Le Meridien Hotel, Jakarta, June 2012

On my recent visit to Jakarta, I stayed at the Le Meridien. It is not exactly an ideal location. The city is building an elevated highway next to the hotel. The roads around the hotel are being diverted and it takes 30-45 minutes just to get on the main road from the hotel.

I would prefer a hotel nearby a shopping mall. This would give me more dining choices and rates that are better than eating in a hotel, even if I am staying for business. One would have to take a cab to go to the nearest mall for eats.

But for this trip, I stayed at the Executive Suite at the hotel. A lot of the hotels are fully booked due to the local governor elections. The suite is quite big as compared to my needs i.e. sleep and shower.

After you enter the room, there is a short hallway. The room opposite is the toilet.

As we enter in, one can see the toilet. On the left is the 1st TV.

As we turn left from the hallway, you can see the living room area.

 

 As we turn left further, we can see the rest of the living room. The other room is the bedroom.

I was quite surprised at how big this room was.

 

 The bedroom.

 

 On the left, is the hallway for the 2nd toilet with wardrobe.

 

The bed.

 

The 2nd TV in the bedroom.

The wardrobe area.

 

 

 

The toilet. You can see, its a bit antiquated.

 

The shower area.

 

The view from my room.

On the right is an abandoned construction site. It has been there since 1998. Nothing is being done about it. Its quite an eyesore.

This is the main lobby. Up ahead is the reception area.

On the left of the lobby is the main hotel restaurant.

Another view of the lobby.

The long hallway to get to the elevator to my room. On the left of the hallway is the swimming pool and smoking area.

The swimming pool and smoking area.

The elevator to my room.

The view of the hotel from outside.

 

The hotel was opened in 1982 by Ibu Tien Soeharto, the old man's wife.

 

Chili Crab at Jumbo Seafood East Coast Park, 7th July 2012

The wife and I had some relatives over last weekend. We treated them to a seafood dinner at Jumbo at East Coast Parkway, here.

The service is quite good. The waiters and waitresses, although are at an 'aunty' age, are quite attentive to their customer needs.

The wife started off with Corn Soup with Crab Meat. Nice!!

Followed by the 'piece de resistance.'

Their famous Chili Crab.

 Accompanied by sweet buns. It is to be dipped in the Chili Crab sauce.

 

We ordered the Pepper Crab.

And the Cereal Prawns, de-shelled.

We also ordered the non-guilty food i.e. Baby Kailan in Oyster sauce...

 

 

....and steamed fish.

Finally, dessert which was Mango Sago but I forgot to take the pictures.

Overall, it was delicious. The crabs were very fresh as the meat was still hard. Definitely recommend.

Olympus Camera SZ-31MR and SZ-30MR

We have a Olympus camera, the SZ-30MR that was bought in 2011 Sitex at Singapore Expo. It served us well. Plenty of functionalities. Until one day, end of June 2012, on our trip to Bali, it dropped and fell into the Grand Hyatt Bali swimming pool. I was not there when it happened but The Wife says it was fully submerged.

I know that if water or moisture were to get into electronics, the manufacturer is hesitant to repair it. We sent it to the Olympus Service Centre here in River Valley to get an idea on the extent of their repair. Changing the lens and the PCB costs around SGD300, almost equivalent to a new camera. The lady said even when they change the PCB, it is not guarantee it will rust again. Instead, she offer a trade-in for the camera with a new camera, the SZ-31MR. They will take the camera and we get to keep its existing peripherals. They took in about SGD100 off from the new camera.

The new camera.

Camera features.

Its Eye-Fi compatible.

The camera came in 2 finishings. We choose the black.

 

The package comes with a basic manual. The full features manual and set-up is in the CD.

Out of the box, comes with one battery and a 8GB SD card.

The cables and the small box below are for charging.

Other items are the camera case, camera strap, pointer and RGB cable.

So the items are quite basic. 

Olympus Singapore did not provide any freebies with the purchase. Just the standard items out of the box. But at least we get to keep the peripherals from the previous camera.

The previous SZ-30MR which we purchase from Sitex 2011. 

The features from the box.

The back of its box is the same as the SZ-31MR.

Came with the camera case and RGB cable with the standard manual.

 The existing charging cable.

 

The freebies: an additional memory card and battery.

A rinky-dink camera stand for hobbits and a camera cleaning kit.

And the screen protector.