Category: General

According to the inflight flight path on channel 99, I’m over Bhopal India right now. Yeah, got to play with a free 30min trial of Boeing’s Connexion service on Singapore Airlines. On my way to Paris today and trying to time my sleep so that I can go to the office today and pretend to work.
The signup is easy enough, almost like any other wifi service (by the way the AP SSID is Connexion1, and since I only have a 802.11b system, I dont know if it works in 802.11g). You enter your given free login and password, and then key in some personal details (just the name and email address, and forced to read some EULA crap).

Internet onboard is surprisingly fast. I was expecting something like a second more lag since we’re probably going thru some satellite up there, but its faster than any land line ADSL crap they have in Malaysia. Ok, probably only have 20 more mins left so let me surf.

Just left Kuala Lumpur this evening on my way to Paris for a year. Stopping by Singapore for a few days first. The checked in luggage was almost at thelimit. Although the official limit is 20kg per person in this part of the world, the rule of thumb is that if you dont exceed 30kg each you’re safe. The only problem is I have a backpack full of photographic equipment and a trolley with two notebooks (one powerbook for personal use and a Dell for the office) so the hand carry is already at least 20kg!
I’ve created a new category called France, which I hope to document the 1 year in France starting next week… If everything according to plan.

Just got back to asia from the first trip to France. I call this the “fact finding” trip. Mission being: find out my schedule to move to Paris, if ever.
It looks like its going to go ahead. The issues with the human resources are either ironed out or I’m feddup to argue with them over a few euro and a little detail here and there. Generally, this first trip is alright, except I got a little conned by the weather forecast on the internet. Either its my fault for being macho, or the internet. Whatever it was, I packed too little clothing for the French winter. My informal wear consist only of a fleece since I expected the weather to be close to 10C. Office attire is ok, I packed enough to survive an Artic winter. In the second week it was normal for the temperature to be anywhere between 0C and 5C during the daytime.

Will be going back to Paris again one last time Mid March to look for an apartment. That’s in about 2 weeks. Right after that I have another 2 weeks to sort out the transportation and selling my car before moving over to PAris for a full year (that’s what the contract says).

By the way, haven’t signed the contract yet. but that should be no problem.

There’s something jinxed about me. Tried to take some pictures at the Tour de Langkawi Stage 10 in Kuala Lumpur today, and it rained. Rather heavily actually, I’m sure if I had my D70 again at that time it would not survived. Luckily I was using an F4s.
The first roll of film went very fast. Had it on Continuous high, and I think its something like 5-6FPS, so you can finish a whole roll in 6 seconds. Had to use it becuase it was getting dark already and even with ISO400 film in the camera I was getting barely handholdable shots with f2.8. The rest of the second roll of Provia was shot on ISO100 and the shutter speed was barely 1/8 sec so had to do some pan-shoot style.

Will send in the negatives for development tomorrow, lets see if I’m lucky. How I miss changeable ISO on a digital SLR!!!

Today is the 4th day of the chinese new year. and this year we’re doing it in KL, and its as dead as Paris is in summer. No cars, no shops open… just like a dead city. This week is a long week of holidays here in KL. Just found out that tomorrow is still a holiday, (thursday) and I was already planning to make it back to work!
I’ve been waiting too long already to buy a replacement for my dead ipod g2… a video ipod could be next. NOt too sure… got some questions on what kinda video it can play. In a way, the flash nano is quite interesting, but sometimes I go on without a PC connection for months, so wouldn’t want to repeat the same bunch of 2gb or 4gb songs list…

The holiday season in Malaysia is starting this weekend. First with chinese new year, then followed by some muslim holiday and finally on wednesday a holiday that applies to just a few cities. What matters here is that there will be no work here (or so I hope), and tomorrow (Saturday) is another cycling day!!!! yahoo!!!
Will be staying in KL this weekend. The whole family is going to be here.

Flying off to Manila again this Monday (tomorrow). WIll be going there using Malaysia airlines, direct flight from KUL to MNL. Ordered low fat meal. NOt that I’m a health freak but when you order special meals they have it specially for you on the flight. You see 99% of people are going to have chicken or beef and you’re going to have…. sometimes cod fish… ok, it looks like cod, and its definitely better than chicken or beef anytime of the week!
Will pack along my running shoes and Polar HRM equipment. Although its going to be work, wont let it take running time away from me.

The new year came and went, and my Windows PC started acting strangely. 90% of the startups end up with a crashed Windows explorer. Most of the time it will restart explorer and it was ok, but once in a while DrWatson would crash as well, and you’re really dead and requires a hard restart.
While I was toying with the idea of reformatting the HDD and losing all settings, I thought I should try and look for the offending virus/trojan whatever….

After going thru about 30 of the new year stuff, its beginning to be boring.
Anyways, on new years day I’ll be driving from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and can’t wait to jump on my F1X for a ride around the neighbourhood!!!

BEen a long time since I accessed this page. Lazy, not busy. During all these time, I’ve bought a Felt F1X cyclocross bicycle and fitted it with a wireless Polar Speed Sensor, with the Cadence sensor to come next. All linked to the Polar S625X HRM.
Tempted to get a new camera as well (Nikon’s D200 looks nice) but I think I can stretch my Nikon F4s + FM2n combi for at least a few more years. They still feel nice and 5400dpi scans of Provias are just amazing… nothing feels better than looking at a well exposed Provia.

Other than that, nothing interesting is happening. Working on a move to somewhere in Europe, but not really finalized yet.
Continue reading “Dec 2005 Update…”