Just amazing. 

A last glimpse of the Concorde before we all left the site and returned home. It was really the best experiance I went through and I'll never forget it for as long as I live. This one's dedicated to you Ian :) 

"Thank you for flying British Airways and we hope to see you on board one of our flights again!"

The sun was setting when Ian took this photo, You could clearly see that the air was very cold from the skin of the Concorde. Truly remarkable. 

The picture speaks for itself! 

Me under the Concorde behind the main landing gears. Quite kewl isn't it? 

A view of the cockpit. Look at all the dials and switches. The Concorde was flown by a three-man crew. The Captain, the First Officer and the Flight Engineer. If you look carefully, you can still see the Captain's hat squashed in the middle. Apparently, Concorde expands 6 inches when flying at supersonic speed and the captain forgot to remove the hat when it flew at normal speed. It'll be there till Concorde flies supersonically again. 

A view of the cabin from the first zone of the aircraft. The second half was sealed off to the public. Posh ain't it? 

Everyone loves this pose. In fact, everyone who was on this tour took the same picture I did. Too bad we weren't really flying Mach 2 at 55500ft above sea level.  

As I was trying out the recline of the seat, Ian snapped this photo. As I said earlier on, the seats are very comfortable despite the fact that the are narrower that the seats you get for paying the fare (the average concorde fare from London to New York is about GBP7000+). Fly First Class subsonically if you want luxury. Also, check out the small windows. You can't see much through it but it relieves you of your fright for confined space, that's if you have one.

These pair of seats were taken from the first zone of the Concorde. They are line with soft connoly leather. The seats do not recline very much but they are comfortable indeed. However, passengers with a height of more than 6 feet might feel a bit squeezed. But then again, what can you complaint? Only the privileged few fly the Concorde. Wish it were me :(

The Concorde dining experience. What you see in the picture is the service trolley that the flight attendants use to serve their fellow Supersonic passengers. I was told by the guide that the bottles contain the actual drinks and not emptied. I guess British Airways wanted to preserve more than just a flying machine. 

This is my impression of an advertisement for the Concorde and the headline would be something like "Welcome On Board". 

The Concorde Experience ... or what's left of it

Hello again. As promised another day with another thought to be shared. I was wondering what I should write about today. As I was cleaning up my room, I found a picture CD stashed in my travelling bag and wondered what contained inside. To my surprise, the pictures I took on my recent Supersonic Experience (grounded though) was in it. So, I thought I'd share this with you and hope you'll enjoy the experience as much as I have. And just to let you know, the Concorde Experience was actually last year's birthday present from Ian. It was the best birthday present anyone one can get. Thanks a trillion Ian, you're truly the greatest :) For everyone's information, British Airways DONATED all their Concorde aircraft. In England, one is displayed on the tarmac near Runway 9 in London Heathrow Airport, one is in Manchester (I think) and another one that I know of is at the Airbus plant in Bristol. I visited the one in Bristol. Although this was a Birthday present, I found out that the cost of the ticket is GBP12.50 and the proceeds goes to an organisation that will permanently keep the aircraft in a comfortable home.

As I am still new to blogging, I'm really confused of how to set up more images next to text. Because of that, I'll have to post the pictures one by one using hello from picassa and explain the detqails of each picture. I'd appreciate anyone who can advise me of how to paste pictures and texts like how I did above using only one frame and not multiple ones.

Home Alone 4 ...

Hello everyone. Just felt like writing again. Apparently, the whole family went to Kerteh to meet up with my younger sister who's living there. She recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl (watch out Lucifer - another one of your kind in the making) and my Mom's crazy about her kids. Aaaaa ... the first one's a boy. Cute, energetic, dying-for-attention syndrome and last but not least a bit, but not too DESTRUCTIVE ( broke my Simpsons coin bank, destroyed my MP3 player clip, lost my coins I kept on the table, scribbled all over the screen of my computer, broke my tie hanger and the list goes on and on) kid. Well anyway, am all alone at home now with my four bunnies living outside. Nothing much happening except that I've been flying my planes and the route today was Zurich to Cairo on a Swiss Airbus 340 and Amsterdam to St Maarten on a KLM Boeing 747-400. I almost fell asleep flying to Cairo today. Dunno why but shouldn't keep it up. If I were a real pilot, I would've put a lot of peoples' lives in ultimate danger. Hmm ... that's as far as I get from flying a plane. Have always wanted to become a pilot and work for Malaysia Airlines but wearing spectacles did me no good (so did joining Arts stream in Form 4). So decided to become an Air Steward instead and still no luck. Never even tried.

Am a blue collar guy working for the people of Malaysia, yep - a civil servant. Work's really stressful and busy but I kinda enjoy it as I'm in the International Relations Division taking care of more than 50 countries under my portfolio; Middle East, The Americas, South America, Ireland to name a few. I do speak a number of languages too: Malay (my mother tongue), English, Arabic, Dutch (Flemish) and Spanish but I don't think it's enough. Would love to learn German and French too. However, German being a Germanic language and French a Romance language with completely different grammatical ruling systems, would take up much of my time to master and I can't afford more time spent. Not yet though.

Spoke to someone on the phone today. In fact, it was my long known friend Malik. We used to chat before but lost contact. Today, as I was signed on to MSN, his name appeared as ONLINE and I decided to give him a shout. Thank God he remembered me, so we started chatting for hours and I rang him up to talk in person. Oh well Malik, if you read this sometime, the whole blog is dedicated to you. May you continue being my friend no matter what the circumstances are. God bless Malik :)

Didn't cook anything today but went out to buy food instead. Ate Nasi Goreng Ayam and Satay Ayam today. Thought I'd pig out but the hefty portion of the rice left me full even before I got to relish the sweet and tender morsels of meat skewered onto bamboo skewers grilled to perfection over a charcoal flame served with piquant peanut sauce. Damn, that made me hungry. So I saved it for tomorrow and kept it in the fridge. What will I do tomorrow while waiting for the family to come home? I dunno but I'll let you know tomorrow night. I'm sure I can cook up a good long paragraph that'll bore you to death about what I did. So till then, good night and see you all later.

This is me ... and my teeth :)

This is me under the Three Sisters in Sydney, Australia. The picture's perfect except for the fact that there is an anonymous Asian woman in the background. Grrr ... Alex :) 

Well, not the best light quality but the view's fantastic 

Me ... Myself ... and I ...

Ok ... ok, that sounds a bit individualistic but I've learned to love myself first before I can start loving anything else that crosses the path that my two legs take me. So, you must be asking why am I starting this blog. Simple ... the fact that everyone has their own site to freely express their thoughts, frustrations and ideas. I guess I've always been the person who actually pours everything on paper and just leaves it lying around waiting for some poor soul to pick it up and read :) Pathetic eh? Trust me, I'm not that bad. Get to know me better and I assure you I'm a friend in deed. Anyway, do not wanna take up much more of your time (heaven knows time is precious these days - especially my god forsaKEN bosses who sits in their room all day long watching their live just critter away while their junior officers do all the hard work-kinda-precious). Take a read and feel free to post any comments eh. I'll write more about myself once I've gotten this thing set up. In the mean time, enjoy!