A downer

 

We have been looking around for an MPV for the best part of the year. The momentum took-off again recently and for the last couple of months, Puan Anita have been looking around for a deal. Initially I wanted an Estima but after browsing a few other alternatives, we considered the Mazda and SsangYong. Finally after a visit to a showroom and giving away our preference, one of the local dealer drove to our house an Estima that was just the right colour and spec. It was love at first sight.

The loan was sorted out. The car - being a reconditioned model, was being done nicely. All the paperwork as far as the authorities were concerned were completed, including a couple of afternoon trips to the back to sign documents. We were due to receive the delivery this afternoon in time for the long Deepavali weekend. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of letting one of our family friend handled the insurance policy. My God, he was fussy. I suspected that he was not happy that we looked for the car ourselves. We thought we involved him for the insurance as a courtesy as the dealer - who have been consistently excellent - have got a policy ready should we chose so. From the beginning, this family friend of ours have been harassing both my wife and the dealer. Everything came to a head yesterday when he insisted on a GPS tracker being installed. According to him, should the GPS tracker not installed, there will be no insurance.

The answer to that was simple. Either he gets it installed for us on his expense, or we just pick another policy instead. No brainer. He went on to abuse our dealer for not making sure that a GPS tracker was installed from the start, sounding as if it was the dealer’s fault and we were being tricked into buying the car from him in the first place! Sigh! So here we were. No MPV until next week.  Moral of the story, don’t do any business with a family friend if one can help it! And before you even think about it, both the dealer and the insurance guy are Chinese. It was not a race thing. Or so I thought!

Day One

Yes! It was the first day in the office with the brand new MacBook Air. Very impressive. Despite the small size, everything loaded up really fast. Must be due to the solid state drive. Rebooting from power off took less than 30 minutes. From sleep was instantaneous. Battery life was almost 5 hours. Can t really complaint. I just wish that it has a built-in 3G wireless connection, saving me from having to hook up my iPhone along as a tethered modem. First order of business was downloading the printer drivers for use in clinic. I can just hook up via USB and have the document printed rather than emailing myself then open the file up from another terminal.

What I need now is a proper case. I just brought it in an envelope inside my bag. It was that small and portable. I also wished that the keyboard were back lit. I can t type in the dark last night! The lack of DVD drive was also a bit of a nuisance at this beginning as most of the programs I had to install were on discs. I used my MacBook Pro as the course, but the speed of transfer was really slow. What I did was load the content into a portable hard drive and use that instead as a source. That solved that!

Back from Langkawi

I reached KLIA at around 1.30 pm. The flight home was very smooth. Nice weather all the way. Straight onto the ERL and jumped onto a taxi for home. Reaching home, the boys went bananas with the Lego I got them.

After a quick lunch, we decided to visit my Mum at Bukit Antarabangsa she just returned from earlier in the morning. She was there for 4 nights on a shopping trip with her friends. She bought some toys for the boys and clothes for me, and no, the Merapi eruption did not disrupt Bandung. Business as usual over there. Her flight to Bandung was delayed for a good 4 hours, wasting her first day. That's Air Asia for you. I font think I can afford the time to take their flight as I would rather pay extra to be on time.

I was really tired when I finally settled down. Did some reading and here I am still up at midnight. Time to catch some sleep. I will blog specifically about the hotel I stayed later in the week. I also realised that I have been uploading plenty of pics directly from y iPhone 4 to Flickr. Might be a good idea to have some sort of link to have the uploads appearing on the aide bar of the blog. Need to make sure that it will not take too mug of the loading time though. Night night!

The cable car ride

Made it up. And made it down. It was quite the experience. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy and breezy when we got there. Even the platform was wobbling. With its spaced plank, you can look through in between and at times, that can be scary.

I went out with a group after the lectures when I was in Langkawi. I had the choice of either going to the town to shop or to the cable car ride in the north part of the island. I couldn't decide on what to do until late on. It all depended on the weather. It was bright and sunny at the hotel but looking at the horizon it was very clear that it could turn at any moment. Time to make the choice. Cable car it was.

After a 30 minutes bus journey, we reached the place. It was still sunny. Queued for another good half hour before getting onto the cable cars. Luckily we were in a groupi of six, the right size for the ride. We had a couple of photographer in the gondola, so they can't help but to stand at snap pictures. To be perfectly honest, the ride was steeper than I thought. There were a couple of stops. The first, being about three quarters of the way up - not much to see there. It took a good 5 minutes to teach this stage. Just a simple platform. We had to queue up again for the other stop. This second part was not as scary.

The magic was all on the second stop. A hike downhill took me to another platform, but this one arch between a couple of summits, making a great panorama. This was the scene I described in the top paragraph. The parabolic platform stretched for a good 100 meters. I was sure the view would have been amazing if the weather was right. Unfortunately as you can see from the photos, I was surrounded by clouds instead. Great fun if that was what you were looking for.

The journey down was actually nauseating if you compare to the ride up. The hiking from the platform to the station on the top stop was actually quite punishing. I would nit recommend it to elderly visitors or anyone not wearing the right footwear. There were more than a hundred steps to negotiate and the stairs were carved into onto the rockface. The handrails helped of course, but I can imagine it being slippery in the rain.

Would I recommend the ride to everybody? Definitely not for the elderly and those not fit. The cable car ride was scary for young kids I'm sure, and there were not enough warning beforehand to tell the patrons what to expect. Everything seemed to have been taken for granted. The safety aspect and the instructions on what to do during emergency. I expected charts and leaflet, or even video shows about what to expect being shown whole we were queuing. But, if you are a keen photographer like me, I would most definitely go again, but I will pray for the right day to do so.

Colmar Part II

For today, as we arrived just after 1 pm, we headed straight for lunch. There was a the main hotel restaurant which did a buffet spread, which we decided to give a miss. The next choice was a slightly more up-market restaurant which only had set menu for lunch. Nope to that as well. Fret not. There were at least four more cafes which did a la cart dining. We took our lunch at a French-Italian restaurant, and ordered pizza, pasta and salad. The food was surprisingly good, although price was a bit on the expensive side. There were entertainers coming to our table, singing Mamma Mia for Idlan and Irfan. Unfortunately, Irfan freaked out to that!

The singers were singing ...... and Irfan don't want to have anything to do with it ....We spend the next couple of hours exploring the main hotel area. The boys stopped for some games at the play nursery, before running around with the clowns who were on hand to dish them some balloon sword. One was blue and one was green of course, being Obi-Wan and Anakin. After his sword pierced, Idlan asked for a red one and turned into Darth Maul. How appropriate. We then walked around to the swimming pool and fed the swan.

Unfortunately it soon started to drizzle, and stopped by at a boulangerie for coffee. The boys wanted to stay for the night, but we did not bring our clothes with us. Even though I volunteered to drive back to pick them up, with the rain and all, we decided otherwise. The rain also meant that we were not able to visit the botanical and Japanese gardens, or the rabbit farm. A good excuse to return I think. Idlan wanted to ride the pony, and I wanted to try some target practice using a paintball rifle. I can see myself reading a book in the room with the windows open letting the time pass by. I can’t really comment about the rooms or the hotel lodgings at the moment. I will hope to be able to do so one day should we spend an night here. So far, the ambiance and the food has been good

Throughout the afternoon, I can see the place as a popular spot for couples to have their wedding portrait done. We sow at least four groups doing that, despite the overcast weather. There were many enthusiast with their dSLR lugged around as well, myself included. A good chance to take out my new lens for a spin. Yes, the photos were sharp as advertised - all the photos on this entry was from my EOD 7D and the new Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS. The IS definitely helped the indoor pics, and the 7D seemed to be handling the high ISO very well if needed. 

All in all, it was a grand day out. Yes, the food may be expensive and with a big crowd, it may not be as comfortable, but for a quick day out, it was not bad at all. We wished that the weather was better. Even though the drive up was windy at times, it was well worth it. After all, it was only 45 minutes from home. Please click here for more information about the place.