Bird Park & Orchid Garden

This is it, my final trip at Orchid Garden and Bird Park in Kuala Lumpur. Find both place as its own unique way to share its experience to the visitors; for example, the Orchid Garden share its beauty and peace while the Bird Park share its natural harmony and wild atmosphere. Compare to those 2 locations, I find Bird Park more interesting than the Orchid Garden because of the chance of going up-close with many different large size bird.

Focus and Emotion



There are many display of bird design dustbin all over the bird park (just like the one on the first photo) and it made me laugh at first glance when I saw one near the entrance. So the dustbin has successfully brought up the sense of emotion. In addition, bird feeding at it own feeding ground (like the peacock on the peacock on second photo) has greatly direct the attention of the visitors.

Space/Form and Orientation



There are couple of arches and pathways in Orchid Garden has successfully direct your eyes and guide your interest to follow the pathway (first photo). This shows the arches and pathway has show sense of direction.

On the Bird Park side, you'll see a big group of flamingos at the pond sleeping peacefully without being disturb by visitors even though they are being confined in a big cage (second photo). This shows the flamingos is being natural living as their own habitat and show the sense of belonging.

Somewhere in bird park, there are gathering of large on a pathway and there you can see and compare the size between different species of birds (third photo). This shows the sense of scale.

Knowledge and Task



In Bird Park, there a couple of sign board and information board that answer your question of what type and species of bird you are looking at; which will allow the visitors to better understand the bird and made the experience knowledgeable.

Royal London Circus

When Prof. Harold showed me Cirque de Soile ( Circus of the Sun), it reminds me my first circus when I was 9 years old which I was just primary 3 (1998). On that time, all my classmates and I received a special price for ticket to Malaysia Royal London Circus. Well compare to Cirque de Soile, The Royal London Circus is not really as creative and as innovative as Cirque de Soile because The Royal London Circus doesn't deal much with art, exaggerating costumes, state of the art technology and storyline but they they uses animals like elephant, ponies and lion, funny clown, death-defying stunts and magic shows. Recently, I surfed the net looking for news regarding The Royal London Circus and I feel sad because the circus doesn't do much of tour and shows anymore compare my old days. Although the popularity of The Royal London Circus is no match against the Cirque de Soile but the Royal London Circus is my first circus shows and I always remember my first experience.

Here some picture I found in the net about the circus. Its not much but at least a glimpse and reminder to those been to Royal London Circus.

Exploring Second Life: Part 5 & Final

For my final exploration, I find myself in Straylight and it is beautiful. Like all fantasy stories, Straylight has all the criteria needed to describe what a fantasy world look like- beautiful scenery, bright but soft glow of sun ray, colorful ambience and weird display of items that doesn't exist in reality. In addition, visiting this world also made you feel comfortable and inspiring with imagination.


Nice waterfall, time for bath?


Bontanical entry, quite festive


Lots of tree for sale: green tree, autumn red tree, Japanese sakura pink tree


Ouu, White Tree of Gondor...I want that on my backyard


Yikes! Spooky


Me playing Elven music instrument

Exploring Second Life: Part 4

Cruise Ship is one of my most favorite vacation and so far I have been to 4 cruise ships in my life - Empress, Superstar Gemini, Superstar Virgo and Superstar Aries; I cant wait to go for the next cruise ships adventure. And there I am, in SS Galaxy Cruise Ship... well, virtually (at least a taste of a virtual cruise ship before I go for the real one). As I enter the ship, not only I discover that the ship as big as Titanic, but it also beautiful design as if it is a dream ships because everything from architectural design to decorations, it is indeed a spectacular view.

Here the picture of me taking the cruise...

That is A BIG miniature ship.


Here I am with a realistic fountain


an Art Gallery...in a SHIP!!


A movie theater in a ship...NO WAY!!


Arcade room, which you have to pay to play :(


Awesome swimming pool on the upper deck

Exploring Second Life: Part 3

For my third visit, I explored the world of Geenie Home and man... I'm so small. In this world, everything from furniture, windows, hardware, lights and the room is the humongous; in addition, not only everything is huge, every item is perfectly scaled and well proportioned which creates the illusion of the visitors being small.

Here a few photo of me exploring this world



Oh, looks like I'm not the only "unexpected" visitor


HEY!! I found something...nevermind, forget what I said


Flight Racing game with hoverboard. Too bad you need to pay to play

Exploring Second Life: Part 2

Since now I'm packing a nice tuxedo, I'm off for exploring. I began my visit at International Space Flight Museum and I teleported on a platform where I'm surrounded by dark space, stars a model space craft. Whenever I get near a model contraption, nearby information is becoming visible allowing visitors to read and learn. There are also several miniature planet displayed which is for the visitor to click on it a be teleport to that particular planet. From there, more information regarding the planet pop out and more things to read and I must say I learned a lot of space knowledge I never even thought of it from there. Later, if you are confident with your mental briliance, you can test youself at one the quiz booth to answer several question regarding space.



I put myself on a test. I got 3 out of 10. DANG!!



Hey, there something about our moon I didn't know



Oops, I forgot my parachute

During my space exploration, I accidentally fell into a hole in the middle and the next you know it, you falling like a meteorite and slam your face on a metal platform on earth. When I was falling 100 mph, I can't help myself laughing of the silliness and I realized the platform I was on was a space platform; so practically I was diving from space without parachute.



My new friend

After my long fall, I met a guy who witness my painful descent and come up to me and say hi. He told me he is a regular SL player and he has his own share of adventure and he is kind enough to give me some tips and some good place to visits. He recommend me to go to Geenie Home, the SS Galaxy Cruise Ship and the Straylight for my next visits. After a long chat with my new pal, I'm off to continue exploring.



I was sitting one of the chair watching movie

In my opinion, the internation space museum is rich with space information and it is suitable for all who are interested in space and astronomy.

Exploring Second Life: Part 1

Before I go out and start exploring, the first went into my head is that " Hey, I can't go out like this! I need a new outfit." So I went to MetaRL to do a little shopping. The place is enormous and has so much things to choose, from the 80s suit to punk rock hair style and its all free, well almost all free.


That me zooming around to browse all the merchandise

When you done browsing the ground floor, you can start your search for the second floor. Although the place is big, the area is kind of plain because there so much wide space left out in the open for the user to display their product for sale.


Me on 2nd floor

Finally after 45 minutes of searching, I finally found the suit I was looking for; a free black tux. It is kind of sad because there are not many people come to shop n this place; maybe is not as popular as the one that require real money. For my first visit I'll say that is tiresome because it took a loooong time for me to find something I like and free, but still is worth it because now I am prepared for a virtual adventure.

Yourself! Fitness

Tired of being criticize of being fat? You want to exercise but are you reluctant to go outdoor? Is all the exercise equipment you want is big and expensive? Then you need YOURSELF! FITNESS.





OK, enough with the promotional speech. Yourself! Fitness is a PC, XboX and PS2 simulation exercise program developed by Respondesign in Portland, Oregon at 5th of March 2005. This program is suitable for all age and comes with many languages which allow users around the world to use it to exercise in their own room. The program contain highly detail model of the environment and background like gym, garden or the zen shrine and very realistic model of a pretty virtual fitness assistant "Maya". Anytime when a user feel like exercising like after awaken from good night sleep or during the evening, the user can just turn on their console and play the program. Yourself! Fitness is a first step for this type of program because a few years later a similar exercise program like the Eye Toy: Kinetic for the PS2 and WII Fit for WII which both uses motion sensor technology to detect the user movement which allow the console to tell the user whether they did it right or wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJFNL8a9qPM&feature=related

To me, I find this program user friendly, convenient, beautifully design and cheap, but I also find it kind of encouraging people to stay home more often. However, most importantly, this is a mark of the advancement of technology which allow consumers to do same thing but with different experience and I believe that many other activity will be replace by all sorts of different devices and provide different experiences for users.

EVE ONLINE

As always, games is my passion, games is my vision and most of all, games is my life. For that, only the most exciting, most thrill and most unique, the best of the best games are the one able to fill my hunger and satisfaction for fun gameplay. So I would like to introduce another game which provide the gamers with whole new experience of gameplay. If I asked you, what is the best games in the world? People will immediately answer "MMORPG"

For those people out there who is asking themselves what in the world is MMORPG, then they most probably living under a rock for decades because the game genre has been booming since year 2000. MMORPG stands for "massive multiplayer online role playing game" which is like all the typical online fantasy MMORPG games like World of Warcraft, Runescape, Everquest, Cabal, Lineage and many other countless unknown Chinese, Korean and Japanese MMORPG games. MMORPG is a game where player login into a server and "lived" in an online virtual world where player live, play, make money, spend money, lose money, interact with other online player, kill unknown wandering creature, DIE and live again. Most players of MMORPG just play the game for sake of having fun and play with a group of online buddies, but some player uses MMORPG to make money by making and buying merchandises and sell it off for better price and convert the virtual money into a real world money. You almost say that MMORPG is a game where player literally "live" in the virtual world and do all sort of same things where you can do it in the real world.

Although some MMORPG is better and more popular than the other like the Wold of Warcraft which earn the title of the current best MMORPG in the world which has warping 11 million players pay and play around the world they; however, they all have the similar way of playing, which is start at level 1, trained your avatar by slaughtering monster, spend cash to buy bigger and more powerful arsenal, do trading, dueling, chatting with other player, embark on a quest and repeat all these all over again.





I would like to introduce one MMORPG like no others, which called EVE ONLINE. What different between this MMORPG and the other is that EVE has different approch in concept and gameplay than any other online games. Most online games play by keeping your feet on the ground, but only handful like EVE made you play by putting into vast void of DARK SPACE in our Milky Way galaxy.





You start build yourself an avatar face and a ship to start your level 1 voyage. The world of EVE consist of 5 faction spread across the galaxy and they are Amarr Empire, the Gallente Federation, the Minmatar Republic, the Caldari State and the Jove Empire and they are at war with each other. As a player you can be a lone wolf merchant, miner, bounty hunter or pirates which allow you to do whatever you want with nobody is bossing you around but you are on your own when you are in trouble. However if you choose by joining of the faction, you will be part of a organisation where you will be there assets like be their miners or be part of their armada, however, if you are attack by one clan of enemy faction, you'll have someone higher up to back you up like a huge squardron of space fighters or a battle cruiser. Besides that, you'll actually be part of a faction to faction political conflict like you have in your country and also be part of a ALL OUT WAR by participating in a Mega Size space battle where a faction fleet vs another faction fleet in a bright, thrilling, scary and EPIC battle you never experiencing before. In a battle, you may be one of the fighter pilot having a dogfight duel with another pilot or a commanding officer of a giant carrier giving out order to your fellow pilot while engaging the enemy.

I must say, compare to other MMORPG, EVE Online is much more real life experiencing than other MMORPG; take World of Warcraft for example, you may play as a knight doing quest, kill monster and interact with your fellow friends but it only allow you to experiencing it alone or in a small groups or clan. Whereas in EVE world you play it in a political scale as if you are actually serving a country and everything in EVE is part of a history making like, clan establishment, total destruction of a clan, a coup detat of fellow members to the higher ups just like the political event like ours in the real life. In addition, the space battle is extraordinary because you will see laser fire, missiles and explosion flashes all over the dark space like electric fireworks and watch your teammate and your enemy ships explode into oblivion and during the fight, you will fell like Luke Skywalker piloting a fighter single-handedly take out enemy ships one by one or as Darth Vader giving out orders while standing on main deck. I hope there are more online games like EVE are developed in the future because online games like EVE could be the FUTURE.

Watch this, you'll get the idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08hmqyejCYU

Spectacular Performance

So far in my life, I have only watch two concert; one is by Ichirou Mizuki and the other is by May'n during AFA 2008 (Anime Festival Asia) held in Singapore. AFA 2008 is a 2 days anime convention event which held on Saturday and Sunday ( 22nd & 23rd November). Like any other anime convention around the world, AFA has plenty of activity like figurine display, digital art demonstration, goodies which imported all the way from Japan for sale, karaoke and cosplay competition and Q&A with well known Japanese company director and artist. AFA pack the schedule and the hall with all these event until Grand Finale at night which there will be a concert by those two singer that I mentioned.


This is Ichirou Mizuki, fans called him ANIKI means Big Brother


ANIKI is mind controlling the audience


May'n, LIVE in Singapore ads poster


May'n, a now 20 year old Japanese idol


Not my picture but I'm somewhere in there watching the concert

Although that my first concert, I feel absolutely overwhelm their performance because during the concert. you follow aniki hand genture, watch May'n singing and 2 female dancers dance along side with May'n and the hall is overbooked with fans to watch the performance. I haven't watch an american LIVE performances before so I can't make a comparison of which is the best but still AFA concert is spectacular enough for me.