#1  Colin And SiewPeng at Kek Lok Tong.  The water on the lake is peaceful and calm, just like our hearts.

#2

#3  The pine cone tree was one of our backgrounds.  It is also one of my favorite trees.

#4  Under the tree.

#5  The lake, the pagoda, the walking path, and …  guess what?  … … …And SiewPeng and Colin.

#6  We stood near the lime stone.

Needless to say, we were taking photos of ourselves again in the beautiful garden.  :)  It was really enjoyable, not only when taking the photographs, but looking at these photos through our computer.  We will collect all photos of ourselves with different places of interest, print them and put them into an album.

Each of these photos is taken at different locations and different times, but same SiewPeng and Colin.  Do you notice that SiewPeng is always standing on my right hand side?  :P  It is because I use my left hand to hold the camera straight while shooting ourselves.

We have taken a lot of photos in this style.  Let me show you some examples:- 1.  SiewPeng and Colin at Sam Poh Tong,Ipoh.  2.   Our Photos at Ranchan Recreational Park, Serian.  And many more where you can find in this blog.  :D

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Open eyes under the bright sunlight

I found that sometimes it is quite hard to open both my eyes wide under the strong sun light when taking photographs of myself.  I believe it might be because of lack of sleep.  Sometimes I wait for a while under the strong sunlight to make my eyes get used to the brightness and look at the camera or darker objects or standing under a shade in order to take the photos with my eyes opened wide.

This is actually a mechanism of our eyes to protect themselves from sudden change of brightness.  A good example is everybody will blink their eyes when the flash light is fired.  When we move from a darker place to a brighter place, our eyes need sometimes to adapt to the brightness.

Last month, on our trip to Ipoh, we visited the Kek Lok Tong.  It is one of the most beautiful cave-temples in Ipoh besides Sam Poh Tong.  As you may know Ipoh is surrounded by mountains and hills, there are quite a number of caves near Ipoh city.  Kek Lok Tong is our favorite.

Kek Lok Tong is the cave’s name in Cantonese.  In Chinese, it is pronounced as “Ji2Le4Dong4″.  ”JiLe” means ultimate happiness, and “Dong” means cave.  Therefore Kek Lok Tong means the Cave of Ultimate Hapiness.

It is located not far from Sam Poh Tong, but it is within a housing area which took us many left and right turns to reach there.

We are welcomed by many pots of Bonsai with miniature landscaping design on the Bonsai.

It looks like a house beside a river with trees surrounding it.

“Thousand-hands GuanYin” is sitting on top of the artistic-shaped stones.

If I am not mistaken this is the tiny statues of  “BaXian” (which means 8 Immortals) in Chinese legend.

All of the landscaping design are tiny and in the form of Bonsai.  We were attracted by those Bonsai, but we had to keep going.

This is what we saw once we entered the cave after walking up a short staircase.  The area within the cave is quite big and there are 2 different staircases to go to the upper floor.

Looking at the mouth of the cave (the entrance of the cave).

There are 2 paths to go to the upper floor, this staircase is one of them.

On the upper floor inside the cave, I took this photo, where I could see the lower ground better.

SiewPeng and Colin in orange shone by the light in the cave.

After I took the photo of the lime stone, we continued to walk further into the cave.

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And we reached the other mouth of the cave, where a beautiful and big garden is accessible from here.

This is another mouth of the cave which brought us to the garden.

There is a big Buddha statue facing the beautiful garden.

These statues are behind the big Buddha statue.

This is how the whole thing looks like.

SiewPeng and Colin with the Buddha statues.

There is a small round-shaped fish pond with fountain in front of the Buddha statue.  I think the number of coins inside is more than the Koi fish.  Some visitors like to throw some coins into the pond and make a wish.  We did not try, because we were afraid that the Koi fish might think that the coins are their food and swallow them.  I can’t imagine what will happen if the fish swallow the coins.

This is the pond.

After walking pass the pond, there is a staircase for visitors to walk down to the garden.  I will show you the big and beautiful garden of the Kek Lok Tong in the coming post.

On our holiday trip last month, we took a train from KL to Ipoh.  The scheduled time was 1 pm, but the train was delayed to 2 pm.  Everything was fine until the train stopped at a station called Sungkai at about 4 pm.  From there, the train stopped and not moving anymore, and we had to wait for the next train to come.

This is the signboard showing that the train which supposed to reach this station at 2:49 pm and the estimated delay time was 122 minutes (including the pre-departure delay).

We sat in the broken train for at least half an hour, but there were not any announcements and nobody came and told us what had happened.  We walked down and see what happened, and we heard that one of the staffs was telling some passengers to calm down and wait.  There must be a communication problem, because we saw some of the passengers have already got ready to walk across the platform opposite us, but this staff told the passengers in our coach to wait where we were.

More and more passengers walked across to the other platform using a bridge.  We also quickly followed them because we have a big bulky baggage.  Just in case the next train might come suddenly and we would miss it.

After settled down across the platform, my photography session started.  :D

There is a passenger on wheelchair who couldn’t get across the bridge because the bridge do not have the facilities for “specially-able” people.

We saw the staffs helped the lady on the wheelchair to get across the platform by turning a big round to the end of the platform at least 50 meters to 100 meters away.

Let me zoom in and see.

Yes, the wheelchair can only get across the tracks at the ends of the platform.  How poor the facilities are, they should build it nearer.

I took the photos while I was on the bridge, this is the only chance that I had.  The delay gave me the opportunity to take photos, but it took about 3 hours of my time.  If there were 1000 passengers, the train has wasted 3000 human hours.

From there we could see some of the passengers were patient, but some are not.  Many of them kept on looking at their watch and pulled their neck long to look far away to check if the train was coming.

SiewPeng and I sat at a far end corner.  We saw a young lady shooting picture of herself using her mobile phone (camwhoring).

We waited  …

And waited … …

And waited … … …

It was quite boring because there was nothing for me to shoot with my camera anymore.

Finally the train came, it was full of its initial passengers.  There were no more first, second, or economy classes, we were on the standing class.  :O  After standing for a few stations, someone got down the train and SiewPeng got a seat, but I stood all the way from Sungkai to Ipoh.  What a special experience on a train.  :)

I tried it once when I was younger and it didn’t work.  And yesterday I tried it again, with a different method, it worked! :D  Alright…what am I talking about here?  Well, have you ever called in to a radio station and request for your favourite song or deliver a message to your loved ones through the song request?

Yesterday, I made a song request through the Internet and had our favourite song broadcast on an FM channel.  I still remember when I was much younger, I tried once.  Back then, it was using phone calls and the line was usually engaged.  They say those staying nearer to the radio station stand bigger chances of getting their calls answered.  I didn’t give up easily and tried for quite some time but still can’t get through so finally I decided to stop.  I still remember those who got their calls answered were so excited, and followed by a series of echo sound because they did not turn of their radios.  They requested their favourite song and dedicate it to their loved ones with messages and wishes.  I think song dedication is not as popular as before nowadays.

It was such a great surprise because I have never thought that I will have second chance to do it again.  It was a coincidence whereby I saw one of my colleagues on Facebook yesterday.  She also works as a DJ and it happened that I saw someone else requested a song so I just gave it a try a asked if I could too.  She said yes and after I told her the title, she immediately said it would be up right after that song.  We were so excited about it! :D  And what was more thrilling was she announced my name on air too! :D  Thanks to my colleague who has made our day!  Colin took the photo of our mini radio after the segment finished.

Give your loved ones a surprise today!  Make their day a special one!  Have a good day everyone!

We had to work one more week after the school holidays started. It was an emotional week. It was emotional because we had to make sure a lot of things and matters are done and settled before the end of the term. It was also because we had to bid the students farewell. It was just like the beginning of the term a few days ago and suddenly, without you knowing, it has come to the end of the term. Time flies…and it really does fly!

Elyse had her promotion test that week. She cried because she couldn’t finish the whole paper. It was three sections in two hours. I told her it’s okay because she did most of the questions. At least, she cared about the paper. Promotion tests are not to be under estimated because they are given by the school’s discretion based on the student’s performance and exam results. Some students who were given these opportunities didn’t really appreciate it and they didn’t try their best in these tests. Therefore, they have lost the chance that probably get them to a higher level this year. It is kind of a pity but that was their choice.

[Light refracted and focused by a bottle of water.]

My markers and stationery are also finally taking a break after a long year of hard work. However, the school is about to be re-opened soon so I think it’s almost time for them to wake up from their slumber and get ready to hit the long long road in the year 2010. I have just attended the school re-opening workshop. It took the whole day but it was helpful and beneficial. I think I am ready to accept the challenges ahead of me. Hope that you are too! Happy New Year 2010 to everyone!