Lat at KLCC

Lat at KLCC, originally uploaded by Haris Abdul Rahman. Taken on my Nokia E71 mobile.

It has been a long week for me personally, with Anita's birthday, on calls, work and all. Unfortunately, I still have to do the rounds tomorrow morning. I thought, I'd better get it over and done with and look forward for my Hari Raya break. I will be off work from next Wednesday. We will be traveling to Penang on the second day of Raya and will be staying there for three nights.

Since the children has been asleep during the day, we decided to eat out tonight. We went to KLCC to do some shopping as well. The central foyer this year was very well decorated I thought. There is a model of Malay kampung with caricatures from the Malaysian famous cartoonist, Dato' Lat. Malaysia is not really liberal in the sense that, nobody really dare to make fun of the politicians without the fear of getting a knock on the door from the powers that be

Lat however is somebody unique. He lampoons Dr Mahathir on a regular basis and gets away with it. Why? Because you can tell the innocence and the truth of his thoughts in his drawings. They are often funny, but at the same time hits home. When I was growing up, my Dad has collection of his comic in our living room and I often browse through hem I guess I learned much about Malaysian politics through his work, something that the current crop of young leaders could do with as well. If you have the time, be sure to give a Suria KLCC a visit. It will be worth your time should you be able to tolerate the crowd. By the way, I didn't see that many people wearing masks there tonight either.

KLicker photoshoot

090708 KLickr Meetup 7 - Let's go!, originally uploaded by Haris Abdul Rahman.

For my birthday tomorrow, I have decided to take an early weekend. I am off both today and tomorrow but spent the whole day sorting out things for my maid. She is flying home tomorrow for a 10-day break. I went to the Indonesian embassy this afternoon since I was told that there are special forms needed to be filled and I needed to get her passport chopped. Otherwise she will need to pay a levy on returning to Malaysia later.

I arrived there around 12.45 since I was busy with both Idlan and Irfan going to school in the morning. When we arrived, I was told that the office is closed for lunch and will only be opened after 2 pm. Then I will need to queue to pick up a form and take a number before meeting the officer. The line then was already 150 people long. I decided that I would rather pay the levy instead. I also did not have a spare N95 mask on me. Catching TB is not nice from what I've seen in hospital .... hehehe. The queue was full of migrant workers.

Since I'm off today, I said yes to the invite to join the KLickrs (KL flickr) for a photoshoot on top of one of my friend's condo in Bukit Bintang. It overlooks the twin tower and KL tower. We first met up for dinner, and started filing up the stairs by 9. We took the lift to the 33rd floor, then climbed a few flights of stairs to the rooftop at 37th. Weather was pretty clear. We brought with us the lighting equipments for the shoot.

View at the rooftopJav doing the rigging for the strobesWhen we were about to unload our gear, the security guard came up. Apparently, our mate that is a resident there did not ask for permission to climb up the roof. For security reasons, they did not want us there. Luckily, he is English and you know how Malaysians treat 'Mat Salleh'. The can get away scott-free even if they murder somebody, let alone climb up to the roof. We offered to take their pictures ... hehehe! Anyway, he gave us 5 minutes, and the 5 minute stretched from 9.30 to just after 10.

Shafina starting the solo photoshootWe got our group shot, and then we went down to street level for our individual pix. We wrapped just before 11. Organising pictures in group is not easy, but luckily there were a few pros in the group. I left the setting up to them, and I just took my LX3 along rather than my EOS. The shoot is for next month's Junk magazine. For some reason they wanted to feature the KLickr group. So, we'll wait and watch.

Yes! We went up this building for the shoot!The end result of the solo shoots. That's me, second row, second from the left. Picture courtesy of Javad Tizmaghz and Prakash Daniel.You can also see Javad's and Prakash's pictures by following the link.