Slurping the Dribble – Page 21

Getting stuck in the lift

Our apartment building has two elevators. Easily enough, we’ll call them Left and Right. The left one is always “in maintenance” mode and stuck somewhere. But having said that, if its working we have caught it half as much as the other lift. Simple enough.

That is until the other night!

The lift had been out of service for days and it was surprising the other day that upon pressing the button, the left doors open. I looked briefly to my wife, but figured, “Oh well, it’s fixed. That’s good.”

Needless to say, it wasn’t.

We got to about the third floor and there was the sound of a metal scraping on the side of the lift. scrape, scrape, scrape, jolt, STOP! The lift just stops. And then falls (maybe 5-10cm, maybe not even that much). I couldn’t help it. I start laughing. Another guy in the life reaches across and presses the alarm. Then the phone. No answer. Alarm.

Alarm, longer press.

Eventually we hear someone on top of the lift, there must be controls there, right? Because the lift starts jolting up and down. Didn’t make the misses very happy.

After about 15 minutes in all the doors start to open. Yep, we’re between floors, could have expected that. The other guy in the lift (obviously having been in this position before), starts pulling on a rope that’s suppose to unlock the outer doors. But the rope breaks. A few moments later the building’s security guard appears as the outer doors open. Moments later we were free.

I do not want to get in that lift again. We do however get in it because often there is no choice. Fingers crossed.

RFID and hotels

calming image — a totally unrelated picture

Three of the last four hotels I have stayed in that used RFID tags for the rooms have absolutely sucked. Big time. Currently staying in the Novatel, KL, Malaysia and were only here four nights. The very first morning after having breakfast and travelling up 25 floors BOTH my wife’s RFID card and mine had decided to fail, yet mine did allow us to enter the floor – the floors are protected by RFID as well.

Then the first afternoon coming home they both failed again! The guy at reception reprogrammed our cards and gave us a third one.

Yesterday, my wife left her card in the room, along with the spare and when we got back mine failed again. We went back down. He reprogrammed mine and gave us a fourth card.

Today, after lugging up all our shopping, both my card, my wife’s card and one of the spares would not open the door. The second spare (luckily) did! But I would have been very peeved if it hadn’t!

The other recent hotels that used RFID and we had problems included big name, fancy places in Koh Samui (and that was a LONG walk back to reception), and Koh Phi Phi (again, another long walk – the longest – back to reception!). I would name them but I honestly forget the names. The only RFID card we haven’t had problems with was the most recent in Singapore – the (overpriced) V Lavender Hotel above the Lavender MRT.

I tried to recall, I thought for a moment swipe v actual RFID cards may have been worse, but the verdict is still out. Two have been swipe, and one was proximity type RFID. So, probably, this post is incorrectly titled. So sue me :/)

BTW, the image of the water is supposed to be a “calming effect” type of thing. This is just such an annoying thing that one needs a little meditation, medication or to go for a drink :-)

Teksi in KL

I first came to Malaysia in 2008 and caught a teksi (taxi*) from KLCC to Mid Valley Mega Mall. The first one back then drive like a bat out of hell and it cost RM60. Now in Aussie dollars that’s about $20 and given that taxis in Aus are notoriously expensive I didn’t think too much of it. I did think it was a LITTLE overpriced, but hey, we were there to have fun**.

Coming back to the hotel in the afternoon the driver was taking us on the scenic tour and I remember repeatedly telling him we wanted to go to KLCC. He confirmed we were but my concern stemmed from the fact that the Petronas Towers were directly behind us and we were headed away from them. Reraising the concerns the driver assured us we were ok. We were going the right way.

As it turned out, we were going the right way and he got us there for RM30!!! Half the price.

Wind the clock forward to 2011, my wife and I walked out of the hotel yesterday and jumped into a taxi and headed off in search of MegaMall once again. We got there and the fare amounted to LESS THAN RM30! So with a tip it cost us RM30 exactly. And this taxi driver was really funny, very wise and will probably be the subject of another post in the next few days.

But then coming back to the hotel last night, the taxi was stuck in traffic for almost the entire journey and it seemed to take forever. We arrived at the hotel and the whole fare rung up at LESS THAN RM15!!!

What’s going on? Everytime I get in a taxi in Malaysia, is gets cheaper!!! This is cool! But it does go to show how much we got ripped off every other time!

* I do love the way Malay’s spell English words, or incorporate English words into their language

** and as it turned out, to get ripped off!

NSW over QLD

NSW ALL THE WAY

Damn, it’s Wednesday night, and state of origin #2 for 2011…. I don’t know what I was thinking… And we won!!! I watched game number one, three weeks ago and was sorely dissapointed when we lost. It WAS a great game, but we went down in the final minutes… And I missed this game… Damn….

I can tell you now, I WILL NOT MISS THE NEXT ONE!!! I’ll be home (in Phuket) and we’ll be backing the blues all the way!

Come and join me…

KL 2011

It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with this site, and maybe it’s about time to start doing something again. I’ve been overseas a lot lately, currently lying in my bed, in KL, Malaysia debating on going shopping. No, I don’t live here, I’m just a tourist. Debating on having a shower and visiting MegaMall in Mid Valley. I went there some years ago and was amazed, preparing to be amazed again, and have my wife spend all my money… After all, isn’t that what they’re for???

I spend most of my time now in Thailand and Australia. Debating on which I call home. Often I get trapped and call both home, but there are moments where I take sides, in which case it’s “Back in Australia… but here at home….” and other times, it’s “When I’m at home…” clearly referring to the other country. One thing that is funny, is visiting your own country as a tourist. Ok, admittedly it’s probably not quite the same as a tourist, because you’ve probably got accommodation, transport (or a transport system you know), no language barriers and communications (email, telephone etc etc).

But going to Australia for short stints, is kind of like a holiday. And like all holidays, they have their good points and bad points.

Regardless, I’m heading off to Singapore in a few days, ready to hit a few attractions that I didn’t get to see in either of my last two trips. But for now, I’ll just sit here, and slowly wake my wife (she get’s grumpy if I just push her out of bed lol), and debate the day’s (and the night’s) activities… Tonight could see me at a favourite little haunt called the Rum Jungle (free plug), they’re just around the corner from the towers (pictured above). But I have found a new little bar at the moment (only because of the price of the drinks).

I’ve never drunk “Carlsberg” beer before, it’s from Copenhagen and it’s not too bad a drop. I’m a Tiger (Singapore) and Chang (Thailand) beer drinker myself (or a Wild Turkey man when I’m at home/in Australia!)… But this bar I found has RM30 (about 300฿ or A$9) for the first stubbie (which is definitely overpriced…), BUT every one AFTER that is just RM1!!! (about 10฿ or just A$0.31)… If over the course of the CRAZY HOURS (as they call them), you put away 11 of these (to make the math easy lol), that’s 11 stubbies for RM40 or 400฿ or A$12.30… breaking that down… each stubbie costs RM3.6, 36฿, or A$1.12… Now that’s good by anyone’s standards. I just have to get the wife there again tonight!!!!

But who want’s to hear about beer…

PPPPPPP – The 7 P’s

Prior Preparation and Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance

I first travelled to Singapore in 2008 with a good friend of mine. While we were there we darted off to KL for a few days and took in some of the local sights, as well as attractions (there is a hidden pun there – sorry, private jokes are so bad, but if anyone knows Sissy, you’d know what I mean!) Anyway, we elected to go by VIP bus. We had heard about how good it was, and cheap, and so we did it. Without a lot of research, we jumped on one of the services (the name has seriously escaped the pair of us) and we were dropped off in some dingy bus terminal/car park with hordes of teksis (how Malaysian’s spell taxi) who were unwilling to run their meters for us.

So we elected to walk.

It was hot, uphill, long and we were dragging our luggage along for the ride. Did I mention it was hot?

We stayed at a hotel, Corus, pretty much across the road from the Petronas Towers. Not bad at the time, cheap, free wifi in their lobby (BTW they don’t have this any more), and not too bad. Especially for the price. The bad point was though, that another bus company ran VIP busses TO THE DOOR!!!

It’s now 2011.

I had forgotten a lot of the lessons learned in 2008 – especially the difficulty in organising and coordinating international travel between countries, that aren’t your home country, and that (despite official languages) don’t speak great EngRish). When I decided to visit KL with my wife I did look briefly at the Corus hotel, but quickly dismissed it for some reason (it wasn’t the wifi!), and went with the Novatel. Now this is no dig on the Novatel, they are a good Hotel and I would recommend them again, Well, we’re still here and haven’t had any problems so far. BUT, and here’s where the 7 P’s come into it… When it came to organising the bus (long after I had BOOKED the accommodation), I booked with the bus company that dropped us off at the Corus Hotel. But the Novatel is closer to the car park/bus station that Andrew and I had taken in 2008!

Is that irony?

No, it’s just those 7 bloody damn P’s

Apple is changing…

There are many things I hate about Apple, but don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of their products. But one of the things that have really annoyed me is when they change their terms and conditions. I have created a post about this before, but it seems now, they have listened to the complaints of many (or maybe just me!) and have modified one of their practices…

Apple now itemises the changes in their terms and conditions without you having to read them all… At least this is what I discovered today… At the top of the page (while logged in using a MBP) I saw a list of changes to the T&C… Better than reading 100+ pages of same!

Dengue Fever

I’ve had Dengue Fever for the last month, I’m only just getting over it. I hope I get over it soon, I’ll be in Singapore next week!

It’s been a debilitating disease, it put me in hospital for 5 days and that was no fun – not without insurance! I have been crook with this for more than a month…

It is purely mosquito driven, and non contagious, and there are four main strains of the disease. I caught one of them (I don’t know which one), but now I am immune from catching it again, the other three strains I am immune for a (unspecified) “period”… The problem is AFTER that period, I am MORE at risk if I ever do catch one of them…

I was VERY lucky, I never caught it (or got the worst strain) as detailed in the above link… But it still hurt though!

Great.

A Hot Shower with Running Water

[iframe http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=non+sa-at,+udon+thani,+thailand&aq=&sll=16.425548,102.826538&sspn=0.947086,1.385651&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Non+Sa-at,+Udon+Thani,+Thailand&vpsrc=6&ll=12.082296,101.953125&spn=19.250296,13.139648&z=5&output=embed 300 450]View Larger Map

Oh how I long for thee.

edit: this was written at a time when I was spending a LOT of time in country Thailand… and I mean BACK COUNTRY!!!

Why do I get a warning…

The AppStore is improving all the time. It has it’s shortcomings (poor searching and sorting to name but two of them), but I have become tired about being warned when I am NOT spending money with them. I would much prefer a warning about when I AM spending money with them.

For example, and as has recently happened to me, I went searching for an app I had previously bought, to reinstall because frankly I got tired of it and I wanting to give it another go. I went to reinstall it. Now I wasn’t at home, so resyncing wasn’t an option.

I found the app, and there is no ‘reinstall’ button, you have no choice but to re-‘buy’ it. I don’t want to buy it, I’ve already bought it. I just want to reinstall it. But to do so, I have to go through the motions of buying it again.

I click INSTALL and then BUY and AppStore quits (I hate this too, let me queue things and buy/install/update multiple items), and moments later I get a message box telling me I won’t be billed for this. I am being warned about NOT being charged… Cool… NOT

But on this occasion, I WAS charged and I don’t have the option to back-out, because (after all) I had selected to BUY IT.

After some research I discovered I actually had TWO iTunes accounts, one being my email address and the other simply my username (sans ‘@myemail.com’). How this occurred I will never know, but when I wrote to apple about this they just maintained I had bought it via two accounts and had no recourse. If I was presented with a last minute ‘You’re about to be charged for this’ message box, I would have kindly not purchased it and found out about the 2 accounts. Instead, I just get billed twice.

Now I know not everyone would want this, and some people would find it annoying, but there can be an option to turn this off (or on, as the case might be).

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