Mumbai 2013

Recently, my company went for a biz trip in Mumbai and the recommended hotel was The Westin at Garden city. It is a nice hotel and well equipped with facilities. The food is pretty good although it is a bit expensive to me. However, the location seems to be in the outskirts of the city. There is only 1 shopping mall behind. The hotel is surrounded by many old buildings and residential homes nearby. Overall, the stay is pleasant I would say.

The front gate

Lobby view

 Room view 1

 Room view 2

 Room view 3

 Nice tub

 Open concept dressing room

View from my room

Heavy traffic everyday

Fake sky from the lounge area

 Cool beer to end the day

The next thing is the mall located behind the hotel, a 5-10mins walk. A typical shopping mall but with sufficient shops and food. It is called Oberai mall. It is the Ganesha Festival when I was there and it is a big event over there. Below is the pics

 Name of the mall

 Inside view 1

 Ganesha statue in the mall lobby

Outside view

 Festival celebration 1

 Many people on the streets

Went shopping during my R&R days with my colleagues. We were bought to a little building that sells traditional and model clothing. The way it works is very different, rather picking the clothes ourselves, you state what you are looking for and they try to bring many design samples for browsing. And you can take your time to choose the clothes or ask the staff to bring more design. Every piece is new. Below is the pic.

 

First time 

Essential is the local taxis and tuk tuk taxis which is a scooter with cover. Most of the cabs we took doesn't go by meter. A fixed price most of the time. So you need to be aware of the estimated rates. However, tuk tuk cabs goes by the meter most of the time and it is cheap compared to normal cabs. They can't go long distance though.

 Cab

 Tuk Tuk cab

A must place to visit if you are in Mumbai is the Gateway of India. A nice heritage monument. Do take note of con mans and take care of your belongings.

View 1

View 2

Another nice building

Interesting building

Famous heritage train station

View 2

Time for food, I have always like to try Macdonald's from different countries. For India, they have vegetarian/Fish/chicken burgers. I only tried the interesting Masala chicken burger. It taste a bit like our local otah maybe due to the spices. Overall, it is not as nice as I thought.

Masala Burger

Another interesting dish is they call momo locally. It is very similar to Chinese dumplings but the dipping sauce and filling is different. The ones I had is chicken with cheese but it is very nice overall. And some sweet dessert which I don't know the names and the Masala tea which I like it personally.

Momo

Masala tea and misc

Can't remember the restaurant name but it sells Western to local cuisine. I ordered a tandoor style dish but it is really nice too. The well marinated fish chunk is big and boneless, it is grilled nicely. Below is the pics of the restaurant and food. It is located in the shopping mall.

View 1

View 2

Nice grilled chicken meat

my main concourse done tandoor style

Lastly, we tried out a local famous cafe that sells Chinese and local food. Of course, we tried the local ones since they are cheaper compared to SG. I tried the fish curry rice served with Basmati rice with a traditional glass bottle coke (been years seen I saw it in SG).

Nice nostalgic bottle

Fish curry with rice

Silverstone SP08 drive converter

Due to an extra SSD now, I have decided to get a converter so that I can house 2 SSD on a 3.5" drive bay. Also, due to the way the SG-02F casing drive bay is designed, It seems to only able to work with the original accessories like SP08. Third party converter doesn't work due to the screw holes. Below is the pics of SP08:

Box

Whole package

It fits my case perfectly, the quality seems to be good and solid. It cost 19 bucks locally before discount.

Stuff from amazon

Recently, there is a change of rules in amazon and they now accept certain items for international shipping directly unlike last time you need to go through a forwarder. I believe many local people is excited about since some of the items can be more cheaper than buying it locally. Moreover, it has free shipping if you exceed a certain purchasing amount.

One of the item is SSD, you can save quite an amount if you buy it online. The only issue is to RMA it if anything is wrong. The item will need to be ship back to them for an exchange.

The items I had in mind is a SSD since my crucial SSD is running out of space and a camera bag for my Olympus EM-5. So I got a Samsung SSD and a National Geographic bag. And it is cheaper than to buy it locally. But the shipping time will take about 3 weeks to reach here by UPS or maybe by other courier. So I guess you need to be patient. Below is the pics of the items.

 Nice well protected box with air bags inside

 Bag and SSD

 Nice little bag for my MFT

Nice drawing of the map in the interior

The smaller pocket for little accessories

 Full package for the Samsung 840 SSD (120GB)

I think in future I will get more items from amazon since I can get savings on the items I am interested in and also hard to find items locally.

2 PS3 games

Recently, I bought these 2 PS3 games from Play-asia once again. It is not the latest titles but it seems to be good and it is on discount. However, one of them is Korean version which only the physical manual is in Korean but the game itself is Japanese. It is the cheapest compared to the rest of the available versions (Asia, Japan).

The shipping took a while though, it takes about 1 week plus to reach me. Nonetheless, I received it in a bubble wrapped box in good condition.

The other one is a typical US version which is English. Below is the pics of the games titles. The name of both titles is:

1) Dai-2-Ji Super Robot Taisen Original Generations

2) Metal Gear Rising

Hope I am able to find time to play both games and complete it :).

Tamiya Lunchbox junior

It has been a long time since I last played with a Tamiya model kit. And this particular kit left a deep impression on me when I was a kid since I really find it attractive in a way, and it still does now and I spent a considerable amount of time to assemble it.

Fast forward to around 20+ years later, it still catches my eye (very nostalgic) and I am still surprised it is still in production. I guess it is a classic model in a way. It is now made in Philippines rather than Japan if I remember correctly.  

I have lost my old one long time ago and when I saw it, I couldn't resist to get it. Moreover, my wife says it will be a gift. Guess she saw the inner child in me :). Below is 2 pics I took, I intend to get the relevant colours and do a nice job in painting it. But I hope to be able to find the time to do it. It will be for my personal display rather than playing with it.

 The front cover

The content

Olympus E-M5

Been a long time since I bought a new camera. So I have to sell my old 4/3 DSLR + lenses to get a new one, but I am going the mirrorless 4/3 camera this time. And E-M5 has caught my attention when it was first released with its splash and dust proof body and kit lens. It has the same durability with the E-series. It also earned a gold award from dpreview. 

Fast forward and it has been a year now and the retail price drop for this model is around 20% since there are new models going to be released soon. So I think it is a good time to get it.

I got a reasonably good deal I guess since there a ongoing PC show promotion going on which includes a leather neck strap, PEN leather bag and a extra battery. Below is the unboxing video and some pictures of the package.  

Unboxing video

 Free PEN leather bag 1

  Leather bag with strap

 Overall package view 1

 Overall package view 2