d7

In the past years, I have always been fascinated by the YTL initiatives timer brand Sentul. It used to be a predominantly Indian community as the railway workshops and hangers used to be stationed there. In the years gone by, the community there thrived but their sense of identity had been lost since the railway terminals no longer operate there.

To a certain extend, the area was under developed until YTL came into the picture rebranding the area and developing it into an urban commercial hub. That had been going on for the last decade and it had been slow to take off.

Slowly but surely, there had been new buildings sprouting up from this area, which were architecturally spectacular. And d7 was definitely one of them.

I had been a consultant for a company based at d7 since the beginning of the year and I often go there for meetings and what not. And today, I brought my camera along to snap pictures as the building was certainly unique. Sadly, the occupancy was rather low due to combination of location and undoubtably cost. Those who could afford to set up shop there would definitely appreciate how aesthetically pleasing the building is.

The tenants there were trendy, mainly architecture and design firms. My favourite shop there was definitely Smeg. I've been admiring their fridges for a while now. Shame that they had to cost a bomb. There were a few art galleries as well, which I have yet had the time to explore.

Security was tight. To get into the offices, you would need to carry a key card - which luckily I had - or register at the security desk. A pain to be perfectly honest. Luckily parking was free - covered slots at the basement.

Maybe in the future I would venture at the surrounding area as well. A photo walk maybe.

GST

The topic on everybody's mind at the hospital lately had been GST. Or Goods and Services Tax. Akin to the VAT in the UK. Will we as Doctors be affected by this new ruling?

The management got the Consultants from Ernest and Young in to brief is on the impact it would have on us. It appeared that we would be exempted. It may sound good initially but that carried some major draw back. It seemed that we would not be able to charge our customers GST for services but we were subjected to GST for rentals and equipment. Not exactly fair wasn't it.

The ruling had yet to be tested, and there would be uncertainty at the beginning. Some teething problems. Praying that in the end things would work out for the better.

Monday Morning Walk

On Monday morning after my post call round, I drove into town to settle some bills. Usually I have clinic at Park City on Monday morning. This was canceled because of Sunday's call. After the bills were settled, I decided to drive into the City Center to see how things were on Monday morning. I ended up having lunch at Pavilion since I could settle my phone bills there.

I had lunch and walked around to a nearby UOB branch to settle my credit card payment for the month. And all this without needing to rush. Amazing how slow-paced late Monday mornings can be. Would definitely venture again the next time my clinic got canceled in Park City. Or I should cancel it at least once a month...

I certainly wouldn't mind doing it again...

Low Key

I haven't been updating the blog lately due to the combination of work and being under the weather. I was hit by a virus while doing my call on Sunday and to be honest, my muscles were aching so badly yesterday morning, I could hardly walk during my ward round.

I had to put myself on antibiotics, and took regular painkiller. My temperature shot up to 40C yesterday after work which got Puan Anita worried. I decided to have an early night but was woken up by a phone call at 3 in the morning. Couldn't sleep properly after that I was afraid.

At least, the muscle ache was more bearable this morning. Drove to work early and quickly settled in for my morning rounds. Then it was Park City and a meeting in town during lunch.

Afternoon clinic back in Subang came next before a quick evening round. I was supposed to attend a meeting at 6, but I don't think I could've survived that. I decided to head home for another early night.

I went straight for dinner, wrote some letters and other paperwork before settling into bed. Irfan was already fast asleep next to me while Idlan was finishing his homework at the sitting room.

I will be on call tomorrow, expecting another long day before settling in for the Aidil Adha weekend. Time to sleep then....

Smitten

I managed to take the GR for a quick spin after work yesterday. Mind you I was on call. So, it was a quick escape while having dinner essentially.

Even on a 15 minutes spin, I could already see the potential. After my evening round, I went back to the apartment and downloaded the snaps onto my deskstop. I couldn't remember how many times I shook my head looking at the quality of the photos coming off the sensor.

There were a few observations though.

1) The camera tended to under expose. I disliked up the compensation by a third of a stop to get better exposure.

2) The on camera crop worked a treat. I programmed one of the function buttons to cycle through the standard 28mm, 35mm and 47mm zoom equivalent. A clever idea by Ricoh to build that feature in.

3) The jpeg capture was almost as good as the RAW provided that the underexposure was not too severe and could be corrected in post.

4) The black and white "filter" on camera was quite useful. I changed the setting to include some vignetting for better effect. It looked good.

On the whole, I still personally felt that snaps coming from my Fuji bodies were more pleasing colour wise. They also tended to get the white balance and skin tone more natural. The Ricoh may been some tweaking.

I was sure that there would be more snaps from this little gem in the coming fee days. Might take a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon to do a proper walk around Bukit Bintang may be.