A Fun Day at Shah Alam Xtreme Bike Park

Today, I had a great day at the Shah Alam Xtreme Bike Park.

Actually, my plan for the day was to ride the Elmina-Saujana trails at Sg. Buloh in the morning and later head on to the Shah Alam Lake Garden to ride biketrials. I brought my cross country bike as well as my trial bike... :-)

On the way to our meeting point at Restoran Salma in Saujana, I received a call from Jovey and Joe telling me that we should change venue as it had been raining the whole of last night and early this morning. In all likelihood, the trails would be muddy and unridable.

I told Jovey that Sean et al, will be riding at the Shah Alam Xtreme Bike Park and that maybe we all should join them. Everyone agreed... :-)

This was my third time at the Shah Alam Xtreme Bike Park. The first time was when Syarul brought me and a couple of Singaporean biketrial riders there to ride.

A New Personal Milestone

I had a great time riding my 20" Monty at the Shah Alam Xtreme Bike Park. And of course, I reached another new personal milestone in trials, which was the reason why I was so happy today... LOL. For the first time, I was able to climb up a flight of stairs using my trial bike! HAhaha... what a great feeling. I climbed the stairs a number of times for good measure just to make sure I get the technique down... in other word, kiasu... LOL.

Normally, I would have taken photos or videos when riding, but today, it completely slipped my mind. I was having too much fun... LOL.

An Australian in Shah Alam

We called it a day at about 1pm. The guys decided to have lunch at the Burger King next to the park. At Burger King, Yang asked me to helped an Australian by giving directions on how to get to BikePro (a bicycle shop in Taman Megah). After drawing a map and explaining the directions, I found out that Breton, the Australian, had wanted to go to BikePro just so he could get some cardboard boxes to pack some stuff and the only two bike outlets that he knew was BikePro in Taman Megah and the KSH in TTDI.

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Apparantly, Breton had been a teacher in Japan. I do not know how long it took him, but since he left Japan, he had cycled through India, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand , etc. to get to this point in Burger King, Shah Alam. All in all, he covered some 5,800 km on his bike!!!! And now he wanted to find BikePro just so he could get some boxes to pack his bike for his flight to Perth and then cycle the rest of the way back to Adelaide.

Hahaha... sorry, I cannot help laughing... but knowing the owner of BikePro's reputation, he would probably charge a bomb just for the cardboard boxes... LOL...


Sin Mee Trading Company, a Lerun franchise that carries notable bikes like Cannondale and Giant bikes.


The ever so helpful Rizal and Faizal.

Anyway, I offered to take Breton and his bikes on my pick-up to a bicycle shop in Subang Jaya. After consulting Sean and Frank, I took Breton to the Sin Mee Lerun bike shop in SS14, Subang Jaya. The guys there were so generous. They actually unpack a brand new bike to get the box for Breton. Thanks guys!

High and Mighty!

After that, I dropped Breton off at the High and Mighty Hostel in SS15, Subang Jaya, and said goodbye as I had to rush off to pick up my kids. The following are some photos I took of Breton assembling his bike after I dropped him off at the High and Mighty Hostel.









I really take my hat off to Breton and all other riders, whom have made this kind of commitment to travel great distances on their bicycles. Perhaps, in another time I may go on such an odyssey as well, perhaps.

Will I ever take a vacation in Hanoi again?

On Nov 8, I went on a 4 days 3 nights company organised trip to Hanoi and these are my experiences.

Risk Management

The 50 plus of us were divided into two teams and sent packing on two different AirAsia flights to Hanoi. The reason for two teams were due to our company risk management policy... that is, in case one plane crashed, at least half of the employees would survive and the company can still go on... LOL. Yeah I know... just so comforting and reassuring to know... LOL.

I told you so!

Anyway, my wife and I were on the early morning flight and we were to assembled at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) at 4:30am. Well, most of us arrived at LCCT at about 5am... LOL. So much for following instructions. In any case, the AirAsia ticketing system was down and this caused a massive jam at the check-in counter. The early-birds were cursing and the late-comers were having a "I told you so" look on their faces... LOL. Surprisingly, the flight was not delayed and we managed to depart on time... :-)



The Sound of Hanoi

The cool and dry weather in Hanoi was fantastic. It was like walking perpetually in an air-conditioned room... lovely... LOL. After checking in to the Trade Union Hotel, everyone went off in their own groups exploring this city of perpetual NOISE!

The noise I am referring to was the sound of vehicle horns. As if the sound of engines and the normal hustling and bustling were not enough, a cacophony of horns of all types filled the air as they assaulted your ear drums.

This unwanted symphony will not play itself out until you leave the streets (if you are lucky enough to have a sound-proof room) or the country itself! After staying in Hanoi for 4 days and 3 nights, I could not understand the Vietnamese language even if my life depended on it... but I have come to understand how the drivers communicate with me using their horns.

The horns, unlike in Malaysia, were not used out of anger or displeasure. They just wanna announced, "Hey, I am here. Get the f**k out of my way dude! I am coming through and I am not going to stop. So move, move, move..." LOL.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

One very important survival skill I have mastered in Hanoi was on how to cross the road. If you have ever been there, you will know exactly why this skill is ranked above the rest in terms of importance. The idea is to just walk across the road in a slow to normal pace. There will be horns blaring at you. It's normal. So just stay calm, wipe the sweat on your forehead (only for extreme cases), take a deep breath and cross. They will somehow manage to swerve around you and before you know it, you are on the other side of the road... EASY... :-)

Take me to...

One way or another, you will have to take a cab in Hanoi. Just make sure that they are using the meter, said the tour guide. "Baloney" I say! There are discrepancies in the calibration of their meters. Some meters just flies... LOL. I could not see any way around this, unless you wanna walk.... so we were at their mercies.

Also, watch out for the change they give back. Count the change and make sure that it is correct before you leave the cab. If not they will just drive off leaving you short-changed... :-)



What do I most enjoy in Hanoi?

There are a number of things I really enjoyed doing in Hanoi.

• One of them was the many varieties of food! At the top of my list was baguette stuffed with lettuce, pork slices and pate. Ah... I really missed that. Next on my list would be the Snail soup noodles (Bún Ốc), wish I had some right now! Also, I have tried all the food and then some, on my must-try food list... :-)
  
• Tour to Halong Bay. Before I made the trip, I was not keen at all to go on the tour. When I heard about the 6 hours bus ride to and fro, and a 4 hours boat ride, I was totally turned off. Thankfully, my wife "convinced" me and I must say that I really enjoyed it. The view was fantastic, but what I most enjoyed was just seating on top of the deck and relaxing in the very cool weather.
• Walking the streets of Hanoi. Ah... I really liked strolling down the streets on Hanoi, taking in the views and observing the livelihood of the locals.

So... will I ever take a vacation in Hanoi again?

The answer would be a resounding YES... but only if someone pays for my ticket and lodging... :-)

More Photos and Videos

• Picasa Photo and Video Album
• Picasa Video Album
• Panaramio Geo-tagged Photo Album
  

YEAH! There is progress in my BikeTrial!

What a great day this turned out to be! I think I have made tremendous progress with my biketrial skills. Three days ago, I tried to pedal-kick down a stack of 4 wooden pallets and landed disastrously! It was my first try at this height and I remembered it was quite scary and rightfully so!

Basically, when I landed, the rear wheel right brake pad slipped out. That caused the rear wheel to shoot forward from under me. I fell over backward and landed on my ass as I hit the rear of my head on the top wooden pallet. If not for my helmet, I think I would have suffered a major concussion.

Thankfully, all I received was a ringing head with a very sore neck and a bruised ass... LOL.

But today was a different day. And I was stoked to try pedal-kick down the wooden pallets again. This time, I made sure that the chain, wheels and brakes were in prime working condition... LOL. I started with a stack of one wooden pallet and gradually added more as I gained confidence. In the end, I conquered my fear and managed to pedal-kick down the stack of four wooden pallets. YEAH!


Again, thanks to Joel for capturing the videos of my progress today.

But that's not all that I managed to achieve today. Today, including the pedal-kick down, I managed to reach a total of 4 major personal milestones.

The others are:

• From a rear wheel stand, I managed to pedal kick up a wooden pallet.
• I managed to side-hop up a wooden pallet.
• I managed to pedal-hop up to a wooden pallet and land on only the rear wheel.

I know, I know... from the video, you can see that they are nothing impressive... LOL. But all the same, I am VERY VERY pleased with my progress... LOL.

The next step for me will be to increase the heights and to refine the skills. Hahahaha... cool or not?

Making the Third Eye Revelation Trophy

Early this year in April, I decided to organise a photography contest for The Third Eye photography special interest group. I called it, The Third Eye Revelation Award Contest 2008. The challenges for the contest were that all contestants must,

• Submit one(1) photo with the worse composition, lousiest perspective, wackiest angle, clumsiest cropping and fatal framing.
• Submit one(1) photo with the best composition, sharpest perspective, pleasing angle, artful cropping and amazing framing.

The prize will be a specially made Third Eye Trophy. Using Google's 3D Sketchup software, I managed to come up with a design I liked.



After that I proceeded to find out how to get the darn thing made. I asked around and found out that there were just too many options, and all of them very expensive.

After mulling over it for more than 6 months, I (finally) decided to go down to my local neighborhood welding shop and asked them if they could help out. Mr. Tan, the proprietor was more than happy to oblige. He had previously supplied and installed the iron grills in my house. So when I asked him to make the trophy, he was more than thrilled to be doing something else other than gates and window grills... LOL.


I roughly sketched the trophy out to explain the design to Mr. Tan.

I had not brought nor shown Mr. Tan the original 3D drawings of the trophy. I merely drew the trophy from memory on a piece of paper to explain to him what I had in mind, with intention to later show him the 3D drawings should he decide to take on the job. I think that was a mistake.

Within 2 days, Mr. Tan called me up and told me that he had completed the prototype of the trophy... LOL. I did not know what to say, as I had not show him the 3D drawings yet.

That evening, I went over to the workshop and found the following prototype.







It seemed that Mr. Tan got carried away. Apparently, that night after I showed him the sketch, he went home and started to make a paper mock-up of the trophy based on my sketch. Even his wife and son got involved... LOL. The very next day, he went ahead and started making the trophy without consulting me... LOL. I really do appreciated his enthusiasm, but I was not happy with the outcome. It was far from what I had in mind.

In any case, not wanting to hurt his feelings, I gently told him in the Hokkien dialect that the trophy was too "si pan pan" (too square, lacking movement). What I wanted was more dynamic and during that time, I was thinking of how to correct the whole thing.

So I told him what I wanted and that he should wait for me to come over to work with him on exacting the changes I had in mind to hopefully correct the form.

And so yesterday, I went over and we started making bits and pieces of corrections.


Mr. Tan grinding and cutting parts of the trophy.


Left over scrapped metal were used to make the trophy. The base of the trophy was very nicely constructed.

After making the necessary changes, I think we managed to make the trophy more dynamic... LOL. Being a first for me, metal was not an easy medium to work with compared to clay or wood. Anyway, I was quite pleased with the final outcome.


The final Third Eye trophy ready for putty-ing.

The following video illustrated some of the necessary adjustments done to the trophy.



After the putty-ing, I hope to get the trophy powder coated, but I have no idea where to go and get it done in Kuala Lumpur. I think I will call Sean and ask him... LOL.

I will update the blog later when I have more information. I have already learned quite a lot from this experience. After this project, I hope to work more with these kind of stuff... :-)

One of Those Days

This article was wrongly published in the Wildgeeks.org blog. I have moved it here, where it belongs. Last night, as the title states, I was having "One of Those Days". An update though, today I have successfully fixed the cooler fridge problem... :-) Looks like it is going to be a great day today... LOL.

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It is just one of those days that everything seems to go wrong!

This morning when I got to office, I could not log in to my Dell notebook. I could only see and move the mouse on a black screen. The day before, I did not shutdown and had only locked my Ubuntu desktop thinking that I could resume work immediately the next day.

Using another terminal to log in, I rebooted the notebook. Next thing I knew, it could not start-up as it could not find the boot loader! I got a colleague to help out. He managed to log in and did a "fsck" (file system check) and before we knew what happened, Gnome desktop could not load and the "home" directory went missing!

Turns out that my Ubuntu partition went and got corrupted on me. We managed to retrieve almost all of my important files in the "Lost and Found" directory. The complete day was totally wasted! I have not decided what I was gonna do with the notebook yet. Left it till Monday to figure it out. Sigh!

When I reach home today, my maid told me that the chiller fridge is acting up. I went to the wet kitchen and heard a terrible screeching sound coming from the chiller fridge! I switched off the fridge and decided to have a look.

Turned out that the screeching sound was coming from the cooling fan between the compressor and the condenser. The plastic bracket holding the fan blades to the dynamo broke and the fan blades were hitting the side of the condenser. And without the fan, the compressor and condenser would over heat... sigh!


The chiller fridge with all the fruits and vegetables removed.


After dismantling the sliding brackets, I managed to slide the compressors out.


I removed the whole fan bewteen the compressor and the condenser.


Another view of the fan.


The electrical power source in the fridge.


The condenser with the fan removed.

Tomorrow was supposed to be my day of cycling with the guys. But now it looked like I have to spend the morning hunting for fan parts before the shops close at noon!

Darn it! Just when I published this post, I realised that I posted in the WRONG blog!! Niah mah!!!! What a jinxed day!