We proceeded to break fast at Portuguese Settlement; it was delicious food for crazy cheap. For 17 of us, the total was RM335 – that’s like RM20 per person for Ikan Siakap, Ikan Pari, Ikan Jenahak, Sotong Goreng, Sayur Goreng Pedas and Devils Curry. Phew. After dinner, we proceeded back to Jonker for more street shooting and desserts (i.e wonderful cendol).

Anyway, here are the pictures!

This is my third time in Jakarta. Its been an annual trip with Syahrin since 2007. Recall that last year I did a 10 day trip along with Mado & Syahrin to Jakarta-Yogjakarta-Bali. While most would say that there’s nothing much in Jakarta other than shopping, I had a great time hanging out with my buddies. Also the trip wouldn’t have been complete if not for Arwan’s & wifey who generously offered their place for us to stay at. Thank you Arwan & Sofia – looking forward to seeing you guys here early next year

Our first night was spent in Jakarta – it took us almost 2 hours to reach Arwan’s place. I really do not know how Jakartians deal with this sort of traffic every day. Its insane. By the time we arrived, there wasn’t much to do but have a delicious delayed berbuka at a local seafood eatery. The next day we started on early by making a move to Bandung at 9 am. I’ll dedicate a post on Bandung later as someone requested me to do a mini review of it. All I can say is, the boys bought tons of stuff from Jonas Photo (a heaven for photographers). As for me, all I got was a bunch of laces

Third day was spent around Jakarta. Again the traffic was insane. It took us more than hour to get into the parking lot at Plaza Ambassador. Note to Blackberry addicts; if you wanna get your Blackberry pimped up, this is the place! I got myself a Red housing for my Javelin – hehe. Nothing grand but at least now I’m different than the masses. Since we’re on the topic of Blackberry. Let me offer some tips on Blackberry services for your short stay in Jakarta.

I was using XL prepaid line and activated the daily BIS plan. Simple, just type ‘BB On’ and send it to 568. Your BIS should be up within 3 to 4 hours. The best thing is, the fees are deducted DAILY at only Rp5000. Thats like RM2 per day for BIS! While it is cheap, keep in mind that the connection was pretty slow on my Javelin (it was on GPRS most of the time instead of EDGE). Perhaps it’ll be faster if you have 3G.

If you’re willing to spend more, then get a prepaid line from Telekomsel which offers unlimited BIS service for Rp150,000. According to Syahrin, the line was pretty fast.

Ok. Guess that was a bit off topic but useful to travelers, I hope.

P/S: If you ever go to Plaza Indonesia, check out Pizza e Birra at the fifth floor. The chilli corne fries is to die for!

Didn’t stay long as I had another appointment which finally materialize after breaking fast. Me, Khairul and Helmi took the camera out to downtown KL (yes again) but this time it was BB walk and Jalan Alor area. I don’t think I’m much of a street shooter but I try nonetheless. I’m a shy gal… and well shooting on the streets takes guts don’t you think so?

I think I’m babbling. Sorry guys. I’ll try to be informative next time. Do ask questions if you have any. I’d be happy to answer them And to all Muslims, Selamat Berpuasa!

I don’t know much about film slides either but I do know they produce lovely lovely colors. So I was more than happy when my friend Fairuz gave me the film for a trial run with my Lomo LC-A. What I learned from this experience is that, at ISO 100, shoot only at bright bright daylight – unless of course you don’t mind blurred out shots which is what lomo is suppose to be all about – experiment! Secondly, note to self to check the batteries of the camera before I start on a new roll of film.

This is not my first batch of shots from my Lomo LC-A. This is probably the third batch since I bought the camera in 2007 ; so yes, time to put this baby to use. Other than the shots below, you can check out my film archive here. 

Note that the shots below have not been edited except for minor leveling. Pictures 1 to 9 are shots taken from my trip to Indonesia in October 2008 – you will see shots of the Borobudur Temple, Kuta Beach, the paddy fields at Ubud and Mount Agung – last 3 locations are in Bali. Pictures 10 to 13 are shots taken just a few weeks back when I was desperately finishing up the roll  

Hmm. Ok. So back to the shooting scene at CM. I guess I lied a bit there. It was not short glimpse. I was pretty much there from 4pm till they wrapped up the scene around dusk. I was quite fascinated by the amount of preparation that needs to be done in order to shoot just a single 3-minute footage. The preparation could take as long as half-an-hour! (Yep.. I’m definitely sticking to photography) I was informed by my friend who was part of the crew that they’ve been at the locating since dawn. (Yep… definitely definitely sticking to photography as I starred at his super-tanned skin. LOL). Wait. Why is there so many “I was” in this paragraph? Haish. Moving on…. If you heard a loud explosion and you were around CM around 5.30/6pm on Saturday, then most likely it came from the filming location. No worries, it was part of carefully planned stunt scene – don’t ask me what it was though. I was crouching behind the camera with my ears closed when it happen. All I know is that the effect was suppose to be similar as a bazooka shot. Cool ey?

So anyhow, today was another day of outing but this time to other side of KL, i.e. Putrajaya. So with 3 hours of sleep (in contrast to the err..12 hour of sleep the previous night), I hopped on in the car with Matt and his wifey at 7.20 am. With Matt’s super driving skills (note the sarcasm here), we arrived at the location of 2009 Putrajaya International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta by 7.40am. Bangsar to Putrajaya in 20 mins! We were flying yo! We got there just in time for the organizers to open up the gates for a 30-minute photo op session which are specifically for *cough*photographers*cough only. According to the announcement, anyone with a dSLR is defined as a photographer. So you can imagine the number of “photographers” that was there including yours truly of course. I think there were about …. 100 photographers? No… perhaps more. Ohhh. And get this. dSLR are allowed but phone cameras are not. I’m still baffled by the statement. 

As I walked around the field, I unexpectedly bumped into 7 or 8 KLickr members there; so there were a few quick hello and goodbyes as each of us try to get our shot of the day. Personally I felt very lemas (what’s lemas in English?), I felt very annoyed with the number of photographers that were around. Everyone was trying to find a nice angle including me – but wherever you point the camera, you’ll see another lens in your frame! Bah. Here are a few of my shots.. my personal favorite is actually the very last shot.

Spot the peacock’s butt