Morning Walk Part 2

Halfway down the street, I took a right turn at Love Street, seeing the many colourful hotels and hostels there. A backpacker's paradise, and more snaps. Next was Lebuh Muntri. A misspelling of the Malay word Menteri, it used to host dignitaries from out of town. Many old building still stood, some being turned into museums and some into guest houses. A few nice modern cafes as well had mushroomed up, balancing the old and the new.

There were street markets and vendor but at that time, the number of cars were already building up. I wished that the whole place was turned into a car-free zone ....

I also noticed that there were plenty of bicycles and moppet for hire available at the area. Expensive and they mainly targeted the tourists. If you knew the route, you could cover the town centre and experience the charm in double quick time.

After I was done with Lebuh Muntri, another turn took me back to my hotel within 10 minutes. Which was just as well since the boys were already up and they were ready for their breakfast. I stayed back to have a shower before joining them.

The walk lasted almost a couple of hours, and my GPS recorded the distance I covered to be just below 5 kilometres. A nice morning work-out. And an enjoyable one as well. And the photos? I just uploaded 210 snaps onto Flickr just then. Not bad .....

More stories from this trip here.

Morning Walk Part 1

It was too early for the boys, and Anita was still asleep. A quick peek out the window and as predicted by the weatherman, the morning would be overcast. No chance of setting up the GoPro for the sunrise capture.

So, I bide my time and once the morning broke, I took my camera gear out and headed towards Lebuh Armenian. Nice breeze, although a blue sky would have been great. Due to the cloud cover, I decided to go telephoto. I attached the 56mm on the X-T1, switched on my GPS and started walking.

I walked from the hotel towards Penang Road via Lebuh Leith, reaching the intersection with Lebuh Chulia. Walked further down taking a left along Lebuh Kimberley, later turning north at Lebuh Carnavon to join Armenian Street.

There was plenty to concentrate on on this walk. With the lens, I mainly did close-up of the windows and building facade. Colourful, gorgeous architecture, a mix of the later 19th Century Chinese influence and a later Art Deco styling. Eclectic mix to be quite honest, wishing that I was better versed in the arts.

It was still early in the day and being Saturday, there was hardly many cars. Plenty of tourists though with their cameras on tow. Some of them already settled for breakfast at the cafe alongside the streets, outnumbering the locals.

At the end of Armenian Street I took a left turn up Lebuh Pantai and another left at Lebuh Ah Quee. Plenty more subjects and mural here.

More stories from this trip here.

Sunday Afternoon

After a hectic week, Sunday could not come much sooner, and surprisingly, I had some time to enjoy for myself. I had been a chauffeur for Anita earlier in the day, driving her for her college meet-up in Cheras. Had lunch there after doing my ward round, and by 3pm, things were already sorted for the day.

So, Anita and I went to Bukit Bintang, and more specifically Pavilion.

There were a couple of arts event happening in KL last weekend. One was at KLPAC, The Inaugural Sime Darby Arts Festival. I wanted to go there but the combination of bad weather and bad timing just made that trip difficult. So, I went to the alternative - KakiSeni Arts Festival held at Pavilion. The Kakiseni event ran until Malaysia Day, so I could've catch up with that later in the week. Shame that the KLPAC event only lasted the weekend. That actually looked much more interesting to be quite honest.

But, able to go to one was better than nothing. I couldn't hang around for too long though as my in-laws would be out for dinner and somebody needed to stay home with the boys. I preferred an early night as well since United was playing later that night and I would be on call the next day.

So, I managed to catch a couple of performance. The problem was space at Pavilion was a premium. Getting one spot to another could be a pain since Pavilion was essentially a shopping mall. The outside terraces got crowded very quickly once an event start.

Hopefully there would be similar events organised for next year. And hopefully it was on separate weekends ....

The Afternoon Walk

After doing my duty - of chauffeuring Puan Anita to meet her friends in town - I had some free time to spend with my camera. With the gorgeous weather and all, I thought I'd go to Pavilion. I get to do some street photography, and also to had a quick walk around Low Yat.

Not much to see as next week would be a big one in tech world. Motorola and Sony had made their announcements of new product earlier in the week. Next week would be Apple's turn, the rumoured iPhone 6, and maybe some wearable products. A much anticipated announcement since the original iPad.

What did I notice? The street vendors were peddling selfie sticks everywhere! Something expected I supposed. Kakiseni would be holding their street art exhibit next weekend, so around Pavilion, there was not much going on. Off to Low Yat then ....

Surface Pro 3 was finally released, but according to the vendors, the sales were pretty slow. It was either due to the price or buyers were waiting for the Apple announcement next week. Either way, it was not shifting. Neat product though, and as I mentioned, I would have snapped it if it was available with LTE option. But since it was carrying an Intel rather than Tegra chip, the chance for that would be pretty small. The vendor suggested using a dongle. But that would just reduce its portability. Once you've used an LTE tablet, there was no turning back.

The Merdeka spirit was still palpableI suspected that this had something to do with the lantern festivalThere was not much alternative when it comes to laptop with built-in LTE chip.

I wonder what it would be like a month from now, after we got the announcements out of the way ....

The Track

I had still to use my Fenix 2 for fitness. With the combination of busy days and hazy weather, I had yet to take the watch out for a spin.

Maybe I would be using it a lot more when I walk in Penang. With my camera of course. Hopefully the weather there would be nice ....

So, once the watch record the walk, the data would be uploaded into the cloud and could later be shared using a GPX file format. That way, you could open it in Google Earth, or in this case, an app called ConnectStat. You can then track your activity at the click of a button.