Happy holidays...

Wish you were here....

As usual, my wife seems to have a knack for these sort of thing. This time the gift came in the form a signpost that got in her way as she was parking the car at the local hypermarket - wide open parking spaces ?

Bagan Seafood

First visit, next door to the Sea Lion Fishing Park in Port Klang. Free wifi and credit card accepted. These places has moved with the times. Parking is abundant albeit a bit muddy if its rainy or the tide is really high.

Mushroom with broccoli.

Mantis prawns. Battered, deep fried and lathered with the yummy sauce.

Bagan's take on the ever popular deep fried squid.

Bamboo clams cooked just right. A tad longer and it will be like chewing on a piece of rubber.

Butter prawns.

Black pepper crab. Personally, we should have asked for the chili crab.

Steamed pomfret.

The remains.

The best is yet to come. Appetisers (pickled papayas and peanuts), desserts (watermelon and pineapples), a round each of fruit juice and coffee, rice and all of the above costs us (3 pax eating for 5/6) slightly less than RM150.

Highly recommended.

Keropok Lekor BTB

The tastiest in Kuala Terengganu. Long queue, risky parking but worth it.

Satay (sate ?)Tulang

Grilled skewered bone (with some meat on it). First encounter, quite interesting actually. Nice bbq'esque taste though I prefer my meat and fish boneless. Definitely a novelty. The restaurant itself has an interesting name "Shah Rock Khan", cool take on the famous Hindi actor.

The place is somewhere in Senawang. Interesting.

Canon S90 - Returned

Had a call from a nice lady from Canon Marketing. She asked that the S90 be returned and replaced with a new one. This is to rectify their distribution error as the one sold to me by the shop is meant as a demo unit. Since she asked nicely, I agreed.

Went back to the store I purchased it from this morning. The guy I bought it from was not there. There was a girl instead. From the moment I step in, it was off putting. No greetings or offer to assist instead she just raised her head from behind the counter in a gesture asking me "WHAT YOU WANT ?" (That's how I perceived it anyway). Told her that I am here to exchange the camera as requested by Canon Marketing. No words, she just took the package from me and start to transfer the contents of my box into a new box. I told her to replace the screen protector. Just a grunt and to my annoyance she proceeded to peel the protector off the demo unit and tried to place it on the new camera. Smudging the thing with her fingers.

Perhaps it was because I was beginning to look cross or perhaps because there was another customer walking in. Another grunt and she gave up on the used protector and got a new one from under the counter. "OK, TEST."

That was not what I expected. She made it seems as if it was my fault that they gave me a demo unit which I went out of my way to exchange. I expected a thank you for my time instead got that. If any of you Canon guys are reading this, please advise your resellers on how to treat customers.

That said perhaps it was my mistake for wanting to try a new store instead of going to my regular one.

Powershot S90

A nice little camera capturing samples of the sweet and the ugly.

Bukit Merah Laketown Resort

The place is not bad. Would I go again ? NO.

After all the investment setting up the place, they forgot the strategy for having repeat customers. Everything has to be paid for. Most are not cheap considering what you get in value for your RM. The worst bit for me was the fact that we stayed on premises, yet there were no offers or concessions of any kind for the attractions. At the very least include the cost as a package so customers like me won't feel cheated. Staying on premises means that you are there to enjoy the park, so why is it that I have to pay similar to walk in customers ?

My advice is to stay in Taiping instead. Its not that far and most likely (we do), mealtime calls for a trip to Taiping. There are food courts and restaurants on premises, but it costs more and the food is not great either, be it the taste or the portion.

Fuel...

Not really a scientific evaluation but it does point to the fact that larger capacity cars have longer range than smaller cars with same amount of fuel in the tank. Full tank, 101.o km done and it can go another 680 km at an average of 110 - 140 km/h. Of course, if I were to step on it then it really guzzles it up.

Selamat Hari Raya

Kacang rebus & karipap.

Sitting here in this cold room waiting make me wanton for these little pleasures...

Guess what these guys were up to ?

Midnight. Deserted car park. Two guys in a car, engrossed... Heh heh, just could not resist. Pozi might have better incriminating pictures.

Errr, selamat hari raya & maaf zahir bathin guys. Be careful where you get intimate... he he he.

From there to here

Almost Heaven, almost...

End of season

Now, we wait for the next round...

Red, hairy, juicy....

The pro's at the back, efficiently gathering the fruit in neat bunches while the amateurs at the front battling those pesky red ants...

Contact with cow poo on the way back. Worth it I guess...

Hospital Kajang

A small government hospital made up of old buildings and pockets of new ones under construction. There are no, well none that I can see anyway, road signs or directions leading to it. I managed by GPS. Be careful not to go to the wrong hospital as there are a few in Kajang.

Parking is a real pain. Park at the first available spot you find.

The people are nice though. From the guards to medical to canteen staff. Somehow they seem friendlier and more accommodating than other hospitals that I have been to recently. It could just be me. Thank you to all of them for making my recent experience there a smooth and pleasant one.

Look...

NT

Windows 7

I first heard about Windows 7 as I was browsing, did a bit more reading on it, check out the forums and decided to try it out. The main reason being it will be usable until March 2010, so I figured its worth the effort. License for the RC was simple to get, log in with MS passport and it will be provided. I got 2, initially by mistake but both proved to be useful as I finally did two installations. The download of the 2.3 GB file took about a day but was quite painless. It could be interrupted and resumed with ease. Once downloaded, burn to create a bootable DVD. Then the adventure begins.

The first was an experiment. A Fujitsu P5020 was in dire need of an overhaul. Its HDD is full, performance is slow and most likely riddled with viruses. First back up all data files. My first mistake here was that I did not copy the driver files. Solved by hunting and grabbing from the net. Precious time would be saved if I had copied the drivers.

Slot in the DVD, turn it on, press Esc key and boot from DVD. Windows 7 will only work on NTFS formatted drive. It will do that first and then install. This took about half an hour. Once done, amazingly it grabbed my home wireless at the first instant and goes online to search for updates. Most it does, some have to be manually searched and updated. It works.

Since this is one used by the kids, I then installed kaspersky AV from a multi license DVD that I thought was a waste of money back then. MS Office was missing and I did not get the licence key so I installed Open Office instead. That's it.

Since the P5020 was successful, I decided to update a Vaio TX with Windows 7. Back up data, copy drivers, download ProduKey for MS Office, pop the DVD, turn on, press escape key and boot from DVD. Format the drive and did a clean install.

About half an hour, install drivers and the AV Mode and function keys does not work. Download and install various Sony files i.e. Shared Library, Utilities DLL, Event Service, SFEP (don't ask - I don't know what it does) and the whole thing just works. For touch pad I installed the Alps Pointing device from Dell instead of Sony, because its only 2.3 MB whereas Sony's is 30 MB and the Sony Asia support page is so S L O W. The US site is fast but there is a notice saying that it might not be compatible with non US Vaios. Double standard ?

Then I installed Kaspersky and MS Office 2007. No issues. Both validated and updated. Brilliant.

Both, especially the Vaio TX now feels much faster and snappier. Looks better and so far works without any glitch. I do think that this is what Vista should have been. If you have an old system in need of an update, go for it.