I'm not dead yet

Though I wish I were tomorrow...since I have to be up in about 2 hours and 40 minutes. So in light of that you can see pretty much what I've seen for the last couple days (stupid days of 10 - 14 hour days...that doesn't include my travel time and food breaks...yes I did go into the fab today).

Night all

My spot in the world as of late 

My view of the world 

No update

Sorry everyone,

You will have to wait for more news from Malaysia since I have to finish a software release tonight and tomorrow (for another SC). So I'll try to squeeze an update in but don't hold your breath.

A taste of the market

I'll try to give a more complete recap of the weekend tomorrow (as I am quite tired and wish to go to sleep in my nice big bed). But first I'll give you all a something to whet your appetite.

We checked out a few things during our day and a bit in Kuala Lumpur, but I'd say that we spent a large part of it exploring the market in China town. Below I have attached a couple pictures I took of it. Keep in mind that this was at around noon--we went back at night and it was a whole different place. I don't know if Dave got any pictures of it at night--I didn't take my camera since it wasn't as small as Dave's and more likely to get snatched (Dave's fits in his pocket).

I don't know of any other place that has so many "original copies" of watches, bags, and sunglasses. Notice that I said "original copy"...just think about that for a moment. You could get a Rolex for 10RM (that is about $3.34 CDN). Or a Mont Blanc leather bag for 80RM. The key is to not accept their offer, always cut it down--way down--if you don't go at least half you are getting screwed out of money. Oh, don't let the old crippled lady make you feel sympathetic, there is another guy just 200 metres away selling the same thing--she didn't make them herself (we fell for that one). On other occasions I got a guy down from his 25RM asking price to 10RM. Later that day I saw the same item in fixed priced stores for 15RM...I was happy with the outcome of that barter.

One thing that I noticed while touring the market at night was that the vendors sound like little birdies, all calling "cheap cheap, I give you cheap price".

I think that is all for tonight (it is 11:30PM), so I'm going to say bye for now, and I'll have more for you tomorrow.

-Ryan



Gates to China town


Market around noon. It is *much* more busy at night.

We survived

We just got back to our hotel (in Penang) about 15 minutes ago. I'm just about to go down for dinner (had time to get a quick shower in). All-and-all the trip was fun, I'll fill everyone in with the details in a couple hours. So, hold onto you hat this could be a bumpy ride.

-Ryan

Off to KL

So Amy comes and rings my door bell just a few minutes ago and says you ready to go to KL? So it looks like we will be catching a cab at midnight to the bus station and then we'll be on a bus ride to Kuala Lampur. We are supposed to arrive at about 6am. I think we are doing a little bit of "figuring it out as we go"...well no, not quite Amy says she knows the place we are going to stay when we are in KL.

Well off to dinner. Good think I have my camera batteries charging.

Home

Well it is starting to hit me. Home is very different from here and very far away from here....and I'm missing it. :( And I really don't like having to take a taxi to and from work. And I miss all of you out there. I know I don't see you all the time, but knowing that you weren't that far away and I could visit you without much trouble.

Let us all hope that integration finishes early and then alpha goes quick and smoothly...then maybe I'll be home early. Listening to Canadian music to make me feel better. :)

Missing Canada (and all the people in it),
Ryan

Good food wasted by poor quality

So tonight Dave got to pick the place for dinner. He picks the Chef & Brew. So after a long while I choose to order peppercorn chicken...which sounds good and all...even if I didn't really know what I was getting. Well it ends up being a peppercorn gravy over the chicken and some fries. I'm like "not what I expected, but looks good". Well, they didn't quite use the best piece of meat...you know the ones marbled with fat and such. Well it was enough to keep me from eating all of it (or most of it for that matter)...and we have these french fries (w/o vinegar...but I can forgive them for that) but I don't know what kind of oil they used to fry the fries...cause they didn't quite taste right... Oh and then we had our Cafe latte after our meal...well let me just say Nescafe.

Well the point of that rant is that it is now 12:40am and I'm very peckish...should have gotten the cheeseburger like Amy.

P.S. there is indeed real lightning going on out there...not just fireworks.
P.S.S Did I mention that our server most likely used to be a guy?

The show of lights

Well I was warned to expect fireworks tonight (related to Chinese New Year). Well there is enough people setting fireworks off around the city that it sounds like we are either receiving an air raid or a good thunderstorm. I went and looked out through an open window in the hall (well not window, but rather opening in the wall) and watched the fireworks across my entire field of view. The clouds (it is looking a little overcast) are lighting up as if by lightning...that is a good amount of fireworks in my opinion.

So Happy Chinese New Year related event. ;) Now lets see if I am able t get to sleep with it going on out there.

Skype endorsement

Just like to put out an endorsement for Skype. Skype is a free VoIP (Voice over IP) P2P (Peer-2-Peer) application. Which means that it allows you to have voice conversations across the internet...for free. Well free for PC to PC, if you'd like to call PC to phone you can for a small fee.

I have been using Skype to have conversations with Mom & Dad (& Joel) between Malaysia and Bowmanville, ON. And those conversations are as clear and lag free as any normal phone call. So I have gotten Amy onto using it to talk to her parents (using Skype-Out to call her parents regular phone). The only thing it can't do is make timezones re-align. ;)

From way over there

Hi all,

Just got back from a post-work swim with Dave. He had been home for quite some time--he got to come to the Penang fab to get his real visa processed (and Amy's...she was elected to work longer). We are currently waiting for her return so we can go find some dinner. I got my visa today (and 410 RM back...they apparently have difficulties figuring out how much is for a Canadian to get a visa...Adam had the same problem). So my passport is starting to get stuff in it...w00t.

So far integration testing has been going well for me. I think that we are making good progress (hopefully Dave and Amy's picks up). Found some good defects in our code (this is a good thing when testing...if we don't find anything then something is likely to be wrong with our tests and it will bite us in the ass later).

As a side-note, it is good to see the reader population growing. Don't feel so dorky any more. ;)

Local critter 

Day one on the town

So just recently got back from our first day on the town. First thing to point out. Lanes on the roads are purely a suggestion here. If it is faster if you go into the on-coming lane, they will do it. Oh, and you can easily drive along-side another car in your lane. And those ever so prevalent scooters and motorcycles need not be considered real vehicles. I mean they are small and no need to give them any room on the road. Hell, and you can easily fit a family of 4 on a small motorcycle (that was scary to watch).

So what we actually did (other than hold on tight in the car) was to go to the large mall in George Town. This was about 10 stories of stores...to my suprise there are a LOT of American stores: Levis, etc... There are plenty of food places to go. We passed up McDonalds for some Chicken & Noodle place for lunch. It wasn't anything to write home about. So after a day of strolling around the giant mall we had dinner at Sushi King. The cool thing about it was that they had a conveyor with plates going around. So you just grabbed what you wanted and since the plates were colour coded, they just added up your plates when you finished. You could also order things from a menu (which we did to suppliment the conveyor food). Amy even tried some sushi (salmon and BBQ eel)...and thought it was quite good.

The cab ride home was a little...interesting. Mostly due to the fact that he really didn't know where our hotel was (the downside of staying in a nearly brand new hotel). But eventually he (with our help..which is difficult) found our hotel. Eventually we will get it figured out where we are.

Well I'm off to go for a swim in the pool. I'll report with more news later.

Ready for some real sleep

Well I'm just about to go lay down for my first real sleep since Wednesday night (and I only got to bed @ 3am that night). The pictures I posted are just a few samples (and at a lower resolution), I have more, and more will be coming. Tomorrow Dave, Amy, and I are planning on going out adventuring to see what we can see before we have to start working. So in about 10 - 12 hours I'll be going out for a Sunday afternoon adventure while you guys are all sleeping (it is currently ~ 1:30am on the 13th). Night (or morning) all.

-Ryan

Terminal stretching as far as the eye can see 

Looking across a corner of the mall w/i HK's terminal 

Some strange water heater in my shower 

A bunch of orchids 

The bustle of HK's terminal 

A view of Hong Kong across the tarmac 

Arrived in a foreign country

So our flights went quite well. Cathay Pacific was a very nice airline to fly. They kept us well fed and in supply of movies to watch (4 during my long flight from Toronto to Hong Kong). So between naps, food, and movies the trip across the pacific went by pretty quickly (for such a long flight). Hong Kong is quite pretty when flying into the airport, however, it looks like you are coming in for a landing on the ocean (couldn't see the airport during the approach).

By the way, Hong Kong airport (which by the way I was stuck in for far too long) has a very cool terminal. I took a few pictures, and a few more of the orchids (I'll upload those pictures).

The weather in Malaysia is....extremely hot and humid. I consider it bad when it is still 30 degrees at midnight...and enough to get you dripping wet in no time.

-Ryan

Waiting in Hong Kong

Hi all,

For those of you who are keeping close watch on me, I'm currently about half way through my ~8 hour layover in Hong Kong. We just had Burger King (last chance for some North American fast food). It is currently 10:07 AM (Saturday the 12th) and it looks quite humid outside and around 20 degrees C.

Somehow I managed the 20 or so hours in the plane from Toronto, to Alaska, to Hong Kong. In that time I got a little reading, a bunch of sleep and 3 or 4 movies in. Oh and they kept giving us food on the plane. Not quite as bad as it is always made out to be.

Anyway, I'll be signing of now (I'm at a public Samsung kiosk) and will check back in when I find internet access again (probably after having a shower at the hotel).

Ryan,
The world traveller

Departure

I'm just shutting down my laptop at work. Finished printing off documentation I need. Better run home and get some food in me before I'm leaving on a jet plane. Wish me luck, I'll keep everyone posted on my travels. Don't forget to check back here often.

-Ryan

Good to the last drop

Well I'm still up. And guess what I'm doing, laundry of course. When would be a better time than the night before I leave. I suppose I could be doing this tomorrow between the time I leave work and the time the limo picks me up. But that would be leaving things to the last, and I'd never be that bad about getting ready. ;)

So far I have packed one bag--the bag full of books, DVDs (just TV series as of now), games, and of course my new camera. The others are just sitting waiting to be filled with some clothes that are so happily spinning in the dryer downstairs. Anyone think of what I might be missing?

Change of plans

So as of this moment I am only going to Malaysia for 4 weeks. This is due to the fact that the extension was not approved by the client (it was them who requested it though). So, I may still be going for 5 weeks, but that will be decided upon after I leave.

-Ryan

Departure is sneaking up

Just over 24 hours until I'll be jumping on a plane bound for the other side of the world. Kind of crazy! Right now I'm just doing some prep-work at work for my departure. Getting a bunch of virtual machines to do software releases while traveling. It is very time consuming since there is about 12GB to transfer to this external hard disk.

Tonights plans are to do some laundry, pack some bags, and get some sleep (maybe get some time to play some games before I go). Hopefully I haven't forgotten to do anything important. I guess I'll find out if I didn't. For anyone wondering my plane is leaving from Toronto at 10:30pm on Thursday flight number CX 829 then CX 721 from Hong Kong. On the way back the flight numbers are CX 720 and CX 828 on March 12th.

-Ryan

New Toy

Brand new toy

Well in light of my future travels (well very near future) I thought I should get something to help me share them with everyone else. So I did the logical thing, and went and bought a brand new digital camera. As you can see I have purchased a Nikon Coolpix 4800. 8.8x optical zoom, 4 megapixel CCD, rechargable Li-ion battery, and a 512 MB SD card.

This is the bigger brother to the camera we got for Grandma (Coolpix 3200). And I'm happy to hear that Grandma is doing quite well with Picasa2 and her camera. Again, I'd like to recommend it to all digital camera (or scanner) owners.

Oh, and if anyone has been wondering why there has been no updates in a while I've been playing a lot of WoW.

-Ryan

P.S. The 24/7 support went fine. Only had one call (@ about 6pm one weekday) and I only ended up redirecting the call back to Asyst.