My Dream Bike ... kinda!

The Duke 1098S bike will stuck as a dream for the time being. Now comes Kawasaki Ninja 250R - the bike that is more practical for commuting and much easy on the wallet. I can afford it at this moment if I've heard the estimated price correctly - but this bike is still a mystery here in Malaysia. The bike has been launched together with the world premiere in Paris Motor Show in Oct 2007 yet still sketchy news when it will be available here. So, I have to categorised it as another 'Dream' bike until full information comes out from Kawasaki Malaysia.

Some of the vids for those dreamers. Keep on dreaming guys..

1. The world premiere in Paris.


2.Promo video for the world premiere in Paris Motor Show.


3. TV Advertisement for Kawa Ninja 250R. I guess it for North America market.


4. Her sweet voice .... after vocal cord transplant by Japanese surgeon named Yoshimura.


GREEN is the new black. But I'm wishing for the RED one.

My Dream Bike

My dream bike - Ducati 1098S. Red Hot. Speaks Italian. Sexy. Tight Ass. And can cook too (the tyres). What else can a man wish for?



Why it's still a dream? The answer is the RM150k figure. Dreams can stuck in the minds and forever become just a vision in your sleep. It is up to us to make it a reality. Wake up bro!

Life with Cruise 3 - Leather Case

Since I bought the Touch Cruise, I've to use the cloth cover bundled in the package. The cover is okay but it just looks 'girlie' to me. Most of my lady friends using a cover (sarung) to protect their handphone or pda. So it is just not 'me' to use the 'sarung' to protect my precious from coins and keys in the pocket. So, need to find a leather case that I can fit onto my waist belt. The search is ON!

After a week searching in Lowyat Plaza, Sungei Wang Plaza and Digital Mall PJ - still couldn't find the perfect leather case as most shops mentioned the popular case brands still not available as Touch Cruise is still new in the market. Then I start searching the Internet. And I found my saviour at PDAir. The one that got my attention is the horizontal leather case with the belt clip as in here.

It is priced for USD28 inclusive shipping worldwide - affordable with free shipping, who can argue with me for not buying it. I'm ready with my credit card, fill in my details and ready to click 'BUY NOW' but ..... they only prefer payment through PayPal. Roadblock - coz I forgot my PayPal account as I never won any bid at eBay before. After a quick interrogation, I found that one of my staff still using his PayPal account. So, I asked him to buy for me then .... and I'll pay him later ;) Thanks Dol.

The case arrived at my office after just 5 days. YES, you heard me correctly - 5 days! Such a quick delivery. The delivery is actually from Hong Kong. I'm used to buy things from Hong Kong especially from PlayAsia but my goods will usually arrived within 10-14 days. Amazon is the worst with delivery more than a month to arrive (US of A!). 5-days from PDAir is my personal best record so far.

Some of the pix that I've taken on my new leather case for HTC Touch Cruise.

1. The box that came with the good. Exclude from the pix is the bubble pack (in the waste basket already). Nicely packaged altogether.

2. Here is the real deal - It is black leather with white stitching .This is what PDAir mentioned about the case "White stitch finishing, making this case look more beautiful". I wish for all black but I don't have a choice .. really. And the logo is quite big ... smaller will make it look nicer.

3. Magnetic studs for ease of use.

4. Get-in and off from the case is quite easy. Make sure that you lock the screen first before you put the PDA into the case to avoid making accidental calls.

5. So, here you are the pix that shows my HTC Touch Cruise nicely fits into the PDAir leather case.

Life with Cruise 2 - Open Box

Let's continue on the juicy part and leave 'why-i-buy-this-shiny-brick' as history. I've took some pictures of Touch Cruise and will be giving a review on it later.

1. The box cover that make me hooked. Black is beautiful.

2. Inside the cover, there are two boxes - one for the car kit and the other one is for the main unit.

3. The car kit consists of a Unitholder that fix to your inner windscreen by using suction power. The bracket that will hold the PDA onto the unitholder plus a battery charger that use the cigarette lighter (or whatever you may call it).

4. When you open the main box, you will see the HTC Touch Cruise in all its glory. The placemat is kinda cool too - that's why this PDA is damn expensive!

5. Some of the major kits that is placed behind the placemat - neat huh!. The kit consists of : 1 extra pointer, screen protector (already installed on the unit), charger and stereo headphone. The sereo headphone comes with the radio antenna - without it you couldn't listen to the radio at all.

6. Start it up and you will be presented with 'Today' screen.

7. Shortcut to media center by touchflo'in the screen - put your thumb on the hTC logo and slide upward. Neat.

8. The 'Audio Manager' at work. I prefer to use this rather than using Windows Media Player.

More to come!

Life with Cruise 1

I'm downed with a fever since Wednesday April 23, 2008. The GP gave me a 1-day medical leave on Thursday but I still went to the office as need to complete some tasks that I need to do it personally at the office. After lunch time, I couldn't stand it anymore and I went straight home - took the drugs and doze-off till next morning. What a life.

It's Saturday now and I'm still recovering from that fever ... so no ride for me this weekend. To fill up my day, I'm going to do a pictorial review of my new boy toy! A good-looking Touch Cruise (Not Tom Cruise, sorry ladies). I bought it 'accidentally' merely two weeks ago at Lowyat Plaza, Kuala Lumpur. Why? Coz I never plan to buy any new phone or PDA at that time. I've set my mind that I'm going there to buy a new motherboard (got it ... MSI K9A2 CF) and some memory sticks (got it .. 2Gb DDR2 667Mhz Kingston). That was it!

But fate had me to walk along the aisle in front of PDA Expert shop and there I saw it in my own eyes.... a stunning beauty named Touch Cruise (the box actually). I just can't help it and straight away handed over my credit card to own it coz I knew it got what i need - HSDPA, GPS, 3MP Camera and TouchFlo!

Here's the details of the HTC Touch Cruise:

Processor - Qualcomm® MSM7200™, 400MHz
Operating System -Windows Mobile® 6 Professional
Memory - ROM: 256MBRAM: 128MB DDR SDRAM
Dimensions - 110 mm (L) X 58 mm (W) X 15.5 mm (T)
Weight - 130g with battery
Display - 2.8-inch TFT-LCD with backlight LEDs, touch-sensitive screen
Network - HSDPA/UMTS: 2100 MHz (Europe), 850/1900 MHz (USA)HSDPA: Up to 384kbps for upload and 3.6Mbps for downloadUMTS: Up to 384kbps for upload and downloadGSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad-band 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz (The device will operate on frequencies available from the cellular network)
Device Control - HTC TouchFLO™4-Way Navigation Wheel with Enter button
Connectivity - Bluetooth® 2.0Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/gHTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB and audio jack in one), full-speed USB 2.0
Camera - Main camera: 3 megapixel color CMOS camera with auto focusSecond camera: VGA CMOS -color camera
Audio - Built-in microphone and speakerRing tone supported formats:
MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB
40 polyphonic and standard MIDI format 0 and 1(SMF)/SP MIDI
Battery
1350 mAh rechargeable Lithium-ion batteryStandby time:
Up to 450 hours for UMTS
Up to 400 hours for GSMTalk time:
Up to 4 hours for UMTS
Up to 7 hours for GSM
Up to 2.3 hours for video call

YUMMY!

One Sunday Morning

It was a clear Sunday morning (April 20, 2008) in Shah Alam and I already dressed up for the occasion. Old padded cycling short, new bike frame, new shoes, new socks and with the renew spirit - I've pressed the START button on the Cateye Cyclometer. It was time to roll and move on. Wheels started to roll at 8.05am.

Cateye Microwireless Cyclometer. Bought it few weeks before the long 'holiday'.

I made a big loop around my housing area for warm-up. The gearing is maintained at middle-ring upfront and using up all possible gearings at the rear to check for any problems and to set my legs muscle to the pedaling load. I'm a little bit worried on my right thigh after I had a fall from my motorcycle 3 weeks ago. After a few minutes, everything went smoothly. Distance covered for the loop is already 2.3km. Now I'm ready to hit the open road (actually it is 6-lane highway!)

Borderline. Cross at your own risk!

The only connecting road from my housing area to the outside world is via Guthrie Corridor Expressway (GCE). The expressway is a 6-lane highway connecting Shah Alam to Rawang - it enables motorists from South coming from Elite Highway to continue the journey northward by using the GCE and then rejoin PLUS highway at Rawang bypasing routes that take you into KL citycenter. It's a boon for me if I need to take 'balik kampung' trip without the need to enter the bigcity - turn left to Sitiawan, Perak and turn right to Muar, Johor. In that morning, the highway is wide open without much traffic. People still in their beds!

Highway to heaven?

It is already 825am and time for me to take a breather. I would call it a pit-stop without any refuelling, sort of a stop-go penalty in F1 terms. Why? I actually forgot to bring any water for this maiden trip! So the stop is to relax the leg muscles, check my right thigh and release rear pressure on my butt. I got off from the bike and walked on the green grass at the side of the highway. Such a great feeling as the Northwave Kaiman shoes step onto the grass. The shoes are great! Worth every cents if you asked me.

Happy feet!

And now it was time to go back home. I wished that I could continue the journey for a little bit longer as I had no pains on the legs and my heart pounding enough juices to pedal even further. But I didn't bring any water. And the biggest 'but' was that I promised to my wife that we are going out at 10am to MidValley for shopping session .... what else than shopping for the gentle kind. The only way was straight ahead to Bukit Subang, no right turn to Ipoh this time!

Di Persimpangan Dilema. Straight ahead back home. Turn right to oblivion.

I safely reached home at 900am with total distance covered only 12km. Not that impressive as too much time wasted for the 'Kodak Time'. The only drawback during the journey was the front fork - it must go or I will endo again in the hills. But the rest of the journey was really worth it. No really pain or aching in any parts of the body and the new shoes really shine (yeahh.. after spending RM260 for it). I still got 1 hour left to take a shower and get ready for the next events - 20km wandering around in MidValley. Sort of 'Ironman' event on that brilliant Sunday!

The bird has landed! Mission accomplished

I'm Back Cycling

After nearly 2 years hiatus from biking, I'm ready to cycle again.

The no-cycling period was quite long, pretty long to erase the mental images of having a bad fall twice in a single day. That day in Bukit Kiara made me feel that it is useless for a mortal man on a bike trying to challenge Nature and Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. But human is given at birth an irrational mind - the more risk, the more fun we can get.

So on Saturday, 19 April 2008, I've decided that I need something to erase those bad memories. What I need was something that motivate me to cycle again. Something fresh and new, things that are not expensive and not require any major installation on the bike. And I've decided the thing was a brand new Mountain Bike shoes. I'm such a sucker for shoes anyway!

Northwave Kaiman.

After reaching home from the specialty bikeshop in TTDI, I prep up the bike and did some lubing on the chains. The bike looked ok to me but safety always comes first (after you already had few accidents):

1. The bike cockpit - Checked!

SRAM X7 shifters, Shimano Deore brake levers, ODI grips.

2. Check the tire pressure - Checked!

Mavic wheels, Hybrid on/off road tires, Shimano hub and SRAM X9 Rear Derailure.

3. Check bum pressure - Checked (ouch)!!

Fizik Gobi saddle, FSA seatpost

4. Glove and Helmet. Checked!

SixSixOne Glove and Ironmag helmet.

5. And lastly the endorsement... from SUPERGIRL!

Endorsement given after bribing SUPERGIRL with a cheeseburger.

I would get a good night rest, wake up in Sunday morning and I'll be ready for my first proper ride.

"HELLO WORLD"

It has been a while, quite sometimes really since I last post or interact about myself. I've been in countless forums chatting and discussing about things - things that not telling the story about me. So now, I'm in this kind of storytelling stuff and I would like to start with these words:

"HELLO WORLD"

Embrace me.