Air Asia it was

I have to confess that the recent day hop to Kota Bharu was my first on Air Asia. I have been hearing mixed experience from those who have been on one before. Air Asia was efficient, straight to the point and basically you pay for what you get.

I was not sure how to categorise my recent experience. On the whole, it was not bad. However, flying off from the LCCT have one drawback however. Traveling to the terminal from KL was a pain as I usually take the KLIA Express from Sentral. There were bus service from Sentral but being buses, I can't assume that it would be as efficient as the 27 minutes travel time you get from the train service. You would also enjoy the convenience of being able to check in your luggages from the Sentral Air Terminal. And since I was able to travel on Business often, there were no such service on Air Asia - disclaimer, I do not pay for my travels usually. Cost was never an issue. The reason for taking Air Asia on that occasion was the timing of the flights. But due to the hold-up which I would mention later, I could have used MAS instead and still reach my house at about the and time.

I decided to drive to LCCT rather than call for a cab and parked at e public space just in front of the terminal. I was only charged RM 27 fees for parking from 7am to 6pm. Open car park though, so your car would bee losers to the elements. The roofed space was located a furthers walk back and I was on a rush then. The terminal would also take you an extra 20 minutes travel from the KLIA main terminal - I almost missed my flight that morning since it took longer than I expected to get to the LCCT.

Landed in the rain, and finally allowed out of the cabin after 30 minutesThe second issue was the fact that we could not disembark or board in heavy rain. According to the crew, opening the cabin door was the main problem as the rain will get into the cabin and make the floors wet. Practical excuse I thought. It would cost the airline tons of money to leave the jet idle on the tarmac, so I was sure they were not making it up.

So the bottom line, would I take Air Asia for traveling with my precious brats? Definitely no. They would go berserk at the terminal. But traveling on short hops like I did last time, I would definitely do it again but if the schedule was tight and I couldn't afford a delay, then definitely I would have prefer MAS.

Waiting game

I have just landed at LCCT at KLIA following a day trip marking papers at Kota Bharu. I started off very early as I drove there and parked the car at the airport. The journey was fine, but upon landing, we were greeted with a heavy downpour and had to stay in the cabin until things settle down. We have been on the ground for a good 20 minutes now. To make things worst, the air conditioning system started fogging up the cabin, not to mention the amount of money AirAsia would have lost with the airline lying idle on the runway.

That was probably one of the major drawback with LCCT, as there were no terminal connecting the cabin and the main building. The other was the fact that it took liger to reach the place compared to KLIA proper if you plan to drive there. It took me a good 20 minutes from KLIA to get here this morning, worrying about missing the flight. Finally, upon arriving, I just parked my car at the main carpark, not having the chance to find an alternative one. Maybe in the future, given the choice for a business trip, I might just prefer MAS instead - if I was not paying for the flight o course.

Satay at Kajang

Since we went to Kajang yesterday to visit my sister - she has since moved to Kajang a few months back upon her husband taking up a job at a private Medical Center there - it was customary to have some satay. She promised me the best meal in town, and it was quite near my brother-in-law's hospital. A small little shop ran by a middle-aged couple.

The main specialty of the shop was satay made from the intestines - we called it perut. It was cut thin and had the fat all trimmed off. Unfortunately, it was not very nice and according to my sister, it may have been because of the marinate. It certainly was rather bland, a dash of salt could have done wonder. The peanut sauce however was very nice, and it came with some sambal for extra kick.

To be honest I was expecting something since Kajang was famous for its satay. Maybe, I should give my sister and the shop the benefit of the doubt and give it another try.

HD it was

We just got the Astro Byond set box installed yesterday morning. As I was on call yesterday, I did not really have the chance to play around with it until earlier today. I tried the recording system, rather fiddly at the beginning but soon after got used to it. And the quality of the HD pictures through my LCD TV was really impressive. The movies looked great and the Discovery Channel documentaries looked amazing.

And then came the real test. Watching the football matches on HD. Did it live up to what Fernando Torres been trying to tell us? Well, it sure did. You can reality see the drip of sweat on the players faces on close-ups. Much betters than I was expecting.

As with a typical ManYoo games, I went through my rituals. Picked up an order of Tandoori from NZ, got into my Veron shirt and sat in front of the TV. Within the first 20 minutes, United were down by a couple of West Ham's penalties. What have I done wrong? A mini disaster! Was it the TV? What it because I was watching on HD?

I persevered. Rooney came to the rescue by bagging a hattrick, saving our season quite literally. After watching a match with such clarity of HD, it would be difficult to turn back.

Dreading the calls

The Final MBBS was finally over. At least I can now say that I was involves without being told off. However the results won't be known until Tuesday morning.

I was involved yesterday afternoon, and I was so proud that the performance of the students during that session was better than I expected. In fact it was amongst the beat session I had in years.

The afternoon session however was very trying as it only finished near 7 pm. I got some food, then it was time to do my evening ward round. That was when my mood changed. There were clearly too many patients for the system to cope without making short cuts. Some patient were down in the Emergency Department from the day before as we were not able to clear the beds out in the wards for them quickly enough. Coupled that with the notion that our Casualty was the beat in the country maybe as there were a couple of patients in the hour I was doing the rounds whose family actually discharged the patients from another hospital and got them admitted here even though a perfectly reasonable treatment could have been offered at the initial centre. The sad thing was, the patient came as far away as JB. I thought that was really out of order. Yes, it was a government hospital. But it was a government hospital for PJ. It was not our fault that there were no government hospitals in Subang, Shah Alam, Damansara and Puchong. But I was sure that the system was not designed to cope with family taking their relatives from out of town to fill in our quota!

I felt that I should have been more strict, or allowed to be strict, and insist on catering on the local residents. Those from outside should only be entertained if the we agree to take the patients on upon consultation from the referring units. We just did not have the financial, logistical and staffing means to cope with such unreasonable demand.

Enough rubbing for today as on the whole Saturday have been kind to me. It was time to spend with the family, and I will blog about that in the later entries.