The Twin Towers’ Grandeur

I asked Esther and Heng on Monday – the only two people in our ever-busy extended family who are absolutely free and probably bored to tears at home – if they’d like to come with me to KLCC as I’d like to purchase a new Crumpler camera bag that’d fit my purposes better, having sold off my previous Crumpler Whickey & Cox. They agreed, so the next day (Tuesday) at about 1.40pm I left my house and we went down in my car to glory glory KL, a city – the capital of my country at that – which I rarely venture to unless I have an actual purpose in mind.

We got a little lost trying to locate the MSL Building on Jalan Putra as its address was displayed to me on the Net – only when we finally made our way back to the same ol’ road again and stopped by at the 7-Eleven, with me about to go down to ask them for directions, did Heng manage to spot MSL Travel, which was directly opposite 7-Eleven.

And MSL Building my ass, ‘cause we were all expecting a huge towering block of concrete instead of a two-storey shop lot.

So I paid the required RM2 to park at this empty plot of land revamped with tar and refurbished as a parking lot near MSL Travel, walked a couple of steps to said company and went in.

I took my number and was greeted by Esther (who happened to share the same name with our Esther), who was rather bitchy and had a rather condescending air. I paid my RM20 to get my ISIC (International Student Identity Card) and debated internally whether to have the name of Metropolitan College or RMIT University on my card, the latter of which I wasn’t able to do as my CoE had yet to arrive. In the end I decided against coming another day and settled for my current college’s name and left.

And so we arrived at KLCC, and went first to KFC while Heng and Esther ate their very late lunch and I ordered a 7Up Revive. We then took around to window-shopping at Parkson, where Heng and I tried a couple of shirts on – Heng bought a nice blue shirt that looked good on him which we thought was rather bland at first, while I settled for a grey vest that Esther was completely bowled over with (I often wondered how people could determine so easily what matches what =/). I think Isetan came next (which we found nothing much that was of interest), before I finally made my way to Crumpler.

So earlier I narrowed down my choices to either the 6 Million Dollar Home or the 7 Million Dollar Home, and first requested from the staffs the 6 Million Dollar Home for me to try stuffing in my camera equipment (which I brought along) inside – it fits too tightly and made the bag look completely out of shape, so I asked them for the 7MDH instead but.. it was out of stock.

And the new stock would only be arriving around mid-July, by which I’d have already flown to Australia. -____- I don’t intend to purchase my bag in Australia considering that it’s far more expensive after doing a conversion of the currency rates, and the staffs suggested that I try Singapore instead wtf.

I left dejected and disappointed. =/

Outside of the KLCC building while my two partners in crime were.. er, engaged in an activity of the gaseous and murderous kind.

Burberry models.

We wandered around the shopping complex a lot and also went outside a lot to snap photos too. :)

Heng and Esther with the KLCC as the backdrop.

Heng and I – notice how the sky has changed its colours pretty quickly.

There were three Indonesian guys who were busy and boisterously snapping photos and Heng offered to help them to snap a group pic – helping his countrymen so to speak. :P

We then moved to the opposite side of KLCC for a better non-obstructive view of the Petronas Twin Towers.

I told Heng and Esther that the Twin Towers is one of my favourite structures by far to photograph and just ogle away – the lights that emanate from the towers, and staring up at their magnificent and powerful twin structures had me in complete awe of their grandeur.

Possibly a better angle – one of my favourite pics of the day.

I crossed the road and snapped this at a small distance from where I stood for the previous shots.

Another vertical shot.

I’ll never get bored looking at this pic.

At one point we went to the weighing machine and paid RM0.40 each to weigh ourselves wtf. I was told that I was 55kg.

We adjourned to Chilli’s and it was so packed (as usual) that we had to reserve our place and we were asked to return 25 minutes later – we walked around, hung out at Rock Corner and listened to some music, and just as I was about to start going into Carla Bruni’s French album, Amanda rang me up to ask me some questions about photography. I learned that she had just received a scholarship to do her Ph.D which was just too damned amazing – she immediately quit her job, and that day was the second day she was “so free” that she decided to try and pursue her interest in photography.

Bottomless Tostada Chips for only RM10! We couldn’t stop eating it until we were quite full.. well, only both Heng and I ate a main course anyway – I had a Grilled Chicken Sandwich.

We prolly only got our seats – a comfortably large one at, unfortunately, a smoking section – at a bit before 9pm, and we talked and ate and chatted all the way till nearly 11pm. We took a couple of group shots before we left:

Esther then warned us that the parking fee may be as high as RM10-RM15, so we were clearly shocked when we saw the numbers 20.50 displayed. FML. No more KLCC – or at least parking here – for as long as I live, I’m not about to contribute to KLCC’s coffers when they charge an exorbitant amount for their parking.

I was too exhausted for some reason – possibly the walking and driving – that I had to ask Heng to drive us back instead. We were stuck a little in KL for a fair bit as we didn’t know the way back and made a wrong turn even when the GPS was turned on, but we managed in the end.

I reached home at nearly 12.30am – that makes nearly 12 hours worth of being out and about. Though I was exhausted like hell, it’s been a while since we’ve actually went out like this together, and it surely was something.

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Got my Certificate of Enrolment (CoE) from Fatima yesterday (Wednesday) morning, so after lunch I went with my dad, parked in my college, then walked about to AusEd and provided the girl who attended to me the required documents and I was quoted RM1350 to do the e-visa (which already includes the service charge for them to lodge the visa application). =/

We were supposed to only go to the panel clinic in PJ the next day as we were told that they would be closed at 3pm and it was nearly 3pm when we were finished with AusEd, but my dad rang the clinic up anyway and found that if we could arrive by 4pm, we could do the health check too. And indeed, we did arrive at about 3.40pm after the AusEd girl helped us to immediately do the necessary for my visa and printed the referral letter for us to bring to the clinic.

Long story short – I did my health check there which comprised of several boring rudimentary ones like checking my height (171cm) and weight (56.1kg WTF did my weight just increase by 1kg after that food rampage the night before or was yesterday’s weighing machine inaccurate??), blood pressure test, eye check-up, urine test, chest X-ray.. and that’s about it really. All these simple procedures for RM205 fml, but this particular panel clinic supposedly was able to send the results online to the Australian High Commission or whoever quicker or something, as I’m racing against time to get my visa done before I fly early next month.

Most of the staffs who worked there were a little too corporate for my tastes, for the lack of a better word. As I was waiting for someone to attend to me after my X-ray was completed, this Malay grandfather who was sitting on the sofa asked if I was there to do my health check to study for Australia, and I nodded yes and engaged in a conversation with him as he told me how he used to live in Melbourne too and told me that I have to go to the Victoria Market – his wife agreed vehemently – when I get there, and possibly the satay stall or something over there as it was run by his engineer friend or something.

So I was then ushered to see the doctor who did even more minimal tests like checking my heartbeat, stomach, and eyes, and that’s it. O_O I was cleared and told to wait for 3 working days for my visa or something.

(I also spent a good part of yesterday reading Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner – it’s really very good and a real page-turner that I simply couldn’t put the book down and had to read and find out what happened next. At page 60+ I’m already feeling the sadness emanating from the novel. =/)

With this done, it feels as if it’s being etched in stone for real that I’m leaving, and a year plus before I get to see my family and friends again.