Scene from Hotel@ Melbourne

Every morning, when we woke up we will see this scenery outside our Hotel Window, Tall building with blue skies.

And when we comes back this is what greeted us, a soft bed

and the Tall building changes its appearance

And finally we also doze off to dreamland and the clicking sound from the lift accompany us for the night.

Some food during my trip to Melbourne

Some may ask, what did I eat during my stay in Melbourne. I think one of the good points is that there are a number of restaurant that uses organic material and does not use MSG. I have did a search before I went down and I manage to find one such restaurant at the Federation Square, it is called Bok Choy Tang Restaurant.


I am shown here eagerly waiting for my lunch on my first visit to the restaurant. The restaurant is nicely decorated with Chinese paintings, furniture and etc which enhance the chinese feel to it.

The above is stir fried chicken with dried chilis.

The above is 2 types of Vege with differrent type of Mushroom.

This is the drink that my wife ordered, on the right is the before and left is after....

Siew Mai with a differrence, it has rice in it...

Wan Ton Noodles, the soup is not like those in Malaysia. You can actually taste the chicken in it. It feels like it was boiled for a long time with the chicken taste slowly absord into the soup.

A piece of clothes that I believe are meant to be place on top of the table. I believe it’s quite suitable for a person like me who is a bit dirty especially dining on wooden tables.

A fish, cannot remember the type of fish, hahaha.
That's all the food I have at Bok Choy Tang Restaurant.

Ah another interesting noodles. This I took along the way to the Great Ocean Road. This is actually Hokkien Mee Australia style, hahaha

I have only ordered this once, spring water. I thought its like mineral water but it looks like it is actually another form of Soda water. Anyone, is it right for me to say so? It got gas or bubble bubbling around it and its sodium contents is quite high...

I have eaten some other foods which is non organic during my trip but I am treating it as “a no choice scenario” as there are no way that I can go on a 100 organic diet while traveling. This trip is like a celebration of a sort, 2 years plus cleans from Cancer. Anyway I spend a few trips to mix rice stores located near China Town that charges only 7.90 AUD for a one time “fill up” of all the dishes available. It’s another type of all you can eat. I actually I gained 3 pounds when I am at Melbourne that is even with all the walking and sight seeing……

Cooks' Cottage @ Fitzroy Garden Melbourne

One of the main attractions is Captain Cook’s cottage. I believe the authority have weigh the historical significant of it and charges 4 AUD per adult. I was quite disappointed though as there is nothing much things to see to justify the cost. Anyway we paid for it and below it some pictures of the rooms inside it. There are 2 floors. The first floor is the dining and second floor is the sleeping quarters and study rooms.

The above is the exterior of it and it was quite well kept, all the bushes was well trimmed.

This is the first floor, which I believe is the dining place.

This is the second floor. You could see books, clothes scatter around and surprisingly plates that have Chinese design.

And Captain Cook himself keeping an eye on the place. And below is his ship….docking at port Philip……

Fitzroy Garden @ Melbourne Part 1

Fitzroy Garden is located right across Treasury Garden. It is much bigger and has more attraction than Treasury Garden. One of them is the Fairies Tree. I have another picture of it posted at my photo blog. I am not sure how it was carved but I bet children will definitely spend some time scrutinizing it and probably hoping that that fairies would pop up and fly around.

Next attraction is the conservatory, there are a lot flowers being displayed in there and below is some of the flowers that I have captured in digital.

Here is all the beautiful flowers, sorry I do not know the name...







Will stop here and continue later...

Treasury Garden @ Melbourne

Treasury Garden is the first garden that we went to as it is situated right across the street passing over the tramlines. It is situated just below the Treasury building. It has nothing spectacular just a few rows of trees and some interesting statue. For example Robert Burns Memorial Statue below

There are also some nice looking birds running around playfully flying just above us and frolicking around with each other picking up what I believe is their food from the grass.

It was our first morning in Melbourne and a sunny one when we stroll across it. The coldness brought from the wind negated by the sunray from above. It was a good way to replenish our energy and for our body to adjust to the time difference. Walking pass rows of bushes we came across a statue, which is located deep in one corner that seems to honor JFK, funny isn’t it. Anyone knows?

*Updated at 6:38 pm pictures of JFK memorial Statue for Wuching*

Parks and Gardens in Melbourne

What surprises me when I was in Melbourne, is the number of public parks or gardens available. During my trip, I stayed at Mercure Hotel Melbourne located at Spring Street. And right opposite it there are 2 parks, Treasury and Fitzroy Garden. And if you pass by it during lunchtime on working days you could see a lot of office worker basking on the greens enjoying the sun. We are the opposite; we will hide from the sun. Asian despises sun like Dracula. We look at Sun as a weapon that was created probably by the cosmetic company to create enough wrinkles for us to start buying their products like moisturizer, cleanser, anti aging cream and etc.

What so great about parks and gardens in Melbourne? I personally like the flowers, trees and occasionally sculptures or statue, which stretch my imagination. I love the flowers because of its color that I could not find in Malaysia. I believe it could be due to the difference of our weather here and Melbourne. Their colors are naturally more saturated and highly contrast. Its sculptures and statue is uniquely different, pieces of art designed and created for the majority of the public and not solely for those who study art.

Generally so far the parks in Melbourne are nicely maintained. I seldom or I did not see any overfilled rubbish bins or waste on the ground. There is only one thing in which it was robbed of its glory. When I was there, water restriction was announced hence there are fountains that were stripped to its bare. No sparkling water spurting out and catching the sunlight, creating man made rainbow…and I guess the grass is always greener on the other side no matter what.

Day Light Saving

For me I only saw this word from in short wave radio schedule. I do not understand what it is back then. When I was in Melbourne, I experienced it; we practically lost an hour of traveling time. If we did not board the city circle tram and feeling a bit friendly ended by chatting up with the lady conductor we might end up missing our flight back home. Our flight back to KL is just one day after they move forward the time. Oh by the way the city circle tram is free and it has been in business many many years in Melbourne

We actually wonder how one knows when to change their clock and watches one-hour forward. I actually checks with a friend of mine in Melbourne and he said that it always occurred on the last Saturday and Sunday of October. So I guess if one forgets about it they could catch up on Sunday, probably that is the reason why the time only changed at 2 am on Sunday, at least giving it a full day (on Sunday) for one to be aware of it. If not some of us might clock in an hour late for work.

I guess most homes in countries that practice it, might have only 1 clock if not they will be spending a day changing all the clocks, watches, gadgets and apparatus that have time on it. Does anyone knows why there is such practice, a search at wikipedia have quite an extensive explanation.

Last Night in Melbourne

As I took the photos below and the one found in Melbourne at Dusk, we were actually waiting for the free City Tram. Based on the brochure it is suppose to operate until 9pm during daylight saving time. However after waiting for more than 15 minutes, it did not arrive. I guess it could be that today is the first day hence it still follows back the old schedule.

Both of us were shivering with cold, sheltering ourselves at the tram station. Only the divider separates us from the cold wind, which was blowing ferociously. I spend the time by trying to take some night shots from both end of the street hoping to get a streak of lights coming from on rushing cars. As the time clicks by with our fingers almost becoming Popsicle, we decided to hop over to the train station to make our way back. That is how we spend our last night in Melbourne…..

Melbourne at Dusk

I have been trying to load photos using blogger but it always return with errors. Too tired to continue after half hour hence loaded a smaller version to Flickr. This picture was taken at Flinders Street Station at around 8.30 pm. This is right after watching the fire spitting “show” at Crown Entertainment. I will try to load some of the better photos once I regain my strength after a long and wonderful 8 days in Melbourne….

DSLR Final Part

FYI, I owned a canon Film SLR in which I used only auto mode and others such as landscape, portrait, night scene only, I have not branch out to the creative zone. So I am still a casual photographer, in other words the green box user. So when I first get my 400D, the first mode I tried is the green box. The result is not as good as I want it to be. Subsequent reads on some forum, it looks like there is some underexposure issue and majority of it, was raised by green box photographer like me.

Due to this I have been comparing the 400D with my Casio Z750 and I find that it could be due to the way the ETTL II of 400D works. Z750 photos was overexpose as compare the slightly under expose of 400D. So that’s where I finally branch out to other modes where I could set the Flash and also exposure compensation. I have took over thousand of pictures, ranging from toys, fruits, haze, my sister, my cupboard, my toilet, flowers and all of this is within the house. I am still not sure if its up to my expectation yet, I guess my Melbourne trip is going to be a testing ground.

I even bought a book on travel photography. I have also been hanging at the 2nd floor of Kinokuniya at KLCC for the past 2 weekends reading up on some photography books. The more I read the more confuse I become. I guess I am not the type of guys that could switch to photography as a career or I am too old. Anyway I still went out and bought myself an Rm2K plus lens, the EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. Some might ask why EF-S lens, as Full Frame could be the future. I guess price of full frame camera will not drop so drastically. I even bought myself a CLR polarizer filter. I have not taken any photo with it hence I am not sure how good will it be wrapping around my lens and the picture quality.

Actually after struggling and spending time reading up sites after sites, finding ways to take good photos, I felt that the most important point is we should enjoyed it and not worry about the quality of the photos. Just take the camera out, look at the viewfinder and press the button……………

DSLR Part 1

I am in holiday mood, preparing myself to go to Melbourne during this coming DepaRaya Celebration. I have even promoted myself from a Point and Shoot (P&S) Camera user to a Digital SLR hoping to capture some good photos. I have been to some nice places and having good photos to remember of it makes a hell difference. Some might argue that its does not matter as its all in the memory. I would like to share my experience in the process of deciding

As we grow older our memory start to fade away. One day you might think that someone left hand is your wife left hand or even better some 6-foot tall, 40-26-36 blonde in the poster near your bedroom is your wife rather than the lady that sleep beside you with her facial mask on. So the best way to remind us is with a good set of photos. Although some might say as long as the photo is viewable is enough. Maybe my expectation is higher as I do not want to be reminded of a place in which I have been and enjoyed tremendously with the same quality I seen from our daily newspaper or the quality of what you see when we open our window everyday since early of this month, hazy…

Who do not like to open up your photo album or your digital image in your computer and saw a National Geographic photo popping up? Raise your hand or legs or some other thing else that can be raised (For guys only, hahaha)? However sometimes expectation and reality is a total different thing. We are just mere day-to-day nerds who sit and face the idiot screen for hours daily, what do we know about camera? When I decided to jump over, that’s where the headache and nightmare starts. There are 3 brands of Digital SLR Sony, Canon and Nikon to choose from and tons of technical camera jargon that comes my way. The 3 brands I mention falls into the category that I aim for which are at least 10-mega pixels. I am the type who likes resolutions.

Words like spot metering, partial metering, evaluative metering, flash filled, exposure compensation, flash compensation, mirror locked, sharpness, contrast, RGB, SRGB, E TTL II, depth of field and tons more. I guess the problem is we are not rich hence we need to ensure that we buy a good one. Actually I have an after thought, will talk about it at the end.

So after weeks of crawling the net, I have finally decided Canon 400D is the camera to go for. Lets put the $$$ issue aside as I believe although I am not rich but I am the type who is doing quite ok and do not mind to splurge out some blood money to buy something in which I think could enhance or increase my happiness level. So I finally brought it a week ago and I have been playing around with it. Actually if I decide to buy Nikon D80, I do not think I could buy it even I have the money as it seems it has been an elusive camera, most of the stores that I went to say that they do not have any stock.

To be continue....