Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Day Trip to Air Papan

Since BB has moved back from KL, we decided to go to this Air Papan Beach that I read so much about in other people's blog. The other main reason we decided to go there is because its really not that far from where I'm staying... about 90mins drive.






We arrived at the Fishing Bay Resort first... its about 10mins from the main beach and apparently this is the better resort to stay if you are planning to stay overnight. The resort has its own beach area, but its a small one. We were there on the weekday, so there wasn't anyone else around and not much was going on... but that was why I chose to make the trip on weekdays.. so that there would not be too many "other" people!!! :)




The chalets look nice enough and its air conditioned with ASTRO... if you people are interested you can always google "air papan" and you will be able to find quite a few reviews of the various chalets available there.




It was super sunny and you can see from the photos that we are actually perspiring on our faces!!! :P The jetty was quite run down, and not as "nice" as you may have seen from the other people's review who were there maybe a year or two ago.

We then proceeded to the main Air Papan beach. I liked the beach. Super long stretch of nice clean beach with nice seas and weather!!!


When we arrived at the beach, the only other people there were a Malay family having a swim in the sea. I think they were locals who stayed just further up the beach.




BB and me were just strolling on the beach, enjoying the sea breeze and trying to see if there were any nice sea shells to pick up as souvenirs... :)






It was REALLY sunny!!! So much that I was squinting when taking this picture. I think the stretch of beach was about 500m long... we walked towards the end which was the rocky part, and from there I took a picture to see how far we walked....


The white thing in the inset is my car. Not bad for an afternoon exercise eh??? kekekeke...



Maybe if we had more time we would have tried to walk pass the rocks to see what was beyond, but the weather was turning quickly as we could see some storm clouds over us as we decided to head back to the car.

And boy it was the right decision as it started to rain when we were about a quarter of the way back. It was more of a heavy drizzle but it was steadily getting heavier and heavier. But I guess it was ok for me and BB as we had not been drenched in the rain for a long time!!! :)

We were half soaked when we reached the car, but luckily we had a towel and brought spare clothings. The rain lasted only for a while longer and from my car I could see some people with a bunch of balloons running on the beach.. WTF????


Hahahaha then we realised that it was a bridal photo/video shoot and their vehicle was the one next to my car. :) But I guessed the came a little too late because even though the rain stopped a little, the skies wasn't clear anymore and it was all a little gloomy.

So after drying up a little, BB and me decided to head for home. It rained again along the way, but I did managed to see some signboards that there were in fact more beaches to the north and south of the town of Mersing. Some were quite far... about 70+km from the town. I think we will try to visit some of those places in the near future. :)

Oh... there are more pictures of this trip in the here.



Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Aquaria @ KL

Was in KL over the last weekend to help BB move out of her place. So we took the opportunity to visit the Aquaria.

The name is Aquaria... but there were many "un-aquaria" animals ... :)


Can you see how many camouflaged geckos are there in the picture???

This monkey is REAL SMALL..... about 20cm when its sitting....

The most disgusting thing to me..... giant spiders or tarantula.....

So there were tarantulas, geckos and monkeys... hehehhehee so where were the sea or water creatures???? Undeniably the attraction of the Aquaria has to be the underwater tunnel where you get to see those sea creatures from a "underwater" point of view.




Actually these photos were taken BEFORE going into the tunnel. :P

Well those are the giant fish that we manage to pose with before they swam away.

It was quite difficult to take pictures in the underwater tunnel with a normal camera because with flash, you won't be able to see the fishes while without flash, everything turns bluish and not so clear... :)


Without the flash.. at least you could see some fish....


With flash... hehehehhe the reflections are almost as clear as the real person!!! :P




BB and me with a school of fish wandering near the glass.


Me and a shark... for those of you who didn't know or forgot, the creatures look 30% smaller due to the thick glass..


The diver was feeding the fishes and posing for the cameras.

A piggyback ride on the shark.... :P


A stingray like creature at the top of the glass tunnel.

A Giant stingray.... If we "goreng" this fella... how many people would it feed??? I wonder....

Oh well.... I've been to the Underwater World in Sentosa, Singapore and honestly I have to say I prefer the one in Singapore.... but for RM28... the Aquaria is also ok.... if you can't make the trip to Singapore :)


Sunday, October 7, 2007

When PIGS can FLY............

When PIGS can FLY, there will be true PROGRESS in the COUNTRY!!!!

So..... who are the pigs? and in which country?????

BEATS ME!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me know if you have any idea!!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday, October 1, 2007

Fun with Saga Seeds!!

Over the weekend I was driving around town with my BB while waiting for the Malay "buka puasa" stalls to open in the early evening. So I brought her to my old primary school (more of that in another post). The front gate was locked so I decided to go around the back, since I also remembered that there used to be saga trees planted behind the school compound, near the soccer field. BB and I have been trying to find these saga trees and seeds for a long time. Seems that a lot of these trees are no longer at the places that we know of.

What was once a small mud road has now turned into a tar-ed road, with kampong houses along the road. Driving slowly, I finally saw them!!! The saga seeds scattered on the roadsides, small red dots embeded in the soil, and some on the road.

So I stopped the car and we got out to take a closer look. And there it was!!!


Hmmmmm after a little researching on the internet, I found that the scientific name for the saga tree is Adenanthera pavonina. Can you see the seeds? I zoomed in the best I could..... and here it is... :)


Those in the center are the un-fallen saga seeds. :) There were actually a lot of the fallen seeds all over the ground, so BB and me began our pickings!!!! We started by the roadside 1st.....


And slowly moved nearer to the school compound. Over there, we could find whole pieces of fallen saga seed pods, and we took some pics!! :D




We just picked and picked because this was something we wanted to do for such a long time, but could not find a suitable location where there were STILL saga trees growing!! And there WERE lots of it all over the ground!!!



Hahahhahah this is the end result of our pickings!!! BB washed them clean and we actually counted how many we picked!!



We actually picked 593 saga seeds... Looks very little but there's really so many of them in the picture!!!!! :) Most probably we will be going back there quite often to "collect" somemore saga seeds, :)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

How Does My GR Sleep?? (Warning!!! Obscene Pics...)




So just how does man's best friend sleep when there's a comfortable queen sized bed in an air-conditioned room???



At first its like this....... then......


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No, this is not a posed picture. She does sleep this way most of the time when she gets to have half of the bed to herself... and yes, she sleeps with me in my room, on my bed.... :P

Monday, September 10, 2007

Anime!!!!!

I've always been watching SOME anime... started with the all famous Gundam series, then Initial D, then Naruto and then Bleach.

Initially I was satisfied with the 2 new weekly episodes that I get from Naruto and Bleach (1 new episodes per week on average - coz there are times when they skip a week or two during the screenings in Japan). So it was about a week ago that I decided that there's got to be other interesting animes out there.

So I searched around the net and there are A LOT of animes. I've since watched some and these are the ones I really liked.


First off is Claymore. This is my favourite of the lot maybe because the setting is in Medevial times, unlike most of the animes which are based on Japan's timelines. The summary from wikipedia -

"The setting of Claymore's story is a fictional world with medieval technology. Politically, it appears to consist of a large number of scattered, apparently independent, towns. In this world, humans coexist with creatures called Yoma sentient monsters that feed on human innards. The Yoma, being shapeshifters, are capable of taking on human form and living in disguise amongst humans. By consuming a human's brain, Yoma can also absorb their memories, allowing them to disguise themselves as specific people without alerting any of their close friends or family.

A nameless and highly secretive organization has created an order of superhuman warriors to protect humans from the Yoma. These warriors have come to be popularly known as Claymores, after the immense claymores they wield. Villages being attacked by Yoma hire Claymores to kill the Yoma for a large fee.

The story of Claymore follows the adventures of the Claymore warrior Clare. The plot follows her as she fights Yoma and struggles to hold on to her humanity. Starting in the 3rd volume, there is a flashback to her childhood on how she was 'adopted' by the Claymore Teresa. After Teresa rebels against the organization and is subsequently killed, Clare volunteers to become a Claymore using Teresa's flesh in order to take revenge on the Awakened who killed her. With determination and her human friend Raki by her side, Clare overcomes her low demonic power by honing the skills she inherited from Teresa. As the series progresses, she becomes a stronger and better fighter, gradually earning the respect of strong allies and coming in conflict with the shadowy organization, the top Claymores who support them, and many powerful Awakened."




Next up is "Keikkaishi". This is another of those typical animes which the people have "special powers" and fight against demons in our modern world setting. A short sypnosis as such...

"By day, 14-year-old Yoshimori Sumimura is just a regular kid going to junior high school, but by night he is a “kekkaishi,” or demon-fighter who specializes in generating magical barriers around his prey before making them disappear. His neighbor is 16-year-old Tokine Yukimura, who is also a kekkaishi! Together they share the knowledge of their ancient art and their nights battling beings from the netherworld. Sounds fun, but their families don’t get along, because each believes themselves to be the “true practitioners” of the art of the kekkaishi. Will Yoshimori and Tokine’s friendship overcome their family’s ancient rivalry? And will they be able to stop the frong-demon that’s threatening their school?! Their exciting adventures and magical battles begin in this volume! "

What's interesting is how they use the magical barriers or "kekkai"s not only to capture but also injure and help them in their battles. You have to watch to see what I mean.

Claymore currently at episode 23 while Kekkaishi is at episode 30. Still not too far for those who want to catch up. There are a few more animes that I'm interested in, but so far haven't got the chance to pick them up. Will post another entry about "Devil May Cry" which I plan to start watching soon - although I heard its only a 12 episode anime.