I had my first Mcdonalds (or in fact any fast food outlet) meal in 3-4 months on Tuesday! Haha, it’s no mean feat okay! Anyway, shall write about the day first:
Tuesday was KTV Outing with Alan and friends – including meeting two new people I’ve never met before – they turned out to be nice and entertaining people!
Having procrastinated by music examination book buying since last week, I finally went down to Bras Basah Complex to buy the books…not without having to walk up and down the five floors trying to find the shop – which was hidden directly behind the stairs. The Grade 7 Book cost me some $16.50, and grade 8 ones are $20…ooh.
The plan that day was to meet two of them for dinner first and the rest will join us later! I realised I was overly early to meet them then, the meeting time was 6pm, but I was done with the books by 5pm! Talk about good time planning 
~ my plans were:
- Start preparing to leave at 3:15pm (I always give myself an hour buffer)
- Leave at 4:15pm (eventually I left home a little later, I think 4:30pm – thank goodness I was “late”)
- Reach Bras Basah Complex at about 4:40pm (well, if you’d just append, I reached there at about 4:50pm then)
- Spend 30 minutes at the Complex finding, hence 5:10pm (I took about 10 minutes only, grrr, so I left there at 5:00pm)
- Spend another 10 minutes to reach the place and walk there, hence 5:30pm. (And I reached the meeting place at 5:10pm
- Wait, reach there at 5:30pm?!?!? Not Right.
- Hence, after typing this, I realised I actually calculated my timings wrongly that day. *facepalm*
This shows that reviews (like these) are important as to finding out how things/what went wrong *gah*.
Moving on from the math failure, I decided to go over to Tiong Bahru Plaza to walk around after that then, before making my way back at 5:45pm to wait for them at the meeting place!
Then I had the first Mcdonalds meal in a very, very, very long while:
My Mcdonalds Meal! Double Cheeseburger!
What the other two guys ordered!
And my favourite doing - the mountain of fries!
Whilst there, we chatted over a little while before doing to the KTV to meet the others. One thing I noticed while I’m there was that the branch still provides power supply for charging laptops and etc, I thought they parsed that out a long time ago, hmm.
After that we walked over to the KTV and started having fun! Started off with a few songs while waiting for the others to appear – I thought I sounded horrible ~ after that it was much better. The night was full of funny dances and laughter from the room – one of the most exciting outings we had in a long while – with thanks to the two new people!
Inside the KTV Room!
Had lots of fun that day ~!
Went home at midnight with one of them when it was over, I managed to catch the last 851- which arrived two minutes early : – thank goodness we spotted it while crossing the road and made a crazy dash…however it was unfortunate that the ones who had to take the train missed it – the timetables provided weren’t accurate lah!
That’s all! Hope to go out with them again soon :p.
As most of you should have figured out by now, I’m a fan of writing long posts. I sure do have a few long posts such as Part 2 of my Malaysia Trip, the Nucleii Chalet in 2008 and last but not least, the Nissan Bus Farewell Tour. Of course, I’d be expecting many more to come…
But anyway, Wordpress isn’t too supportive of my extremely long posts. It seems to hate it, it doesn’t display them on the page at all – however, they save perfectly in the database. As such, I’ve dived right into the core of Wordpress to figure out the cause of this problem – its certainly not some post length limit in Wordpress…and after much searching and testing, I’ve deduced that the cause is this evil piece of code in wp-includes/formatting.php.
It wouldn’t do much harm in removing it if you don’t use shortcodes, so here’s the fix. Just for the record, I don’t use shortcodes.
In wp-includes/formatting.php, find the following line in the wpautop() function:
$pee = preg_replace('/<p>\s*?(' . get_shortcode_regex() . ')\s*<\/p>/s', '$1', $pee); // don't auto-p wrap shortcodes that stand alone
Just comment out that line by prefixing a “//” and your extremely long posts should display fine again – clear the WP Cache if it doesn’t work.
This quick and dirty fix works out just fine for me.
—
Okay okay, part 3 of the Malaysia Trip soon – must start sleeping early.
Some life updates too – recently I’ve been watching 百万大歌星 on Youtube. It’s the Taiwanese version of Don’t Forget the Lyrics. Quite an interesting show, with all the celebrities vying for the 300,000 NTD prize. All sorts of Chinese Songs come up during the show, and I know quite a number of them .
Just search 百万大歌星 on Youtube, it has an episode every Saturday, then there are two uploaders for this entertainment show too, so it’s relative easier to find . It’s usually split into ten parts, with it occasionally going into 11 parts!
I would absolutely love to complete all five days of my trip in this blog post. Let’s me try.
Day 1 – 24th December 2008
We woke up at about 5.30am on the 24th, the first day, preparing for a long drive there with the always expected jams at the Causeway. It was after a long decision that we decided to take the risk and take the first link, which has had the new CIQ just opening a few days ago – something new, you’d expect hiccups.
Of course, we never quite made it there at the time of 6.30am. We reached Woodlands at about 7.30am, after many, many, many delays at home. You bet we were half expecting a jam then. On the contary, upon reaching Woodlands, there wasn’t much of a jam. Going through Woodlands was quite a breeze then.
The new CIQ is relatively deep into Malaysian territory, with all the areas along the road into the CIQ fenced up – though the fence doesn’t seem any secure to me…seems like as if it could be easily pryed or climbed over. And it was a breeze through the new CIQ too! The new CIQ is NOT nicely placed in front of the way to the coastal road, after driving around some places, following the signboards, you then get led back onto the old coastal road, which brings you to the highway. Troublesome… ~
Anyway, after some four hour drive, we arrive at our hotel! That is a feat done with making some unneccersary turns to find the hotel despite having a GPS with you :\. The streets there are narrowly one way, which makes it quite hard to navigate…and one wrong turn will bring you back to the headof the street, only to join in the never-ending queue of cars and buses. We booked Hotel Puri for the first day…and no other hotel for the second, third and fourth day 
. Certainly a smart plan to want to book hotels along the way…but the trip wasn’t really a “planned” four day trip, we booked along the way so that we can go back anytime we liked.
Some scenes in front of the hotel located on a small street by the name of Jalan Tan Cheng Lock…
 Facade of Hotel Puri |
 Buildings to the left of the hotel |
 The Church in front of Hotel Puri |
 Buildings to the right of Hotel Puri |
The hotel is described as a Boutique Hotel and if I’m not mistaken, it’s where the popular Channel 8 Drama, The Little Nyona, was flimed. The building was owned by someone, can’t remember who now, and then it was revamped into this hotel, with the original facade and other stuff still intact. The hotel has its own carpark a few units away, so you don’t have to park your car outside. There’s too, a little secret about this hotel that I’ll mention later…
The hotel’s interior is nice looking and gives you some cozy feeling. You can easily see what the unit was like before it was revamped into the hotel. Some pictures of the interior and from the window in front of my hotel room’s door…
 Rooftop view from Hotel Puri |
 Rooftop view from Hotel Puri |
 Hotel Interior, facing the front door |
 The old windows that are still there...I doubt you can actually go up to the second floor since the stairs was chained... |
Shophouses along Jalan Tan Cheng Lock
After unpacking the items in the hotel room, it was time to move out and explore this place…the entire street was full of shophouses like these. There was a unit that was under renovation, and NUS’s name was on it…I wonder what they’re doing there!
The street leads you to the riverside, Melaka River. There’s not much life on the river, hence it certainly looks clean. The occasional riverboats passing by, which make a loop back at the end of the river that has been dammed up. Nice scene…took a few pictures of it too! I realised I’m taking pictures of everything – glad I’m going to collage all my pictures next time instead of posting them one by one!
 Riverside view with the water-wheel |
 The street behind the riverside, intersecting with Jalan Tan Cheng Lock |
Heeren House. My parents wanted to stay here, but they were out of rooms - they only had 4 rooms. This is not Heeren Inn which has bad reviews! |
 Melaka River with the fort and the bridge in the background |
 Signpost by the riverside! |
 Further down the river, where the malls are still largely under construction...many things there are still being built. One of the tour boats is in the background too! |
It was almost lunchtime by then. Next to the river you can find Jonker Street, this street is full of life – with never-ending traffic flow – human and cars alike – save for maybe at night. When it’s almost 9-10pm, you can barely find anything on this street, mentioned later! Some street scenes as usual:
 Big Stone Plague that says Jonker Street! |
 Shops... |
 No prizes for guessing what else is there... |
 And even more shops... |
We took lunch at this shop called Famosa Chicken Rice Ball. The food was quite nice, and the shop has a unique design too! Of course, pictures speak a thousand words…
 Front interior of the shop |
 Fishballs on the left? No, it's actually chicken rice balls! |
 At the back of the shop... |
 The gold looking design of the shop! |
 There's even a place for kings...! |
 Close-up of the King's Throne |
After lunch, we began exploring Jonker Street again and we found this small hole which leads to a supposed tea-house. Money tree plants are all around you as you dig your waythrough the narrow pathway into the tea house. What I never expected was that this tea house also functions as a museum at the same time, which has tour guides and shows. The tea house cum museum is some 6 shophouses long if memory serves!
 Riverside view with the water-wheel |
 The street behind the riverside, intersecting with Jalan Tan Cheng Lock |
 The entrance to the Museum cum Tea-house |
 Yet another street scene... |
After this was a walk over the river to the other side, where you can find the Stadhuys and the Clock Tower, at the very heart of Malacca. Pictures will do the talking again since I’m lazy – you know, a montage IS the way to go…
 Signboard with the River's Name |
 Another scene of the river with the docks in the background... |
 The Stadhyus and Church and the Tang Beng Swee Clock Tower |
 Red Square with a Pasar Malam |
 The Art Gallery and Church. They sure don't call this place the Red Square for nothing... |
 River with a tour boat arriving. Notice the OCBC Bank in the background - it has closed. |
 Fountain in the middle of the Red Square |
 Pasar Malam at the back of the Red Square |
Oh, then guess what we saw while walking around the Red Square? Mounted Tourist Police, I wonder where do you see these anymore! Certainly a sight to behold…and I do wonder how these policemen go on duty with people taking photos of their horses all the time 
.
 Mounted Tourist Police on Horses! |
 Another picture of the tourist police on horses! They're so nice! |
After that, we got on one of the bicycle tour rides, forgot what was the term…brought us around for about 5 minutes and showed us places that we were lazy to walk to before it headed back to the Red Square. It seems to me that there’s no fixed pricing there, with the people riding just setting the prices on their own .
 One of the bicycles with the cabins...gah cannot remember the term for it now. |
 We saw the mounted police again...so here's another picture! |
 I cannot really remember what is the train, but it is probably some old KTM train mounted there. In the background would be the Taming Sari Revolving Tower which we went on later |
 All the uhm, nicely decorated, bicycle taxis! |
 MAN Tourist Public Transport Bus in Malacca  OCBC Bank Structure |
After alighting, it was more walking to be done! Here’s some local public transport infrastructure, or more like tourist infrastructure…it’s a tourist bus that brings you around the town’s attractions. No, I did not go on the bus.
And the OCBC Bank structure in the background…of course if you’re looking at something else, I wouldn’t be suprised . |
The next place we went to was the Porta de Santiago, an old Portuguese fort that has been rebuilt by the Dutch…amazingly, they dug it up and reconstructed it according to the layers and even labelled them . There’s still digging being done I believe.
 The Fort from opposite the river. |
 The layers of the fort reconstructed and labelled! |
 View of the street from above the fort |
 The fort and its cannons! |
 Close-up of a cannon in the Fort |
 Lookout Tower on the Fort. It is a really, really small hole. |
 Fort from the base, with the cannons protruding outwards |
The Ship in question
After the fort, we proceeded and continued walking towards the Revolving Tower…and passed by several attractions on the way, such as this ship. It’s some tourist attraction, but I can’t remember what is it…here’s a picture of it nevertheless.
When we reached the Revolving Tower, a queue begun to form. There was some form of school excursion there and hence there was a huge group of students, right in front of us queueing up too…Luckily the queueing time was relatively short, despite the length of the queue. There was either no English guide on the Revolving Tower to tell you what you see, or I simply couldn’t understand what the person was muttering, so if you don’t speak Malay, you’re quite left on your own to just see what you can see!
After this, we walked back to our Hotel to get some rest, I think, because there isn’t anymore photos to help me back any story up. We figured out where the Ferries Wheel was. On our way back, we saw huge groups of 燕子’s flying and flying in huge flocks, it’s quite an amazing sight to behold…but I don’t have any pictures to describe it! They were literally black masses flying in the sky, making chirping sounds non-stop…
On our way back, we stopped by Jonker Street again, and looked at several things and bought some CNY Goodies back. The flattened love letters that we bought is quite nice, so is the rolled up version .
We didn’t go out for dinner until 9:30pm, and that was another problem. Everything was closed in the vicinity, save for the pubs which were preparing to celebrate Christmas with loud, non-stop blasting music…
To be continued in part 3~
I’ve been wasting a few nights away – like by staying up till 5am. Thought I’d start uploading the photos for Malaysia and Taiwan…I’ll post about Malaysia tomorrow since the uploads will be done by tonight. As for Taiwan, I’m thinking I’ll probably do a montage instead of uploading 2.1megabyte pictures at high resolutions. Hey, at least that’s a start!
Whilst people are starting school, I’m still having my holidays, how great…still have till about April – and I have absolutely nothing to do. Unfortunately, some people who wanted to help some months back, forgot about it totally it seems…a little disappointing, but I shouldn’t expect too much – makes me feel like a fool helping them whenever they need me to.
Anyway, Malacca was quite fun. Went there over the Christmas Period (24th Dec to 27th Dec, actually more like 28th if you consider the additional nights stay). Though I don’t quite remember the exact details now…I’m sure the pictures will trigger my memory…
I didn’t quite just go to Malacca, but also had a stopover at Muar…then went over to Johor Bahru and stayed with my aunt for a day since the Causeway Jam was quite bad – will talk about it later.
