Before anyone asks where is Day 2 of the WeddingStory Langkawi trip, I decided that I definitely wanted to post up some other photos of my recent trip to the US. Back in May, I flew to the States to attend a training in Chicago for a week where I planned a short break after the training session. Since I was already at Chicago attending the training, I thought it would be great to stay a couple of nights in Chicago with a bunch of my colleagues over in the City whilst taking in the sights.

The bus ride from St. Charles all the way to the city was horrendous. We were stuck in traffic for about 3 over hours for what should have been a 45-min bus ride. By the time we arrived in Chicago, it was already 5pm in the evening and we had little time there to enjoy the sights.



Chicago City itself, home of the mafias and also known as the Windy City.



This is a view from my hotel room. The building next to the hotel had a very interesting concept, it was totally round and had built the parking lots below the rooms. Look at the parking spaces, there are no walls at all! I can't imagine parking my car there overnight. I would probably be having nightmares about my car falling off from the building.



Chicago has a river running through the city where they have plenty of water taxis and Architecture tours available for tourists to ride up the Chicago River. Look how nice and clean the water is much compared to our own wonderful Klang River which runs through KL City. The secret to this is not only civic minded folks who don't throw every single bit of rubbish into the river but they actually have a processing plant to clean the river's water.



Before I went to Chicago, a friend of mine, CWCW, told me that I have to try a deep dish pizza. After checking out with some of my colleagues during my training session, I was told that I should check out Giordano's for some of that awesome deep dish pizza. I guess Giordano's is sort of like those franchise type stores, much like Domino's or Pizza Hut.



As it's name suggests, this pizza is definitely a thick crust! The pizza is so thick that after 3 slices I was totally filled up to the brim, of course the extra added cheese did not help at all. The crust itself isn't like the usual pizza crust you might get but it had a combination of pie crust in it. If you ever are in Chicago, I would highly recommend that you try out a deep dish pizza.



After stuffing ourselves crazy (with plenty of leftovers), we decided that a nice long walk would be suitable and since Grant Park was nearby we headed there for a walk. As light began to disappear, shooting in low light was going to be a tough challenge. The weather itself was just awesome, nice and cooling without any hint of humidity.



As we were walking, we chanced upon this interesting monument. I love the fact that it was rather stylish and interesting, mainly because it was totally reflective!



Which means I could take a photo of myself!



I loved how the syline of the buildings behind were also reflected on it the monument.



This was the skyline of buildings behind it.

After snapping a couple more photos, we headed towards the Sears Tower where the attraction there would be to head up to the upper decks or the "Sky Deck" to catch a 360 view of the Chicago City.



The one thing that caught my eye is how straight the roads were! Everything is so nicely planned out.



The SkyDeck definitely showed us all how large Chicago is. By the time we got down (we stayed till it was closing time), we were totally wiped out and proceeded back to our hotel.

Day 2 of the Chicago trip to follow up!

* Apologies for the confusion, I am trying out a new desktop publishing tool and it seemed to have screwed up the entire post and I have lost everything! *

The one thing I really hate to do is to retype an entire blog post which I have spent quite a fair bit of time writing. It saddens me that a simple mistake or being totally oblivious to the new tool which I am trying out can cause about 30 minutes of work down the drain. Nevertheless, the post must go up! Let me try to recapture what I have written in my earlier post.

I wonder how many people out there get up on a Monday morning, feeling worn out and said to themselves,"Wow, its going to be a great week ahead!". Most of the time I hear from my desk is that people are either feeling the Monday blues or they are updating their Facebook status about what a wonderful weekend they had recently. Personally, my weekend was the bomb!

Together with the WeddingStory team, we headed to a part of Malaysia I have not been in over 10 years, and that was the island, Langkawi. Feeling excited about Stuart & Amy's wedding, I took the 8am flight to Langkawi on Friday and I can safely say is that, don't fly so early in the morning. Why? Think about it, if your flight is at 8am, then you would probably need to be at the airport by 6.30am to check-in. Which means you have to leave your house at 5.30am by taxi. Hence you need to be up at 4 something in order to get ready.

And that was what happened and I have to thank Alex and Grace for hosting me and Mun Tzin the night before so that I didn't have to take account the time needed to travel from my house to their place. Also I have to thank Mun Tzin for waking me up in the morning by rubbing her wet fingers against my face. That really didn't give me a shock at all.

By the time we arrived in Langkawi, rented two cars, checked into the hotel, the first thing I did was sleep! Yes, sleep was the first thing in my mind and after a quick nap, whilst Alex and Mun Tzin went to pick Kee Sitt and Sharon up from the ferry dock, I felt hungry. A quick walk along the main road where our hotel was located, we found ourselves in a cosy restaurant ordering some dishes and eagerly waiting for our food to arrive



Kee Sitt then decided to try out Nigel's camera while we were waiting for our food to arrive.



By the time the first dish arrived (fried rice in case you were wondering if this was some special Langkawi grown rice), we were all too hungry to take more photos of the rest of the food. Ok, I admitted that once I started eating, I didn't stop until the food was gone!



The one thing I remembered about Langkawi was that it was a duty free island, meaning that all alcohol, chocolates and cigarettes were very cheap. It was so dirt cheap that they even served my chinese tea in a beer mug.



After lunch we decided to walk about and check out some of the stalls across the street from the restaurant. Apparently Alex and Nigel found a new toy, Langkawi Poken!



Kee Sitt loved playing with his new toy so much so that he took loads of pictures and videos with it. Can't wait to see all of them when he is done with it.

After lunch, the team got ready and drove about 45 minutes up north of the Island to the famed Andaman resort. There we were to shoot Stuart & Amy's beach wedding. I will leave more details about the shoot in a separate post. :)



This was the view from the bride's room. Look how lovely the scenery is.



And last but not least a view of the beach side where the ceremony is to take place. The decoration and the lovely sea breeze was just amazing, makes everything feel so romantic. The wedding lasted from 4pm all the way till past midnight and it was just so much fun!

I was totally wiped out by the time we got back to the hotel which means only one thing for me. I need more exercise!

Stay tuned for day 2 of the Langkawi trip.

It is 7am here now in Kuala Lumpur and I am feeling extremely sleepy. Getting up at 5am is something I don't do too often, of course sleeping at 5am doesn't count. So the title probably gave me away. Here I am sitting at the newly refurbished Taste of Asia restaurant at the LCCT airport surfing the web (using my Maxis 3G line because the wi-fi here is near impossible to connect to!) whilst waiting for my flight at 7.30 together with the WeddingStory team.

The team is flying up to Langkawi to shoot a wedding later today as well as spend a little time to have a nice R&R. Personally, I do hope to catch up on my sleep as I have been having less than 5 hours of sleep for the past two nights. More photos to come of the trip as well as I have planned quite a number of posts to post up some of my photos as well.

Langkawi here I come!

The one thing a lot of people love to do is to go hiking and what better thing to do in the early hours of the day, breathing in fresh air and getting a spot of exercise. That was the initial plan when BK decided that a group of us would head over to Taman Melawati and climb up Bukit Tabur. We decided to do this on Labour Day itself and boy, was I wrong about it being a holiday. There is no way in hell that I would consider it a holiday.

Let me begin to explain to you why I don't call it a holiday. First of all, it is not a walk nor is it a hike nor is it an early morning stroll. Going up Bukit Tabur consists of not only hiking up but also climbing up rock walls which are almost at a 90 degree angle which in my opinion, is only meant for mountain goats to scale up.



The view however, was something else indeed. The early morning sun coupled with the cool breeze was something out of the norm to me.





Before reaching the first peak or basically the first wall where we had to scale, you could actually get a peek of KL City with the Petronas Twin Towers and the KL Tower basically in perfect view (praise God that the weather was good that day).


(Left to right: Me, Yu How, Chris, Boon)

Of course I needed proof that was up there as well but to be entirely honest, this was just the first peak and I could still carry my camera bag. After an hour, I was literally crawling on the ground because I was just so exhausted! Every stop I could make, I rested. I won't even begin to tell you about my pants! (I shall leave that for another story or do join me in one of my mamak sessions with the four blokes up there and you will hear all about my pants).



I took the photo above to show how high up we were and you can practically see the clouds at this level.



Most of the photos were actually taken before the first "wall" where you actually have a view of the water dam. In the early morning, the place looks absolutely gorgeous and stunning. Definitely worth making another trip there again with more gears (namely some filters and some tripods).



The last image above shows Bukit Tabur from Taman Melawati (which is near the National Zoo). Basically you can see about 5 peaks and to climb throughout the entire hill you would need to scale through at least 4. The fifth however is just another hill but in order to get to the pass downhill, you would need to climb down again.

In total, it took me almost 6 hours to climb through that. Definitely something I want to experience again in the near future but I do plan to head up the first peak just to take photographers. But first, I need a tripod for that.

With a new blog design, I guess its time to post up some photos. Digging through some of my photo archive, I found some photos which I shot a couple months back. Joshua has been one of my best friends and we go a long way back. Having also both studied in the UK, he was always a great host whenever I visited him in Coventry. This time, he came back to Malaysia to propose to Adeline and she said "yes!".

Although both Joshua and Adeline had a tight schedule here in Malaysia (he's working in the UK and she's working in Singapore), I had to make do with the little available time they had. Although the two of them were in Malaysia, it didn't mean that they were in Selangor. The short time before church started was the only time they could spare. Nevertheless, the 35 minutes we spent together was well worth it!

Here are some of my favourite shots from that day.







Joshua is a talented musician and he plays the drums and the piano. Check out his blog over here.







I know Joshua quite well and to be very honest, he seems to always like to put his hands like that against the wall. Even when he is thinking to himself. I guess it was meant that Adeline could easily charm him from that angle :)





I secretly took this shot after we were done and they wanted to see some of the results of the earlier shoot.







Last but not least, a group shot of the four of us having lunch after church.

Joshua and Adeline, congratulations on your engagement and I can't wait for your wedding next year. Although I won't be shooting it but I am glad that I can be part of your wedding next year as one of your groomsmen.