Been Awhile ctd and Other News

Looking back, I'm not sure why I didn't simply finish the last post as there is not a whole lot left to say.
As it happened, 6 of us teacher-friends, got up early that morning to catch our flight to Sabah, excited about the possibility of seeing the elephants in the wild. But we missed our flight. There were a few factors at play, but basically we left home too late, got to the check-in counter too late -just as they'd closed it (45 min prior to departure). They would not re-open it for us. It's funny because, between the six of us, we've been on over 60 Air Asia flights, and between us we were unaware of the policy or it didn't dawn on us. Also, several of our group have checked in as late as 20min before departure on previous domestic flights. But, there and then, the check-in counter had closed, and there was no way around it.
Luckily we had purchased the tickets months back on a big sale so we didn't lose much that in that sense. But it would have been nice to see the elephants :(
We decided that since we had our bags packed and were prepared for a weekend trip, we should go somewhere,do something. So we hung out in the airport for awhile discussing options, checking out flights. But, buying flight tickets was none too economical, so we decided to rent a car and eventually settled on heading to Frasers Hill to relax in the cool temperatures of the highlands. It ended up being a fun weekend.

In Other News:
I've decided that I'm not yet ready to leave Malaysia. So I'm going to stay awhile longer. How long exactly? I'm not sure, but I have accepted a contract to stay for one more semester (till end of 2007). It has been a very difficult decision to make, and as I remained undecided, job opportunities were disappearing both in Ontario and here at Sunway. Eventually, my director offered me a half year contract (as she understands my commitment issues). So that's where I stand at the moment.
The original plan was to go back to Canada at the end of the contract, but to take the month of June to see Laos and Cambodia. As I've decided that I'm not moving back to Canada, I've also decided to axe my original plan for June and, instead, take a little trip over the Canada way. While I would love to spend a month in Laos, I gotta go see about a girl.

Been Awhile

Clearly I've been having a little difficulty recently maintaining this thing. In part, I'm not sure that I have any sort of great excitement to report. Not that things haven't been good; just not anything out of the ordinary. So, if you do read the following and are disappointed, do not say you hadn't been forewarned :)
I'll begin with a trek that I did with Tim. Now this was a trek different from any that we'd done before; A new area, one that we knew little about. We hadn't been walking for too long before we came across something that I certainly am not used to seeing on treks. A white freakin' Tiger!


Well I totally freaked out. I had my camera out, but my batteries died before I could fire off a shot. Tim whipped out his camera and started snapping (the above pic is his). I always carry a spare set of batteries. This time, however, I'd left them in our hostel. I told Tim to go on without me and ran back to the Gift Shop to buy a set. I met up with him a little further down and we continued to stroll around. Now armed with a loaded camera, I was free to happily snap away:

Tim and I had hopped on a flight to Singapore and had a day to ourselves. We spent most of it walking around Little India, the Zoo, and then the night zoo. The night zoo was quite nice.
The next day, we were joined by Chris and Mike. We joined Chris in his hunt for an iPod, strolled around Chinatown (the cleanest Chinatown that I've ever seen -anywhere), just walked around Singapore getting a feel for the place; we checked out the famous Merlion, the Raffles Hotel, and a few breweries. Singapore was nice but, besides the cleanliness, unremarkable. This is my favourite pic of the citystate: (to appreciate it, it must be viewed at a larger size and quality -you can do so in my galleries).


That was about it for the Singapore weekend. A weekend was more than enough time to check it out.
The weekend after that, I went on a proper trek with TMC to Bukit Tabur again, but this time on a different part of the ridge. This shot actually captures the spine that we usually walk.


The next weekend we took a group of students to the ridge. I also took another shot of the KL skyline, slightly better than my previous shots, but still not great


The following weekend, Tim, Mike, and I hopped on a bus to historical Malacca.


This is a town that has been occupied by nearly everyone at one point or another. The most notable remnants are Dutch and Portugese.
Melacca is considered a food Mecca, so we spent some time eating at various places. We also bumped into a few of our students. One group was on a trip with their church; A separate bump-into student actually is from Melacca and was visiting her folks. She spent a little time showing us around and bought us lunch. Thanks Kelly!

For the following weekend, a group of us, 6 teacher-friends, had tickets to fly to Sabah. We were spending the weekend at Uncle Tan's on the Kinabatangan river. If you remember, I stayed there for a few days in December. This time, I was going for one specific reason: a herd of asian elephants on migration, pass nearly through the camp.

...Will continue soon (before the end of the week, I hope)