Starbucks Malaysia 2009 Bearista Destination Series

Another cute toy which caught my attention recently, the new Starbucks Coffee Bearista (Bear + Ballista.. err, I mean Barista). It was very very cute, plus it was wearing denim pants, a T-shirt with a Wau and a cool brown cap. Costs RM 53, 10% discount with Jusco card, original price RM 59.00.

Anyway, let the pictures do the talking :P

The front view


The side


The tag: Destination Series Bearista 2009: Malaysia


Isn't he cute? :)


His T-shirt


Great bear to buy since the he has high quality fur which is unlike those cheapo toy bears.

Something Work related: Suspended Lift Pit

Here's something which usually as a mechanical engineer will definitely face during the design of shopping center or any other building for that matter. Say you have a small lift to serve a small number of floors, so you proceed to place that lift there with all the dimensions requirements. But sometimes you have a lift which does not serve all the floors, such as in a shopping complex, a small lift is placed at the center of the shopping center as part of the facade to serve the retail floors but not serve the basement car park below it. In this case you will definitely have a suspended lift pit since you do not want the whole lift shaft right through your car park as it will eat valuable car park space.

Below is 1 such lift, located at the new wing of IOI mall Puchong.


As you can see, it only serve only 4 floors and does not serve the basement below it. I can see it is a small capacity machine roomless lift since it appears there isn't any machine room at the top. This kind of lift is called a machine roomless lift, whereby all the motors and equipment are located in the shaft. This kind of lift is good for a short building as it does not need a huge room right at the top, but not advisable for tall buildings 12 storeys or more since if anything goes wrong, the poor repair guy have to be suspended up to 60-70 meters at the top of the shaft to get to the motor.

The close-up of the lift car.The counter-weight is at the side of the car. Some lifts have it behind the car, but in this case the counterweight will block the good view out of the lift. It is also why some lift have very long widths or depths to cater for the placement of the counterweight. The car operating panel for this lift is only located on 1 side of the lift car. Ok for a small lift, but if it is a big lift for a office building, it is better to have it on both sides.


To the visitors to this shopping mall, they will not notice all the finer details that went into the placement and installation of this lift. Even during the design stage, we as the mechanical engineer must coordinate with the architect and civil engineer on the placement of the lift so that is does not affect items like headroom, beams, columns, car park etc. It becomes important as we take a look at the lift pit from Basement 1, the floor below.


As you can see, the lift pit is something like a very big concrete box suspended from the ceiling. Lift pits vary in depth depending on the speed of the lift car. Some like in this case maybe 2m deep or less, while high speed lifts may have lift pits up to 4m deep to house the large buffer (something like a spring) to absorb the impact of the lift should the lift free-fall (very very unlikely, since it has a safety governor). But it can be a big issue when you have very little headroom to place the lift pit. As you can see, it is eating up 2 car park lots that might otherwise be available. But this is something like a compromise when you do the lift pit placement; you cannot have it in the driveway, you can't let the lift shaft run all the way down to lowest basement otherwise you would lose 4 car parks.

In a way part and parcel of being an architect is to watch out for stuff like this during the design stage. Sure on the Ground floor and above the placement of the lift is fantastic, but then it will obstruct the drive way or eat into some car parks or worse, fan rooms, electrical rooms, domestic water tanks etc. Always spot these stuff during the design stage because once the pit is casted and the mistake is realized, it will cost ALOT since a suspended lift pit must be able to withstand a lift free-falling onto it and not crack. No way you can hack this if such a mistake is done.

To the consultants and architects doing IOI mall, great work for coordinating this lift pit into a location where it will at most, eat only 2 car parks and not obstruct the driveway.

I'm just a frequent shopper to IOI mall, so this is my first time to the new wing since it was opened.

Lego again, 1980s Duplo

Here are some of the old Duplo sets which I had from the 1980s. Duplo is like a baby version of Lego, but nonetheless have the same plastic toughness of its more mature brothers. The pieces are large and the pieces are few, but then again how an a baby play with so many pieces?

Anyway, here are some of the stuff which I have:-

2705 Passenger Train. Items missing :( include 1 of the roofs, 1 more dude and a shovel



2632 Duplo Delivery Truck



2619 Duplo Helicopter and propeller plane (dunnot the number)


and my biggest Duplo set, 2655 Farm set. Features include 1 large barnhouse, horse, cow, pig, chicken, tractor, conveyor, table, chair and windmill. The current barn isn't as big as this anymore. Items missing: 2 more chickens and 1 sheep :(



All of them shown in 1 big picture. Got somemore, but the data bout the Duplo sets are very sketchy since there isn't much documentation on the internet bout Duplo. I believe that all these are 100% classic Duplo sets and are fit for a museum. The best part is that it is still playable and looks like new even after a good 20 years. Looks in way better condition than my Tomicas or Matchbox since it is all plastic and not paint nor metal parts. Another plus point: NO STICKERS!!!




Sometimes to escape the realities of life, you dig out some of your childhood memories and look back at how care-free you are during those times.

Year of the Bull

Its been more than a month since I last blog. CNY passed by and not a blog post to accompany it.

Anyway I have been busy lately with my work so dun have much time to blog. But judging from what is going on in the year of the bull, this is going to be 1 very hectic year. Reading the local newspaper with all the political news is one hint things aren't going smoothly.

They say the economy is slowing down, especially in the States, which I can see it slowly coming down here. I'm a building services engineer, mainly doing mechanical stuff like fire-fighting, air-con, plumbing, lift etc and some of my projects are either Keep-In-Viewed or scrapped. Got 1 semi-conductor factory in Banting which we were supposed to build but since the semi-conductor industry is the hardest it, that is the 1st to go. On the bright side, it has barely moved past the tendering stage and the job was not awarded yet.

Anyway, let's not talk bout the real-life stuff, more on what I have been doing lately.

Recently bought myself a Lego City set. The first set using my own money and the first set in my working life. The last set was during my final year in Aussie back in 2005.

The set is the 7632 Crawler Crane. When I first saw it I was immediately hooked to it coz it looked like the real thing on the construction site.

The front of the box


The back


Overall it was a great set, although the item it lift (the green building panel) is a little out of place and practically useless. Realistic sets like these usually attract my attention.

Currenly planning to buy one Technic set which is coming out later this year. Not a kids set, but more of an adults set since only an adult can afford it. So gotta save up.