Update

So, now it's been two months since my last post, but at least I'm still keeping this blog alive! So what happened since last time? Well, that project I was hoping for didn't happen as quickly as I'd hoped. Besides that, the whole project scope changed and is now very similar to my original suggestion. I'm going to make an algebra game, most probably in Flash, that is aimed at students who are just about to get introduced to it(algebra). I'm really looking forward to do this project as I've been thinking about this since long before I got it! I'm now in my fifth week and almost done with the theoretical preparation. Next week, it'll start "for real" with designing paper mock-ups and trying to find schools that are willing to let me in for the field research and evaluations!

What else? Well, before starting the project, I took one last vacation and spent a week on Bali!! Kuta beach was awesome and I also managed to do something I didn't find time to do neither in Sydney nor Florianopolis: Surf!! So how did it go? well... not so well... I mananaged to finally predict the waves good enough to catch some, but trying to stand on the board without proper instructions beforehand was not at all easy! At least it was a progress from my first and only time before when I couldn't even get to the waves... We also rented some scooters to travel around the southern part of the island and went visiting Hindu temples. One of them was Uluwatu, situated at a cliff with breathtaking views of the ocean and the big waves hitting the cliffs!



Surfing, anyone?

We also went up Mont Batur, a still active volcano! Starting off at 2 am, we got to the top just in time for sunrise. The view? Of course it was spectacular!! My camera isn't the best, but here's an idea of how it was:


Sunrise at Mont Batur



And... of course, no travel without jump pictures!

"Could you please drive fast? I have an appointment in Serdang in 30 minutes"...

That was what I told the taxi driver and it seemed like it triggered his inner F1-dreams! It's taken me a whole day to settle down and now that I'm able to write about it, I just want to say hello to my whole family and all my friends and tell you all how much I care about you and love you! One might never know if life will end in the passenger seat of a taxi...

Maybe I should take it from the beginning? I had just bought some furniture for my room the day before, so I went to the store to buy smaller things like clothes hangers and stuff when I got a phone call saying that the company I've applied to do my master thesis at wanted to have an interview at 4! At that time it was 2.45, so I rushed home and got myself ready by 3.30 pm. And let me explain this to you: traffic in KL is always horrific! And by train, it would've take me about 1 hour to get there from KL Sentral, which means about 2 hours total with public transport. Now, the formula for making it in 30 minutes is as follows:

1) Stop a cab on the street.
2) Say the phrase that's in the title
3) Close your eyes and keep praying until you arrive!
4) The fare will be 19 RM, but pay him 25 for taking you there in 13(!!!!!) minutes but mostly out of gratitute for sparing your life!

These are the details that I still remember about the trip:

- When the three lanes are completely jammed, the driver found a fourth lane that alternates between being the left- most and the right- most lane.

-Driving 3 times faster than the car in front of you and sniff their rear end in 120 km/h (while the car in front is doing the legal 40-50km/h) and make your own lane when getting close to crashing into the car in front.

- Never staying in the same lane for longer than 4 seconds.

- Driving against red light while in that magical 4th (and sometimes 5th) lane.

- Squeezing in between two trucks in 120 km/h and having less than half a meter to both the truck in front and at the back while going from right-most to left-most lane (while the trucks are in the middle lane...).

I'm telling you: Michael Schumacher doesn't stand a chance in city racing against local taxi drivers! Definately not since he didn't even manage to finish 10 laps on the Sepang circuit...

Ok, my pulse just went up to unhealthy levels again just thinking back to the whole episode! The good news though is that the discussion went very well and that it looks like something could be agreed upon. I will know more at the end of this week!

With all that in one day, I'm prepared to call it a week already! Have a nice weekend everybody (i.e. the four of you who still read this blog)!

Edit: I checked the distance on google maps: Just below 23 km. You do the math...

I'm back!

Wow, has it really been three weeks since the last post? Then that would mean I've been here for over 5 weeks now!! Time really flies around here! Anyway, I figure I'd try to keep my blog alive a lot longer than last time, so here's some updates.

First things first: I got myself a Nintendo Wii about two weeks ago! It might be a coincidence, but I can't really remember if I've done anything useful since... I didn't get a very good console though as the cd reader broke down almost instantly and now it's been on repair for a week and a half... To bad since it was my only source of "exercise" thus far!

When it comes to everything else, well, the painting of my room is done! I wanted to put in some more power outlets in my room since I only have one socket so I got myself an extension cord and a 6-outlet socket. I also bought a pair of cutters for about 65 cents and I remember thinking to myself that tools are pretty cheap here. Of course, there's a reason for it; Once I tried to cut through the cord, the cutter broke into three pieces! There weren't any other bigger (or better for that matter) cutters in the DIY store, so now I've put that project on hold, which means that I'm also putting a hold on buying all the furnitures since they'd just be in the way when I'm still fixing all the other stuff... Kind of explains why everything is moving so slowly, right?

So, what to do? Well I found myself another project hunting down all the leaking taps and pipes in the house and replaced some parts. At least there's no more dripping around the house!! Yeah, I know, I have to much spare time...

Anyway, I've also started hunting for potential companies to do my master thesis project, so I won't have so much time anymore to do a ton of maintenance stuff. Just going to focus on my room now and hope to get it all done. I've contacted one company and now I'm crossing my fingers that it'll work out in a couple of days. Otherwise it'll be back to square one.

What else? Oh, yeah, I STILL haven't used the swimming pool that I can see from my apartment entrance.

Oh, something else as well. One reason I haven't written anything is that the Internet connection got REALLY slow when going on international sites. It got so slow I couldn't even read my emails! That's a huge issue for me since I need to get in contact with my uni at home and also for sending out emails to companies. I'ts improved somewhat but there's just no guarantees around here. After all, surfing to Malaysian sites works fine! Why do you need to go elsewhere, right? No, I'm not bitter...

Ok, there's always both good and bad things everywhere, so I'm finishing of with some good things: Things are cheap! And now I mean it in a good way! I got my hair cut for 4 Euros at a proper beauty salon or whatever it's called. And, I also ate my first double Big Mac at McD. Yes, that's right, that's 4(!) hamburgers squeezed into one bun! That's a lot of beef for your money! All for less than 2 EUR :)

Ok, so until next time, I've hopefully finished my room, gotten a project and gotten my Wii back. Cross your fingers or hold your thumbs or whatever you do for good luck wherever you are! Now it's time to prepare for the second leg of Barca - Inter!

Getting some live F1 experience

So, the last two days have been all about the F1 race at Sepang! I've never been to a F1 circuit race before and I'm not a huge motorsport fan but, as F1 is the biggest stage, I do keep track of the standings and current results. Besides, seeing things live usually adds a lot more to the experience than merely watching it on TV.

The Sepang International Circuit, SIC!

The biggest thing I guess was that the 7-time world champion and arguably one of the best of all times, Michael Schumacher, was driving for the "home team" of Mercedes whose biggest sponsor is the Malaysian oil company Petronas. (Was that just one sentence? Yeah, I think it was...)
Schumacher's first car!

Anyway, saturday saw a lot of heavy rains and I also arrived pretty late at the tracks. As the qualification rounds started at 16 and I arrived close to 17, I was worried that I'd miss the party! Luckily for me (but probably not as luckily for the drivers), the daily "shower" (Actually it's more like someone throwing a bucket of water at you, just that they keep on doing that for at least 30 minutes!) had the qualification postponed, so I did get some F1 action that day. The problem was that since I arrived so late, they'd stopped selling ear plugs and I hadn't brought any of course... Since the stands were made of concrete and the team depots were inside this huge building, the sound of the engines echoed pretty loudly! First time the sound hit me, I felt like I was run over! It might've just as well been a jumbo jet taking off! And the vibrations could be felt through the shaking camera that was in my hand! That DEFINATELY doesn't go through the TV screens! Let's just say I didn't take my fingers out of my ears just to get a good picture for you guys... Still, even after I'd left, my ears were still in chock as they ached quite a bit even though there was no ringing in the ears... I guess the only word I can come up with to describe the experience was that is was MASSIVE!

Sunday was the big racing day and I thought I'd go out to the tracks early to beat the horrendous traffic jams. I also planned to buy ear plugs this time... Unfortuantely everywhere I went, they had sold out the ear plugs and they just looked at me with an apologetic look and said "It's F1 now, you know?" and shrugged their shoulders. My immediate thought was "Then why not order a lot more and make some money??", but I didn't say it out loud and I guess I was just a bit irritated after managing to find 6 different pharmacies without any luck of finding ear plugs. I confess to my mistake!
I did manage to get a shot of the chaos 35sec before the start of the final warm up lap!

It proved though that I didn't beat the traffic jam as it took FOREVER to get there (which is like 2,5 hours at a distance that took about 10 min the day before). Luckily they sold ear plugs before boarding the bus and I finally got myself a couple of horrendously overpriced ones(They cost 5 RM ~ 11 SEK ~ 1 EUR!)! Well at the tracks I managed to get to my seating area about 5 mins before the race started. Perfect timing! And with the ear plugs on, I could actually take pictures as well!! The only problem with the race was that they passed by so quickly that it was hard to follow who's who. I could see that the two cars from the Red Bull- team was first, but I missed that Vettel beat Webber at the start as my seat was on the other side of the track... Maybe a big TV screen would've helped...


Starting the last warm up lap

I also got to see Schumacher forfeit the race and being taken back to the depot on a motorcycle while waving his hands to the crowd. It looked hilarious! Also the cheering when the last placed car went by was unexpectedly funny as well :)
Yes, that IS Schumacher at the back of the motorcycle!

All in all, it was definately a great experience and I'm very thankful to uncle Ismail for giving me tickets to the event. I promise to never ever forget his name (even in the confusion of boarding a bus) again!! Despite the massive traffic, I thought the whole thing was very well organised as there were never any doubts about where to go for transportation or where to line up and besides the traffic jams, there acutally weren't any queues anywhere. I guess "Malaysia Boleh!"*
Yasir Boleh!

* "Malaysia Boleh" is the slogan that's been used widely across the country whenever things go well for the country or when they reach certain achievements. It translates into "Malaysia Can!" and private unofficial sources (that I cannot reveal) say that Barack Obama may have found this slogan on the Internet and decided to make it his campaign motto! ;)

My first Malaysian birthday

Yesterdays birthday turned out to be better than expected. I'm not much for celebrating my birthday really and as I've barely just arrived, I thought the day would just go by unnoticed. My cousin managed to find out about my birthday though and planned to go out for a dinner so we went to the Pavillion in Bukit Bintang along with some of her friends. On the way there, I got some suprise calls from people wanting to congratulate me on my birthday. Very unexpected as very few have gotten my Malaysian number! In the confusion of boarding the bus and not recognising the number, my mind went blank and I totally forgot the names of the callers! Somewhat embarassing... Or actually very embarassing, so I just want to apologize to Auntie Maya for the total blackout. If you're reading this, I'll come over with a brand new refrigerator magnet for your collection as compensation! :P

The restaurant we went to was a funny place as the interior was a mix of Arabic and South American and the food was mostly Mexican and western. Only the waiters reminded of Malaysia. The food was REALLY good though, so it was definately nice! Not to mention the chocolate milk shake! Awesome! As for the finale, they had bought birthday cup cakes that was supposedly the best in town (at least according to some...) and could only be bought at the Pavillion (hence the choice of place I guess...). I have to admit they were really good cup cakes though! I had two and it made me stay up all night! I guess it was made of 90% sugar or something...

It was good though as I found out when I got home that our Internet connection was fast enough to stream the football games from the Champions League. I guess having 100Mbit/sec in Sweden makes you a bit spoiled. Just becuase streams on youtube doesn't stream instantly, I just assumed that it would not be up to streaming a game live. I was happy to be wrong though as the Arsenal - Barcelona games was well worth to stay up for! Definately a great game if you like watching football! So.. a nice game to round out a great night made my first birthday in Malaysia a very nice one!



Abe, my Malaysian nickname


A Birthday Happy to me!


The gang


Oh, btw... this will soon turn into a home improvement blog as I seem to never get finished with my room. I think the house was built like 15 years ago and it shows... The paint has started to loosen from the walls, so now I need to go buy some putty to fill in the holes... I wouldn't be surprised to find a birds nest hiding behind the wall eventually either....

Colour chosen!

So, the big decision has been made! I'm going with the darker, more greenish, color that is to the left in the picture. Somehow, the color feels somewhat typical Malaysian, don't you agree?



I have to return the blue paint tomorrow at noon which is about 11 hours away, so unless anyone will start protesting loudly I'll switch back to the "cove blue" or whatever the color is called...

The room only has one window, which is located under some kind of pillar, so there's not much light sipping in during the days. With dark walls and probably dark furniture as well, I guess the room lighting will need to be good...

Or... I could just go back to how the room looked like before:



And if anything else fails ,I could always go for this winning look:

Time to get settled!

It's been basically 5 days since I've arrived and so far, I haven't done much to settle myself in my apartment. I still have all my clothes in my suitcases since I don't have a wardrobe to put my clothes in. I still haven't been to that swimming pool with crisp blue water that I can see from my balcony 9 floors down.I also haven't been to the gym at the condo yet, so still don't know if it's good enough. Lastly, I haven't started fixing my room yet, so it's still unfurnished.

At least I've done something today to cope with the last issue. Today, I went to buy paint! Yes! It was a huge step to locate the nearest paint store to finally get the ball rolling! So, I went to the store and managed to strike a deal with the salesman. Since they don't have sample colours to hand out, I'd get one of the 1l tins in one color and try it on a piece of my wall. Tomorrow, I'm going to return it for another color until I've tried them both. After that, I'll buy a bigger tin with the wanted color! It sounded good when the deal was made, but we'll see tomorrow if it really worked!
The colors are two different shades of blue with one being a bit greenish as well. I'll post the results of both and maybe you guys can vote for the best one?

Ok, besides the settling, I've been to a birthday party at a cousins place and watched a movie at the cinema with another cousin and her friend. That's also a part of settling in, right? The party was in Cheras, which is about 45 minutes by car from my place. I still haven't gotten used to the taxi prices here as I was sursprised to only pay 25 RM for the trip (about 5 EUR...). I met a cousin there I haven't seen since I was, like, 10-12? It was really cool to start of my stay with a fun birthday!

The name of the movie? Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson after the book with the same name. It was about a girl that saw how the life of her family continued after she got murdered by a pedofile. Not exactly the happiest movie I've seen and it doesn't do on a big cinema screen. Still, I'd give it a 3.5/5.