missruslee

MH370: Is this the end?

March 25, 2014March 27, 2014 missrusleeLeave a comment

Yesterday, 16 days after the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing, the Prime Minister of Malaysia released an official statement that the missing flight MH370 is assumed to have crashed, with no survivors.

I’m sure the story about the missing MH370 is as heartbreaking as it is close to all travellers’ hearts. We have taken flights so often that we it take for granted when we reach destinations safely. When we take it for granted the words ‘safe flight’.

I remember the very first time I read the news – I was barely awake on the morning of Saturday of March 8th. Reading about a missing Boeing 777 with 239 passengers on board was just very hard to comprehend, and it did not even register to me how this might not be ‘yet another plane crash’.

Since then the world seemed to be focused on the tragedy. Everyone has been at the edge of their seats waiting for the next news that popped up. When there were no meaningful updates or leads in the search, people came up with conspiracy theories. Some hurled blames at each other. Stories behind some of the passengers surfaced, and when you could actually picture lives and families behind the number of people affected, it just feels closer and closer to home. The closest that I knew the passenger was through a third degree of separation, and it already broke my heart when things seemed to be leading nowhere. So I could only imagine the pain that the direct families and friends are going through.

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Kuala Lumpur in 23 hours.

March 20, 2014September 6, 2014 missruslee1 Comment

Different people have different reactions when faced with unexpected situations.

Some people take selfies after they survived a plane crash.

Some others go hysterical, or even come up with interesting theories surrounding a crisis.

For me, as long as the unexpected situations do not manifest themselves in the form of cockroaches, flying prawns (there really are such insects, I swear), lightning or someone tickling me from the back, I generally remain calm and composed.

Until the next day, when the reality of the situations start sinking in – I spent pretty much the whole day thinking of the events that happened over last weekend and playing every scene in my head. I think this is what psychologists would have analysed as a case of delayed shock (or in layman’s terms: v e r y s l o w ).

Before you jump into conclusions, nothing disastrously bad happened to me nor someone I know personally. But one thing was for sure: it was a very bizarre weekend.

I wrote in my previous post that I was going to have a weekend trip to KL for Future Music Festival Asia 2014. It was meant to be straightforward – reach KL early in the afternoon, get changed, head to the festival and take a bus ride back to Singapore the next day.

But of course nothing in travelling is ever that straightforward.

We reached KL two hours later than expected due to the traffic, and the moment I had access to WiFi from our hostel, I was greeted by a text from a friend informing me that the festival had been cancelled.

Cancelled. The festival we took a 5-hour bus journey for. The festival where Pharrell Williams was supposed to play! Poof. No more.

In our disbelief, we searched the net for more news and found a few articles confirming our news and when the official website finally released some sort of confirmation, we knew that it was time for Plan B. Except that we did not have a plan B, so we had to come up with something on the spot.

Apparently this is the only sign that could be found at the venue. — Apparently this A4 piece of paper is the only sign that could be found at the venue. Photo courtesy to ST Communities.

So I think it is of utmost importance that I write a guide of what you can do, should you find yourself stranded in Kuala Lumpur for 23 hours because the festival you came all the way for was cancelled at the last minute:

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Header of the Month: Nyhavn.

March 13, 2014September 6, 2014 missruslee2 Comments

As much as I love my Nyhavn shot, even the best pictures get old. And what can I do to keep the look fresh without much effort? Why of course to keep changing the header. I have now decided to add a new feature to this blog – Header of the Month, where I will be picking pictures taken by yours truly from some of my travel destinations as headers of the blog and write about them. I think this is one of my stroke of brilliance since if anything, it will at least ensure that I have to fill you guys in once a month even when my travel traffic is low.

So without further ado, the header of this month (December and January and February):

Nyhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark

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To the Future.

March 11, 2014September 6, 2014 missrusleeLeave a comment

Some girls go shopping. Some others indulge in yummy food. But for me, the way to let off some steam is by travelling.

So you can tell that I have had a really long week when my upcoming travel count has increased from 1 to 4 in just one week. The first one is as early as this weekend, going slightly north to Kuala Lumpur. Never mind that I only know 3 out of the countless artists performing – Future Music Festival Asia, here I come!

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The Underground Love.

March 9, 2014March 9, 2014 missrusleeLeave a comment

As I was sieving through my London pictures on Facebook to write my last post, I discovered something about myself: I may have a secret love for the London Underground. Not sure whether this is because of my love for trains, or that I keep roaming around the city which forced me to spend a lot of my time in the tunnels or whether I am just plain weird, I seem to be taking pictures incessantly of anything related to the Tube.

Let’s face it: I think the Tube is fascinating.

Now I know some of you will jump in protest. I am perfectly aware that the London railway system is not the most reliable thing in the world. And despite having only been in London three times, I have had my fair share of disrupted railways, Tube not running on important days like Christmas and getting lost in the tunnels (no surprise there). In fact, when Singapore recently introduced TV screens to indicate the service operation for each of its MRT lines, I joked to my friend that we have dropped to London standard since this means that the service will be disrupted often enough to warrant such investment.

Having said that, you’ve got to admit that London Underground is fascinating. Being the oldest metro system in the world, it is still functioning until now since its opening in 1863. It now has 270 stations with 402 kilometres of track. So I suppose we just have to be more forgiving for the slow upgrades because to be frank, most people would not have the foresight of 150 years or so?

Anyway, whatever your views towards the Tube are, some love just can’t be explained. So here it is, in pictures, my love story with the London Underground.

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What I didn’t expect from London.

March 7, 2014March 9, 2014 missruslee1 Comment

You can say that I’m lucky. It has been a childhood dream of mine to visit England, London in particular, thanks to all Enid Blyton’s books, Harry Potter and Daniel Radcliffe. And now in the past four years, I have visited London 3 times and loved it very much there. (I did have to wait for 21 years before my first visit, but hey, it is still a dream come true!)

Being one of the most visited cities in the world, London should hold little surprise for anyone: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, London Bridge, the royal family, Hyde Park, Harrods, you name it. But I guess that’s the beauty of travelling, no matter how much you read about it, the experience you have is your own and no amount of research through travel guides could foretell what you will see there nor the many pleasant surprises that you may encounter.

Like the fact that after all this day-dreaming, the first picture I took in London was actually of the DLR.

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Jakarta, through different eyes.

March 1, 2014March 1, 2014 missruslee1 Comment

It is funny that ever since I started this blog in December, I haven’t actually been travelling. The only place I have visited since Christmas day was my hometown, Jakarta. Under normal circumstances, I would not count such as travelling. However, my latest trip back home was far from normal. Five friends of three different nationalities came along with me to spend a long weekend in Jakarta, which certainly had to count for something. Hence, this is my first real post-travel blog post ever since this blog was set up, and I am pleased that I am writing about my own hometown.

I remember fretting for a few weeks leading up to the trip, trying to plan a perfect getaway for my friends. Living in Jakarta for 17 years as a rather antisocial person meant that I was practically clueless about cool hangout places and interesting things to do. So it was really down to a bit of online research, asking some more experienced friends for tips and outsourcing the tour guide service to two of my friends that I managed to pull the weekend through, very successfully if I may say so.

As a reminder for myself, I have listed down the below of what I deem to be the winning recipe for my fantastic weekend in Jakarta.

Food, glorious food. Always fill the trip with good food. From artery-clogging sweet martabak, to a goat’s eye in milky soup to crispy curly fish – when every single meal is to be remembered, even if all else fails, the food will always be fond memories. After all, the closest way to a person’s heart is through the stomach.
Crispy, curly fish.

An eye for an eye.

Ingredients: flour, sugar, butter (loads of them), chocolate, cheese, condensed milk, more butter.

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Singapore on two wheels.

February 19, 2014April 18, 2014 missruslee1 Comment

Aaand I did it – the 50 km cycle around Singapore. Something I have dreaded and looked forward to at the same time.

Tour de Singapore has been an exhausting journey, both physically and emotionally. While the physical tiredness from having to attend weekly spinning classes in preparation was very much expected, the emotional part came as a surprise. The pressure only came in much later, closer to the race – I was growing nervous and restless, unsure about the road safety and whether I would be fit enough to complete the distance. It was amplified by the fact that one of my friends who was joining the ride with me was no longer joining. It felt like I lost a bit of emotional support. It also did not help that half of the time I was wishing I had decided to forget about this whole cycling thing and join my friend on a 3-day football charity trip to Cambodia from 14th-16th Feb. (The title of this post at one point in time was dangerously close to be “Cambodia: Of Football, Happy Pizza and Fried Tarantulas” had I chosen to go.) But I had too much of a sense of commitment in me to quit halfway as tempting as the Cambodia trip sounded.

And I’m really I happy I went through with it. It was a well-spent 5 hours of my journey and looking back at all the preparation that I had done, it was the only right thing to do, really.

(Although after hearing the exciting stories from Cambodia, I did have a sliight regret, but hey, you can’t have everything).

So read on, if you want to find out more about what happened before, during and some observations that I reflected upon completing.

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A close shave.

February 10, 2014June 7, 2014 missruslee1 Comment

Last weekend was meant to be productive. I had it all planned out so well. In order to get enough rest post Chinese New Year, I cleared out the weekend for myself, and my laptop. It was supposed to happen this way: I would have come home on Friday, cooked a healthy dinner for myself, watched a few episodes of ‘A Game of Thrones’, slept for good eight hours, exercised the next morning, written a blog post, researched about my upcoming trips, watched a few more episodes of ‘A Game of Thrones’, uploaded Myanmar pictures on Facebook and so on. Basically a very productive weekend in terms of resting, researching and writing.

But I got home on Friday evening and got as far as cooking my dinner before my plan was shattered into pieces. I tried to switch my computer on and this appeared.

I like blue in general, but when it appeared on my computer screen and was just stuck there, it was the colour of a nightmare.

And that basically rendered my whole weekend plan useless.

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Nepal, food wise.

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014 missruslee1 Comment

I am perfectly aware that I do still have a long overdue post to write about my trip to Nepal in April last year. But in the spirit of Chinese New Year overeating (which also explains the absence of posts over the past week due to uncontrollable food consumption), I thought it would be wise to slot in this post about Nepalese food, inspired by the recent post-trip gathering to a Nepalese restaurant in Little India in Singapore.

Before that, just a little background regarding me and food photography: I hate taking pictures of food. It is perhaps partly due to the fact that I believe in just indulging in the food the moment you see it, but mostly due to me being just plain lazy. I don’t have the habit of taking out my phone/camera and snap pictures of the dishes that are served in front of me. Unless if it looks something like this.