Before I die #1

There are so many places I want to see with my own eyes, before I close my eyes for the last and final time. Before natural disasters causing these places to vanish, before human mistakes causing it to disappear.

Lets start with Indonesia, our very own neighbour.

Java is world most populous island, where the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta is sitting on. Jakarta city is on the west side of Java island, somewhere in the middle of the island, we have Yogyakarta city.

Nearby to Yogyakarta city, there is an ancient Hindu temple complex.

Image taken from http://www.harekrsna.com

Prambanan, one of the most beautiful Hindu temple in the world.

Next, towards to northwest of Yogyakarta city, we have a temple complex dedicated to the Buddhist.

 

 

 

Image take from http://www.atmann.net

The temple of Borobudur, built in the 9th century as well. It was built 300 years before Angkor Wat construction started in Cambodia.

 

 

Well, so far my work only allows me to reach the outskirt of Jakarta. I wish that one day, when I have the ability to go to these places, it won’t be too late.

Work is about working happily

Company won’t have feelings, they won’t feel it even if we work very hard for them. There is no point working too hard for them.  Allocate time for ourselves, spending some time with loved ones and family, spending some time enjoying our life, these are all important aspect of balancing between working life and normal life.

Working because of high pay, can never make us happy. The higher the pay, the higher the expectations as well. We can earn 10 times more than industry average, that would also mean we are part of the high risk personnel to be sacked during economic downturn, and also, the company will expect nothing but the best from us.

Sigh.

Air Asia X Premium

Due to really short notice from customer, all the other airlines has been fully booked, even normal Air Asia seats are fully booked, that leaves us no choice but to fork out approx USD 2k for the flight.

Air Asia nowadays does not encourage us to do check in at the counter anymore. They have prepared the kiosk for us to do check in at LCCT, and also made web check-in available.

The funny things with these premium tickets is that, it is not possible to check in at the kiosk and also online at all. We reached the airport like 1 hour before the departing time, and phew, we managed to check in at the counter. There is a separate counter for the premium ticket but we did not know that, so we went to the normal counter and check in.

Everything else is standard. They advertised something like we can board the plane any time we want, but the truth it, the gate leading to the tarmac outside is always closed until everyone can board. So there is no such thing as board anytime we want. By the time the gate is open, there is be a mad dash to the plane. I don’t know what’s the rush with these people.

We took the wrong entrance to the plane, as the seat is way in front, we took the back entrance and slowly squeezed through the crowd. Well, lesson learnt. Always ask before going into the plane.

Inside the plane….

 

Plenty of legroom. I can put my legs straight and still I can’t reach the wall in front.

Plenty of cabin space for your carry-on. This time we did not check in any luggage, brought everything on board. Made good use of all the available space.

The complicated control panel of the seat. I haven’t been exploring all these buttons. I just reclined the seat and slept for the whole journey.

Independent armrest for each side of the passenger, so nobody will fight with you for the armrest.

There is not much other perks here, only thing is that we get a flat bed seat. Usually we don’t find flat bed in business class in normal airlines, only in first class. And first class usually will cost an arm.

They throw in a couple of bottles of water for free, which is usually retailed for MYR 5 per bottle, I think, used to bought of lot of those before Air Asia launched their Air Asia X branding.

Food served on Air Asia is still way better than the food I get on other airlines. I wonder why other airlines can’t opt for this kind of food? Gee.

Now the next thing I would like to request from Air Asia is that they start to fly to Middle East, a couple of countries, like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt. Then it will be so much better.

Airports

There was once when we were taking Thai Airways from LHR (Heathrow) to KUL (KLIA), transiting through BKK, the transit time is really short, less than 1 hour. Even our luggage is tagged with big yellow sign, ‘Hot Transfer’. I am not entirely sure if BKK Airport is really that big. From one end to another, we were already walking really fast, no time to even stop and take a breath, and we reached the gate just in time. The feeling is like you just need to walk and walk, there is no end in sight. The signboard forever pointing that in front is the gate number. Well, plenty of shopping opportunities in BKK but we did not have time for that. Anyway, we will be going there again later this year.

In my recent trip, DEL Airport (Indira Gandhi) has just gone through a major renovation last year, I think. We were in Terminal 3, it’s the new one I guess. The journey from the immigration to the gateway is like walking around half a stadium. One conveyor walkway after another, and furthermore, there are like places without conveyor, where we have to really walk. One thing nice about this Terminal 3 is that they have free Wifi! Where we can just request for a code using our mobile, any country free of charge.

While I was in RUH (King Khaled), the taxi driver dropped me at the wrong terminal. There is no transfer service from one terminal and another, well, I had to walk myself from one terminal to another, around 500m, hauling my luggage bag all along. When I reached the other terminal, the queue is really long at the scanning part before the check-in. Phew, hopefully I still managed to check-in. The best thing about RUH is not when leaving KSA, it is about reaching KSA. During the immigration phase when we arrived, don’t bother about the label on top of the immigration counters. Just go to any counters apart from the one on the left most, usually the one with the longest queue. The immigration officer will always ask us to go the left most queue, we can just ignore him. It will take at least 2 hours to clear the immigration if we go for the left most queue.

There are more to go, but I need to take rest first.

Senjyu

Went there last weekend.

I have never known there is a place called e-Curve until that day. Never even heard of it. I thought that place is only about Ikea, Ikano and the Curve.

The food is quite alright, kind of like fusion Japanese cuisine.

If you don't know what to pick, just pick all the chef recommendation items on the menu!

The price is a bit on the steeper side, good for pampering oneself like, once a year?

Hopefully she has a discount coupon so we get the save up a bit.

I wonder how do they clean up the place, because the seating 'hole' in the middle has no place for them to like sweep out the dust or some other stuff.