Day 5 - Thu, 17th May 2007

10am - woke up late again.. must check out by 1pm.. but we still managed to make a quick round of shopping trip in Sungei Wang complex.. i bought my first t-shirt.. my first and probably only luxury item for the this tour.. ahah..

12pm - hurried back to the hostel and left our bags under their care after checking out.. so we headed to Chow Kit next.. JH suggested to visit the Sogo shopping centre nearby.. it was not so easy to find though and JH had to ask for directions several times before we got on the right track to Sogo..

realized that the people in KL were rather lazy walkers though.. entered a 7-11 convenient store to ask for directions..
the sales assistant pointed out the general directions.. so JH continued to probe..

then the sales assistant replied matter-of-factly:

uhh okay.. we thanked them.. anyway.. we did not have a car and were too broke to take a cab.. we believed we could walk there.. and so we did.. probably about 15-20 minutes walk only..

found out that Sogo was actually nearer to the Medan Tuanku LRT station (the stop before Chow Kit).. well at least the walking helped the time pass more quickly.. along the way we saw a budget hotel, Tune Hotels, along Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman..

it looked real cheap.. single rooms starting at RM9.99/night.. i checked the hotel website.. apparently the room prices are calculated according to their availability, number of days of stay, and number of rooms to book.. the picture on the left (from website) shows the Tune Hotels and that was one of the streets we walked through..

4pm - our luck was not too good.. it started to rain.. big.. just as we decided to head back.. the nearest LRT station was Medan Tuanku.. but it seemed so far away.. we had to skip between many buildings to avoid as much rain as possible.. and this happened to be the only day i did not bring umbrellas because they were chucked away with our luggage at the hostel.. anyway.. i suppose we had nothing better to do so we started postulating about the rules of getting wet while moving through the rain..

JH postulated that walking slowly through the rain was the best option.. since an object would avoid colliding into rain drops in the path of the moving object..

i gave a simpler postulation.. the amount of rain falling on one's head is proportional to the time of exposure to rain..

since degree of wetness increases with increasing velocity and increasing time.. and since velocity is inversely proportional to time.. i suggested the JH-EU Law, which should go something like this..

the wetness-velocity relationship should look something like that (i drew it myself )

of course i did not have the time to actually determine the optimum velocity.. so i just ran as fast i could..

7pm - ok.. enough of all this crap.. somehow we managed to pass the time.. window shopping.. internet surfing etc.. we went back to collect our bags and then headed to KL Sentral to catch our train..

8:45pm - so there we were squatting at the train station like "fugitives".. and JH was reading his book.. he was well prepared for the long wait i guess.. i should have taken a photo of him then.. but a schematic illustration is provided

9:15pm - there was a slighty delay in moving off.. but we finally got on the train.. JH told me the toilet bowls in the train were open-air at the bottom.. so i went to take a look.. indeed it was.. i won't be crossing any railway tracks in the future.. and i decided to do a good deed of not doing any big business in the toilet..

before we went to sleep.. we had more games of chess while savouring the pineapple biscuits (JH's favorite), which we bought at KL.. i still beat JH to the game.. ahah.. i did lose my unbeaten streak once to JH since the day we bought the new chess set.. but i really thrashed him in one of the games.. this was what the situation looked like.. i was of course controlling the green army

i had only lost 1 chess piece before winning the game.. and i didn't even move my horses.. my opponent was really in a pathetic state..

JH finally gave up.. he had succumbed to my frustration tactics.. so we went to sleep.. my first night on a train..