Kuching Festival 2009

Kuching Festival is an annual event that is held in an amazing city called Kuching.

The festival is where the local, famous food stalls or restaurant of Kuching all meet and open their stores to let locals, tourists or just anyone who loves food to eat and enjoy the great food of Kuching!

Almost everyone from Kuching would come to this yearly event and it truly is an amazing festival. Packed with people of different races and culture, just to come an enjoy the delicious and smell-binding taste of the many different varieties of food from the local Laksa and Satay to widely-known KFC and many many more!

Usually, Kuching festival starts on the first of August and continues for a whole month (or three weeks for the year 2009).

The festival is always held at a compound on Jalan Pandungan. (Beside SJK Chung Hua No.3 and the tall, sharp and blue MBKS building)

Here is a map of the place if you have problems finding it.

Google Map of area around Jalan Pandungan

where the Kuching Festival is held.

Google Earth Map of the same place.

Let the fun begin!

Basic layout of the whole place. Entrance is at the bottem left.

Everyone in a festive mood!

What did I say? The famous KFC is here too!

Some stalls!

Look at the variety! Even Thai food!

SHARKS!!! (No I do not support this)

Would you look at that! Yumm! Smells nice. Satay!

Yay balloons!!! Look! It’s Spongebob!

Random. The animal by the entrance =]

Fried Ice Cream stall

Fried Ice Cream. Bet you never tried that before but TBH I don’t really like it.

Garden Show. It is also part of the Kuching festival!

If you have been to Kuching Festival before, you will know that there is always a stage or platform where there are performances but at Kuching Festival 2009, the platform has been moved. It is now a man-made platform on a lake. It is located quite far from the entrance(on the lake, check the overview photo, you should be able to find it). You can go there  by going through the Garden show.

My Review

I truly think that this great festival is not one that should be missed. If you don’t know what are the great food stalls or restaurant in Kuching or if you are just a tourist wanting to see what Kuching food is all about. This is a great opportunity.

Although the 2009 Kuching Festival is over, I bet we are all eagerly waiting for the next 2010 Kuching Festival!

P.S.  Really sorry about the low quality images. We do not have a DSLR camera.

P.S2  Kuching is back to normal again, with rain almost everyday =) The haze is gone!

1 Malaysia!

Audio Clip Satu Malaysia Song

Listen to the song here

Download the 1Malaysia song by AMP All-Stars – featuring JJ, Ean, Rudy, Moots! and many many more of your favourite jocks…

“AMP Radio Networks embodies the spirit of 1Malaysia with its eight radio networks in four vernacular languages, reaching 11.16 million listeners weekly*. To celebrate our country’s 52nd Independence Day, we are proud to introduce ‘Satu Malaysia’, a song composed by our very own DJ Uno and AJ of Pop Shuvit. The song features the ‘AMP Allstars’, with the voices of 15 AMP announcers from ERA, MY FM, hitz.fm, MIX fm, LiteFM, SINAR, XFM, THR Raaga and THR Gegar.”

*Source: Nielsen’s Radio Audience Measurement, Sweep 1, 2009 for all people 10 years and older in Pen. Malaysia

Source for here

Enjoy!

Haze is keeping the heat up

Wow! The haze is getting more serious everyday. I can barely stand the heat anymore. It has been almost 3 weeks since rain was seen in the now-very-dry Kuching. A lot of plants and grasses are dying.

There has been a massive lack of water these days. Some parts of Kuching don’t even have water now. People are starting to panic and starting to save up water. What can we do? I have devised some things we can do.

1. Use water properly – Do NOT waste anymore water. Water is an essential thing we need everyday. Living without water is far worse than living without electricity in my opinion.
2. Drink water – Even though we are lacking of water now, we still must keep ourselves healthy in a way that we will fall sick. (Note: H1N1 cases is still at large, newspaper reported that 90% of the sickness people are experiencing now are H1N1 cases).
3. Pray for rain –  Almost 3 weeks since it has rained. I really wonder when the rain is going to come. I’ve looked through all the weather forecast on Kuching and they ALL have different forecasts, so I have no idea which one is the correct one. So please just rain!
4. Stop open burning – If you see anyone burning their waste, REPORT them to the local authority immediately. We can’t afford any more hazey situations. The weather is bad enough.
5. Do less outdoor activities – It is encouraged that people do not do outdoor activities for now, because of the hazey weather, it is really really not healthy, or put it like this, not good to be doing extreme sports are be breathing in such carbon-filled, cell-killing, polluted air that is around us.

These are the simple 5 steps I can think of now. Let’s just hope that it will rain soon. If this keeps up, I can’t bear to think of what might and will happen.

and Sorry, we  (iKuching) have canceled our trip to the Kuching festival due to this terrible weather and conditions.

This post is a continual of the previous post on haze and H1N1

tHe Spring Kuching

tHe Spring
If you don’t know what’s Spring, you are obviously a tourist in Kuching.

When people speak of Spring, they mean a big, wide,  spacious building.       It is a  food and shopping paradise!
Lots of famous and branded stores are inside Spring.
I took a few pictures to show you what those stores are.

I went there yesterday to have my dinner. We stopped at this place called KIM BAY H.K Macau Restaurant.
In my opinion, the food they serve are not that delicious.

Starting off with this “Seafood” noodle.
I ordered Seafood noodle and i see “greens” inside.

1 more thing that I’m not happy about is…
Look below.

Only Muslims get discount. Don’t ask me why.
After I ate there with my family, we went through the main entrance.
You would most certainly see Starbucks Coffee at your left and Big apple donuts at your right.

Left

Right

As you walk in the main area of the complex, you should see a Quicksilver and a Roxy store fused together.

On the Second floor there’s a small BodyGlove store but its just a small shop with little choices.

A Nike store

ESPRIT

GiorDano

Get your tight jeans here!

Also the iPod Nano at Spring I was talking about in the previous post.

And everyone knows Parkson

Snackbar

This is near the food court.

On that day(2nd august) there was a car show and it’s the last day!
So lucky to have went there in time.

Is it locked? heheh

Civic hybrid…or something

A converterble!!!

New Beeeeeeeeetle

A clown for Isuzu giving out balloons sculptures.
Don’t look at the girl behind eating something.
She is not related to me. :p

Before you leave “Please pay” :p

That’s pretty much that is in Spring.
It sounds small because I was not shopping. 😀

Posted by: Tommy

Heat and haze takeover!

Can you believe the heat?

When I woke up, I looked outside the window, what did I saw? Nothing. At first I thought it was the normal morning mist but I was wrong. My first step out of my house this morning, I could already smell a kind of burning spell. It was indeed, haze.

Haze in Kuching is usually caused by burning in the Sumatra (western Indonesia). They burn off glaze of land so that they can start doing their cropping. I don’t know if they have no clue the damage and carbon dioxide they are producing, or that this is just their culture, but whatever they are doing are harming us. The carbon dioxide they produced are being carried off to the once-so-cool Kuching by the wind.

Look around you ladies and gentlemen, I believe that we all agree that it was a hot day. Lets just hope that conditions will get better.

Here is the weather report for the next few days, I am glad to see that it is going to rain (hopefully).

Weather Forecast

Here are some pictures :

Zoomed to blurred trees caused by haze

Zoomed to Extremely red sun(that is not really obviously shown in the picture) caused by haze.

More news on haze here

H1N1 suspected in schools

In SMK DPHA Gapor, Stampin there are several of students suspected to have the h1n1 symptom and sent to the hospital for further testing and quarantine.

Chung Hua Middle School No.3 had reported 30 suspected case 2 and has already closed down.

Now, there are 4 schools and 5 institutions of higher education have been temporarily closed down due to the arise of H1N1 cases in the school  [updated 4th August]

Though the virus spreads very easily but it will not kill you unless your immunity is weak, it is just a normal flu/fever that spreads. If you suspect your getting h1n1 please check for the symptom:

• Fever
• Sore Throat
• Nasal
• Cough
• Respiratory Problems
• Body Aches

I’ve heard that diarrhea is also one of the symptoms but i’m not 100% sure. So if any of you people get these symptoms, even 1 or 2 go to the clinic to have a medical check up. Better safe then sorry.

Kuching fest is coming up and everyone is worried that 1 victim of the virus will infect the population of Kuching at this very prestigious festival held annually.

Me and Zack is going to the Kuching fest soon and will have pictures and reviews posted here? lets hope we don’t get h1n1.

Mobile phone service providers in Malaysia

This is a dialog of me and my friend, Tommy, talking about mobile phone service providers in Malaysia. Check it out.

Zack says:
Hello Tommy. You told me that today you want to talk about mobile phones service provider in Malaysia? How many providers are there and what are their names?

Tommy says:
There are 3 mobile phones service providers in Malaysia and they are Digi, Celcom and Maxis.

Zack says:
Alright. So what so different or special about each of these three providers? Would you care to explain more to us?

Tommy says:
Each service providers have their own specialty. For example, Digi, it has the plan called “Super Sms” which allows you to send unlimited text messages just for RM0.50 per day, which is very cheap. For Celcom, it is best for its connectivity and coverage in the whole nation. On the other hand, Maxis is a very trusted, stable and an international service provider.

Zack says:
That was very, very detailed explanation. Thank you Tommy but I would just like to add that there are also some bad sides on each of these providers. DiGi, although it might have the lowest cost of all, it also comes with the lowest coverage out of all of them and this provider is mostly used by teenagers as it offers the best plans. Could you tell us a bit more on Celcom and Maxis?

Tommy says:
It is true. Digi’s coverage is very low. I’m texting in my room and i have 0 bars of signal on my phone. Celcom and Maxis are more expensive because you have either “8pax” for Celcom and “active5” for Maxis at a calling rate of RM0.15 per minute and RM0.01 per sms and its limited to how many people you can add in your “cheap list” but DiGi offers unlimited sms to all DiGi users for RM0.50 per day.

Zack says:
So are you saying that DiGi is the most preferred choice as it is the cheapest?

Tommy says:
No. I think that all these providers have their own good and bad points and it all depends on which you prefer. In my opinion, DiGi is preferred by most of the teens because most of them are text addicts including myself but if you’re a businessman who needs coverage everywhere you go(including toilet), you should get Celcom or Maxis which offers coverage even in your toilet.

7 reasons why Facebook is better than Friendster

7 reasons why Facebook is better than Friendster

People from all around Malaysia are gradually moving away from once-famous Friendster and towards Facebook! Why?

Facebook is a social website just like Friendster, Hi5, Myspace, etc. All social networking sites’ main objective is to connect people from all around the world.
We are going to compare Facebook with less popular, Friendster. But, why is friendster less popular by the second and why are people moving to Facebook? You will know now.

1. Facebook has an outstanding second-by-second notification compared to the Friendster’s “home page” notification. Facebook’s notification sits at the bottom right corner, where you can easily check if you have any new alerts, this is an important feature that Friendster does not have.While at it Facebook have the option to choose whether to send a notification or not which i think its way more flexible compared to Friendster where whenever you use a application it will automaticly send a notification to all your friends.
2. Facebook has a professional look. I believe we will all agree on this point if you compare one’s profile layout to a Friendster profile. Facebook profiles are less customizable compared to Friendster’s, because I think that they want to be more ‘professional-looking’, but nevertheless, it worked.
3. Facebook has a better terms of service and rules. – I believe this is extremely important as it will reduce the number of spammers and spoilers to such a great social networking community. According to the terms of service, you are required to use your own name in your profile else they would disable your account. Unlike Friendster, some people even have offensive names and it is very hard to find relatives and old friends who uses the site as well.
4. Facebook’s photo sharing is a great thing because is has a “tag” function. You can use this function to label yourself or your friends in the picture so that when people view the picture, they will know who is who.
5. Friendster is a heaven for advertisers. Look at all the ads and spam in the ‘bulletin-boards’ by the right of the homepage. Most of the posted bulletins are spammed links or just want to intentionally grab your attention which are very annoying.
6. Facebook has a chat box feature. Which, in my opinion, is very useful and great for fast chats, comments and questions to friends.
7. Facebook also has a game feature, which Friendster does not have. It includes games like Bejeweled, Poker and many many others.

If you take a look at their Alexa ranks and traffic changes, you’ll notice that people are gradually moving away from Friendster while Facebook users are increasing.

iPod Nano

The iPod Nano Chromatic is the latest design for iPod Nanos in the Apple/iPod store.

Its stylish, colourful, giant capacity which comes in 8gb or 16gb and it comes with a giant prize range of RM599 to RM799.

The Nano Chromatic is ultra slim and lightweight with just 36 grams! It is as heavy as a small rock!

The screen is small yet still so big measuring in 2 inches with a scratch proof glass perhaps?

It comes in 9 colours which are White, Black, Purple, Light blue, Light green, Yellow, Orange, Red(product red™) and Pink, as shown above.

My review

I’ve been using a Nano for 3 weeks now and I’m satisfied with the sound quality, videos and pictures stored.

To Scroll through the files you stored inside a Nano you have to use the Clickwheel but its not as simple as click down to scroll down.

You have to put your finger on the wheel and scroll clockwise or anti-clockwise to browse your files.

The Nano also have accelerometer installed inside which enables it to track movement.

When you tilt the Nano on its side while a song is playing, it will turn to “Cover Flow” which gives you a menu to browse your albums.

Shuffling songs is possible just by a shake but in my opinion, it is using the idea of the Sony Erricsson’s idea of the “shake control” function.

It also have an aluminium casing which can be dented if dropped by a certain height. I know this because I dropped my Nano 4 times and now have 4 dents/scratch.

1 thing I don’t like is the Equalizer’s “bass boost” which makes the music sounds like you are using a broken speaker.

Overall i think its worth your money, and you can put “videos” in it. You know what i mean right? 🙂

You can get all Apple products online at their webstore or go to any Apple retailers in Kuching @ the Spring or Tun Jugah.

Posted by,

Tommy

*no infringement of copyright or advertisements is intended, its just my opinions. Visit www.apple.com/ipodnano/ or Spring in Kuching if your interested in buying an iPod.*