Moleskine 2010-2011 planner

I just bought a moleskine 2010-2011 daily planner. It's rather small and it cost me RM57 :| You must think i'm crazy to buy such an expensive notebook planner. But i think it's well worth the money i paid.

I got it from this shop selling books & stationery called CzipLee at bangsar. According to my friend, not many shops are selling Moleskin products. I only know CzipLee & Kinokuniya carry Moleskine.

Anyway what's Moleskine and why are Moleskine products so expensive? I wiki-ed Moleskine and Moleskine is imported from Italy (though made in China) and they are famous for their notebooks. Their notebooks are kind of unique as there's an elastic band around it's hardcover which you can use it as a bookmark or to hold & close the book.

"Moleskine is a brand of notebooks, planners, diaries, sketchbooks and albums manufactured by Moleskine Srl, an Italian company based in Milan. Moleskine notebooks are typically bound in coated paper cardboard, with an elastic band to hold the notebook closed, a sewn spine that allows it to lie flat when opened, cream colour paper, rounded corners, a ribbon bookmark, an expandable pocket inside the rear cover, all packed in a paper banderole."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moleskin


I've been looking for a portable weekly planner for quite sometime now. The cheap notebooks don't seem to suit my needs as i want to have the planner as close to Stephen Covey's planner as much as possible. I found that this Moleskine planner fits my needs perfectly. Ofcourse the planner starts from July 2010 till Dec 2011. Still too early and i need to wait till July :) I hope with this new planner I can plan better and help me to reach my goals :)

Day 1 - Malaysia to Macau (27th March 2010)

27Mar10 Saturday

Got up early to meet up with my 2 pals, Henry and L at KL Sentral at around 10am. I ordered a nice Sub of the Day sandwich to be eaten for lunch at LCCT airport.

From KL sentral we took a bus to LCCT airport. We performed a web check-in on the day before so we simply had to check in our luggage at the express counter. Since we got there an hour+ early, we just loitered around the airport's boarding gate area.

Finally boarded the AK54 Airasia plane to Macau. The journey took 4 hours which was the longest time I've ever spent in an airplane :)

After we landed on Macau and got past the immigration check point, the first thing I wanted to do was to get small change for the big Hong Kong notes that i had. And so I asked the airport security guards for help and they pointed us to a convenience store and a money changer. But none of them allowed us to change to small notes. So we decided to just take a free shuttle bus instead. By then i was already pissed off at the security guards for wasting our time.

Our hostel is located near to Lisboa Hotel so we wanted to take a free shuttle bus to Lisboa. It turned out that the only available free shuttle bus was to Venetian (according to the locals there) so we decided to board the bus to Venetian. The journey took about 5-10 minutes. Upon reaching Venetian Hotel, we asked the a female staff on how to take the bus to Macau Ferry. We followed her direction but it led us to the the casino area itself and so we thought she might meant the opposite direction. And so we back-tracked, got out of the hotel, walked across the road, but couldn't find any free shuttle...all the while carrying our heavy luggage bag. We knew we were lost so we went back into Venetian and asked another staff for the proper direction. It turned out we had to walk through that casino area we saw earlier! Cant believe we wasted like 20 minutes because of this.

Took the free shuttle from Venetian to Macau Ferry Terminal (15 minutes). Got off and went inside the terminal to buy ferry tickets in advance (7.30am Sunday ticket) . We then took the free shuttle to Lisboa which took about 5 minutes and then walked 5-10 minutes to reach Auguster's Lodge. There's no lift/elevator to hostel which was on the 3rd floor. So we climbed the stairs all the way up with our luggage. We were terribly exhausted when we finally checked into our room.

We chose to stay at Auguster's Lodge a few months earlier because it was the cheapest option available for it's strategic location (hotels usually charge double or triple on weekend stay). We booked a room (with 2 double decker beds) which cost HKD 1,011.51 (USD 131.79) for 2 nights. There were a few things we didnt like about the place. The aircon in our room was making noise so we ended up turning off the aircon and opened the window when we wanted to sleep at night. although we paid extra for a private room, we still had to share the bathroom with the other room occupants.

After we checked-in our bags, we immediately left the hostel and headed to the alley of Patio do

Cotovelo (德 隆 新 街), just after Senado Square to have our first taste of Macau food at Chu Kei Noodle House.

From Senado Square walk north along along Avenida de Almeida Robeiro (亞美打利庇盧大馬路). You will see this Y-shaped road junction on your left. Turn in here and you will see the Chu Kei noodle restaurant (left road/alley).

If you see on the far right of the photo above, there's an old man with his right arm raised. He's the owner of the famous Sing Kei Congee. His shop just behind him. Too bad didnt have the time to try his congee. Next time :D

After taking dinner at Chu Kei, we walked towards Grand Lisboa, Wynn and MGM Casinos at 8pm. At night, Macau turned alive with bright lights everywhere in the city.

We ended up walking past Lisboa, Wynn & MGM to reach the edge of the peninsula, with a nice view of the Macau bridge at night. The Kuan Yin status wasnt that far away but we were quite tired and decided to head straight to Wynn instead to watch the Tree of Properity show.

The tree of prosperity show is one of the main attractions at Wynn. It's basically a spectacular 7 minutes long show with music, video and light.

The show begins when the music starts playing. Soon the wide ceiling iris above representing the signs of the Zodiac with the Chinese horoscope sculpted on it, opens to reveal an LED display of abstract video. Then the LED ceiling itself parts and a beautiful chandelier, lit by thousands of LEDs, descends. Now the action shifts to the ground floor where a copper dome, with the Western horoscope sculpted on it, opens and the 20-meter tall golden tree of prosperity rises. The magical tree rotates to the music until the show ends and all the mechanical elements return to their home positions. Besdies the tree of properity, there's also a similar light show at the same place instead of a tree, a dragon rises from the copper dome. I missed that show since i only found out about it after i got back home. I'll make sure i wont miss it the next time I visit Macau :)

After the golden tree show, we walked around and stumbled upon a shop selling Ferrari merchadises. Just like another shops in Wynn, the prices were exorbitantly high so we just took pictures of the Ferrari car on display.

Later we discovered that there's a fountain show just right outside Wynn and so we waited until around 9.30pm to watch it.

After Wynn, we walked all the way back to Senado Square. Upon reaching the place, we decided to grab a late supper and went to Yee Shun Dairy Company. I took a warm double-layer steamed milk pudding.

After supper, we took some pictures of Senado Square's main area before heading back to our hostel. I was already worried about my itinerary since we only spent half a day in Macau and were already dead tired. Somemore it was just Day 1 and we still had to journey to Hong Kong and Shenzhen with our packed itinerary!

Next: Day 2 - Macau (Senado Square, Ruins of St Paul,A-Ma Temple, Maritime Museum, Tai Lei Loi Kei Pork Chop Bun, Venetian Casino)

My Macau-Hong Kong-Shenzhen 9D8N in 2010 trip

I've decided to write a blog about my recent 9D8N trip to Macau, Hong Kong and Shenzhen while the memory is still fresh in my mind. It took me around 10 months of planning as i wanted to cover these places as much as humanly possible during this trip.

Day 1 - Malaysia to Macau (Wynn's Tree Of Properity)
Day 2 - Macau (Senado Square, Ruins of St Paul,A-Ma Temple, Maritime Museum, Tai Lei Loi Kei Pork Chop Bun, Venetian Casino)
Day 3 - Macau To Hong Kong (Mongkok, Tim Ho Wan Dim Sum,Avenue of Stars,Symphony of Lights, Temple Street Night Market)
Day 4 - Hong Kong (Big Buddha, Po Lim Monastery, Disneyland, Yue Kee Roasted Goose)
Day 5 - Hong Kong (Ocean Park)
Day 6 - Hong Kong (Golden Bauhinia Square, Man-Mo Temple, Ladder Street,Times Square,Happy Valley Racecourse,Hoi Kee Roastie Specialist,Victory Peak,Madame Tussauds wax museum,Lan Kwai Fong)
Day 7 - Hong Kong to Shenzhen (Dong Men Pedestrian Street)
Day 8 - Shenzhen (Windows Of the World)
Day 9 - Shenzhen to Malaysia (Shuttle Bus to Shenzhen Airport)