Last week during the Raya holidays, I decided to go on an impromptu trip to Ipoh whilst halfway munching down McDonald's big breakfast set. The idea was that I would follow Alex, Grace, Ivan and Mi Ghent up to Ipoh by car and take a train back to KL as I needed to pick my wife up from Pavilion in the evening. This was on the 2nd day of Raya and after a quick check online, there was an electric train service which will leave Ipoh at 3pm later that day.



The first issue came up, after calling KTM's ETS's hotline number, there was no answer at all. Of course I was worried that the train services were not running but by faith I decided to follow them up to Ipoh anyway. So I parked my car at Centerpoint in front of Starbucks where I know there will be plenty of people sitting down drinking coffee, hence I guess a thief would be less likely to steal the car in front of so many people.

By the time I arrived in Ipoh, we went about checking out several places, and then decided to buy my train ticket back. Prices were reasonable, at RM35 per one way ticket, the ride would take 2 hours to reach KL Sentral. Note that the time taken was longer because it wasn't the express train and there were several stops in between Ipoh and KL.

At the train station, I was greeted with 3 ticket counters and a small machine outside dispensing numbers. I took a number and then saw which number was being served at the moment. My heart sank, there were like a 100 more numbers to go before mine came up and at the current rate that they are going, I would probably have to wait 2 hours for my turn and probably miss the train completely!

A quick look around and check and with Ivan's help and a very extremely nice gentleman who gave me his number which was only 20 more numbers after the current one, I learned that one of the reasons for this slow service was the system which the staff used to book and dispense tickets. Seriously, I can 100% say that it wasn't the staff who were lazy but the system was really holding them back. Each time they keyed in the customer's request, it would take the system a good 3-5 minutes to process the request. Multiply that with 10 customers then you manage to either serve 10 customers in more or less an hour.

Apparently queues were the theme of the day. As we left the train station and I had gotten my ticket (yay! although I waited 40 minutes in line), Ivan brought us to one of the local restaurants where there was a huge crowd waiting to be served. It was already close to 2pm and I realised that everyone there were tourists (meaning those KL fellas), and everyone was just standing about waiting to grab the next available tables.

Anyway back to the topic on public transportation. I was rather determined to try it out fully today utilizing all sorts of methods except for the bus service because I am totally out of sync with the bus service that I will probably get REALLY REALLY lost in KL.

On the train, it was rather comfortable, the seats were adequate and there was enough leg room but the beauty of trains is that I get to walk around. They even had a 17" screen showing a movie which had no sound so all I could do was read the subtitles. When I got bored, I would take a walk to the cafeteria carriage and order a couple of snacks.

2 hours went by and my phone battery was dying thanks to Bejeweled and Facebook. I was quite restless by this point and decided to do a very "smart" thing (note the air quotes). Instead of going off at KL Sentral, and then taking a monorail to Bukit Bintang, I decided to drop off at the old KL Station (where Heritage Hotel used to be) and take a cab to Pavilion instead.

Boy was that a big mistake, you see, the old KL station now was rather dead. Maybe because it could be the 2nd day of Raya and there were absolutely NO taxi's available. I walked to the main road, flagged down a taxi where the driver told me that it would cost me RM20 without the use of the meter to get to Pavilion. Talk about highway robbery (it was literally on the highway though!).

So I took out my phone, turned on Google Maps and started trying to path a way to Pavilion or to the nearest monorail station. This was what I found.



And you know what? That was the exact route I had to walk because there were very little pedestrian pathways and walkways. There wasn't even a pedestrian crossing at all so I had to walk through various weird routes to reach the monorail station. By the time I reached the station, I was completely drenched in sweat and the cool aircon in the monorail trains were a great sigh of relieve.

So the cost for the trip to Pavilion was RM1.60 and of course a bit of extra time it took me to get to the stations and to walk to Pavilion as well. Oh well, I did save a bit more cash on that.

As of right now, my cost to travel from Ipoh to Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur is RM35 + Rm1.60 which brings it to a grand total of RM36.60

On the way back home to PJ, I was running a little late so we decided to take a cab from Pavilion and this is where our image gets hurt very badly. Every taxi demanded their own fare WITHOUT the use of the meter. At the end, after negotiating with 6 taxi drivers, the fare was RM50.

Now that is really called highway robbery. I don't blame the taxi drivers, seriously. It's because they can't get individual taxi licenses that they have to go through taxi companies and then on top of that they have to pay for the LNG cost (liquefied natural gas) as well as the cost to rent the cars that on some days, they make a loss because they can't cover their daily costs.

So who are the people who give out these licenses?

Why can't taxi drivers get their own licenses?

Damn we are no where close to Singapore's public transportation.

Have you registered yourself to vote yet?

If you would have noticed that the advertisements on my site are mostly via Nuffnang and to be honest, I have been secretly using them exclusively for my little site which has been evolving around from a photography centric to something part of what life is for me at the moment.

So I received an email from Nuffnang that this 31st of August, in collaboration with our nation's national day, we will also be celebrating their 6th Blog Day! This is an excerpt of their email below.

On Blog Day, bloggers will post a recommendation of 6 new blogs, and this way, everyone will find themselves discovering new, previously unknown blogs thanks to the viral effect of social media. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Here are some of the blogs which I would like to recommend. If you asked me this last year, I would totally list out 6 photography related blogs but in this time of my life, there are of course certain other interests in my life lately.

1) Stories.my 



Stories.my is a wedding and portrait photography blog which is mainly contributed by Grace Tan (and on some rare occasions Johan and me) whom I shoot with and frankly, I really do like how she write blog posts about each and every wedding she covers as well as the ones that I cover as well.

2) Whatadrive.blogspot.com



I started reading up on automotive blogs lately and of course you would have noticed that I have been blogging about cars lately as well. How I came about this was through various links and chanced upon Loki's blog. What actually made me come back again was his Nissan R33 GT-R rebuild project. Back in the UK, I have always been a fan of "Pimp My Ride" where they would slowly change a really old car and transform it into something new. Going through that journey with the owner themselves was a real treat for me because not only do I learn a little bit more about performance cars, I also learn that the automotive industry is really huge, and complicated as well.

3) k3v's Modlog



I met Kevin when I bought my 17" Denver rims from him. After checking out the various VW Forums as well as joining the VW groups, Kevin is one of the few who blogs about his car modifications. He drives a VW Golf GTI Mk5 and it is currently on a Stage 3. I liked how he has documented his journey from Stage 1 all the way to Stage 3 recently with images of the hardware he has installed as well as the dyno charts to show the results of the modifications. Definitely a good read for those who are interested in getting a 2nd hand Golf GTI Mk5 and modding it for a great weekend car.

4) Autodetailer.co



A month ago while I was attending Nigel Barker's photography workshop in KL, I manage to meet the man behind Autodetailer.co, Darren Chang. Tagged as the most advanced auto detailing center in Malaysia, I have been following Darren's blog and see how he actually transform cars into showroom quality conditions as well as restoration projects. He makes car washing and cleaning into an art form and the amount of detail that they put into each and every job is truly amazing. And to boot it off, Darren is an amazing photographer as well and I love that he has  studio incorporated into his detailing center at Jaya One to help him capture images of the cars he details and offer customers an album of their cars.

5) Presentation Zen



Part of my work is to give presentations for clients and constantly I have been trying to figure out how can I present technical areas without the need to make my audience fall asleep. I have always been admiring the kind of slides which Steve Job's uses for his keynote speeches and how I can incorporate those type of designs into my day-to-day work. Then I was introduced to this book written by Garr Reynolds and it was called, "Presentation Zen". After reading his book, I follow Garr's continuous update and ideologies through his blog.

6) Duarte Blog



If you have ever watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", one of the things which really made an impact to me was the slides he used to explain about global warming and the effects it has done on earth. Guess who made those slides? Nancy Duarte's team was on the project to design those slides to bring forward a very important point, global warming. Ever since I found out about that, I started following her blog and it has given me plenty of tips on how to run successful teleconferences (something I do very often) as well as virtual presentations. Her books also does give a good insight on how can you tailor your presentations and her focus is very much on both the visual and design aspects of your communication medium as well as how you communicate and put forward your points.

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So here are the 6 blogs I would definitely want to recommend to everyone out there for Blog Day! Selamat Hari Raya everyone and have a great Merdeka Day! For those of you travelling back from your hometowns, drive safe!

Note: I would recommend reading my review on the Golf 1.4 TSI before reading this as most of this is based on a comparison between the Roc and the Golf

One of the benefits of joining other Volkswagen enthusiasts especially during a teh tarik session is that I get chances to test drive other member's cars. One of them, which I managed to sneakily test drive a number of times was the Scirocco 1.4. Now I have always been curious to see a car with the same engine as the Golf 1.4 TSI, but priced at RM188,888 has to offer.

The Scirocco was also featured in the recent Karate Kid movie but of course, it's an extremely old version. Also called the Roc for short, here is a quick and brief history of the Scirocco.

So let's see what are some of the differences here.

First Impressions

Right off the bat, the moment anyone looks at a Scirocco, I am sure there has to be a reaction. Whether it may be a good one or a bad one but still a reaction. Perhaps you might be like James May where he might have a fizzy little thing between his legs when he sees a car which gives him the fancy, yeah, something like that but irregardless, it definitely turns heads. The first time I actually saw a Scirocco was when Top Gear featured an episode on it where they had to come up with an advertisement for the 3-cylinder diesel version of the Roc (you can view their silly results here and here).



Interior and Boot Space

From other Roc owners, you can still set up a baby chair in the Roc and it comfortably fits 4 people in total due to its 50/50 split folding rear seat design (you can squeeze in 5 for short trips but it wouldn't be legal as there are only two rear seat belts available). One thing that stands out between the Roc 1.4 and the Golf is that the Roc comes with a flattened steering wheel, the same one which is given for GTI and R owners. The Golf 1.4 comes with the standard round steering wheel which also is available with the Passat CC sold here.

Shown above is the flat bottom steering wheel designed for the R-line cars. The GTI ones look exactly the same except that it has red stitching on it. Another thing to note that Scirocco's that were manufactured in 2009 have a completely different interior than the current ones mainly because it takes the same styling from the older Golf MkV. The ones sold here by Volkswagen Group Malaysia are based off the newer interior but I have seen 2009 Rocs for sale on Mudah brought in by the local dealers.

The rest of the interior is standard and there isn't much differences between this and the Golf. In my opinion, the steering wheel itself provides a nice sporty look and feel and to optionally get this steering wheel itself can cost around USD$500 (searching through eBay).

The boot however, is surprisingly deep and you definitely can store a lot of stuff in there. I haven't had the chance to test it out with my full-sized golf bag but it definitely does look like it has a lot of space.

Another benefit you get with the Roc 1.4 is that it comes with 17" rims as it's standard compared to the Golf's 16" rims.

So far there hasn't been any complaints as well for the Roc owners especially when it comes to the "rattling" noise experienced by Golf owners especially when taking the corner. This issue actually comes from the fact that the rubber lining along the doors tend to dry up in our weather, hence the noise. Because the Roc has only two doors, I guess you can hardly hear the sound.

The Drive

After taking off in the standard fashion and the moment I enter the first corner, or basically, leaving the mamak stall and turning the first corner; the Roc shines here. Due to it's lower profile, this car handles way better than the Golf 1.4 which I think is a little soft around the suspension areas. You get the planted feel when tackling corners and I could hardly feel the side G's pushing me. Of course it does help that it's only a 2-door car hence you get less body roll due to a more rigid and firmer chassis.

Differences

Other differences between the Roc and the Golf are rather miniature in nature. For example, the Roc doesn't have sensors at the front but only sensors at the back as compared to the Golf which has sensors all around. The Roc however has two reverse lights versus the rest of the other VW cars mainly because I think the rear window is so small and the C pillars are so fat, that it is extremely difficult to reverse out.

Interesting Mods

Of course with every VW car, comes plenty of modifications. Here are some of the mods you can do for the Scirocco to stand out from the rest of the other Rocs.

• Bodykit (Rieger, Caractere, etc, etc) - This of course changes the look of your car!


• Scirocco R rear lights - This isn't as fancy as the Golf R rear LED lights. It's just a darkened rear Roc lights


• Aluminium pedals for the Roc 1.4 as well as the OSIR footrest or you can opt for the full R-line pedal sets.


• Unibrace for the Roc to improve its handling further. I am not too sure if they have the Crossbrace for the Roc as well.


• Head unit upgrade to either the RCD510 (the Roc 2.0 comes with this) or the RNS510 which offers satellite navigation and DVD playback.


• Custom downpipe for the Roc


• Engine remap


• Cold air intake


• Quad exhausts


• H&R or Eibach lowering springs

So far there hasn't been any announcement by VW to provide daytime running lights for the Scirocco.

Conclusion

To conclude up this review, would I say that the Scirocco is worth the extra RM30,000? Well it all depends on your taste. If you like a 2-door car, then yes, I would say it would be worth the RM30,000 extra. But if you are considering the 2.0litre version, I still have some doubts mainly because a 2-door Renault Megane RS is priced currently at RM236k which is RM15k cheaper than the 2.0 Roc and it has a lot more features to the car. Overall, the Scirocco fits into a different segment compared to the Golf hence I guess it's a nice compliment in their line up.

The Roc which I tested was a very unique Roc, because the owner, decided to bring it in for a dyno run and the results were astonishing. The Scirocco 1.4 TSI is stated to provide an output of 160ps running on Ron98 but his Roc managed to generate 170horses at the wheel, yes, 170whp! That is insane!

By the way, there is currently a Scirocco R in Malaysia already. Apparently someone managed to bring it in via a local AP and it made an appearance at the Volkswagen Club Malaysia's TT session two weeks ago. So far no concrete rumours about Volkswagen Malaysia launching the Scirocco R but there has been changes in terms of the prices for the Golf R. What I have heard is that the prices have been raised from the rumoured RM270k+ to RM300k+.

Calling all VW Owners, do join us at the VW Club Malaysia. It's an informal club and gathering of all VW enthusiasts around here. We have on-going TT or "teh tarik" sessions which goes on every Friday night and we usually choose various locations around Klang Valley to suit the needs of the members :)

There is a huge diversity in the group in both the members as well as the cars they own. From the very old classic Beetle, to Golfs, Polos, Passats, Tiguans and of course brothers from the VAG group such as Audis, Skodas and Porsches. I used to be quite shy when it comes to these sort of gatherings especially when you don't know anyone but after joining them in a couple of "teh tarik" sessions, I managed to get to know some of those fellas who have even helped me out quite a fair bit in giving me information about cars and the technical aspects of it.

Recently last week, we had a buka puasa event where about 30 of us met up in Ampang to have dinner at Istana Bambu which was a unique place where the entire restaurant was made out of bamboo. I had great fun there and I think everyone had a lot of fun eating and enjoying each other's company.

So if you are passionate about VW cars and just want to hang out with car nuts as well (they promise they won't poison you so much), you can also start joining the forum in the link below.

http://www.vwclubmalaysia.net 

Or you can also join the Volkswagen Club Malaysia Facebook Group over here.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/209276962443790/

It's a great place to chat as well as learn a couple of technical stuff about your cars and new tricks which you didn't know that your car had in them.

There will be a "teh-tarik" session going on this Friday at Kota Kemuning. Do check out more about that session here. Hope to see you there!