A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the World Refugee Day or sort of announced that it was going to take place at KL Sentral over the 19th and 20th of June. So, on the 19th of June, I decided to head over to KL Sentral to check out the World Refugee Day myself and I did have a bit of fun. What I am also pleased is that my photos also managed to be published here on the Nut Graph. Hopefully they will be able to make an impact and create more awareness about.

Here are some photos which I took when I was there. One of the things I noticed was that there was a huge crowd already gathering around the stage as there was a competition or quiz being held by the UNHCR folks. Basically the emcee will ask a question to the crowd and whoever can answer the question gets a prize.



The UNHCR have set up two booths or rather exhibitions for members of the public to enter in and view. One of them was called "Take a Minute to be a Refugee". The exhibition provides a view of how a refugee lives by showing images of real refugee shelters look like. A good touch was that they also recreated a room where refugees normally would live in, and this isn't some single room for a person but where up to 5 people might have to squeeze in and share. This really provided an up close perspective of how a refugee has to live even in our country.



[caption id="attachment_1832" align="aligncenter" width="880" caption="A visitor taking an image of the exhibition sign"][/caption]

There were plenty of stalls there where the refugees were able to sell some of their wares. I managed to get some items for Mun Tzin during the exhibition which made her very happy. Unfortunately, I only noticed that most of the tourists were the ones who were browsing through the stalls. My theory is that because of where the event was located, which was at the entrance of KL Sentral towards Le Meridien and KL Hilton, that is usually where tourists would walk by. As a local, when I disembarked from the LRT (yes, I took the Putra LRT from Taman Jaya), I couldn't find where the exhibit was. Location does play a very important role but I am guessing because the locations where there is high traffic, businesses would have already paid the management of KL Sentral for.





Overall, I hope that the event manage to gain more awareness among the public and I even do hope that this blog post and my images will help create awareness amongst the public. This is UNHCR's first public event on World Refugee Day so I really do hope that there will be more to come.

For more information about refugees, check out this site here.

Take a look at the rest of the images I took below.

[gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

Haven't had much time to post up new photos as there are quite a number of photos that I have yet to process sitting on my hard disks. No, they are not for paying clients, just some of the photos I took whilst on holiday as well as some random shots about.

Although I am looking forward to shooting at tomorrow's World Refugee Day event. So see you there if you are going to be checking it out. The event will be held at KL Sentral so I will probably park my car at the nearest LRT station and head over there by LRT. Best way to beat the traffic.

Wordpress 3.0 has been released, so if your blog runs on Wordpress, get it. I tell you, it seems to be running really efficient now. Definitely worth an upgrade. The good side of things is that all of the plugins still seem to work on my site and my site design hasn't gone completely wonkers for me.

I recently received an iPad from my colleague after he painstakingly searched throughout the US of A (and by search I meant he checked out Orlando, New York and Chicago for me). I say painstakingly is because it really did cause him some inconvenience and has decided to charge me for his cab fare as well. Totally owe it to VH for bringing it back for me. Must write a separate blog post about it.

Will be attending the Japan GT on Sunday, managed to receive free tickets from Canon so hopefully I can get those items settled by today.

England will be playing late tonight, they better win this match!

Have a great weekend everyone!

p.s. Also it is father's day this weekend. Don't forget to wish your dad a very happy Father's day!

Cameron Highlands has been a very nice and eventful place for me. Mainly because I can only remember going there twice when I was very young and the only eventful thing that occurred to me was that I bought cheap flowers there and the weather was quite cooling and there was a roti canai that was completely covered with flies!

You can find out more about Cameron Highlands in my other posts here and here.

Whilst I was there recently with my friends, I decided to bring some of my gears up to Camerons with me to take some portaiture shots at the tea plantations. Here are some of my favourite ones.















These shots were taken at the Boh Tea Plantation where it was quite difficult to drive in. Trust me, it is only a one way dirt road so I think this was where my car rims got bent when I was travelling through it. The view there was fantastic and I just loved the tea plantations.

On the way back from Camerons, we also passed by another tea plantation called Cameronian Valley and decided to snap more shots there as well.





And finally a group photo of us before heading down back to KL.



Sorry guys, I will pass you all the full set of photos soon ok? Organize a makan event and I can pass it to you all then.

[caption id="attachment_1777" align="aligncenter" width="609" caption="World Refugee Day 2010"][/caption]

Experience the lives of refugees on World Refugee Day. What's it like to be a refugee? Understand more about who refugees are and why they have been forced to flee their country. Join us at the KL Sentral Station on 19 and 20 June from 10.00am till 4.00pm for World Refugee Day. Visitors will get a chance to "Walk a mile in a refugee's shoes" by experiencing the journey a refugee makes, and to see what it's like to live as a refugee in Malaysia. Enjoy a refugee bazaar, refugee performances, meet celebrities, win exclusive UN merchandise and more.

Free admission.

Visit www.unhcr.org.my or call 03 2141 1322 for more information. Help us get the word out!

Circulate this message and attached e-flyer generously.

Update: 10th June 2010

Since the Cruze now has been officially launched, the price for the car is at RM97,888, and the on-the-road price would be around RM98k. Still a lot cheaper than the current price of the Honda Civic 1.8.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of being crashing  invited for Cergazam's sneak preview of the Chevrolet Cruze over by their showroom next to the Federal Highway. With only 4 hours of sleep thanks to the previous night's frivolities, I dragged my sorry ass over to the showroom, unshaven and half asleep only to be greeted by not a single coffee machine in the place.

Well, enough about my condition. Let's talk about the car and the event. The event started off with a couple of speeches by some big shots and then a product demonstration by one of their technicians.

Since they didn't allow anyone to take photos during the event especially photos of the car and it's interior, I can't really show them to you but rather narrate it out or help you visualize it with what I am about to type.

Ok, close your eyes and image that you are sitting in a car. The car is meant to compete against the likes of the Honda Civic or the Toyota Altis and also the newer and more recent Kia Forte. So it is rather roomy inside but it felt smaller compared to a Honda Civic.

The number of electronic gizmos attached with it is definitely a very good plus compared to the usual Hondas and Toyotas. Some of them include the following:

• Rain sensor to automatically activate the windscreen wipers. With Malaysia's weather, that should be perpetually turned on.


• Automatic light settings, it turns on your lights when you go into a dark place such as a basement or a tunnel automatically


• Different settings for your remote control, for example you can set that whenever you unlock your car with your remote, you can only unlock only the driver's side. Very useful if you are a lone single driver and you always have that fear that someone might just barge into your car and nick your handbag, laptop bag or knickers.


• 6 CD changer in car, yes you only see a single CD slot but you can slot up to 6 CDs into it.


• 6 speed shiftronic gearbox which performed quite sluggishly when I was test driving the car. I could really feel the jerked after I switched gears up or down.


• Auxiliary jack and a USB port


• A large boot space!

What is missing which I thought might be embedded into the car or into this version is there is no keyless entry and start stop button for the car. The interior feels plasticky and a super quick and efficient "mark" test tells me it wasn't made properly or some 200 other people have decided to use the "mark" test. (The "mark" test includes pressing every available panel spacing with their own fingers and if there is a squeek, that is a negative point).

The worse part about the interior is that they have no leather seat option as well as they have garnished the interior with a very ugly blue cotton-cum-suede material which totally does not go well with any of the car colours available. Now don't get me wrong, blue is my FAVOURITE colour and yet they manage to destroy it's beauty! Worse of all, its also on your dashboard. The good thing about that is they have a light grey option which wasn't available at the time of the sneak preview so I have no chance of seeing it. Doubt that it would be any difference.

The inside of the car feels bulky thanks to its garish interior design which sort of have a fixation of looking "muscular". To put it into perspective, image a buffed up body builder covered in body oil and have muscles that squeek each time you perform the "mark" test on him. That pretty much sums it all up.

The 1.8 litre engine felt a little bit unresponsive just the same way how I feel that the Civic 1.8 isn't responsive unless you tweak it up a bit. Road noise was minimal when I test drove it but no chance of testing it at higher speeds such as driving at 110kph on the highway.

Handling felt very normal and bouncy thanks to it's soft suspension. I guess you have a trade off between comfort versus handling performance.

The spare tyre is the typical black steel rimmed ones. The signal light is located on the left.

The engine was made in Germany and the front windscreen is from France. The car was assembled in Korea so technically this car is a CBU unit.

Price wise, the car will be priced cheaper than the Civic so for those people who are looking to spend that amount of money, they have now a new choice to look at, which is the Chevrolet Cruze.

Note that Naza is now the importer of the Cruze and they have the official launch where our lovely Prime Minister will be there to launch it at KL Convention Center on Thursday.

A couple of days ago, BK threw this idea at me and asked me whether I wanted to participate in the challenge or not. BK being BK, always talk in a cryptic slang and if you sat next to us listening or eavesdropping, chances are you might get more confused than informed. Anyhow, the challenge was something in line with the image below.



That's right, a couple of us are going to be competing over a two month period on who loses the most amount of weight percentage and if you were following my tweets last night, the weigh-in session started last night. I took this shot with my iPhone and my official weigh-in was in fact 102.2kg and not the one shown below. The added weight was probably the weight of my iPhone in my hand.


Yes, that is my weight in kilos!

So by now, you might have guessed what the challenge might be but if you are as equally blur as some people, it is about a group of friends chipping some dough into a pool and whoever loses the most weight percentage over an 8-week period keeps it all.

My target is to try and achieve a 10-12% weight loss which would bring my weight down to 90 kilos. That is a lot but I am determined to achieve that with a mixture of eating right and less (no puking out my food!) as well as regular exercising and trips to the gym.

Truth be told, the idea of this challenge started from LY and most of the action will be blogged on her blog here. I will also update my blog periodically on this challenge and use the tag "weight challenge" for all related posts.

Hope I win :)