28 Nov - Mengkabong sunrise, Kionsom waterfall

School holidays is great. I have a lot of time in my hands for my gym sessions, window shopping and as usual, outing with my fellow snapper friends. Last Sunday we decided to capture sunrise from Mengkabong bridge, followed by a short waterfall trip to Kionsom in Inanam.

I reached Mengkabong around 5 am and boy it was cold. Set up my camera and tripod, shot these.


Good Morning Malaysia!!!


Time for some panoramic view.


Two boats created nice water ripples.


Another one!


I mounted the 70200G f2.8 SSM on my Nex, and shot this uncropped photo from the brigde.


Interesting stuffs happening on the other side of the bridge as well.

Then, we head to the popular waterfall deep inside Inanam. Because I didn't come prepared, I had my shots at the lower part of the waterfall. You need to climb up for 10-15 minutes to experience other parts of this wonderful place.









Here's a short clip of that place in the morning.

Up the Irons!

Guess what reached me today?



Woohoo! Maiden tee! Bought this from Ebay.com, and it took more than a week to reach here from USA. This is Maiden's Final Frontier Tour tee which happened in June this year. I paid more than Rm100 plus postage.



The back view of the tee with venues where Maiden's played(below the graphic). For Maiden's next year's tour in Singapore which I will be attending, I will get the official tour tee for sure.


SGD192.64. Pen A, in front fo the stage. Worth the money? You bet!

Now, should I get Maiden's Vans shoes or not? Hmm...

Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Aquarium and Museum

I heard about this place from a friend and we decided to take a visit there yesterday. Going back to UMS brought me back lots of memories as I studied there in 1999-2001. Much has change since then.

The aquarium is situated at Borneo Marine Research Institute (BMRI) and the entrance fee is RM5 for adults. The aquarium area actually is not as big as the one at Green Connection, but it houses some of the biggest sea creatures I've ever seen!






The aquarium area.




When you enter the aquarium, look up!












This fish is big!




Another big fish.








Remora.









On the other part of the aquarium...

GioGio : China-made GPS unit

It's school holidays again, and I'm enjoying my time in KK, which, will be my home for years to come. I still do not have any idea which school I will be transferred to, but I do hope it will be at SMK Limbanak at Penampang. The school is situated at KK - Papar old road, and I don't see any signboard that shows there's a school there. But I found my way, thanks to my 5-inch GioGio GPS unit.


Home screen.

GioGio? Quite a funny name but name's aside, it's a must have thing in my car nowadays. The idea of getting it came when I need an MP3 player for my car stereo system. The one that can store hundreds of my favorite songs, nice to look at and have a touch screen. I'm tired of burning CDs, and I'm not too keen of getting the small cigarette lighter MP3 player that accepts thumbdrives. I browsed through lelong.com, bid a unit and won! All in all it costs a bit more than RM300. I got the unit itself, windscreen mount, car charger, wall charger, USB cable and headphone. I put in a 8 GB micro SD for added storage.


Stylus pen.




Ipod-inspired interface for the MP3 player.


Movie player. Due to the low spec processor and ram, the movie stutters. A nice feature, but because of the shortcomings, I don't use it often.


Photo viewer. The display is not that sharp, but still acceptable.


I like this feature the most! FM transmitter to transmit the sound to my car stereo system. Luckily, it's in stereo.


Navi options. I used Garmin and Papago much. Garmin for the vast POI's, Papago for the 3D view. As the seller claims, the unit lock onto satellite signals less than a minute and it's proven.

So far, I don't have any major comments about the unit. However, the touch screen is not that sensitive at times. I do find myself pressing at the same spot more than twice. I hope the audio output will be a bit louder in future models, as I need to adjust the volume of the car's headunit each time I changed audio sources(radios, Cd and the GPS unit).

p/s I just bid another unit for a friend from another seller, with a different name and design. And a bit cheaper too. The best part is it accepts AV in, which means I can display signals from Playstations or even reverse cameras.

Cokin P-series

Recently I bought a used Cokin P-series filter set for RM150 from a good friend. It came with 5 filters which, I hope it would help me in getting better photos especially landscapes. I tried looking for the 49mm adapter ring to no avail, which led me in getting the 52mm as I already have the 49-52mm step-up ring. Lucky for me, after mounting ring, adapter and filter, I didn't have issues with vignetting for all my lenses.


I bought the adapter ring for Rm38 from a seller in lelong.com.my


Mounted on my camera via step-up ring and adapter.

Some views along Kota Belud-Kota Marudu road.








Punang, Lawas this evening.