Port Dickson Trip

This was supposed to be last week's post but once again, my laziness had gotten the better of me... again. Besides, when I was in the mood, my family had a last minute trip to Hatyai in Thailand, which will eventually be posted anytime by now. Ah well, better late than never, eh?

My family went to Port Dickson last two week on Saturday, 29th of November, with my father's side of my family. We woke up early and began packing. All the stuffs barely fit inside my mom's Honda Stream. You should have seen how cramped it was after packing in all the stuffs, it's like our family is running away from home. If I had a picture, I would definitely post it out but too bad, huh? We traveled early to avoid traffic and boy were we glad that we decided to go early. Heard from the radio that not long after reaching to my father's hometown in Seremban to get our lunch, the road was beginning to be flooded by cars.

We had a few time to spare before meeting up with the rest of our family, so we decided to go get some chicken rice from one of my favorite but pricey shop in town. My family had been their customers for as long as I could remember. I found out that one of my ancestor had a history in that restaurant. There was a giant mirror slash sign hung above in the restaurant. I guess it was for feng shui or something. There was a lot of name of the contributers written in Chinese on the sign and my great grandfather's name, from my mother's side of the family, was written on it.

Hmm, I wonder. Shouldn't my family get a discount or something since our family had histories with this restaurant? Lol.

Anyway, the chicken rice was great as usual. The rice was always smoking hot and the chicken is always soft and gives out a nice feeling when chewing on it. Mix those two together and their signature soy sauce equals to a few second trip to paradise. It's Finger Lick'N Good.

After that, we headed straight to the Port Dickson highway. We waited there for my father's younger sister's arrival. It took her about 20 minutes or so to arrive. Good thing I packed my PSP to kill some time otherwise I would have to chew on my toes to cover the free time. My father's younger sister was late because she had to go fetch my grandaunt and one of my aunt that had just came back from Ireland with her newly born son, my cousin, Earnest Sui.

Couldn't get a clear shot. He's just moving too much. Anyway, that's him with his mom.

With eveyone arrived, we went all the way to the our resort. There were lots of turns and corners we had to go through, my brother almost vomited from car-sickness and even I was at the verge of re-decorating my mom's car.

We were following my father's younger sister's boyfriend's car to the hotel. I then wondered, why is there a military camp, armed personnel vehicle, and tanks at a holiday resort? It was then, we realized that the lead car had brought us into the wrong area. Instead of going to the beach resort, we went to the Malaysian Army Museum. For a while there, I thought I was going to sleep with a cannon.

Atlas, we reached out destination. The hotel that we are spending a night there was called Ilham Resort, a three-stared hotel according to Wikipedia. If you ask me, I'd say it would at least be a two-star hotel or two and a half at the very least. Why? Read on and you'll know.

Right, we reached there and unpacked everything into our room and boy, it was like moving from one house to another. As much as I wanted to take pictures of the room that we were staying in, I didn't for some stupid reasons. After unpacking, the youngsters; me, my brother, and two cousin sisters decided to go swimming at the nearby swimming pool. My grandma, grandaunt, mom, dad, dad's older sister and her husband were engaged in a fierce game of Mahjong, well, mostly my grandma and my parents.

My brother was the first to be in the pool without warming up his body first and as expected, he was freezing his arse off in the pool. I didn't warm my body nor listen to my brother's complaints, I cannon-balled myself into the pool and almost couldn't feel my body from the cold.

Overall, the pool's depth was just on my chest, so I'm thinking the pool's depth is about 1 meter or so. The pool was kinda dirty with dirt and pieces of dried leaves in it, even with the help of a pair of goggles, the view under the water was still blurry. There were lots of people, mostly children in the pool but most of them were Malays. There were only a few Chinese including us. I'm kinda disappointed though, there weren't any Chinese chicks there, only children. =( And I don't usually praise myself or something but I might even be the most handsome Chinese guy in the pool. Probably even the prettiest even if I'm not a girl. LOL!

We played a classic game of 'Monkey' in the pool that got everyone looking at us. Guess the Malays had no idea what 'Monkey' is. Pity.

After playing a while, Earnest decided to join us. It was his first time in a pool and well, he was scared of it and cried.

Awww... how cute.

but eventually, we managed to persuade him into the water and he liked it, courtesy from yours truly. He started playing with the water and the next thing you know, he was swimming on the water with the help of a float of course.

After finish playing in the pool, we head back to our room and took a bath and changed our clothes. And now for the reason why I did not take pictures of the hotel, room and the pool. I then only remembered that I had brought my trusty Olympus E-510 camera along. Stupid lame memory of mine, sheesh.

The Olympus E-510. Looking sexy, eh?

My dad's older sister and her husband was in charge of bringing the food and cooking them. At night, we had BBQ.

While waiting for them to prepare, I decided to sneak away from helping the rest to prepare dinner to take some pictures of the scenery down by the beach. One of my friends once told me that PD was pretty polluted and it isn't worth going. Well, after heading down the beach, I too have to agree with my friend about the pretty polluted part.

The beach was really dirty; there was snack wrappers, plastic bags, plastic bottles, food and stuffs all over the beach. Not to mention the water there too. It seems that Mr. Pollution has worked his twisted art around the sea water too. The water was BLACK when it was washed ashore.

See? Black water!
Another one. This time, the color difference between the sand and the water can be seen.

Darn, isn't dirty or what? Nearby the beach was a lot of camp built there with all of them belonged to Malays. Rubbishes scattered around their camps and undoubtedly, the Malay campers were the ones who threw the rubbish there. Man and some of them used to argue to the fact that this country belongs to them when they in the first place do not know how to take good care of it.

I stroll around the beach, taking pictures of the products of those campers. Here are the pictures of the 'products' that I took.

Man... It's like the aftermath of WWII or basically speaking, my room.
I don't think that Spongebob and his fishy friends in Bikini Bottom would eat mamee monster snacks...
Or eat Maggi Goreng. Asli flavor at that...
Or drink water IN water...
Or play basketball in the water...
Or wash their clothes with softener...
Or even uses petrol for their boat mobiles, if they even have one in the first place that is.

Leaving that aside, it was evening and I took the chance to take some pictures of the sunset since I'm at the beach anyway and the picture turned out... well, not bad I suppose.

If that little island wasn't in the way, my shot would've been nice.
Another evening scenery.
This was my favorite shot.

After taking all the shots I wanted, I headed back for dinner. We had our BBQ outdoors. My father's older sister and her husband prepared all the food. We had fish balls, seafood tofus, chicken wings, otak-otak muar, hot dogs, satay, fried rice and fried noodles. Orange juice, root beer, and alcohol drinks were our beverages that night.

One of my cousins went creative and applied shandy on the chicken wings when it was on the fire and the chicken turned out superb. With a little alcohol in it, it gave out a sweet taste to the chicken. My parents and grandma was still in the room playing mahjong. With them not being here yet, I dared myself to finish a bottle of Heineken beer.

I did.

It was kinda horrible, I had to force myself to finish it and it didn't felt good. Almost vomited all of the BBQ food again. Good thing was, I wasn't drunk yet or... at least I think I was. My grandma and parents were the last to come out and eat. There was another group of Malays singing on a stage there and it sounded like a dying elephant whining. Completely ruined our family moment and appetite.

After cleaning up the place, we headed back to our room and did our own stuff, my parents and grandma continued their never-ending game of mahjong. We, the youngsters, watched a few movies that we brought along.

First movie that we watched was...

That's right, a panda in rubber shorts. Quite funny actually. The story is a little bit like this:

Po (Jack Black) is a panda who works in a noodle restaurant owned by his goose father Mr. Ping (James Hong), who hopes that Po will one day take over the restaurant (like Mr. Ping took it over from his father, and his father, who won it from a pig friend in a game of Mahjong) and wishes to disclose to him the secret ingredient of his family's famous noodle soup. Po is a kungfu fanatic with secret dreams of becoming a great master in the discipline. However, his weight, clumsiness, and incredibly large girth make this goal very unlikely.

For more information regarding about the story, go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kungfu_Panda
or
www.GoWatchItYourself.com

Then the second movie was...

A black superman. No pun intended. Gave us a few cracks. Summary of the story:

John Hancock (Will Smith) is a drunkard with superhuman powers, including supersonic flight, invulnerability, immortality, and super-strength. Though he uses his powers to stop criminals in his current residence of Los Angeles, his activities inadvertently cause millions of dollars in property damage from carelessness due to his constant intoxication. As a result, he is routinely jeered at the crime scenes. Hancock also ignores court subpoenas from the city of Los Angeles to address the property damage he has caused.

Once again, for more information, go visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_(film)
or
www.GoWatchItYourself.com

Then, our last movie before hitting the bed was...

Yes, a horror zombie-based movie being shot via digital camcorder just like Cloverfield. The movie was from the zombie movie making genius, George A. Romero.

After an introduction to the zombie documentary (The Death of Death) mostly filmed by Jason Creed, a film student at the University of Pittsburgh, the film cuts to the group of students filming a mummy horror movie in the woods. While the group argues, a student listening to the radio hears that something strange that is on the news -- the dead are waking. After hearing the report, the student playing the mummy, Ridley, decides to head to his home in Philadelphia, and invites the other students to join him and stay in his safe room.

The students are seized with Y2k paranoia and attempt to drive to a safe room in Pittsburgh from Berkeley after this event. Along the way they try to check on their families, and avoid zombies. But who are the zombies?

Summary based on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_the_dead
and once again, www.GoWatchItYourself.com

After all the movie, we tugged ourselves into bed. The rooms wasn't enough for all of us, so some of us had to sleep out in the living room. I was one of the unlucky ones and when I say unlucky, I really mean it.

Throughout the whole night, I couldn't sleep. Different parts of my body was itching like hell, I spent hours scratching myself here and there. At first I thought it was just mosquito bites and let it be but after a few minutes, the number of bite marks increased with a minimum amount of at least 10 bumps in each hands and legs. My body was so darn itchy that I couldn't sleep through the night.

Found out that the mosquitoes weren't mosquitoes, they were sand flies, a species similar to mosquito only more annoying.

I then played my PSP until it was 5 in the morning or so when I found out that my brother too had his blood been turned into sand flies' midnight snack. Only his right arm was bitten, there was at least 19 bite marks that I counted on his right arm. Didn't snap a picture thought. After nearly draining all the juice in my PSP, I decided to go out with my camera to take some sunrise picture since the sun would come out around that time.

Took some pictures while waiting for the sun to rise.

The night scenery around the resort

The pool at night

There was a watch-tower nearby the resort. Wondered if it saw me taking pictures.

Waited for another half an hour and the sun hasn't even shown itself and the number of sand fly bites were increasing. So me and brother had to head back to the room and we saw that my cousin's boyfriend was awake. He decided to tag along with us. We played black-jack to kill some time with him being the banker and surprisingly, I was owning them. If only we used real money... ah well.

At around 6 in the morning, we went out for a stroll in my cousin's boyfriend's car and headed to the nearest beach to catch the sun. The sun just rose but the thing was, we were at the west side of the beach and the east was blocked by some forest and other resorts. Darn it. Couldn't get my shot, so we headed back before we worried others.

While in the car, I noticed that the sky was so beautiful due to the sunrise, I decided to take the picture even thought my cousin's boyfriend was moving quite fast with his car. I thought that the pictures that I took would be all blurry but I stand corrected.

Sime Tyres. Lol
One of my favorite shots
This one turned out nice too, don't you think?

I was surprised at the picture that I had taken. The car was moving at a speed of 100 km/h and my camera could still produce a picture like that. That is why I love my Olympus E-510. Headed back to the room and everyone began waking up.

We made our own breakfast, like a self-service buffet. My brother made his scrambled egg while I made my famous egg-roll with hams and bacons, topped with tomato ketchup.

After munching everything down, we packed all our stuff and left Port Dickson. Not before having another one last view of the ocean. I think I slept through the whole trip back home only to be waken up by my dad to accompany my mom to buy something (read previous post). Oh and I saw Daniel's car pass by. Reached home at around 6 p.m. and was dead tired. Didn't bothered helping out and went straight ahead to bed. I slept like a log until the next day only to end up with a fever. Great...

Overall, the whole trip was nice except for the polluted part and the part where me and my brother had turned into sand flies' midnight snack. It was a great family activity and I'm glad that my grandma was pretty happy the whole time.

Hope to have another trip with my family like this again at the exception of getting a better resort and cleaner surroundings.

Kyle
Next post, Hatyai trip.

I don't get it

Yesterday, I was on my way back to my home after spending one night at PD (I'll be posting it. Soon, I hope...) My parents stopped by a mini-market in Taman Connaught to buy some ingredients for that night's dinner. My mom went out of the car with me accompanying her while my dad and brother waited in the car.

While walking towards the store, the workers as well as the owner of the store was standing outside looking over to the opposite street; where there was a bunch of people standing around a white Toyota Wish. Curiosity gotten over us, my mom asked the owner, whom she knew for a long time, what happened.

The owner told us that the window of the car was broken with all its valuables in it looted. She also said that apparently earlier, there was two guys on a motor did that. "That doesn't surprise me at all," I bet that you were thinking the same way as I am that time, am I right? Well, that's what I thought until I heard the rest of the story;

There was two guys on a bike, they arrived quickly and broke the car's glass. They took any valuables they could find inside the car and sped off after that. There was a bank nearby and the security guard who saw the entire thing that had transpired in front of him did nothing at all. Yes people, NOTHING AT ALL!! After the car was broke into and the two had sped off, then only people started to come out from the nearby restaurants etc etc to see the situation.

What the hell, man? If the security guard of the bank was there, he was supposed to do something. Great, this is the kind of people that the government spend their money to. I kinda pity what the bank manager had to face if the owner of the car knew about the guard and decided to bombard him or her. I'm sure that the guard had undergo some trainings to face this kind of situation or at least dial 999 or shout for help at the very least but instead he just stood there like a buffoon and just watch?

I don't get it

What the hell is wrong with the guard? And for the people from the nearby restaurants and all, aren't you all a little slow judging from your reaction? Someone's car is being broke into and you all thought that it was none of your business? Come on, man, I thought we Malaysians are supposed to be helping one and another, not watch in enjoyment and do nothing while someone's car is being broke into. Imagine if the same thing happened to your lovely car and no one was there to help you, what would you do? How would you feel?

The story doesn't end here. After a while with still no police visible nearby, one of the man from the crowd grabbed a long wooden pillar and stormed into a gray Proton Satria followed by another man. I wonder, what was he thinking. My guess was that he somehow recognizes the criminal's faces (if they weren't wearing any helmets) and wanted to go find those two and give them a good beating or something. Whether this is true or not, it's still remains unknown, well, to me at least.

I don't get it

If my guess was correct, that does it mean that the guy recognizes their face? Doesn't that tell us that he TOO saw through the entire thing that was happening? If so, why didn't he help out in the first place with that bad-ass wooden pillar of his? Why didn't he call the police and report to them at what happened? Where was he going with that wooden pillar of his? Beat the criminals up? Won't that make things worse?

I don't get it

Violence only breeds more violence. Don't you get it? But still, that was just my intuition and my intuition hasn't always hit the jackpot and vice versa. But if my intuition proves otherwise correct, then that just shows us how bashful and irresponsible us society today is. Not to mention cold-hearted. Great, these are the kind of people that the government spend their money to. I pity what the bank owner had to face if the owner of the car knew about the guard and decided to bombard him or her.

After all the ruckus, I still couldn't see any police patrol car around but luckily and hopefully that the nearby CCTV installed captured the whole thing and will be able to solve the whole thing. After all, I don't think that the government uses our tax money and spend it to install the CCTV just for shits.

Then I heard another similar case that happened somewhere last month or so from the owner of the store. The case happened at McDonalds' down by Connaught;

There was this one lady who was happily enjoying her meal at the smoking area (outdoor table) and was playing with her laptop until two guys came up to her with a knife and robbed her of her belongings; laptop, cellphone, handbag and all the knick-knacks that the lady has. The other patrons saw what happened and guess what the good society did? They rushed away from the restaurant! Not only that, to add it worse, those who were INSIDE the restaurant, including workers, rushed away from the restaurant too. So in the end, all the lady's belonging was taken away. And as usual, the lady cried and asked to borrow a phone from a guard (i think) to report to police about the incident. This got me angered when I heard that the guard didn't want to borrow his phone to her claiming that it was none of his business and didn't want to involve in it. In the end, this injustice was left like that or at least I think it was.

I don't get it

First of all, those two robbers had guts to conduct a robbery in daylight and in an open area at that I'll give them that. But come on, to the other patrons, what the hell is wrong with you people? It's just the two of them against and I'm guessing at least 10 of you, shouldn't you help out or dial 999 or even shout for help for Pete's sake? I mean come on, there's presumably more than 10 of you and there's only two of them. Don't you know maths? Ten beats two? Makes any sense? Don't give me the they-had-knives bullshit, can't you use your brain? With ten of you, you can just easily surround the two. You're much older than me, if I can think of this, why can't you?

I don't get it

Now for the workers in the restaurant. Why couldn't you workers at least dial 999 for help and instead run away from the spot? If you're going to give me the they-had-knives excuse again, don't bother. Don't you people like, have a knife in the kitchen somewhere? Otherwise, how are you going to cut the meats, patties, pickles, cucumber and all? Don't tell me you actually rip them with your hands or something? Once again, these are the kinds of peoples that the government spend their money onto.

I don't get it

Last and finally, that guard (I'm not entirely sure it's the same guard from the car breaking incident. But judging on how he reacted from the case, I beg to differ.) What in the seven seas of earth does he mean by not wanting to get involve in the case? It's already bad enough of him not helping out especially if he is a guard in the first place and to make things worse, he doesn't even want to lend the victim his cellphone after losing hers? Is lending his cellphone to that victim that much of a burden? This guy is just too selfish, how did he end up with the job as a guard in the first place anyway? His employer should really fire his sorry little arse, i bet that it would do the society a good favor.

I don't get it

What is the matter is with this people? Aren't we supposed to help out among one and another? Like what we have learn in our Moral subject or Civic? Or what our parents had taught us? Or what we have learn by watching television nowadays?

Doesn't the line;

"United we stand, divided we fall" (or some bullshit like that, I don't know...)

Mean anything to us?

I don't think there is any harm in helping others out especially if he or she is in need of one. This just once again, shows us how our society are nowadays. I'm just so disappointed in this and I bet that you are too after reading this. I guess with all this happening, we're on our own from now on. I suppose that we can only trust the society only by a little or can only trust ourselves. All I can think now is...

I don't get it

Kyle