Hiking: Broga Hill (Bukit Lalang)

Quite sometime back, my friend showed me some of his hiking photos.

The location that caught my interest was the Broga Hill.

Located near Semenyih after Kajang, the hill is actually very near to The University of Nottingham Malaysia campus.

My colleague, Chow proposed to hike that hill last saturday and I agreed since my wife was not around for business trip @ Seoul.

We started driving around seven thirty and with the assistance of GPS, we managed to find the location without getting lost.

Please click on the title of this post for coordinates and other info.

We actually overshot and landed @ Pekan Broga. Thanks to the dude in internet for providing us the wrong coordinates.

Actual coordinates are X: 101.90073, Y: 2.94716.

We u-turned back and head back to the entrance of Bukit Lalang which is an oil palm plantation area.

The journey took around 25 minutes from the car park to the first peak.

The first section is few hundred metres of oil palm plantation and as you hike in further to slightly higher ground, it will take you into the usual tropical forest.

There you will encounter 2 areas with landslides. Becareful when walking near the edge!

As we walk further for another ten minutes, we saw the first peak.

I felt better as the front stretch no longer forest area but all covered with Lalang!

We covered all the three peaks and took many panoramic shots for later stitching. Sorry that these pics shown here have been resized.

One of my colleagues is now very interested to go there. Maybe I will plan another trip by early April. If you wish to come along,... please do not hesitate to give me a call.

Let's hike together and this time, we try to make it early if we want to see sun-rise @ Bukit Lalang.

Wimax? Not Ready...

Wimax anyone? I just returned the 15-day trial for P1 Wimax. The first impression about this technology was cool until I use it. It all started when my Streamyx was freaking slow due to submarine cable fault.



I was @ Digital Mall when I saw a P1 booth sitting next to the building. It was raining at that time and while waiting for the rain to stop, the college boy asked me to try it. Without much delay, click on some you tube videos. Speed was relatively fast considering that the line indicator was showing orange(low signal strength) in colour during rain.

I then asked him about the threshold limit stated in the brochure. He could be lying to me when he said the threshold set to your modem will not stop your downloads but just to slower (priority given to other users below threshold limit) the speed for other users based on the fair usage policy. Being in IT line for quite sometime, I think his information is very misleading. I don't think the bloke has been given proper sales/marketing training to the agents.

I then sign up for the 15-day trial since it was free. I got home and started using the modem after few hours. I sense that during the day time, it was okay but not @ night. Speed was getting slower and by midnight, I could not even open the yahoo page!

I told myself to forget about using it. It was a bad experience. As far as I know, my cousin did some testing on the P1 antenna @ Bangsar Village. Thinking that the distance from Bangsar Village to the house is near, the signal suppose to be superb but then, it went the other way round.

My conclusion about this Wimax service is not bad but they can surely further improve by not upgrading the software during midnight as this will affect the users' connection. Bad move. At lease, inform us via the main website!

1 Day Trip to Singapore

It was a spontaneous decision made by my colleagues and I to go to Singapore for a day trip particularly for BIKE ASIA 2009 exhibition.

The journey started very early in the morning from KL. After he picked up Donald from Office, Chow came over to my place to pick me up.

We stopped several times along the way and finally we decided to use the "Tuas" link. At first we thought that we got lost on the way to Tuas but after a short while, we saw the immigration signboard.

The first stop at the Malaysian Immigration booth was quick.

Next we stopped our car at one of the Singapore Immigration booths, showed our passports and filled up the arrival card. Then, the immigration officer told us to get the "Autopass" card for around SGD10.00.

Chow drove the car a little bit further in front and went out of the car to grab the pass. As he got back to the car, he told us that the Singaporean officer asked him to reload another SGD10.00 before we return back to Malaysia. The card is valid till year 2013. Since it was a Sunday, we need not pay for ERP charges whenever we pass by the toll gantry. The whole journey in SGD was guided by Chow's ASUS P320 GPS phone. Not bad!

After we dropped Donald(to visit his friend) at Bukit Panjang, we moved forward to Singapore Expo. The parking lot was jammed when we arrived. Chow parked at further hall and we had to walk quite a distance.

Upon arrival at the exhibition hall, I would say the crowd was not that big. We went to the ticketing booth and paid for the entrance fee which is SGD15.00!

As we enter, there were huge booths mainly displaying Italian motorbikes and Bicycles.

We went clock wise starting from the Cannondale booth. Later, we spotted a bicycle using wheel technology similar to the commercial aircraft. It is interesting and the product is from Australia. It's called Street Surfer.

Next, we went further in to see some shocks manufacturer for motorbikes, local Singaporean bicycle shops which sells Fuji bikes and some magazine booths. The exhibition was way under expectation!

Further inside, we could hear some dance music being played. We investigated and found out there was some BMX bike stunts. Few jumpers fell during some group jumps. Very dissapointing when I compared the show to X-games.

Next, I went over to MV Augusta booth to take a look at the Superbikes. Really nice Italian designs being showcased out there! Ducati has superb designs as well. I don't think I can afford these bikes.

Around three quarter way through, we dropped by Selle's booth tried on the Ergonomic grips. They are nice for XC riding but exchange rate did not permit us to buy them - wasted.

One booth which caught my eye on was the Bianchi booth. There, I found a full susser with Ducati Corse label on it. The model is Scrambler 140. The rear suspension design is some what similar to Giant's anthem-x. Correct me if I am wrong, hehe.

Scrambler 140 is a bike with nice geometry and rear suspension setup. Whole bike is SRAM equipped for the drive-train. Next, we also saw Ducati Monster (carbon fibered HT) and Colnago Carbon HT MTB.

I was surprised to see a famous MTB rider named Tinker Juarez. He is very humble and he keeps on planting his famous signature for his Asian friends. Nice bloke!

Once done with the lousy and not entertaining exhibition, we left to hunt for outdoor gear near Beach road with assistance of the GPS phone. First stop was at the Golden Mile complex, full of Thais! It was like in Bangkok city... or maybe worst than that! We quickly left the place. Weird!

Next stop was at the Shaw Leisure Complex where we managed to grab waterproof wallet case costing SGD3.00 each. That's the only thing I bought.

One the way home, we went back to pick up Donald and left Singapore via the Tuas link again. We crossed the border after the customs officer checked our car.

It was raining heavily on the way back and three of us were freezing in the car. Thanks to Chow's powerful air-cond. We took turns to drive until we arrived KL around 10.30pm at night.

That will be my first and last trip to Bike Asia exhibition! So much under expectations. Sorry to the organizers.

The end...