It is located at Taman Tun Fuad Stephens, Bukit Padang. The tagline is “Sabah’s Premier Water Theme Park.” Don’t expect anything like Sunway Lagoon though.

Recommended to go on weekdays - costs only RM5 per person, as opposed to RM15 per person on weekends. Those below 3 feet tall are entitled to free admission.

Err… I thought all the items listed there, with the exception of the 3rd item is also strictly forbidden anywhere else?

But Sunway Lagoon standard or not, kids don’t really mind do they, as long as there’s plenty of water: Read the rest of this entry »

MV Doulos, the world’s oldest active passenger ship (built more than 90 years ago), and one of the world’s premier floating bookshops is in town 13 - 25th October. She arrived from Hong Kong, having spent about about a month there. Apparently Sabah is the only Malaysian state it will visit this year. Its last visit to Malaysia was in December when it berthed at Pasir Gudang, Johor.

It’s open 10am - 10pm, except on some dates where the hours are 2pm - 10pm.

We visited it on the first day at almost noon. The following photo was taken about 12pm as we’re about to board the ship. It seemed to be a popular photo spot, but dangerous because there are no fences. When we left the ship about an hour later, the entrance to this spot has been blocked. So I consider myself lucky…

It is 130m long, 16m wide. Apparently it has a crew of 300, from 30 different countries. They even offer you to join as crew on their website. This is a good opportunity to gain experience and see the world.

Kids and the disabled might have difficulty in ascending / descending the non conventional steps (sorry I forgot to take photos to show what it actually looked like).

Kids can get free hand paintings of butterflies:

The fences on the ship are not childproof, so keep an eye on your kids at all times!
Click here for more pics

If you look at the live telecast of the Soyuz carrying Malaysia’s first person in space docking with the ISS on 12th October, there are a few things I observed:

- there’s no video of the docking in progress; but looking at the videos of docking to ISS of the Soyuz crafts carrying previous space tourists Anousheh Ansari (September 2006) and Charles Simonyi (April 2007), there should be

- the same female interpreter is on duty (translating Russian to English)

- Simonyi and Dr Mus had their first videoconference in the same room. Simonyi stood to the right of the camera - there was a pole which he could hold on to: hence looked very comfortable while talking. Dr Mus, in contrast, apparently did not have anything to hold on to, and looked awkward bobbing up and down, struggling to keep still, while talking.

- Ansari’s first videoconference was apparently in a different room than Simonyi and Dr Mus’s. She stood in the middle, and had something to hold on to.

Click here to see the videos

The new manager

First official statement on Chelsea FC’s official website

As of a few hours ago, the forum thread at Chelsea FC’s official website entitled “Official: Chelsea and Jose Mourinho Have Parted Company” had had more than 30,000 views and more than 500 replies in 23 pages, the most popular thread in the entire website.

The first few pages had fans fans expressing shock and disbelief, even one lashing out at Roman Abramovich himself! Some selected forum entries:

Please tell me this is all crap! Please!

If I was Roman I would be fairly fed up. We are a weaker team now than in 2005 by a distance despite bringing in more and more players. The club has gone backwards over the last 12 months and it is difficult to ignore that fact. Roman didn’t become a multi billionaire by waiting for things to happen. It’s a sad day for Chelsea but we’ve been here before.