as SOON as possible

It was mangrove but not so dense, looked more like a piece of land just being flooded after hurricane swept across that area the night before except there was no house, no cars, no lamp posts, not a single visible human trace or perhaps a small fishing boat or anything like that spotted. Calm, desolated and borderless, this was the scene I saw through the cabin windows. Most probably this was the border area of Tonle Sap Lake, at an altitude of at least 6000 feet above the lake level, around 15 minutes to 8 o’clock local time in the morning.

I then saw the sunlight penetrated the thick and dark clouds from distance and the rice fields, sugar palm trees, piling houses came into view moments later. Minus the sugar palm tree, it looks not much different comparing to the rice fields in the northern states of peninsular Malaysia.  The noise from the giant engines beneath our wings might have wakened up the people down there when we flew over their roofs towards Siem Reap Airport or perhaps they have already got used to this big bird which will pass by at around 8 o’clock in the morning above their roof every day.

The pilot did a very smooth landing and we were very honor to be one of the two sizeable aero planes landed at the airport surrounded by rice fields. Jet Star seemed like having been waiting for a long time to use the run way and the blinking lights on the wings resembled an impatient signal to warn us to leave the place as quickly as possible so they can ‘get the hell out of here’.

The Angkor trip started the same day, around 1 hour after we checked into our guesthouse

The towers that inspire

On the left is Kelana Center Point, the condo with blue roof is Tiara Kelana and this is where I live. The red and white roofs at the back are Kelana Mahkota and Sterling PJ respectively.

The picture was taken when I brought my uncle, aunt and my cousin for a walk in the park during one beautiful Sunday morning.

The happiness of Saturday is to slide your french windows wide open and let the summer breeze comes in. [We have it all year round by the way.]

Turn on the music (currently playing ‘you are everything’ by Misia), stare at the potrait of the blue-dome cathedral with Aegean Sea as the background, adore the forever smiley face of the wood puppet bought by Jean from Laos sitting beside the standing calendar from my ex-company given by Abby.

3 artificial Carnation flowers with some dusts on it, an aquarium full of coins, some are now useless 1 cent coins. Sip a cup of butterly Vietnamese coffee using an exactly 10 year old Cofee Bean Cup bought from Melaka during my university day.

I heard the bamboo-made windchime hanging at the corridor of my neighbour, the azan call from the mosque not far away and also the birds’ chirping downstairs in between the trees.

…it’s a beautiful day.

Upper Swat Valley

Lower Swat Valley

Swat River near Mingora

Miandam, Swat Valley

Swat Valley during winter

By Swat River

PTDC Motel, Miandam, Swat Valley

The pictures were taken between 31st December 2006 and 2nd January 2007 when I visited to Swat Valley at North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. The fertilized, wide and beautiful valley surrounded by snow capped mountain ranges has turned into one of the most dangerous places on the planet, sigh…

This is actually a battle between a 75 ringgit and a relatively cheaper 40 ringgit service. The cheaper won during the days of economic downturn, well, that’s not what I usually go for because I believe in the theory of ‘Good thing is not cheap and cheap thing is not good ‘. What’s more appropriate to describe, it’s the ‘ego’ within me.

The story goes like this: Company A will start to charge RM75/year for my 1G web hosting service at the end of May instead of RM50. The reason given was the higher maintenance cost for the server and the quality of their service. This will definitely piss everyone off like how certain politic parties (whether currently ruling or the opposition) piss their supporters off in certain countries. So I surfed the net and found out Company B offering the price of RM40/year for 0.5G web hosting. Since my utilization is always less than 0.2G (then you might ask: then why the hell you subscribed for a more expensive 1G service? Well, the reason is that I won it from lelong.com.my!), so why not go for it? This time, I go cheap, or put it in better phrase, I go for a more affordable service which is more suitable to my needs.

The migration at the backend took me days to figure out how to migrate the database & the images of my blog from Company A to B. This might sound easy to all the IT people out there but the fact is I am not as IT as you.

Migration - that’s the most scary part that held me back lying on the sofa pondering over this 25 ringgit question that if I failed to do this, I am going to pay 75 ringgit for Company A and also wasted another 40 ringgit to the potential hosting ccompany.

Everything was done, SoonKOH.com remains soonKOH.com at the front end. I am sorry to Company A, I am going cheap inexpensive this time.

1,2,3!

4,5,6!

Arrgghh! 7,8,9!

Sekinchan in the month of March

The most breathtaking picture taken on Santorini Island

Click this file –> santorini_again.pdf to download the pictures that I took on Santorini Island in June 2008.