Outlet Shopping and Ice Cream

After a week of hard work standing around at the exhibition, I finally finished my work and it was time for a very short weekend holiday. We were joined by Sze jean who flew over from Manchester to meet up with us and before she came we decided to go look for this flower shape ice cream. We woke up bright and early on Friday and headed out to find Amarino. It was not surprising that freezing in the morning and after we got to the general area that I thought hey it is freezing and we are looking for ice cream.

In any case it wasn't open yet which was a bummer but lucky we did find another Amarino outlet later in the day....

Picture Thanks to Sze Jean

The speciality about this ice cream is you can choose as many flavours as you like and they will make it into a flower petal. It is quite nice and the ice cream was quite nice as well. We also had a nice chocolate waffle to go with it. See how happy Ee Von is when it comes to desserts. Haha

We met up with Sze Jean at Gare Du Nord, shifted hotel from our first hotel. Yea we had to shift hotel since the first hotel couldn't accommodate 3 people in one room. As we got into our new room I was SHOCKED!!!!

Picture Thanks to Sze Jean

Picture Thanks to Sze Jean

Picture Thanks to Sze Jean

Picture Thanks to Sze Jean

The entire room is PINK in color. Who the heck paints the room in PINK!!!!! The carpets were PINK, the pillows were PINK and the bed covers were also PINK. Lucky my room is not so pink. If not how to sleep at night. Haha.

We dropped our stuff and headed to La Valeè Village which is actually an outlet shopping center in Paris. They have all the name brands there on super lower prices. Brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Longchamp, Tumi. etc. 

We spent basically the entire day there walking and shopping and guess what? I came back with nothing. No surprise there. We went to the Longchamp shop and they only had one of the famous La Pliagè. So after the outlet shopping, we went back to the main outlet in Paris city and the ladies bought a whopping 8 Longchamp bags.

For dinner Ee Von was to meet her boss at the famous Cafe Marlee which is this nice cafe at the Louvre. I dropped her at the cafe and went back to meet up with Sze Jean where we sat at a French cafe to have some good food and catch up on this....

It was a good day shopping and eating and catching up. Tomorrow we are taking a train to Giverny for some cycling action. Stay tuned.....

Paris Monuments

When someone goes to Paris, there are only 2 places where they will remember which is of course....

and.....

Yea I have been there many times already. However this time around I was joined by a good friend. She arrived on Monday and while I work in the day time, she goes gallivanting around Paris and we meet up again after I am done with work.

Normally I would be right at the base of the Eiffel tower but this time around Ee Von brought me to another place to take pictures. I never knew it existed and man there were a lot of people taking pictures from this vantage point....

We waited the 30 minutes to see the Eiffel blink like a Christmas tree. It is after all getting close to Christmas....

Next stop we went to the Louvre to take some pictures as well. For some reason I always like the Louvre more then the Eiffel tower.

After taking this pictures I seriously look like a Cinapek from China. I think I need to change my winter jacket and also my camera bag. Maybe that is why they keep treating me like crap when I go to Paris. Hahahaha.

We couldn't decide on what to eat for dinner and Ee Von was still quite full. So we settled for.....

Before you go WHAT? YOU GO TO PARIS AND EAT MCDONALDS. Check out the most prominent word on the box. It is a bacon burger which confirm Malaysia tadak one. So it is still something different....

To be honest wasn't anything fantastic really. Just a double cheese burger without the tomato sauce and 2 slices of bacon and some BBQ sauce. Till today the best bacon burger is still the Bacon Deluxe from Hungry  Jack's in Australia.

Soon we will be joined by another friend from London where we will go to a small town outside of Paris called Giverny. Stay tuned....

Paris Again

Oh yea it is that time of the year again when my company sends me to Paris for the Cartes exhibition. People who have frequented my blog knows that I never liked Paris. However this time around I have to say that the Parisian people have changed since the last I was in Paris in 2010. They are a bit more friendlier and nothing bad happened to me this trip around.

There was 2 random act of kindness that I experienced this time around...

1. While I was buying a train ticket, a train personnel actually took the time to help me buy the ticket. However actually I didn't need any help since I have done it many times
2. I was on the train one morning and my laptop bag was open and someone on the train actually told me it was open. Although it was in French and I don't know how I managed to establish he was telling me that my bag was not zipped up.

I arrived a day earlier then I was suppose to be because I thought we had to work on Sunday. However my customer told me the booth would only be ready on Monday so I took Sunday off. I checked into my normal aparthotel and I was totally surprised that the room was ready for me to move in. That is the first good thing that happened on this trip.

I moved in and settled in before decided to head out to a park called Parc Des Buttes Chaumont. This time around I was kinda broke heading to this trip so I googled best free things to do in Paris and one of them which I have not gone to was Parc Des Buttes Chaumont. On the way out of the hotel, I saw this on the road....

Yea it looks a bit scary and it remind me of Chucky for some stupid reason. I got off the Metro station and it was slightly drizzling. I was telling myself dang and I am walking in the park and it is raining. When I got into the park proper, man there was a lot of people jogging and exercising. It started to rain a bit heavier and people were still jogging and exercising. In Malaysia everyone will be back at home or at the mamak already. Haha.

It was end of Autumn and the start of winter so there was orange leaves and some of the trees have all dropped their leaves...

I walked around the park for an hour or so before finding the attraction of this park....

That is the Temple of Sybil which is built on top of a 30 meter cliff surrounded by a lake. I climbed up towards the temple and this is the fantastic view from the top of that peak....

I walked around a bit more and then head back to the hotel. By the way I found out that the 1st Sunday of the month in Paris, I think most shops are closed or only open half day only. On the way to the park, I saw the supermarket was open and I was planning to buy some stuff on the way back. 

However when I got back to my hotel area, the supermarket was closed and I had to walk quite a distance to another supermarket to get my stuff. In the end I stayed the rest of the day at the hotel and fell asleep at 7pm Paris time. I wanted to stay up until at least 9pm but by 7pm I cannot tahan already and fell asleep. Haha. 

Tomorrow is the first day of work and it is gonna be "fun".......

Fanboy I am NOT

I think it has been said in this blog a few times that people call me an Android fanboy. I do not think I am an Android fanboy but I call myself a gadget fanboy. I like stuff which is looks cool, have cool features, cool feature to price ratio and more important is future proof. 

Take for instance my HTC Desire which I bought close to 2 and a half years ago. I wrote about it on the 5th of July 2010 and up till today I am still using that same very phone. Yes it may not be the same original software that came with the phone but that is what I mean by future proof. I am able to easily flash new ROMs and software to make the phone new again. However it is really showing it age recently when Amy got her Samsung Galaxy SIII. 

I always tell everyone that the Samsung Galaxy SIII is the first proper Android phone which the combination of hardware and software is just perfect. The HTC One X is also no slouch by the way but the HTC Sense interface that comes with it while very cool slows the phone down considerably. 

I admit that one of the best thing about the iPhone is its ease of use and things just work and it is very fast. This is due to the vertical company that Apple is where the hardware and OS is all done by the same company. Even the things that are "not within" the companies control they still control through their iTunes and App store. While this is all good and works, it actually sort of inhibits innovation. 

Before you go crazy and screw me for bashing Apple, check my logic out. There are a lot of brilliant people around the world and Apple have many brilliant people working for them but again they always say it is always good to get a fresh perspective in things. So if you imagine the Android environment where Google builds the basic interface and each hardware manufacture is able to customize it to their own systems.

Companies like Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola, etc have their own strength in their own industry and it shows in their product. HTC is known to have nice looking interface which is attractive and they are using it to their advantage. Sony now is beginning to have a good camera subsidiary and they are using that know how in their phones by introducing phones where the camera is the specialty. Motorola on the other hand has also been about built quality and they even introduced Kevlar into their phone to make it durable. Samsung on the other hand is all about integration to other devices such as the TV and they have their Samsung AllPlay.

Each of the manufactures have a specialty and they are putting it to good use which creates innovation. If you still do not see my point about how Apple has created an environment that inhibits innovation then I guess we defer in the way we think. 

One of the companies that I didn't think would make it big in the Android phone arena was Samsung. Their initial phones were too iPhone like and I would say yes they sort of deserve to be sue-ed by Apply but not to the tune of 3 billion. Their phones initially look very plasticky and never had any good functions compared to the rest. HTC always had Sense, Sony always had superior camera and Motorola always had good built quality. However Samsung had crap software, crap built quality, crap hardware and they were just following the rest.

The Galaxy SI and Galaxy SII didn't have much difference other then it screen was much bigger but in terms of software was pretty much the same. However then came the Galaxy SIII which packed good built quality, good hardware features and good software features. Thinks like the Smart Stay was cool and pretty useful but then the rest of the features like S Voice were quite gimmicky. While cool not many people would use them. However recently Samsung has updated their software to put in even more cool features. Check it out....

You can say I am an Android fanboy or whatever but you got to admit some of the features are super cool. The Facebook integration is super cool, the take 5 pictures and choosing which face you want is to me EXTREME cool and even the low light thing is super cool. I know about photography and from a BLACK screen to something you can see is extremely good when you think about the camera sensor that they use.

Comparing this features to the features of say HTC, Motorola, Sony even the iPhone, I say that Samsung takes the cake on this. None of the other phone manufactures has a super killer feature. Even the soon to be launched iPhone 5 (in Malaysia) don't have cool features which people use on a regular basis. In fact they took out Google Maps and YouTube which is a heavily used feature in the phone.

So I ask you once again. Don't you think the Galaxy SIII is a uber duber cool phone?

Calm Before the Storm

The weather in KL in the past month have been pretty crazy. It is usually super bright, sunny and hot in the mornings and afternoons. However around 3 or 4pm, the clouds will roll in and it would bucket down like crazy.

One day while I was in the office, armed with my camera, I waited until the rain clouds start to come in and caught this photo....

It is a HDR photo or High Dynamic Range photos which allows me to show the dark areas and also the bright areas in a single shot. Basically what I did was to take one shot and underexposed it and overexposed it so that the clouds look oh so garang and the houses in Kampung Bharu still look bright and sunny. Check out how the white building on the left is so prominent. Can't do that without HDR.

Anyway shortly after this photo was taken, it poured like crazy. Haha. Hope everyone stays safe in this crazy weather.

Final day of shoppping

Today is the final day we are in Macau and there is basically only 3 things to do in Macau. 

1. Casino related stuff (Gambling, free and paid shows, etc)
2. Shopping
3. Eating

Since we already did the casino related stuff, we decided to do the last 2 things. First was shopping. My cousin brought us to the older part of Macau city where it is basically like a pasar malam/factory outlet shop. Apparently Macau makes a lot of name brand clothing and these are basically the over runs. However before the shopping can begin, we must first do the 3 thing which is to eat. 

What the most famous makan thing in Macau?

Portuguese egg tarts of course. Margaret's is very famous from them and the other one is called Lord Stow. The story is that Lord Stow was the first to open and started to sell the famous Portuguese egg tarts. Apparently Lord Stow and Margaret were married and when they broke up the marriage, Margaret decided to open her own cafe also selling mainly Portuguese egg tarts. I am not sure if the story is true but both their egg tarts are pretty nice. 

Next stop was this place which basically sells all kinds of name brand clothing for cheap. Brands such as Nautica, Polo Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch and many more were sold there. This place if you ask me, to go I will never be able to find it ever. It is like in a back alley and some more on the second floor. If you want to try to find here, here is a map....

Some of the stuff are really super cheap and they shouldn't be fakes. There were a couple of Japanese people shopping there and we all know them Japanese people do not wear fakes. Right after that we went to the main street where the other shops are at the so called market and man there were selling all kinds of apparels from Canterbury, Adidas, Mizuno, Jack Wolfskin, etc. You name it and they have it. These one I am not sure if it is genuine stuff or not la. However I got a Canterbury rugby jersey for like RM15. Incidentally that is the only thing I bought other then food throughout the entire Macau trip.

The ladies when crazy and we bought so much stuff we barely fit everything into the bags to go home. After all the shopping, Amy insisted we go for another famous food in Macau....

We actually had to wait until after 3pm where they started selling the Macau Pork Burgers in the famous buns. I do not know why they do not sell them buns before 3pm. Anyway that is our last meal in Macau. We went home to my cousin's place, packed up and head to the airport.

It was a very tiring trip but it was also extremely fun. Having someone there who knows the place well makes the trip so much more enjoyable. We came back to Malaysia with all the shopping and the memories and actually I do not mind going back to Macau if there is free accommodation. Hehe

Shopping, Shopping and More Shopping

On the 4th day of our trip, we were apparently going to shopping heaven just across the border from Macau into China called Zhuhai. Apparently it is where they sell all the grade "AA" fake stuff and it is in this huge underground market.

I actually didn't know that Zhuhai was so near Macau and we just have to take a 15 min ride on yes you guessed it, a free bus from the casino to the boarder. There we basically walk through towards China and shopping heaven. My cousin actually told me that since the standard of living in Macau is so high, a lot of the Macau resident on a weekly basis walk towards Zhuhai to do their grocery shopping. She said that a bunch of vege in Macau would cost equivalent to RM10 in Macau only cost RM1 in Zhuhai. So it makes a lot of sense to head towards Zhuhai to do their shopping.

First we had some dim sum in one of the restaurants before the shopping starts. The shopping is actually in an underground "shopping mall" which surprisingly is fully air conditioned. The crazy thing about this place is it bloody massive and even alternate shop is selling basically the same thing. They basically sell women handbags, clothing and watches. 

The scary thing about all this is that if you want the grade AA stuff you have to ask them and they will usher you into this small little room. The entrance to the room is basically concealed behind a fake wall and if it wasn't for my cousin, we would not have dared to go into any of the rooms. It feels like they going to rob you inside there. After a while it feel like last time when VCD was popular and you wanted to buy some pornographic VCD. Some of them have the secret room and in the secret room it extends to another secret room. It was pretty interesting.

Just to give you and idea how cheap this place is, Amy bought 3 handbags (Longchamp and 2 Marc Jacobs) for equivalent of RM50 bucks. Now that is what I call cheap.

Again we walked and walked and walked until our legs were breaking, luckily Zhuhai is also famous for chinese massage. My cousin brought us for a foot massage as we didn't have much time. We went to this nice place where all 7 of us were put into a room with TV and they provided drinks and fruits. The masseuse also were very friendly and we got talking even with my crap mandarin.

After the massage is another highlight of Zhuhai which is the seafood. What is so good? Well right out the restaurant is the market and you actually walk out of the restaurant, buy the fresh seafood and bring it back to the restaurant to be cooked by the restaurant. The other thing is all the seafood are STILL ALIVE!!!! It cannot get more fresh then that.

We didn't want to get conned and my cousin has this very standard "taxi" driver which came to pick us up. His wife is one of the captain at the restaurant we were eating at. So we went out to look what we wanted to eat and we told her and she went to get the food for us. After all that....

The star dish is the steamed scallops. It was fresh of course and below the scallops there is bee hoon cooked with garlic which was delicious. Another very interesting dish is the picture right above. It is some kinda fish which is very very very soft. Basically there is only one way to cook it which is to fry it. Anything other then frying it, the meat is too soft to be eaten. It was really nice, smooth and soft and it is the first time I had it. Don't ask me what fish it was because I have no idea as well.

After dinner, the ladies continued shopping at the Zhuhai shopping mall and after all that, I didn't even get a single thing at all. My parents were so tired, that we had to sit at a cafe and have drinks while the ladies went on shopping. At 930pm we gathered back at the cafe and walked back to Macau.

My parent's legs couldn't hold up to any more walking so they plus my brother decided to go back to the apartment while my cousin, my sister in law, Amy and I went to Macau city to check out some of the city casino. First stop was.....

The Wynn has 2 "shows" and the first one was....

Initially it was supposed to be the tree show where a tree emerge from the floor and changes color depending on the season. My cousin say that it was pretty nice but as the show started, suddenly a dragon appeared out of the floor. The cool thing was the fire on the ceiling which was very mesmerizing. We found out later that since it was the year of the dragon they alternate between the dragon show and the tree show. When the dragon started to emerge from the floor, we started to hear this like knocking sounds. I couldn't identify the noise until I finally realised that people were actually throwing money at the dragon for luck.

Once the dragon show was done, we walked to the front of the hotel to check out the second show....

It is the fountain show where they use jets of water fountain to create a show to the tune of some song. It was very calming and very nice. Right behind where we were seeing the fountain show, it was the sea and it looks towards the newer part of Macau.

After the fountain show was done, we went back to the first place to see the tree show....

As again people where throwing money when the tree emerged from the floor. We finally ended the day by having some supper at this famous HK restaurant at The Galaxy casino. I think the amount of walking we did could cover at least 5-10km. I should have brought a pedometer to track the amount of steps I took that day.

4 days down and 1 last day to go in Macau before we head home. Lucky it was more of a relaxing day. Stay tuned.