This blog entry will close my 2009 blogging. At the moment of writing, below are the last count of the blog posts that I’ve made in 2009, with a total of 96 blog posts (excluding this one) even though the count for December will most likely increase due to the post dated entries that I will do on my Bali trip.

Overall, I’m writing more this year compared to 2008 and 2007. But 2006 remains the most active year – the year that I started writing blog seriously.

So where was I and what I was doing at 12 midnight of 1st Jan 2010? Well, I’m at home, watching the fireworks from the window of my house.

Well, most of my friends just stay home, not having any plan. I guess lets save the energy for the Cameron Highland trip tomorrow.

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Had a very good sleep last night, and I’m ready for the activities for the third day here. Click the link below to visit the sub page of each of the activity.

• Souvenir shopping at Krisna (coming soon)
• Visiting Tanah Lot (coming soon)
• Watching Kecak Dance at Uluwatu (coming soon)

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Finding lunch for today was quite an adventurous one. At first, our “pak supir” brought us to a place, where most of us find the food is quite expensive. Then, we decided just to find Nasi Padang. Next stop is Gunung Batur.

As we go higher than the sea level, the temperature here is quite cool, same as what you feel when you are at Cameron Highland. Gunung Batur is still an active volcano. At the mouth of this mountain, there’s not much life and colour, just this dull grey surrounding, marking that the lava once being spit out of this volcano.

It turned out that they have buffet here. Darn. If we know that this place have a buffet, we will be taking lunch here instead. But the scenery is so good, and not to miss the cool feeling oh eating at somewhere at this high altitude.

Read the rest of stories about by Bali Trip

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

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Day 2 at Bali is quite packed with activities. Click the link below to visit the sub page of each of the activity.

• Watching Barong & Kris dance (coming soon)
• Tid-bits shopping at Puteri Bali (coming soon)
• Drinking coffee at Buana Amertha Sari Agrotourism (coming soon)
• Having lunch at Gunung Batur
• Buying handicraft at Tegallalang (coming soon)
• Visiting art market at Pasar Ubud (coming soon)
• Dinner at Jinbaram (coming soon)

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The day that I’ve been waiting for has finally arrived – the day that I will be going to Bali. Got out from the house as early as 12pm to catch the 5pm flight at LCCT. Got to get out early as there are 20 people all together that will be on this trip, just to allow ample time for all of them to gather around.

Arrived at Ngurah Rai Airport, Bali at around 8:10pm. Yay! Another stamp in my passport. Since I just recently renew my passport, this is the third stamp that I got in my new passport (the other 2 were for my Bulgaria and Thailand work trip).

There a little bit confusion at the baggage claim area. There’s no monitor telling which carousel that I should go to claim my baggage. I have to revisit from one carousel to another, only to find out that all Air Asia flight will be using this carousel.

As I passed the immigration and custom area, there’s this whole stretch of money changer counters, each one competing on offering the good exchange rate.

Getting cab at the airport is not a problem. On our way to hotel, we had a little chat with the cab driver. Surprisingly, the cab driver thought that we are from Jakarta, where we told them that we are from Kuala Lumpur. Thanks for the “sinetron” that we have aired in Malaysia where we already get so used to Indonesian slang.

Well, this is the hotel that I’m staying here in Bali, the recently opened Tune Hotel, Kuta Bali.

The counter has a Balinese decoration,

and the landscape is very Balinese.

Doh! That’s for sure since I’m in Bali.

Once we have settled down at the hotel room, it’s time to go for dinner. We took a 20 minutes walk to the Legian district. It’s quite happening here with numerous clubs and eating place.

It’s not that hard to find halal food shop in Bali. Just look for “Masakan Padang” and “Masakan Sunda”.

Yummy! I’m so hungry now.

On my way back to hotel, I saw there’s a little commotion at this place, with crowds keep lingering at this area.

Getting closer to that place, it seems that this place is having a foam party tonight.

And out of the blue, there’s this “minah salleh” just came in front of me while I’m taking photo, and strike a post. Using DSLR, I can rapidly press the trigger and capture this beautiful moment.

Well. Got to go know. Have to be in the hotel lobby by 8:30am tomorrow for the tour. I’ll write more of the places that I visit during my trip here in Bali.

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

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It’s been a while since I travel for leisure, where the last one was the trip to Phuket early last year. Most of the time, it’s due to work which I don’t have time to enjoy, and furhermore, I’m travelling alone, and it’s kinda boring just to do the sightseeing on my own.

Went to see my friends for the final discussion before the flight tomorrow.

Well, I’ve got all the essential stuffs packed – passport, hotel confirmation, flight ticket and money. I’m a millionaire now. That is 3 millions worth of Indonesia Rupiah.

Bali, here I come.

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Astro will go HD tomorrow. I was sitting in the car to office this morning when I heard the news on the radio that Astro will launch HD service tomorrow. Well, it’s just time, and just a very perfect time since I also just recently getting obsessed with HD World when purchasing my Sony Full HD LCD TV.

After the launch of Measat 3A satellite, Astro been quietly upgrading their system to support HD broadcast. Well, they are doing a good job of keeping that quite as I only get to know that today despite several articles on the local newspaper already about this.

From the digging that I do, I found out that the broadcast will be in 1080i resolution. What? I thought that it will be in 720p. 1080i can be thought as 540p, which is below 720p. There’s also interesting rumors about the new decoder as well. The new decoder will be eqquiped with HDMI port, ethernet port, usb port and digital audio output.

(Images via Miri Community Forum)

But I don’t see any HDMI port from the new decoder that comes with any new Astro subscription.

But seeing the USB port and Ethernet port at the back of the decoder rather excites me (current model only have phone jack port for the modem). Having USB port can mean that you can connect portable external hard disk to it, and use Astro decoder as PVR (Personal Video Recorder) to programatically the whole season of Akademi Fantasia (LOL!), and watch it at your own leisure time.

With broadband internet is now connectable to Astro decoder, I hope this will be first Malaysia version of TiVo. As a matter of fact, in the past I have touched twice about Malaysia version of TiVo. Firstly, when MiTV first launched, which MiTV turn out to be not close to TiVo at all, and the launched of Astro Max after that (which the production has been ceased now)

During the launch, only a few channels will be broadcast in HD. Which channels then? Measat website has a good hint for this.

Local programs will be in HD in the next phase as Astro has to upgrade the video camera and other equipments. I just can’t want to watch Akademi Fantasia in HD (LOL).

The 2 things that still have big question marks on them are, i) how much the new decoder will cost, ii) what’s the price will be for the HD channels package. Everything will be unveiled soon.

It’s time for me to reconsider upgrading my package which currently I’m under protest by switching to the basic RM37.95 package due to the price hike that they announce to the Sports Channel last time.

Astro website will definately be the first website that I’ll be visiting first thing tomorrow.

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The newly bought Xbox 360 starts milking money from me. With Xbox 360 connected to Xbox Live, you have a vast options of downloading game trailers, and even game demo, but each download can easily cost you almost 1GB of storage space. The 512MB built in memory is good for storing profiles and game saves, but obviously not enough for such thing as downloading other stuffs from Xbox Live.

Searched lelong.com.my again and found this 120GB hard disk for Xbox 360.

It’s not the official Microsoft product,

but hey, it looks good on my Xbox 360.

With hard disk this big, I can even install the Xbox game to it, and run the game from the hard disk. Man. I love that. No more roaring sound from the spinning disc, and the load time of the game, especially when you transit from scene to scene is very fast.

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