Trip to Malacca (21st to 23rd Mar 2013)

Took a short holiday with my wife to the historic town of Malacca in West Malaysia. The drive was about 3 hours and reached our hotel at about 8.30 pm. We have been to Malacca a couple of times and I must say I enjoy the place.

We had supper at a nearby cafe in a shopping centre next to the Equatorial Hotel.  Not very nice but we just got there.  So anything will do.

This is a view early in the morning from the balcony of our hotel.

We had breakfast in a small coffeeshop and this is like Singapore in the olden days.  The picture below shows the coffeeshop.

My wife bought some stuff from this shop outside a Chinese market.  Some stuff to cook Malacca style food.

You can still find roadside stalls selling pork, fruits and poultry in Malacca.  In Singapore, they are history.

Some local delights.

This is a Malay market.  You cannot find pork here.

If you go to Malacca, you must always visit Jonker Street.  The night market happens only on Friday and Saturday nights.  Do bargain when you buy stuff from the hawkers.

At Jonker Street, you must also try the chicken rice and durian chendol.

There is one chicken rice stall in an old shop house that normally has a queue.  Queue early because it is lightly to finish by 2 pm.

We ate chicken rice at another shop.  Better than nothing.

There are more things and sights to see.  A Google search will provide more information that I could.

If you are going to Malacca and have not been to Singapore (or even if you have been to Singapore), do pay a visit to Singapore.  You're see the contrast.

Created a new song titled "My School Life".

It is a fun song.  Hope you will enjoy it.

Orchard Road - from another view

Went to the top of Orchard Central to have Pho (Vietnamese noodle) with my wife the other day.  It was at a restaurant at the top of Orchard Central.

The Pho was nice but I feel that it should not be eaten in such a posh restaurant.  Sometimes the venue and the food do not match and this is one of them.  I cannot imagine eating fish ball noodle in a posh restaurant.  It is meant to be eaten along the street or at a hawker centre or food court.

What I like about the place was the view.  Perhaps the weather contributed to the good feeling too - it was a cooling evening.

My first impression was - New York Skywalk.  However this is only about 100 metres whereas the Skywalk stretches for kilometres.

The view of parts of Orchard Road was also refreshing.  It is quite a nice place to just hand out as some young ones did.

Frankfurt - 9th Dec 2013

Have not posted for a long long time.  Anyway, been busy - honing my guitar skills, reading, went to the US and Spain, writing some new songs, arranging song for guitar, etc.....  Will post some songs later.

For this post, I want to share some pictures of Frankfurt when we were there on 9th Dec 2012.  It was not a planned visit but we missed our connecting flight (flying in from Madrid) and so have to wait 24 hours for the next flight.  Many flights were cancelled on that day due to weather.  Lufthansa was kind enough to book us into a hotel in the city for one night.

So instead of waiting at the airport, we made a visit to Frankfurt - Roemer.

It was Christmas time and really enjoyed the atmosphere.  Temperature was below 10 degrees C that day but it was OK.  Beside soaking in the atmosphere, attended Mass, ate pork knuckle and drank hot wine.

Think we went to the St Bartholomew Catholic Dome.

The people were also nice.  At least they spoke English....

Frankfurt was something unplanned but it turned out to be really enjoyable.

Day after heavy snow outside our hotel.

The main railway station.

Scenes from the Christmas market.

Think this is the St Bartholomew Catholic Dome. 

Lend a helping hand

I came up with a new song titled "Lend A Helping Hand".  It has a country feel and is about lending someone a helping hand.  Hope you like it.

Musical Midi Accompaniment

Found this great piece of software in Linux that could generate accompaniment for singing.  You can read about it at http://www.mellowood.ca/mma/.

It seems that there is a graphical interface, Lemma, but I have yet to get it working.

Have a look at the accompanying documentation and that should get you started.  I used a text editor and created a the mma file in text format.  Next, use MMA to create the midi.  The I played it through Timidity or converted it to a mp3 file.

What I found useful is that it is great to practise soloing.

I have recorded 2 versions of Amazing Grace using MMA with different grooves (I just change one word to change groove).  I am not a great singer or a great guitar player.   But I had fun.

Can you imagine, in the future, bands might be obsolete if the do not play their own grooves.


Amazing Grace - 60s Rock

Amazing Grace -Shuffle Boogie

Baker and Cook

Went to Hillcrest Road to have coffee with my wife last Thursday.  Found this place called Baker and Cook (http://www.bakerandcook.biz) at the corner of the block and it is quite a refreshing place.  We were impressed by their display of bread though we shared a croissant and had a coffee each.

I like the contemporary design.  Service came with a smile and the place has a leisure feel to it and besides us, there were a couple of ladies (tai tai?) chatting away.

Visit their website for more info.