Yes, I did take a lot of pictures during my trip to Terengganu, but I never quite felt like putting them up just for the sake of telling people “Oh, look! I took lots of pictures! Here, here, see, see!”. However, since I haven’t had anything decent to write about today, I’ll just post a couple pictures to keep the blog active :D

During my brother’s wedding in Terengganu [December 2005] we stayed at Rumah Rehat Hasram Sri Duyong, a lodging centre near the outskirts of Kuala Terengganu.

It’s a nice medium-sized compound with four houses. One belongs to the owner, whom we simply refer to as Pak Haji, and the other three have been made as tourist hostels. It has a nice lawn, and a big birdcage filled with beautiful parakeets.

I took these pictures during my second visit to Terengganu. It was a lovely shady evening and everyone was too lazy to go sight-seeing or shopping. So I grabbed the camera and started shooting. Boy, shooting through a cage was a real challenge.

Okay, let me rephrase that. Shooting through a cage was a real bitch. The AF got fucked up countless times. No, Albert, I don’t have a ring on the lens to do on-the-fly manual focusing because I was using the S3IS and not the FZ30 :p

Such a bitch it was, that I only managed to get three satisfactory pictures out of some 30 attempts. The cage was not the only problem, actually. Unlike their other very selamba parrot cousins, these parakeets are quite hyperactive. It was really hard for me to get a nicely-composed shot. They were flapping around each other, jumping from one perch to another, and flying from one side of the cage to the other.

*scratch head*

Well, that’s it, I guess :p Haha, maybe I’ll put up some more pictures next time. If I feel like it, that is.

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Small Talk:
Here’s a little something for you to ponder about.

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I just realised that it’s actually really easy to create good first impressions for yourself. Sure, everyone knows the basics of common public manners and addressing social courtesy as well as the optional chivalrous gestures. But honestly, I think that it’s really easy to create the impression that you’re a deep-thinking intellect with a good sense of things, and it can be done in just a few short sentences.

I noticed, that the easiest way to sound like a smart fellow, is to state blatant and obvious facts, while using metaphorical expressions, and being really vague about it. You know, simple [and sometimes meaningless] sayings like “Everyone tells white lies, but only idiots tell transparent ones.” or “Two wrongs don’t always make a right, but three rights always make a left,” That sort of shit.

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I don’t really feel like writing today, so I’ll just make this one full of pictures. Take it as my own little contribution to the Visit Malaysia ‘07 Campaign, heheh.

This particular series of photos are sights from the lively and colourful Pasar Kedai Payang, a bustling traditional and cultural market smack right in the middle of Kuala Terengganu, the capital city of Terengganu.

I think I’ll just let the pictures explain the rest :D

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Our coaster escaped the desert and into the city of Aswan. It is a beautiful city enriched with blessings from Nile. Aswan, like many other Egyptian cities, also has its share of archaeological sites, and one of it was our next stop.

Throughout the travelogs, you may have seen a couple of obelisks in the pictures of the several temples that I visited. Obelisks, colossal pillars with sharp tips piercing the skies, are a significant item in the school of Egyptology. Ancient Egyptians have a strict rule when it comes to creating things out of stone blocks. Many of the carved stone statues are built upon a very important rule - that they must be carved out of ONE solid piece of rock, under the basis that it should retain the spiritual energy that is to be contained within them.

Obelisks are no exception to this rule. Especially so since obelisks are as important as an entire temple complex itself. Erecting an obelisk is a grand achievement for any pharaoh, and many pharaohs have erected several obelisks to signify their divinity. Obelisks are built with the purpose of channeling energies from the sun-god, Ra.

In order to allow the energies to pass through efficiently, obelisks must be carved out of stone, and must remain one single solid block of rock in order to let the energy flow through uninterrupted. To illustrate this fact, our tour guide happily took us to a site that was the quarry of the Ancient Egyptians. In this quarry lay an unfinished obelisk, an important evidence that the structures of the Ancients were indeed built not by aliens, but by the hands of highly skilled men.

This particular obelisk was left unfinished because there was a crack in the middle of its structure. If you look carefully, you can see a straight sloping surface that is one side of the obelisk. From where I stood, there was not much to be seen, so we went up the walkway to get a better angle.

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Winter mornings bring about swift dawns, and in only a short time the dark starry night turned into a bright sunny day. After the burst tyre incident, our vehicle continued down the barren desert highway for about another hour before we reached the desert city of Abu Simbel.

The first sight that greeted us was a grand view of a lake in the Upper [South] Nile, Lake Nasser. It is a very large man-made lake, formed by holding the waters of the Nile at the Aswan Dam. In that way, it’s very similar to our very own Kenyir lake.

The entire temple complex was a huge one. We actually had to go around the temple to see the entrance and facade. When we got around, we were greeted with an astonishing view.

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