DARCH MALACCA STUDY TRIP.

my malacca study trip summed up in a few words was first-rate satisfactory, much because of the company of friends which leads to the absence of parents. to actually go through what the DARCH students did in specifics for that 3 days is out of the question. they say a picture speaks a thousand words. they were referring to the point and shoot ones. mine speaks 4 billion words. ^^

the company during the malacca trip was 

thank god none of them were boring people that went just so they could get into the books of the lecturers. it was fun with people like them around, except for the fact that shopping had to be done hastily because 'patience is not a virtue'.

en route up to our destination, we had our first ever buffet lunch as a whole DARCH cohort for the very first time at a hotel. i thought the food was quite bad, which struck a food-lover like me hard that i may have to suffer for the following 2 days. 

sp architecture people.

an ice cream cone.

ritz and me.

and yay, another addition to my collection of my IT-WAS-SUNNY friendster photos. ^^

my first day as an architecture student in malacca was spent walking through Christ Church and then up a hill to highest summit in Malacca. ashok, our tour guide, caught my attention when he told us about how the body of a pastor was maintained without any preservatives after passing on. buried somewhere in the Vatican City, Rome, he told us some random fucker tried to bite off the late pastor's toe, not convinced that the body was real and not made up like that of a plastic figurine. the most interesting part is, according to our tour guide, the late pastor started bleeding after his toe got bitten off. dead body, blood - not exactly suitable to talk about at 329am. 

a very red church.

mini shops selling mini things. very useless and very malacca.

people taking photos of people taking photos of christ church and its surroundings.

the fountain is hot from the day's sun. it needed water, and so it became a water fountain. pleasant description to make it a malacca attraction.

red buildings in contrast to the blue skies. sweet.

my tour guide. definitely not the one in orange.

on the way up the hill. beautiful scenery.

nasri with the shades, lawrence with the camera. lawrence's spoke 80 words only. 

no, they're not one of us. ugly hats, lame lime colour tees, playing a stupid game.

the used.

nicholas.

the first burial cage. the pastor is not in there already.

close up of steel.

an arc.

we made our way down the hill.

selling his works.

selling useless souvenirs. 

a canon shooting a canon. with ritz.

entrance to a shopping mall. it looks so much like a grand entrance of an airport.

beautiful remains 1. 

beautiful remains 2.

we took a short walk back to our coach, and proceeded to check into our hotels. i roomed with nasri and ritz for that 3 days in a special-privileged triple room. we washed up (or did i not.?), and were given a few hours in the hotel before meeting back at the lobby. dinner time, and we had the same food as lunch. different place, different orientation, but same ol' traditional peranakan food. the green jelly thingy topping on top of the chendol was hard, very hard.

makan place. i love how malaysians blatantly change the spelling of restaurant to RESTORAN. cool man.
 

sunset soon.

we gathered outside the RESTORAN, went up the bus, and was briefed on our next activity for the day. he told us to meet back at the ballroom in the hotel for an ice breaking session. i "wtf -.-" because ice breaking session in september. woot. but it was better than an ice breaking session. guys forced to strip half naked. guys forced to put make up on. guys in masking tapes and garbage bags. guys doing sexy catwalks on a makeshift runway. and everything sexy and sassy that happened that night. because i was the last to reach, i was supposed to be forfeited to be the model for our group. i begged and begged, and even gave lame excuses like, "the thrash bag don't have my size la," and after much negotiating, my sexy friend ritz took up the challenge. he said, "joey you owe me one," at least 25 times that night. and now to reveal the sexy bapok side of him. 

accessories.

for the eye. look at the different shades of colour in the make up kit.

"eh fold up your shorts, we make mini skirt."

more make up. the thicker the better - that's the motto nowadays.

lip balm, in exchange of lipstick.

cutie pose.

beautiful zhnng-ed eye, against an equally beautfiull ear ring.

'open, *dabbles make up* close *rests* open *dabbles make up* close." and it went on.

the final model. i didn't know we had to explore into different modelling such as this as an architecture student. i must thank ritz for saving my face.

many other sex bombs.

and yes, this is the muhd from our school, newtown. he's from my course, and up till that night, i wouldn't have imagined him being that sporting in such a wild way. 

yong hong, supposedly a batwoman.

hon lun, a medusa, if i didn't remember wrongly.

ahhh.

xenia, the warrior princess.

and i dno, but sexy shaved legs look good under strong flashlighting. 

aidil, some person from the olympics. 

er.

the winner of the runway that night. he was feminine enough, sexy enough, bapok enough, and definitely sporting enough. whatever.~~~

then we were released, and were supposed to tuck in and rejuvenate for the following morning, but then... ...

came, most probably and easily, the highlight of my entire malacca trip. it went something like

me: poh bring us out tonight leh, i don't want to sleep so early.

poh: okay lor, we go eat nasi lemak.

me: okay where.?"

poh: KL.

i stunned for a few seconds and thought it was meant to be a joke. then i suddenly remembered that he drove there and didn't take the coach with us up to malacca, and realised that this idea was within the bounds. he confirmed, and we went on to look for more willing khakis. at 1030pm, where most students would have been asleep or engaged in their boring little activities such as card games on the bed, pretending to be enjoying it only because they had nothing better to do, nasri, ritz, yong hong, hong lun, and myself was on our way to KUALA LUMPUR. not exactly a place worth boasting about, but definitely the eccentricity of my lecturer is something to talk about.! squeezed in a black mazda 3 hatchback car (excluding fatty nasri who sat in front luxuriously), it was almost surreal that our impromptu plan could be realised. okay, i sound so formal about it, but it was a very good feeling. makes me want to score a grade A for HTA and ADS next term. the ride was no longer than one and a half hour. throughout the ride, we questioned poh about his life as an architect, how he became one, and the hardships and reaping of being one, and can't help but be inspired. 

true enough, the nasi lemak was heavenly delicious. as if driving us there is not a good enough favour, poh fished out a RM50 note and paid for our supper. we moved on to the petronas tower, and poh gave us a while to snap some photographs for keepsake. because it was dark and i was without a tripod, the photos turned out to be blurry and bad. 

poh shared his experience that once, he was so engrossed in composing a shot of the entire petronas twin tower that he lied flat upwards on the floor and was chased away by the guards.

here, we see ritz, being an avid photographer, trying to achieve the same. 

we reached our hotel at 345am on a friday morning, all tired and exhausted, but hearts agreeing that it was all worth it.

the next morning, i slept through complimentary breakfast buffet, despite my roomies trying to wake me up. fast forward to our first stop, we went to a museum called the baba nyonya museum, which is a translation of how peranakan houses were back then. i had no photographs because photography was prohibited in the house. we walked to a temple in the vicinity and ashok started all his bullshit all over again. his talking was accompanied by the sweet sound of the opening and closing of the shutter click of the canon eos. HA.

ashok with the gang.

beautiful temple against a beautiful backdrop.

then we were given a little less than 2 hours to roam jonker street by day. there was nothing much to buy, nothing much to see, but a lot to perspire about. we took the coach back to the hotel when everybody gathered.

the 24 hour convenience store beside our hotel.

nasri and me.

we headed back to our hotel for buffet lunch, and this time, they served good spaghetti and potato salad. i had a little too much only because i didn't have my breakfast. we left for a malay village called the villa sentosa, and was greeted by a very vibrant old man who was more than glad to have us as guests.






vibrant old man, introducing villa sentosa, and how his ancestors founded this place.

small kitchen.

old skool teapots.

family tree, almost never ending.

\

their tradition.

a representative of our DARCH cohort signing in his guestbook. i looked and saw the names and signatures of people from all over the world (mexico, america, china etc)

we bade our farewell and left the place.

boat in the longkang.

instantly, the house of a patriot. 

the guys giggled. the naughtier girls joined in.

we were then sent to jonker street, and reached the place at 530pm sharp. we were told to report back to the same spot at 9pm, stomachs and hands filled with food and shopping respectively. so we started roaming, and went to this beautiful outdoor seafood RESTORAN. i've used the word 'beautiful' at least 10 times already. we ordered seafood, satays, otah, fried rice for each, and a sheesha which burned our pockets by 5 ringgit only. okay that's lesser than S$2.50, and the price is a big difference as compared to the S$12-S$20 found in singapore. 

the sun was setting, and the sky was just pretty.

good food plus sheesha against a sun-setting backdrop with a few of your friends. what can be better.? and we spent ringgit 19 for all of that only. 

we proceeded with our shopping at jonker street. the setting was a vast difference from that in the day where it was all empty and quiet. in the night, shop tenders open their makeshift roadside stalls, and everything seemed to come to life. i didn't take any photos there because the arms were occupied carrying plastic bags.

obviously not all of us reached the spot back at 9pm. we left that place almost half an hour later as planned. we were supposed to go back to our rooms but because we didn't want to have a boring night and make this experience more of an... experience (?), we dragged people along to the carnival which was of walking distance from our rooms. obviously i gave all rides a miss (not like they had many rides to begin with).

nasri brought the camera up to his ferris wheel ride.

we walked back and settled down for supper at a place just beside our hotel. ramlee burger style, one of my favourite food whenever i'm in malaysia.

very ugly cap.

very ugly cap 2. even he's agreeing with me on the 2.

quite super.

eh.?

eh.?

we went back to our hotel and a guy from a different class came up to me and asked if i wanted to drink. they had 2 bottles of vodka to finish that night, and was looking for people to partayye. my first question was, "daidee.?" but no, they declined, because they already lost 100 ringgit plus the night before. so, i followed the others to the same place where we had burgers to watch how zenit st petesburg game manchester united gor tai BIG TIME. damn nice to watch la the game, seeing how manchester united falter without ronaldo. at 450am, we were back at our hotel, slept for a mere 4 hours, and was up and ready for check out.

we checked out, and the last stop for the entire malacca trip was Mahkota shopping centre. nothing at all, machiam ginza plaza. -.- we walked over to palawan, the shopping centre opposite mahkota, and got the same response. a little better, because ritz, nasri, and myself got stuffs there. 

soon, we were back in the coach, on the way back to singapore, marking the end of this wonderful study trip. study trip, not. up till now, i cannot associate the knowledge of the culture of the babas and the nyonyas to what i'm currently studying now in a polytechnic. may the lecturers enlighten me when we meet 6 weeks later. 

i am finally done with this shit. it is 524am. i'll be a boring person tomorrow. all usual mahjong khakis are busy. i want to watch a movie and buy things to zhng myself. give me a call.

last note: the bnw photography includes

photos that speak 1001 words. an extra 1 from the usual only because i'm inside.



THERE'S A HOLE IN MY TEETH.
MY FAVOURITE PASTIME, REALLY.