To Kajang And Back Again

Yesterday I surprised my friend Aliza by showing up unannounced to her wedding (I was invited of course, I didn't gatecrash). The trip was an interesting one. It was the first time I had flown in years, and I took the "cheap" Malaysian airline called Air Asia.

Now the tickets may look cheap at around 55 ringgit from Penang to KL, but what they don't tell you is that they also add an "airport tax" (around 40 ringgit in my case) to the fare.

The flight wasn't so bad as far as short-distance flights go, except for the overly cramped seats and the fact that you had to buy overpriced refreshments from a trolley like in the Harry Potter train. If you had to fly more than a few hours in those seats you'd probably get a nasty case of deep vein thrombosis.

When KLIA was built, the annoying thing was that it was right in the middle of nowhere, and it cost more than the plane ticket to get to civilisation. However, now there's a new airport terminal open called the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (read : Where We Dump the Cheapskates). This terminal also seems to be in the middle of nowhere, but at least the bus ticket out of there is only 9 ringgit. However, the bus takes forever to get to its destination in KL Sentral.

So if you're planning to take those Air Asia discounted tickets from Penang to KL, make sure to take the tax, the cost of the time taken for the bus to get to KL Sentral into consideration when making plans.

From KL Sentral, I took the commuter train to Kajang, and a taxi from the train station to Aliza's house.

I had a nice time, meeting up with Aliza, her groom Naza and our friend Aline (it's been a while since I last met them), though I had hoped to meet more of my former classmates.

In the late afternoon, I hitched a ride with Aline to the commuter train station, and arranged to meet up with Jason for a very quick trip around Megamall. It's lucky that the light rail transit trains run on time, or it would have been very hard to pull off.

I took the evening bus out of KL and returned home, on the very same day. I went to Kajang and back in less than 24 hours. It's a tiring trip, but it's fun riding planes, trains and buses around Malaysia. I should do it again sometime, when another wedding invitation arrives in the mail.

One Year Later

Happy new year everyone.

I've been occupied lately, and I haven't had time to write random stuff on the interwebs. After I lost my Wordpress host, I didn't quite bother to set up a new site.

But now Blogger has improved its services, and thus I am using this facility again.

I have finally finished my Master of Science, and thus that chapter has come to a close. Therefore the old blog is gone from the interwebs, although I still keep an archive on my hard drive.

I just got a new job working as a computer scientist for the Doping Control Center, where I continue to do research while at the same time, look for a place to do my PhD.

I don't think anyone actually reads this stuff, but here I am, back on the internets again. I have adorned this post with some of my graduation pictures from August last year. They consist of myself posing in exactly the same way at different locations on campus. Yes that is me, and not a cardboard cut-out.