Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Geography ROCKS!

Alright I am back from the trip, alive and have came back in one piece aka 在一块里面回来!


Friday
Kinda disappointed at CPM for not giving us a full day cos I was expecting one. Maybe after school reopens? Haha but anyways spent my morning playing floorball (PE) with few people from the class, unintentionally, tSg and Nora. After which then the bus came at around 11am and off we went TO MALAYSIA!

As usual, there wasn't much scenery on the way there- plantations and just more plantations and of course when I looked back in the bus, people were just sleeping.




Dinner was a stop at KL International Airport. The airport was voted Best Airport for 2007 and 2008 but our sentiments are hmmnn.... Personally I felt that the place was rather dark and gloomy, architectural-wise, I wasn't exactly too impressed by anything. Further more service was a let-down with majority of the cashiers and servicers only able to speak Malay.




Nevertheless, we managed to get our dinner- Burger King. -.-




After some time, we finally reached our first destination- Putrajaya. Putrajaya is the new federal administrative centre of Malaysia, the first town in the country ever to be build from a superplan, every detail was taken care of from the street lighting, traffic light designs, buildings etc. It was just like some kind of utopia. The aim of the city was to relief the overcrowded and congested KL, capital of Malaysia.

When we reached, there was a slight drizzle, but progressed to a rather large downpour. A rather quirky place as it was built on a scale completely disproportional to its current population (50k).






It was rather freaky actually, cos when we reached there, there was amazingly huge buildings surrounded by vast spaces with NOBODY! I think we increased their population by several hundred per cent when we arrived.


After a rather long walk along the 4.2km "spine" of the city, we boarded the bus again, this time to Palm Garden Hotel for our rest. Super nice place, but a little too overpowering as the first hotel which we found out later during the next day.

Saturday
Breakfast was great too, with some guy cooking eggs for us which I never really got my order but...


After a short briefing at the hotel, we were back on our feets (or wheels) and back to the suburbs of Putrajaya for some fieldwork.


Certainly, there are always grumpy people.


And election fever.


Basically, there were the government housing and of course, Najib's car.




Next stop was back to the city center, and went around asking some people for opinions about Putrajaya. There was the Flirting Mosque with a capacity of 10,000 (HUGE) and the Prime Minister's Office.










Lunch was at Alamanda, the only shopping centre in Putrajaya. (Yes yes and of course this was planned by the planners too. 1 shopping centre was sufficient as they didn't want to teach their young to shop too much -.-) A&W for lunch cos we decided to eat something that we couldn't find in Singapore. Luckily I got the Cooney Dog which was rather alright as compared to the rest who got burgers which were terrible.




After lunch, we were back to KLIA to take the KLIA ekspres to KL Sentral Station.


Plenty of time to disturb people through "involuntary photography".


There were voluntary ones too..




Really impressed by the smooth ride and of course, everybody was trying to look out for Najib's car.




I was secretly eavesdropping on this Singaporean gay's conversation with his gay angmo friend. He was like cursing about how lousy the services are and how he can't get a taxi when all the drivers went praying and how Putrajaya is a white elephant. Strangely his angmo friend only had this stoned face which read "whatever" throughout.

KL Sentral Station..


Of course, the bus was late cos it couldn't possible travel as fast as the train so we had a little time to walk around. After a long time, xiaoyi and i spotted the teachers happily eating some snacks and we decided to get some too.




Unfortunately, the bus came shortly after we got our stuff and were trying to gulp down the super hot teh terik while trying challenging angela wu to a fight to see who can drink faster. She pangsehed her drink completely when she realised she was losing and didn't drink like 9/10 of all her tea. What a waste.

Dinner was early at this Japanese restaurant in Sentul West. Pretty good. Other than the fact that they had really huge mosquitoes. Ouch.




Some group shots outside the restaurant..




And my group!


Play by the University of Malaya at the KL Performing Arts Centre started really late so we had lots of time to burn stoning around and camwhoring.






BTW, Josef's gay too!


The play was pretty ok. Me-No-Lie aka Ancient Chinese MeStick was super funny. And of course, there was the girl ahem guy who went around asking people to touch her boobs. -.-

ARRRGGGHHH! This hotel almost killed me. Grand Pacific Hotel which was like... 大便!Absolutely horrifying! They don't even have phone reception man. And the bedsheet and pillow cover were stained with these black stuff. EWW. The only thing that could possibly compensate was the rather good view of the Petronas Towers.


Sunday
Fast forward to after breakfast was the walkabout at Sentul area which was the inner city of KL. True enough to what we studied about inner city decline, this place was the perfect example. There was also visible attempts by the government to create re-urbanisation through the building of hotels etc. Disinvested public housing was all around.










Happy massage was something not to be missed in the inner city!


Lunch was at TJ Haus at Subang Jaya, this German restaurant, owned by some guy related to the wife of Josef. Woah the pumpkin soup was GREAT.


And the main course sucked to the max. Dry chicken breast meat- YUCKS.


Cheesecake was good too.


Next stop is the Petronas Twin Tower where we went up to the bridge for a good view of the city.


Don't ask me why I am not straight...




A little fieldwork below and finally SHOPPING @ Suria KLCC! Got a couple of things from this nice shop, other than that was just dinner at foodcourt.




Of course, "reflections at Bukit Bintang" was great too. Shopping obviously wasn't enough for the guys so we took the city train with a couple of other peeps other than the usual gang, Feddie, Han Sen, Kenji and Edwin, all the way to little brother play sand (弟弟玩沙)aka Titiwangsa. Other than the bumpy ride, it was quite fun looking at the night view of the city. The rest of time was spent checking out a new mall and I saw the MacBook Air! Really thin man.










Jay Chou was in town..


So was 07S51!


And the ghostly trio!


After which was rest time at this rather nice hotel other than the fact that my room didn't even have a window. -.- coolness. But Jek's room had a really great view of the city skyline.


Monday
The next day, we were back to Sentul West for the very last fieldwork...




And back to Putrajaya again, this time for a guided tour from a person from Putrajaya Corp.



Got to know alot of things and got a great view of the entire city from their International Convention Centre.


Not before long, we were back @ Singapore already! It had been a really amazing trip with a good balance of work and play. I will try to upload more photos when I am done editting them.

Everyone was happy after the trip. Even the little boy who lost his high scores!


Hope you guys are enjoying your March Hols too!

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