On going to TRX 45 mins Circuit Class by Jacq Ng

I managed to hit the gym at around 5pm yesterday. I straightaway went to see the class schedule for 5ish class... Any class i could attend, wanted to kick start my week with a light workout especially NO GYM for the past 4 days.

5:15pm was the TRX class by Jacq Ng. I quickly changed to my exercise attire, went to the front desk for registration, walked over to the group exercise main studio. Jacq  was there preparing for the class. He actually saw me looking at the board earlier.

He was surprised that i changed so quickly and headed to his class. BTW, i was surprised as he addressed me by my full name. Wow~ how you know my full name? After some thought, i think he knew my full name is because he is the Personal Training Manager in 1MK and i have signed up for so many PT sessions with his team. So, should not have any surprise he knew me by name eh~ :-)

Back to TRX, it was a circuit class and Jacq being a pleasant and encouraging facilitator. He has made the class very enjoyable, 45 mins passed so quickly and we really have a good workout since options were given to us. In additional,  he encouraged us to listen to our own body... Some of the exercise i just have to forgo since i have lost some momentum/stamina without going to gym for 4 days.You must be thinking how could this happen, but for a core gym person like me... it makes a different kub~

For those people who don't know what is TRX and never see TRX,  here is a video clip...

On planning how to spend the long weekend

Oct 3rd - Oct 6th 2014 is a long weekend in Malaysia and Singapore. So, my travel buddy from Singapore will be coming to Malaysia for spending a long weekend with my friends and I.

So as a host, what should i plan for this long weekend? I have a few options and got a quick discussion with my friends

Option #1:
2 day 1 night in Ipoh + remaining day in Kuala Lumpur

• We will drive up to Ipoh and visit the surrounding area (e.g. Gua Tempurung etc), then spent a night in Ipoh happening downtown booze area. Next day come back to Kuala Lumpur. 
• Day 3 will chill out in Kuala Lumpur 

Option #2: 
3 days 2 night Pulau Ketam, Klang area, Kuala Lumpur downtown

• Day trip to Pulau Ketam to visit the fishing village and have seafood lunch, evening chill in cafe @ Klang
• Be a tourist in Kuala Lumpur for 2 day 1 night including visit attraction in Kuala Lumpur and booze booze at Changkat Bukit Bintang at night.

Option #3: 
Staycation in downtown Kuala Lumpur for 3day 2night.

• Find a nice hotel and staycate in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Enjoying food around Kuala Lumpur and booze booze at night

This are the 3 options that we have in mind... We tried not to go too far from Kuala Lumpur due to foresee the highway will be jammed up with people traveling on the long weekend.

So, any suggestion?

NO GYM DAYs

Sister is in town for a weekend... I was not going to gym since Thursday until today - Sunday.

Thursday - No gym
After work, went to Grapes in Cyberjaya with Colleagues for Happy Hour before heading to airport to pick up my sister and sent her to the hotel. Too late for gym and i didn't not bring my clothing with me.

Friday - No gym
Wanted to hit the gym at 4:30pm but ended up the rain was coming and didn;t want to get wet, so decided to skip gym and went out dinner with my parent and le sister.

Saturday - No gym
Went for lunch with parents and le sister in Sukiya, planned to hit the gym after dropping them back to my condo. Ended up Dad suggested to head over to VW to have a test drive on Polo and Jetta. So gym didn't happen due to too rush for me as we have planned to have dinner at port klang. Sigh~

Sunday - No gym
Had brunch with my friend came back for holiday from Scotland. Initially, i have planned to hit the gym after the brunch but ended up sitting in Tous Les Jours, Bintang Walk for the whole afternoon until sister called for dinner. Quickly sent my friend back to pick up his car and headed home...

Total 4 days of  NO GYM day... Oops~ am i getting fat?

On swinging like a monkey

Fitness First Avenue K has installed a racks of functional workout... It has becoming quite popular outlet after its make over on reflecting the latest Fitness First Rebranding. They have installed some new tools and workout equipment. One of them is

Functional Workout Rack - Monkey Bar (the Gray rack)

The Monkey Bar rack was for those members whom wanted to workout their arms and abs... this workout rack is a whole body functional workout. Not really fully utilized at this moment as not many people able to swing from one bar to another. 

Back to the Monkey Bar Workout... I was trying to swing myself from one bar to another... the most i can finished was 5 bars which not even 1/3 of the total bars. Anyway, i'm trying to reach as many as i could on my next attempt. One bar at a time~ :p

Anyone has tried this workout?

Coffee Place : Epique coffee company

So many coffee place in Malaysia... there are light the mushroom growing rapidly. Last week, I went to this small coffee place called Epique Coffee Company which located at Empire Damansara.

Epique coffee company

I purchased the coffee latte and my friend got the ice white chocolate.

Coffee Latte from Epique Coffee Company

Epique Coffee Company

Sitting there in the coffee, i just wondered what is this cafe specialty. Google for some information about this cafe. What is their specialty... etc. What i found in most of the people whom been to this cafe, according to them, Epique signature is Gula Malacca Banana Cake...

Gula Malacca Banana Cake

Just a normal banana cake with Gula Malacca...
Overall this place is nice in term of ambiance, coffee and cake is just so so only. The place is quiet and it's good place to catch up with your friends.

On friend visiting and bringing Anthon Berg

My friend visited me in Kuala Lumpur last month. He knew I like chocolate liqueurs, so he brought along Anthon Berg for me.

The box has 16 different types of liqueurs inside the chocolate. From famous volka, Canadian Club to XO and brandy... I just had one last night and hmmm... it's yummy~

Too bad i could not send some over the internet for you to taste. Close your eyes and imagine the smell of the liquor and chocolate eh~

hehehe...

Crabby dinner @ Bagan Hailam, North Port

Friday evening - Almost everywhere is like a huge carpark in Klang Valley...

It is a challenge to travel with car from point A to point B especially from one end to another. How about from One Mont Kiara to North Port?

No exception. I was stuck for at least 1 hr after Penchala Link to Damansara Toll and from Damansara Toll to the exit of Bukit Kemunning. It was so so sooooo damn terrible. Only 10m per move.

So why TZ so determine to go for the dinner @ Bagan Hailam? He can beat the 1hr massive traffic jam to drive all the way from Kuala Lumpur to Port Klang for dinner...

Big Fresh oysters

Fried Squid

Bake Crab

Hahaha... now you know what drives TZ to drives for 2.5 hours from One Mont Kiara to Bagan Hailam, North Port (Port Klang) for this yummy seafood... So, will you drive for hours just to have food?

High chance to ditch my Hong Kong trip

My friends and I have planned the Hong Kong trip for months and I'm looking forward to go to Hong Kong. I never been to Hong Kong other than Hong Kong International Airport which i have been there many times. If everything runs perfectly, this trip would be after my exam for this semester i.e. Oct 21st - Oct 26th 2014.

The "Potong Stem" news came about yesterday evening during my dinner with my friend. I was a bit upset as i have given an heads up to the MBA course coordinator to ask him to ensure we do not have any exam during the Deepavali period. As a result the an unofficial schedule drop on the Oct 22nd 2014. Sad eh~

It's not that i have to celebrate Deepavali like my Indian classmate, guess what? i was the only one who concern the exam schedule... So my Indian Classmate actually kept quiet when i raised my concern, one of them even challenge me as if I'm celebrating Deepavali... I told her, i'm not but i would like to plan a getaway from the city of potholes to the Pearl of the Oriental. (City of Potholes vs Pearl of the Oriental - which is your choice?)

Now, my plan has to put on hold until the final schedule is out... The air ticket to Hong Kong is going to be more and more expensive as the departure date is getting closer... and i might have to make a call on TO GO or NOT TO GO... What would be the decision?

...

Singapore Formula One

Singapore F1 is a very unique F1 as it held in the middle of the night and they close partial of the roads in Singapore to become the F1 venue. So, if you are in some of the buildings in downtown, you may view the F1 from the top... 

Snapshots from http://www.singaporegp.sg

When i visited the Singapore GP page, I saw this stunning design and decided to snapshot it and keep it in TZ-Photo since they are going to change after the F1. To me this was a well design piece of artwork that brought out the features of Singapore at the background... Don't you think it's nice?

Anyway, back to the Singapore F1... Anyone here went for the event? I noticed every year they have some famous artist in their grand concert, not sure who was there this year >.<

I'm not a big fan of Formula One. Moreover, to go to this event in Singapore will cost me a hand and a leg. So i just have to say "PASS"

If you have been to this event in Singapore, can you share with us what is your experience?

Touring Kuala Lumpur - Day #3

Malaysia Day was a public holiday, since my boss was around and i have volunteered to bring her around Kuala Lumpur. We have planned to cover the National Mosque, Central Market, Skybar @ 33 Traders KLCC and Din Tai Fung.

Picked up my boss at 2:30pm from the hotel and headed to the national mosque, we arrived at around 3pm and realized we have 1 hr to walked around as the visitor hour is 3pm-4pm. Nothing much to see in the National Mosque. Anyway, it was my first visit to National Mosque.

National Mosque Kuala Lumpur

Inside Main Prayer Hall @  National Mosque

After visiting the National Mosque, our next stop was Central Market for more shopping, it was the 2nd time my boss visited Central Market. She likes the market with lots of stuff that she can negotiate and purchase. Guess what? She got what she wanted in Central Market :)

Sunset @ Skybar 33 Traders KLCC is stunning but unfortunately that day the weather reported HAZY. No stunning sunset just the nice lighting of KLCC... Sigh~ Boss has no luck to see the stunning sunset. Anyway, she will be back early next year.

Skybar 33 Traders Hotel KLCC

view from Skybar Traders KLCC

We chilled at Skybar until around 8pm and left for our dinner at Din Tai Fung, Pavillion. We walked over to Pavillion via the skybridge. Reached the restaurant and waited for around 10 mins then we were being seated at a nice and cosy corners. My colleague and I have ordered the food and boss was very enjoying with the food. 

Anyway, we ended the day with a good night greeting at the hotel lobby before headed home. 

Coffee Place: Coffee Factory

Coffee Factory is located inside a very unique place i.e. The Grand Shanghai SetiaWalk Mall Puchong. Have you visited the place? If not do visit Coffee Factory as this place is very cozy at the corner of the old Shanghai place. You will experience drinking coffee in the street of Shanghai in olden days...

This place has nice coffee and friendly staff. Besides, i have tried their food like pasta and sandwiches. It's delicious.

Coffee Latte

I will the nice coffee art with the doggie biscuit... It was a cute combination.
Anyway, just pay a visit and experience yourself eh~

Next Cafe : Epique Coffee Company

On staying over @ Hotel Majapahit Surabaya

My friend booked the hotel Majapahit for a night in Surabaya, on our way to Ijen Indonesia. This hotel was built in 1910 and was around for nearly 100 years. It was a luxury hotel and it's design was all victorian style.

By looking at the outside and inside, it's just a normal hotel with nice historical architecture. But it has the historical story behind this building...

The hotel was the site of the famous "Insiden Hotel Yamato" (in English "Hotel Yamato incident") on 19 September 1945 in which young Indonesian revolutionaries tore the blue part of the Dutch flag flown in the hotel to change it to the red and white Indonesian flag in the lead up to the Battle of Surabaya. Following this incident it became known as the Hotel Merdeka, or the Liberty Hotel. (Detail: Hotel Majapahit @ Wikipedia )

After visited this hotel, i have learn on how the Indonesia flag come about....
How Malaysia flag come about. Anyone?

Happy Malaysia Day

Roll back ONE YEAR ago in Sept 16th... Where was TZ be in?

Ta-da...

yup, i was in Kuching... by now you must be asking, where will TZ be this year?
hehe... TZ will be working this year. Not going to anywhere. Boss is in Kuala Lumpur...

HAPPY MALAYSIA DAY eh~

Picture from http://flags.redpixart.com/malaysia/people_icon/

Touring Kuala Lumpur - Day #2

My boss and I decided to do a half day sightseeing and have a nice seafood dinner. We actually planned to covered 2 places but we only managed to cover 1 place + a dinner. Really free and easy eh~

Royal Selangor Pewter Visitor Center 

The Royal Selangor Pewter Visitor Center is built on the extension of the existing Royal Selangor Pewter factory in Setapak. This factory produces the pewter for all the outlets around the world, as far as London, UK and Toronto, Canada. In short, the only Royal Selangor Pewter factory in the world. 

We were welcomed with the World Largest Pewter Tankard... 

World Largest 

A guide was assigned to explain the history of Royal Selangor Pewter and she brought us around the Royal Selangor Pewter... The Royal Selangor Pewter was founded by a Chinese migrant on 1885 and he settled down in Kuala Lumpur, the town with Tin. The whole session was informative and good for kids to learn about Pewter. 

As we finishing the visitor center, we don't have time to head over to the National Mosque, we ended up skipping the National Mosque and proceed to Port Klang for seafood.

Bagan Hailam
My colleague and I have chosen Bagan Hailam to have our seafood dinner.  Journey from Royal Selangor Pewter took around 1hr via DUKE and NKVE.

Bagan Hailam seafood restaurant was located at North Port of Port Klang, we ordered three dishes for 4 adult and 1 children.

• Sweet and Sour Crab 
• Steam Prawn
• Assam Stingray fish

Steam Prawn

Sweet n Sour Crab

The food was yummy~ and every was so satisfied.

Before sending them back to the hotel, i brought them over to have a quick tour to see OLD KL at night... "It looks different, the building looks nice" said my boss~

It was a 1.5 days tiring tour around but it was fun to host people in my lovely metropolitan Kuala Lumpur... 

Touring Kuala Lumpur - Day #1

Sept 13th 2014 Kuala Lumpur

TZ was hosting his boss and brought his boss around Kuala Lumpur for sightseeing... 

Batu Cave 

Our first stop was Batu Cave, climbing 273 steps and we finished the temple within an hour. We skipped the dark cave which has been closed to the public for decades. The bats' smell was so bad... Anyway, we went down immediately after we decided not to proceed to the dark cave. 

Statue on top of the temple @ Batu cave

Next, we went to the Istana Negara to catch the changing guard, unfortunately we missed the guard changing... but we did see a guard riding on the horse... 

Guard @ Istana Negara

It has been long time since the last time i visited National Monument. So the surrounding has changed but i still know there is a small car park within 10m from the main gate. So we parked our car and walked into the National Monument.

National Monument 

We had our lunch break at THE CURVE... Then, we went back to old KL visited the Dataran Merdeka, where the world tallest flag pole is located... Wow~ it's Tall, that's from my boss reaction ;-)

Tallest Flag pole in the world - Dataran Merdeka

KL Gallery is a new attraction in Old KL. This cool place is located 100m from Data Merdeka. We finished the sightseeing on tallest flag pole... We didn't know it was free to visit and understand the KL future. 

Future State of Kuala Lumpur

Finished the slide show and went outside the KL gallery building, i noticed no one queued up for the I love KL, So quickly went for the shots :p

TZ with I Love KL

Handsome? I think i have at one picture on I AM AMSTERDAM... 

We went to Central Market and China Town, my boss wanted to go shopping, I was walking behind her to make sure her handbag intact with her all the time. Guess what? We saw one person was being beaten until he was bleeding from his nose... Scary experience in Chinatown eh~

On being a Tour Guide in Kuala Lumpur

I was born in Kuala Lumpur... Yes~ I'm a city boy.

My boss is here for a few days and i have volunteer to be her tour guide to bring her around Kuala Lumpur... We have planned out a list of place to visit~

Batu Cave
New Istana
National Monument
Dataran Merdeka
Central Market
Petaling Street etc...

It has been long time i haven't been a tour guide as no many visitor from outside the country...

Coffee Place

I'm a coffee person since I was in Canada for my studies... I like to taste different coffee from various cafe. Cafe market in Malaysia is like mushrooms... booming and basically you can get different cafe all over the place. Some has its uniqueness and some just a typical coffee place. Let's explore the cafe eh~

Every Friday, I'm going to post and share with all of you the coffee place i have been and hope you can also share your view if you have been there.

Let's exchange ideas starting next Friday eh~
Next Cafe: Coffee Factory

Nine Eleven (911)

picture adapted from The Guardian

13 years ago, when i was surfing the internet, my friend buzz me with the messenger and told me that there was an attacked happen in New York City... there was a flight hit the world trade center New York. I was shocked and google the news. What i saw the picture is this (right)...

Then, Malaysia NTV7 or TV3 has reported LIVE from US. I was sitting in front of the TV and following the news closely. It was a sad night for my friends and I.

13 years later, I still feel the sadness as this tragedy was caused by human and those innocent people was being the victim in this tragedy. Anyway, today is Sept 11th again, and let's pay a respect to those whom passed away in this tragedy.

On hunting the blue flame @ Ijen Crater, East Java, Indonesia

There are only two places that can see this blue color flame, one is in Iceland and the other one is in Ijen, Indonesia.

Ijen crater located in East Java, nearest city is BanyuWangi and Ijen village  This is another volcano area different from Bromo. This volcano needed a 3km hike up to the edge of the crater and 1km hike down to the volcano lake.

Ijen Crater @ Indonesia

In order to hunt the blue flame, we have to leave our hotel/resort at 1am in morning by 4x4 to the base of the volcano. The journey is 1.5 hours from the place we stayed, it was a rough journey with winding roads, and traveling in the jungle pitch dark.

We finally reached the base, tour guide calling for last call on civilized toilet before we hike up to the crater. 


The first 500m was a gradual slope up the hill... At the end of the 500m, the slope becoming steeper and steeper. We need to go through 1.5km of steepest slope i.e. around 45 degrees. It was a tough 2km climb. At last we reached the workers' canteen which serves coffee and hot instant noodles. The last 1km was not as tough as the 1.5km steep hike up.

The moment you reach the top of the crater, you can view the nice blue flame from far. just a few blue dots. Then there is another 1km to go down to the base of the crater. Going down to the base was another challenging path... Rocky and steep down 1km with total darkness. You couldn't figure out the edge of the path which might be 100m deep down. So scary (only realized after the sky is bright) The only lights for lighting up the path is our torch light. Quite challenge eh~

At the end of the 1km hike down to the crater, the nice blue flame was our reward...

the blue flame

At the bottom of the crater you could also see the sulphur miners working... they are mining the sulphur and it was interesting to be so up close with the sulphur mine. BTW, the stingy smell like rotten eat was so turned off... Luckily my friend has prepared the N95 mask which can eliminate the smell by 99%... So we could hardly smell anything when we were there. But guess what? the smell was penetrated into our clothing until today...

Sulphur mining

Fresh Sulphur brew from the volcano

We stayed at the bottom of the craters for around 2 hours just to capture all the pictures that we desired... And of course not forgetting to camwhoring :-)

TZ in N95 mask - Smart eh~

The whole journey ended at about 9am. The tour guide and driver sent us back to the hotel.

Guess what? we went up twice in two different days because of first day we didn't manage to see the nice blue flame. So we made another trip up the next day. Total hiking in Kilometers = 14km for both days :)

It was a tiring trip but it was a good experience with the astonishing view of the blue flame...