East vs West

So how do you spot an East Malaysian at the KL LCCT Airport? Easy, go to the LCCT Emporium and check out the Gardenia buns section. He/she will most likely have a shopping basket full of buns.

Ok, maybe that was an over-generalization. That person could've been buying for an East Malaysian friend he/she was visiting. The first time I became aware that Gardenia don't sell their buns here was when my wife asked me to get her some Gardenia Ikan Bilis buns when I went over to KL. I also found out that the best place to get the freshest stocks is at LCCT, having spent quite some time looking around in various locations. The LCCT Emporium knows that they are catering to the East Malaysian market and makes quite a lot from this. Gardenia sells their plain bread here, but why not the others (I don't know if it's the same for Sarawak) ?  Oddly enough, I've never had the ikan bilis bun till I moved over to Sabah from PJ so maybe Gardenia knows what they are doing...

There's another thing I've missed since moving here. The KFC stores in Sabah don't offer Thai Chili Sauce (TCS) to their customers, relying instead on ketchup and normal chili.

The first few times eating KFC without TCS was terrible. I considered buying one bottle from the supermarket and bringing it with me everytime I go to KFC, but common sense told me to suck it up and deal with it. 4 years later, I can't remember how fried chicken tastes with TCS anymore... *making a mental note to eat KFC next time I go back to the peninsula*

And McD's...huh! No free refills! The first time I asked the cashier for a free refill was also my last time. I might as well have asked if her mom had a hairy chest because she would have given me the same look.

After 4 years here in Kota Kinabalu, I'm not so bothered by these minor differences in products and services offered by the big chain companies like I used to be. But hello KFC, I really really hope you will listen to what I'm saying. Ahem.

Hacking The DX Coding On The Film Canisters

Mom: So is there anything you'd like me to bring over when I visit?
Me: Hmm, ya. Whatever happened to my old film camera?

So she searched around the house and found this.

My old Olympus Mju-II. This camera accompanied me through my college and uni years and to many places in Europe. It's a reliable old friend. There was one problem with it though, it automatically sets the ISO based on the DX coding on the film canister. That may be alright for normal photography but a massive inconvenience when shooting with redscale or black and white films.

So how to get around this?

Changing from 400 to 1600

Fool the camera by changing the DX coding. The film at the bottom is at normal 400 speed and the film at the top has had its paint scratched so the camera reads it as a 1600 film instead. Probably the best thing about this is that the Olympus is such an easy camera to handle that I can be in the pictures more often.

With available window light and spot metering on the Mju-II