My Awesome year of 2011

As we all know, the year of 2011 is going to ends in a couple of day.
Is it an awesome year for you? For me, it's the greatest and happiest year so far!

This awesome year, i've experience many 'first time' experience.
Firstly, I've entered another stage of my life, the working life.
Bringing my life to another challenge! In case you're new to my blog, i'm currently an Microelectronics Failure Analysis Engineer in a Electronics manufacture company in Muar.

Next as usual, let me rewind back my best memory in 2011 before it ends.

January



The 1st January, I was countdown at Taipei, Taiwan with Kas.
This is the first ever counting down during new year eve in my life.
6 hours of standing wasn't comfortable but it's a very precious experience.
There were a lot of singer performed and that was awesome!
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February


12th of February, i was given an opportunity to Italy for microelectronics training.
The period was 2 and half months, which was 12th Feb - Mid of April.

My first time travel to Europe, and most important is i travel by myself without my family.
I managed to grabbed this great chance to travel around Italy during the weekend.
Made several great and genius friends in Italy.

Antonino, Andrea, Marco, Mikesh, Simona and etc.
You guys rock my Italy trip.
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Anyway, on my second valentine day in our relationship i failed to acc her.
But i told myself i will give you the best i can.
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25th of February, i bought my Beats by Dr Dre Solo HD from Apple Store, Carugate Italy.
The bass, the stylishness, the clarity, the eye-catching with this product. You can't describe with words.
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March


On 25th March, it was the worldwide launching of iPad 2.
I went back early from work and stop by the Apple Store in Carugate, Italy to witness the countdown launching ceremony. You'll never know how excited the people until you experience yourself.

Check out the video i recorded as below.


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May

I wasn't able to celebrate Kas birthday with her. She was in Australia for her studies.
But i think i gave you my best birthday present, isn't it? =)
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June


8th of June, i changed my iPhone 4 Black to the White one.
Apple finally released after so long of waiting period.
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25th of June, i bought myself the iPad 2 32GB White.
Sold my iPad 1 and change to this iPad 2 with a little top up.
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July


This is the lens that most of the photography enthusiast want for.
The Canon EF 24-70 F2.8L. It's in my arsenal now! :)
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August


19th of August, i went to Australia. At the same day, i lost my iPad 2 in the flight.
'Donated' it to Singapore Airlines A380 flight to Melbourne.
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On 23rd of August, we flew to Sydney from Melbourne.
Nevertheless, Australia is a great place and i hope i can work and live in there.
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29th of August, i can't live without my iPad 2.
I bought another one to replace the one i lost in Melbourne.
It's the same spec but this time in Black colour.
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September


On 4th of September, i shoot for my cousin's wedding ceremony along with Wei Chen.
My 24-70L did a great job but i think i still need time to play with it.
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October


15th of October, 4 of us went to KL for Canon Photomarathon at Pavilion.
Chun Leng, Wei Chen, Kas and Me. The weather wasn't well and we decided to shopping instead of finish the contest. However, Chun Leng still won a Canon printer in the lucky draw.
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November


It's my birthday and Kas celebrated with me in San Francisco Restaurant, Melaka.


All of my previous people gave me a great presents.

December


We went to Bangkok for travel. I did have a great trip. I had a great smile to be with you, isn't it?
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Bought myself a Seiko 5 SFNZ21K1 from Springwell, Mahkota Prade Melaka.
It's an automatic watch and nice to be my everyday use watch.
----


25th of December, our 3rd Christmas together.
We celebrated it at Olio Italian Restaurant, Renaissance Hotel Melaka.


You smiled happily.

So, it's about my 2011. This year was fun. Hehe!

3 must visit places for shopaholic in Bangkok, Thailand

I just got back from Bangkok, Thailand on 8th Dec 11. It's a 7 days fun trip with my parents, dear and relatives. So at the first point, i would like to share about my must go places in Bangkok for shopaholic.


We went there via Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 737 for RM629 per person. Airasia was having RM550+- at the same time we booked so we decided for MAS instead for a little price difference.


I recommended you to stay in Baiyoke Sky Hotel.
We stayed in Baiyoke Sky Hotel for the first 2 nights before my relatives meet us at the third day.


You can have a buffet dinner in the Baiyoke Sky Hotel for 550baht per person, with a lot of entertainment around.


On the roof top of Baiyoke sky hotel you can view the awesome city view on top with 360 auto spinning.


There are market below the hotel too, which available for the whole day till late night.

P/S: When you're out from Baiyoke Sky Hotel, you may need to be careful if there's some people in well attire with good english approaches to you. Telling you today is lucky and you might need to pray on their lucky buddha blah blah blah. NO! Please don't listen to them, just telling them you're not interested and walk away.

1) Platinum Fashion Mall.


Around 15 minutes of walking distance, there's a big shopping mall for shopaholic, The Platinum Mall.


There are tons of shops available in there with good arrangement. Mostly are clothes for girls.
You can get wholesale price if you're buying in bulk.

2) Chatucak Weekend Market


Chatucak Market is famous in Bangkok, i bet you heard many times of them. It's better to shop there during the weekend since there are more options for you to buy from. There are various kind of stuffs to buy there. Prepare for a one whole day to shop there, you wont regret.


The shops are very small and you might need to careful of pickpocket.
My gf and I bought a lot of clothes from there.


The clothes are simply awesome cheap compare to the boutique selling in Malaysia. From my observation i think Malaysia boutiques took stock from here. :P

Remember ask for discount / bargain to get a good price.
If you're buying in bulk you can post the goods by DHL/TnT and etc.
There are the post company there!

P/S: It's better to bring a luggage there to put all your victories in there!

Take care if you're going to Chatucak market by Taxis, they will keep ask you to stop by the jewelry shop without any extra cost. Just ignore them and insist to the Chatucak Market! :)

3) Street Market opposite of Siam Paragon


The street market opposite of Siam Paragon is another must go places for shopaholic.
The price is quite cheap and i think shopaholic might excited to go there, too!


It's quite big and i think few hours will be needed.

That's all of my recommended places for shopaholic in Bangkok, Thailand.
Hope this post helps you guys to decided where to go during your visit in Bangkok! :D

How to: Replace your iTunes dock icons with cover flow

*This is not my original idea of changing icon dock, just sharing :)*
*Original source of turorial link is below the page*

Do you ever feel bored with your iTunes icon displayed in the dock of your Mac OS?
Today when i was browsing internet i've learnt from a website to change it with the cover flow of your current song playing.

So i thought of sharing it in here.

Firstly, you may need to download DockArt in order to complete this task.

Secondly, press the Command + Shift + G from your keyboard.

 

Insert  ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins/ to the pop out folder option.

Unzip the DockArt that you've downloaded earlier.

Move the 'DockArt.bundle' file to the folder that you've opened.

Quit your iTunes if you're opening it. And restart it.

Play a song. That's it! :)



Source from OsxDaily & CultofMac

My Birthday Celebration 2011

Last Tuesday, 08/11/2011 which was my 24th birthday.
I did had a happy birthday on the day and of course, she celebrated with me.

I was in Kassie's house on 12am of 08/11/2011.
she celebrated with the cake bought from 'Delectable Treats', Pavilion when the time reached.


Chocolate flavor cake, with very nice decoration. :)

Unfortunately this year my birthday falls on Tuesday and i've to work on the day.
So, night time we went to San Francisco Steak House in Melaka for dinner.
That was my very first time to San Francisco, a very well western restaurant.


Here's my well-done Steak with black pepper flavor.
No, i don't eat half done steak coz of the fresh smell.


She don't eat steak so that's her chicken chop!


Here's my present for this year. Thank you my parents and my precious Kas.


And also this photo, thanks Kas for creating this. :)

The Dragonfly

Hello people, a small update for the photo that i've taken last weekend. The Dragonfly!



It was Saturday afternoon with a great weather and i was walking to my backyard to have a look on my small garden. Suddenly this Dragonfly was flying there and rest on the PVC pipe that we used to straighten our plant. So quickly grab my camera and tested my new 24-70L lens with insect shot.

For the first time shooting on insects, i must say it's pretty hard to wait it to pose better.
My handheld is still not stable yet, forced to boost up my ISO settings to compensate.

But for the first time, i'm quite satisfy the outcome. What say you?
How do you think about this photo? C&C are welcomed.
Leave me a comment below :)

My Apple Journey, tribute to Steve Jobs

This is unbelievable, probably the longest post I’ve written in my entire blogging life especially I’ve been slack for quite a long time, but no choice lah coz the topic is my love topic. :P

As we know, Steve Jobs passed away earlier. He’s my idol since the first time I know about the Apple products, iPod Nano 3rd Gen. Ever since then, I watched the keynote from Endgadget/Gizmodo whenever I can. I’ve decided to write a post about my Apple journey to express my deepest respect to Mr Steve Jobs, so here we go.

Before I start my first Apple product, I was actually exposed by my dad with his iBook G4 a couple of years ago, which he borrowed from his school to show me. The first thing that impressed me a lot was the solidness of white plastic body, the glowing Apple logo, followed by the beautiful Mac OS sidebar. Unfortunately, this wonderful product did not last for a week in my house due to Mac OS Leopard. My dad was a long time windows user and he doesn’t familiar with Mac OS Leopard. Hence he returned to school and exchanged with another Windows laptop.



So, what was your first Apple product? Well, as I mentioned above, mine was an iPod Nano 3rd Gen 8GB Black colour. I bought it for RM849 from Machines, Mid Valley in the year 2007. It was well packed under a very simple yet elegance transparent box. The 3rd gen of iPod Nano was the newly launched product and I was deeply attracted by it. The 2” screen with shorter, wider body, cover flow playing method, & click wheel. Awesome features. When the first time I used the iPod Nano, the screen resolution did make me a big Wow with very clear and real display. A very big difference with my previous MP3/MP4 MIC(Made in China) music player.



At 2009, I couldn’t stand anymore the hotness on my arm rest area of my 3 years old Compaq Presario V3000 laptop. I bought my second Apple product, Macbook White (Late’09, 2.26GHz Core2Duo) model for RM3599 from Machines, Sunway Pyramid. As usual, the well packaging from Apple did impressed again. The transparent plastic that let you lift up the Macbook from the box was so convenient. The first start-up of laptop, with the welcome page make me feel so ‘home’. Not to forget the awesome White keyboard, Glowing Apple logo like how iBook G4 did, 13” LED Glossy screen & more. Of course, the Macbook is still serving me well till now.



I’m also a fan of iPhone since the iPhone 2G was out in the market in 2007 (if I’m not mistaken the year). It isn’t popular in Malaysia at that time and weren’t available to get as well. My first touch for the iPhone was the iPhone 3G, which owned by my gf. She bought it from Australia when she was still study there. Great phone I hold that time. Okay let’s cut short my story of molesting the iPhone 3G, I actually bought my first ever iPhone last year in 2010, the iPhone 4. I believe that a lot of you were impressed by the awesome features presented by Steve Jobs in the keynote at 2010. I, myself was impressed as well. I bought it on 31 July, 2010 which is the first day launched in Australia, on behalf of my friends who happened to travel at there. The price was AUD$799 for my 16GB Black iPhone 4. The best and awesome handphone ever I would say. Then after a year of using it, I changed to the White iPhone 4 16GB few months ago, somewhere in June/July from Maxis and still using it now. The iPhone 4 did change my life in the social network, and changed my point of view for the smartphone. Before using the iPhone I never thought that I’m able to buy movie ticket online, facebook on-the-go, twitter, surfing net, and even blogging, too! In conclusion, a great invention, Apple!



Since I’m the Apple fans, you must be very curious about iPad now. What about iPad? Well, I’m the iPad user as well. I bought my iPad 1 32GB Black Wi-fi version in December, 2010 from Epicentre, KL convention centre during a fair. The price was RM1849 at that time. It’s another awesome product from Apple (Yay I apple fanboy everything Apple sure awesome lah :P). But this really changed my light browsing usage. I can now surfing with bigger screen anywhere, as long as there’s internet available.



Half a year later, I sold my iPad for RM1300 to a forummer after 6 months of usage. I bought the iPad 2 32GB White Wi-fi version for RM1799 from Apple online store, Malaysia. I did engraved ‘Apple Addict’ as suggested by my gf on my iPad 2. The iPad 2 is indeed lighter & faster than the previous iPad 1. Unfortunately, I lost my iPad 2 during my Australia trip back in August, 2011. I feel like killing myself (just kidding), and I couldn’t live without my iPad 2. Therefore, I bought another iPad 2 32GB Black Wi-fi version after I returned from Australia. It’s been a baby to me and my gf until now. :)


My current iPad

Lastly, my apple collection until today is the Steve Jobs’ Biography. I assumed most of the fans would get it for collection, although it’s not an official product from Apple.inc. I bought it from Popular Bookstore for RM69.95, after 30% discount from RM99.90. Read for a couple page for the first day and stopped until now, probably it gonna takes quite some time for me to finish it.

So, I’ve introduced you guys about my Apple journey up to Nov, 2011. What about yours? Mind to share with me. Are you guys getting iPhone 4s? I will probably skip for the 4S this time and stick with my iPhone 4 White, until the release of iPhone 5 (probably June/July 2012).

I would call myself an Apple fans but not that kind of die-hard fans. I did not buy the iMac, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, iPod Touch, iPod shuffle just for collection though. But for time being after I retired my Macbook White, would probably consider a Macbook Pro, Macbook Air or an iMac.

Ciao. RIP, Steve Jobs.

Torino, Italy

Back to my journey in Italy. On 26 March, i went to Torino (Turin).

'Torino, is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River surrounded by the Alpine arch.'

Source: Wikipedia

So, from what i understand Torino is a capital of Italy in the past (Not sure one hah!).

And since Milan is just near to Torino, my colleague and I decided to give a visit there.

The train from Milan to Torino takes about 2 hours, with a cost of Euro 9.55 per trip.

This is a very well organized city i must said, the maps can prove you.

All the buildings and streets were well organized in shape!

I can't believe there's a city as tidy as this. You gotta be believe me, you can try your own and visit there! (Italy should reward me something for writing so many blogs about italy lah! haha)

2 hours of journey, we reached there at almost noon time, Torino greet us with a very nice view as above. The weather was awesome, the streets are beautiful & so many things (except the blacks that annoyed me).

The typical western style of building is the train station, Stazione Di Porta Nuova.

And do you know that Italy is celebrating their 150 years old this year?

This is the statue of i-forgot-the-name. haha..

The location was Piazza San Marco.

You can easily reach this monument by walking from the Stazione Di Porta Nuova to the direction of Palazzo Madama.

This is me, taken while waiting the traffic light in the middle of road.

If you spotted carefully, you can actually saw the railway of Turin Tramcar behind me. :)

To visit Torino, this is a place you must visit and take picture.

The landmark of Torino, Mole Antonelliana (National Museum of Cinema).

It's very beautiful building indeed, and there's offering panoramic view from up.

You have to pay for the visit, too bad there were so many people at the time we visited, and also i've no idea and not interested with Italian movie so we decide to give it a pass.

More about Mole Antonelliana here.

From my point of view, you must visit the old city of Torino also!

It's seperated by Fiume Po, a river that used to seperate the modern city and the older city.

You have to experience yourself to believe that you can actually differentiate two kind of city just in front of your eyes. Crossing a bridge makes you actually feel like you're walking a time machine to the older city of Torino.

So, for sure i crossed Fiuma Po and reach the old city. First thing welcome you was the Piazza Gran Madre Di Dio. Thus, i took this photo while i was crossing the bridge. Beautiful pot of flowers were nice decorate!

This is the shot i took when we were walking uphill.

Our destination was Monte Dei Cappuccini, it's a mountain that actually give you another panoramic view beside Mole Antonelliana. This gotta be a better option coz it's totally free! The only thing is you have to walk up to the hill. :)

This is my favourite shot of the day. :)

The location was somewhere around Monte Dei Cappuccini too.

It was a good place for some photography actually, too bad my model (my gf lah) wasnt there.

Tada~ the view from there. Nice nice nice?

Just one shot of all the shots i took..hehehe..

Soon, we went down and this is the view of Fiume Po when we were walking back to the direction of Stazione.

Since it was still early, we decided to walk walk at Vio Garibaldi before we went back.

This is the place that the tourism information counter recommend me for shopping.

and yeah, i bought ice cream (Gelato) at there too. In Italy i bought their ice cream in almost all of my visits. It's very nice! :) Average price was Euro 2.

This is my one day trip to Torino, not bad for this city.

If you have more time in Italy, you should try to visit here too! :)

Regards,

Jing