my father that it costs a lot of money to live a middle class life in Malaysia but he never believed me. Finally, I managed to explain it to him personally and show him that it is not cheap for me to live a simple life like him, in Malaysia. I just used our life as an example of how expensive things have gotten in Malaysia.

When my dad was about 30, he bought the present home that we have in KL. It is a very typical double-storey linked house that most middle class families have. It is not terribly big nor terribly small. He also owned a little Volkswagen Beetle at the time and he was able to support all of this on his salary by financing the purchases using loans.

So, I did a very quick calculation for him.

If I were to buy a regular double-storey linked house in KL today, it would cost about RM400k. Financing this through a long term loan would mean making monthly installment payments of about RM2,500. Now, if we factor in owning a regular car (certainly not the new Volkswagen Beetle), that would cost an additional RM1,000 or thereabouts, in monthly payments.

By law, the installment payments cannot cost more than 33% of my monthly salary. Therefore, in order to afford a simple life as he did, I would need to be earning RM10,500 each month. This was when it dawned on him that a simple life is not so cheap afterall. Of course, this only assumes a single sided income. If we assume that this is the combined total income, I would still need to bring in more than RM5,000 each month.

And all this does not take into account other expenditures. I told him that university fees are not as cheap as they used to be. While things cost less than RM10,000 for a university degree at a local public university during my sister’s time, it had already increased dramatically during my time. If we were to assume that the trend continues, even a local public university degree is going to cost a small fortune in the future.

I am just glad that I finally got the chance to explain to my dad why I cannot be contented with a regular civil service job like he was. If I were to just take the path of a regular civil servant (or equivalent), I would be living a lower quality of life than he did and he certainly would not want that for me. So, that is why I have to chase after money like I do.

Hopefully, now that he understands, he will stop pestering me to just lead a simple life.

I went down to Singapore last week for a number of reasons, one of which, was to visit the place again, as an adult. I used to visit it when I was a kid, as my dad’s family hails from Johor Bahru. So, I packed my bags, took out some cash and just went down.

My first problem came as I did not know how to get down to Singapore. I knew that I was going by bus and I knew that there were definitely a number of buses that go down each day. However, I did not know where to get the buses from. But I decided that KL Sentral was the place where everything was connected to. So, I started by journey there.

From there, I was told by the information counter that the buses to Singapore left from the old KL train station, and not Sentral. So, I took a short Komuter hop over to the old station and made it just in time for the next Nice++ executive coach. It cost me RM80 for a one way ticket but it was well worth it. Taking the bus was just like taking the plane.

The seats were really comfy business class seats. There was also a lady that went around taking care of us. She served us lunch, tea and a late refreshment. She also gave us pillows and blankets and tucked us in. Each of us were provided with a headset that we could use to watch some TV but there were only 4 channels to choose from. Since I slept most of the way down, I didn’t really mind this.

When I got to Singapore, I took a cab down to the YMCA. I did not research much on youth hostels either but I assumed that the YMCA was a basic standard and I just booked into the dorms, which were pretty decent. Unlike some of the youth hostels I have been to in Europe, house keeping would come around each morning to change our sheets and towels. We were also provided with soap and water in the dorms as well as an ensuite toilet and shower. There was also a pretty decent buffet breakfast included in the price.

One morning, I ended up chatting with Kelly, a nice young lady who had just passed her Bar exam recently. She is a Malaysian who studied at Manchester and was in Singapore visiting some friends. So, we had a nice chat over breakfast until the people at the cafe chased us off.

So, while I was in Singapore, I got to attend to some personal business and take in a few sights. On my first evening there, I met up with three other friends and we ended up spending some time at the Esplanade. I managed to get a few good night photographs there and you can see them in the gallery. For most of this trip, I used my new 50-200mm lens and I have to say that it is quite useful for holiday purposes.

Then, on the second night, I went for the Night Safari, which cost quite a bit. Moreover, due to the nature of it being in the dark, we could hardly make out most of the animals. However, I still think that it was worth the trouble. Again, most of the shots were taken, handheld, without any flash, using my new 50-200mm lens. Most of the photos ended up being fairly blur.

As to my overall impression of Singapore, it is this: If you do not look too carefully, you will just think that you are in KL. When I say carefully, I mean:

• No Protons in sight.
• Different high street brands.
• Cleaner streets.

Otherwise, it feels very much like home. I even took the long northern MRT round the out skirts of the island and back. Looking out the windows, I can even identify the different parts of KL that the areas looked like. It was like deja-vu, only not quite.

Anyway, I’m back now and I will be uploading my photos soon. I will then link to the album here.

I successfully made it home in one piece, although there were several interesting things that happened along the way. I think that this is probably the most eventful flight that I had ever been on. So, I thought that I’d share a few of the things that had happened on that fateful day.

It all started with the coach ride to the airport. When we left Stansted, the coach driver informed us that all reports indicate that the traffic situation was fine and we should arrive at Heathrow by 7pm, which gave me 3 whole hours to get myself checked in, have a light dinner and then fly off home. However, fortune was not as kind and it rained heavily causing the M25 to jam up. Therefore, by the time the coach arrived at Heathrow, it was already well past 8pm.

So, I quickly rushed to the check in counter and had my luggage weighed. I was really unfortunate and got an extremely unhelpful person at the check in counter. He even asked that I weigh my hand luggage and he added all that to the total combined weight. This resulted in an additional 20kg and I had to go to the service counter at the other end of the terminal to check the price. When I was told that my excess luggage would cost almost £900, I balked. That was the price of two whole tickets!

I was hungry, tired, late and now this. So, I decided to dump all my clothes. I sat in the middle of the terminal and started tossing almost everything out except for my suit. I thought that for RM7,000 I could easily afford an entirely new wardrobe of clothes. So, I tossed everything out including the few nice barong shirts that I had. This got my weight reduced by about 7kg but it was still too heavy.

But I met the same unreasonable counter staff again. He told me that I was still over by 10kg but that I would have to pay 15kg of excess. I could not understand this logic and called his supervisor over to discuss this with. After some reasoning, the supervisor decided to raise my baggage allowance and only charge me for an extra 5kg, which came up to about £200. This I gladly paid as I could possibly get it reimbursed by my sponsor later.

After checking into the flight, I decided to go back to the place where I tossed my clothes to collect them and properly dispose of them. But by the time that I got there, the place had already been thoroughly cleared. I guess that passengers tossing their clothes must be a very common thing and the efficient airport staff and already disposed off it on my behalf. So, I went through security and got on my way.

While in the departure hall, an elderly Malay man came over to sit with me. So, I struck up a conversation with him which invariably led to the talk of Malaysian politics, which is quite interesting at the moment. But I noticed several people staring at me with an evil eye when I was chatting with the elderly chap. Then, I finally asked him what he did for a living and he told me that he was the MP for Bukit Gantang, one of our opposition politicians. He promised me that they would seize power by September 16 and I reminded him that it has to be done legally.

Then, as I boarded the plane, I ended up sitting next to a young girl that looked extremely familiar. So, I asked her if she was a Part II engineering student at Cambridge and she said that she was. So, I asked her what she was doing going to Malaysia and she said that she was going home. This kind of shocked me as I didn’t ever realise that she was Malaysian. I can chalk this up as another random Malaysian whom I know, that no one else knows. So, at the very least, I had someone else to talk to during the flight and it wasn’t as dull or boring a 12 hours as I thought it would be.

So, anyway, I’m back!

Well, technically it is still 31 August in Malaysia. So, I will just write down some of my hopes and (dare I say) dreams for the country, on her 51st birthday. I think that most of these things are very obvious although there are a few little things that I would like to change that may be a little less so. So, in no particular order, here they are:

• Changing our Rukun Negara (National Creed)
  Like most other Malaysians, I am totally fed up by how religion has become a political tool. So, I would suggest that we get rid of the first item in our creed, Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan (Trust in God). I have a problem with that because I do not believe in God/Gods. So, that means that I cannot honestly pledge myself to that belief. So, let us just get rid of any random religious references that are thoroughly irrelevant as a nation.
• Changing our National Anthem (Negaraku)
  There is that line in the anthem that refers to God again: Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan that I am not particularly comfortable with. It just serves to reinforce certain religious believes of some people over the others. I see it as a form of discrimination, forcing someone who doesn’t believe in God/Gods to ask for diving blessing. Also, we should use an original melody instead of borrowing the tune from an old love song.
• Changing our Perlembagaan (Constitution)
  Okay, there are lots of bits of the Constitution that require changing. However, I doubt that this would be possible simply because neither alliances in parliament have the sufficient majority to amend things. But if they did, I would like all religious references taken out of the Constitution. Islam will always remain the majority religion in Malaysia but Malaysia cannot possible profess any religion, it is silly to suggest that Malaysia (as an entity) is a Muslim. It is not even a living creature.
• Changing our Politics
  Of course, politics has got to change. While the racial based politics may have worked well in the past, it is kind of outdated today. People around the world are transcending national boundaries and racial identities. The same thing is happening in Malaysia. We are global citizens and it is silly to think that we can still so easily dice people up by skin colour and expect it to go down well. So, the politicians need to find some new way to dice us up and I am sure that there are many other equally arbitrary ways to do it.
• Change our Polis Di-Raja Malaysia (Royal Malaysian Police)
  The only reason that a former house mate of mine wanted to join the police force was because it paid better than any other graduate job on the market and when he said “pay” he didn’t actually mean the official salary, which isn’t very much to begin with. So, people no longer trust the police to actually do any policing and recent cases in Malaysia don’t make things any better. So, let us try to turn our police force into a respectable occupation that people would aspire to join, in order to make a positive contribution to society.

I had a wonderful dinner with my supervisor and his family tonight. The dinner lasted for just over 3 hours and it wasn’t because the service was slow. It was just that the company was great. I think that I got to know my supervisor and his family a lot better tonight. We exchanged a lot of stories about our lives and our past. Regardless of what other people may think, I think that I’ve got a really nice supervisor.

As I would be leaving for home soon, my supervisor decided to have a going away do for me with his family. So, he suggested Chinese food and asked me for a recommendation. Seeing that there were only two edible restaurants here, I brought them to the nicer one on Regent Street (J’s Restaurant). The other one is a little dodgy. We ordered 5 different dishes and rice. As usual, the food was good. However, I did note that certain things were different in the service.

When I visited J’s in the past with friends, we were treated differently than this visit with my supervisor’s family. For example, they served us rice on a plate instead, while they would normally serve us rice in a bowl, just like any other Chinese restaurant. And when they made a mistake on our order and missed out a dish, the restaurant owner touched me on my shoulder apologetically. And when we left, he placed an appreciative touch on my shoulder. He has never ever touched me on my shoulder ever, in all my previous visits.

For our dessert, we had leong fun or what they called “minty jelly” at the restaurant. My supervisor’s wife was trying to figure out where the mint went. So, I explained that it was a translation of the Chinese name, which meant “cool” or “minty”. She was also trying to figure out the odd taste of the thing. So, I explained that there is a slight tinge of bitterness in it and all that. But it is something easier to savour than explain.

My supervisor’s family was really nice to be with too. Even his son, who is normally a little quiet, also joined into the conversation. We shared a bit about our past with each other and I told him a bit about my plans for the future. His wife also told me some stories about her childhood, which was very funny to hear. Britain in the past, was a very different place from what it is today. I even got to find out how my supervisor met his wife, which made me think that fate (not in the deterministic form) always plays a role in these things.

There aren’t very many things that I will miss about Cambridge but I think that I will miss my supervisor in some ways. He is a really nice guy. I do hope that we will be able to keep in touch. He is on Facebook and while I am not, he is on my MSN list after all and there should be no difficulty there. Oh, and I think that he’ll miss me too. d:

I had just taken this photo of a sunset, a few hours ago. This was taken from behind my house, in the bit of green right opposite Midsummer’s Common and Jesus Green. I just stood up in my room and saw this beautiful sunset outside my window. Knowing that it would not last for long, I picked up my camera, tripod and lenses, and ran off towards the sunset. It was beautiful.

Although it may seem like it has been post-processed extensively, this photo was surprisingly original. All I did was set the white balance. There was no other post-processing step and certainly no HDR work. The photo was a 30 second exposure, taken with the use of my new remote shutter. That is why you can see the floating lines above the roads, where the lamps from the vehicles and cycles passed through.

I think that I kind of like how vivid colours can get in the dark.