I did it, I got a Tat

Well can you believe it? First it was the eyebrow ring about 5 years ago after I just got my first job.....but that didn't last because I just couldn't handle having this blooding thing above my eye. Every time I washed my face I would forget that it was there and oooppps with every upward wipe I almost ripped my left eyelid off, along with half my face, so that wasn't for me. After 4 months that one came out. Now I have moved onto something that I have always wanted ....... .... and I have it now. So yeah I met up with a nice Chinese guy here in Summit shopping mall and he was willing to poke me full of holes and the fill them with ink that can never be removed and he was willing to do it for a good price so I was game :) I had never had a tattoo so the whole experience was quite a thing for me, most of the preparation was quite logical..clean the leg, shave the hair off...oh wait, I didn't mention that I was having the tattoo done on the right side of my calf, well that's the best place I reckon...now back to the story, dammit I keep drifting off....no wonder I got such shitty essay marks at school. So he started by shaving and cleaning it and then he basically copy and pasted the design onto my leg with some special carbon paper...and ink. Next stop was the little tattoo room behind the front desk. I checked this place out, it was clean, welcoming and it had really great scamps hanging off the walls, obviously of past customers tattoos. So I sat in the chair and watched as Simple Lim (the tattoo guy) prepared himself and his flesh stabbing, ink ripping, buzzing "art tool". We took out some clean needles and adjusted them to fit his machine, there were two guns, one was a fine detail version and the other was a "lets colour in the leg" gun. Very S&M looking in fact with wires hanging out running down to a DC power supply. Just before he starts he tells me to "Get leady for the pain"...and was he right! Freaking hell, it was sore, the worst part was the outline....that was worse than the shading...so if anyone tells you that tattoo's aren't sore, they are lying or they have a problem with there nervous system and they didn't have feeling in their tattoo are from the word go. I hung in there and the result was just great....a good job indeed and very professional...he stopped as soon as I whined :) The funniest part of this whole thing was the music and the sounds that I heard while I was getting inked. You must bear in mind that his wife and his two kids were in the back room of the shop..... The HIFI was on and it was playing some nice heavy rock music, so the whole scene was set..harcore music..getting a tattoo and I thought to myself, this is great, pretty awesome in fact....until the CD finished...then I heard the educational DVD in the back ground..it was teaching his kid to count or read or something but freaking hell what a put off and to top it all off, Simple was whistling along " 1,2,3,4.5,6,7,8 lalaaaalaalaaallaaa" I really thought I was going to smash that TV and then the kid started screaming for mama who was in the front with another canvas, I mean customer. So yeah......I had an eventful tattoo experience..and I can say for sure now.... IT WAS SORE , check it out 5mins after Simple Finished. If you want a nice tat and a good job give him a shout at Summit on the top floor near the billiards room...

My new Toy --> GPSMAP 60CSx

I found a great website that provides free Malaysian and Singapore Garmin GPS maps for most Garmin products.

Free GPS Maps for Malaysia and Singapore

I have recently acquired a new GPSMAP 60CSx. It is a nice handheld GPS that has a new sensor for receiving signals in poor coverage areas, like jungle areas with overhead foliage cover as well as deep canyons.....I don't
suspect the deep canyons scenario will affect me at all, but the jungle theory is a good one. Most of the biking trails in Malaysia are found in the jungles and you can get lost easily....especially if you are a ferringi and you are new to the area!!

I haven't had a chance to test it yet but tomorrow I will take it along on our May Day ride. We will go for about a 5 hour ride so hopefully we can test it, get some good photos and
have a lotta fun. This same GPS costs about R6500 in South Africa. Managed to pick this one up for RM2500 which is about R4000. So not such a bad saving if you think about it, plus I need it to get around here, works a lot better than the car rental's map book. The map book is about 500 pages in total and is as thick ass the telephone directory for Gauteng. The best feature of the map book is that the spine life (you know, the part holding all the pages together) is about 2 and a half minutes. That's right, you open the book, search for your Jalan (Street in Bahasa Malayu) and as you are flipping through to page 386 and looking for section GH67 all the pages start to fall out and the spine disintegrates...then you get horribly lost and also realise that in Malaysia they aren't big on linking the off ramp of the freeway up with the on ramp on the other side. So the next step is to try and find an alternative route...this obviously becomes semi-impossible due to the fact that the first 385 pages are now lying around your foot well area of your car......so the bottom line is YOU GET LOST!!

My new GPS however solves this problem and it is working very very well. I just need to get a windscreen suction cup for it so I don't have to hold the GPS in my crotch area!! Must look quite funny driving along with my arm down in that area with me looking down all the time and "fiddling" there. I reckon they gonna arrest me for indecent acts in a public are whilst driving a rental car. Another great Feature of this GPS is that it is super Duper water resistant, well so they claim! It is rated as IEC 60529 IPX7. I looked this up and it has bugger all to do with the
International Electoral Committee :)- Seriously it means that this unit can be submerged for 30 minutes in no more than 1 meter of water. In the event that a boat sinks and you have your GPS this means that you have 30 minutes to get rescued or else your GPS is gonna be buggered. Hmmmmm, somehow I don't think you will really give a shit about your GPS if you are in the sea and you don't have a boat anymore! Well I hope the link is useful and I will post some feedback on how useful the GPS was in the jungle tomorrow!

G's New Blog

Good morning and welcome to the new Saffa_G Blog! That’s right another blog...from another South African......but not living in SA. I am staying in a great place at the moment, it is hot, fresh, weird smelling and cheap and that’s just the food....Kuala Lumpur is a bustling city with lots of things to do to keep you busy...and of course empty your wallet. What is strange though is that things are so much cheaper than in good old South Africa. It seems that we just enjoy being ripped off back at home. Obviously the economies are very different and the tax, but still it really does hurt to pay so much for things in SA. I guess as long as everyone keeps buying them and doesn't boycott products then the manufacturers and the resellers will continue in the current trend of ripping all consumers off ;)

So yeah, you guessed it, I am living and working Malaysia, not based in KL, but in a state called Selangor and the town is called Bandar Sunway....lovely place with many Mountain Biking Trails nearby. Malaysia is a very humid and hot place and mostly experiences some countries annual rainfall every afternoon in a space of about 3 hours...crazy I know, but it doesn't seem to phase the locals...they just carry on as normal, if you can call it normal. 4 people sharing a motorbike? Father in the front, 4 year old brother behind him, 5 year old sister behind the brother and the mother at the back....all this on a 125cc Kriss Motorbike that looks like it was designed in the late 70's. The best part is that the old man still thinks he is Valentino Rossi and he takes corners like him too. But don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, just trying to paint the picture for you.....keep checking the blog as I will update it whenever I get a chance. Cheers for now G