Thanks to a lack of a constant internet connection, I wrote a lot of tweets that didn’t get published. A few were thanks to frequent trips to Starbucks, but many, many others didn’t. Without further ado, I present: tweets from the road: stuff that didn’t get posted during my time away from the constantly connected web (note that some are actually longer than 140 characters). There’s a backstory to most of them, but I’ll leave it up to your imagination to fill in the blanks. In some kind of chronological order…

If you look closely, you can see the AMP tower or whatever it’s called.

What most people don’t know is there’s a game you play on intl flights called “respect other people’s personal space as much as possible”.

This guy next to me lost very badly, as did the woman in front who had her chair reclined almost the entire flight.

Travelled something like 6000 kilometres yesterday, but Fitbit reports a mere 5500 steps taken. Technology, hey?

Think my Comply foam tips worked just as well as a pair of noise-cancelling headphones would have on that flight, at a fraction of the cost.

Day two of my overseas trip and my sister already has Wi-Fi. Me? I can wait a few more days to sync my Fitbit, check email, etc.

Kinda disappointed in myself. Only lasted just over a day without Wi-Fi before I succumbed to the mistress of TCP.

Saw the first Hunger Games on the plane over. It was OK, I guess, if you’re willing to overlook the entire dystopian future aspect.

Riddick, on the other hand, was kind of stupid. Did not enjoy.

Worst thing about travelling, by far, is the sub-quality showers. I can deal with everything else, but showers with no water pressure, no.

Can you tell I slept in these pants? Because I totes did.

My sister just revealed to me she turned off autocorrect on her iPod touch. The shame.

Always amazes me how great iPhone battery life is in airplane mode.

…which is exactly what I need on long bus rides from KLIA to my father’s remote hometown. Just me and Miley, or Kilometrey as she’s known here

I seem to be catching a lot of buses in Malaysia. It’s like I never left Hobart!

I was pretty sure they stopped publishing these books? Evidently I was wrong.

Penang’s alright. I’ve always liked Penang. Quite a few new high-rise buildings since the last time I was here though, some very fancy.

Some random high-rise building in Penang. Pretty sure it wasn’t there last time I visited.

Tossing up whether to buy a GoPro here or not. Kinda want to do a time lapse of cousins, but ehh, money.

Since I’ve been playing a lot of Juggernaut recently, I saw this in Penang and just had to have it. May or may not have bought it for the Kantusa it came with.

I’ve been playing a lot of Vengeful Spirit lately, and I saw this along with the SteelSeries Kana mouse. Had to have it.

And quite a few more Caucasian tourists, too, not that I’m complaining. Families and the like on holiday, that kind of thing.

The shortest, most pointless escalators in the world. Probably.

Things you don’t hear very often anymore: “uh oh, I ran out of film”. Have a spare roll, but it’s in my sister’s handbag.

The Malaysian equivalent of an Apple Reseller. Didn’t I tell you not to leave your Facebook logged in on the 42-inch plasma?

Totes just bought my cousins the perfect joke gift: an awesome One Direction poster. Apologies to all of you who actually think 1D are cool.

Went to the Toys’R’Us in Gurney Plaza, Penang. Bought two Nerf guns, as you do.

Named after the DotA 2 hero, the salesperson at Toys’R’Us assured me.

Haven’t even owned my new Nerf weapon for 24 hours, already lost a dart #nerflyfe Plus, you can’t even buy MEGA darts separately 🙁

I can say that in the battle of Benny vs the flying/super-fast crawly thing with 8 spindly long legs, I have no idea where it went.

I’m pretty sure I hit it with a towel, but unless I saw its body I’m not entirely sure I killed it.

I honestly don’t mind the heat or the cold. But for crying out loud, the difference between the sub-arctic aircon indoors then sauna-like outside is ridiculous.

What’s weird is that stuff opens later here, around 10-11am, but also stays open way longer (way past 6pm).

Dim sum is always fun. Ordering stuff I like, on the other hand, not  so much, owing to the fact that my Cantonese is super rusty.

RLRT: “I’m on holidays, why should I have to do maths” — my sister, after I questioned her on why she pulled out her iPod to do 15/3… sigh.

Incidentally, since when was my sister old enough to buy stuff from Victoria’s Secret? They grow up so fast tear

Is there such a thing as an internet refugee? Because I am it, forced to jump from one open Wi-Fi network to the next.

You know, everyone complains about autocorrect autocorrecting all their ducks but you never hear of anyone turning it off, you know?

Another day, another three hour bus ride. But at the end: a long overdue rendezvous with cousins I haven’t seen in years.

At a touristy island on the west coast of Malaysia, they had these shells of fish that were blown up. Pretty cool.

No matter how hot it is outside, I’ll almost always want a hot shower. That’s not weird or anything, right?

Here’s the thing: if it’s an ULTRASONIC mosquito repellant, why does it need to play an audible version of twinkle, twinkle little star?

You have no idea how good this pair of fresh underpants feels. Very comfort. Much fresh. Wow.

If the iOS video camera wasn’t a longer focal length than the photo camera, then maybe people would stop with the vertical video business.

Note to self: if I want to play Dota 2 on Mac, turn off hot corners. Or learn to play without the cursor-edge movement.

Have not played mahjong in more than three years. It’s just pattern recognition, right?

Lost MYR 20 playing mahjong. I was sad until I realised that it was around AUD $8. Eh, whatever.

Birthdays and other date/related events are so weird, when you think about it. No way you can put them off, postpone them.

It may or may not have been my birthday when I was away.

If there’s one plus side to having a birthday in Malaysia it means you get double red packets.

Definitely seeing both ends of the spectrum here. One moment bored out of my ever-loving mind, the next having a blast with my cousins.

I think, if it came down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to eat a guinea pig, no matter how tasty my relatives say they are.

I’ve been wearing these shorts for basically the entire trip. No one has said anything… yet.

I’ve cleared a lot of stuff from my Instapaper account, bring offline and all, and am proud to announce I’ve reached Instapaper 2014 zero.

Vesper is seriously buggy and/or has some weird behaviours for longish (1200+ word) posts. Shame, as it’s a really nice app otherwise.

Pretty interesting watching a watered-down, PG version of the second Transformers. Much to my amusement they censored Megan Fox’s cleavage.

“We couldn’t possibly show off cleavage on the Disney Channel, oh no!” And “that scene” with the girl from Home and Away just didn’t happen.

“Can voice.” Very Beats. Much fake. Wow. (The real WTF is that Beats don’t usually cost AUD $10.)

I don’t know what’s more WTF-y — the fact that that’s a speaker that resembles a hand grenade, or the box depicts a young girl holding one of the things.

So, Running Man? Horrible and hilarious, all at the same time…

Can’t really work out why most places have milo ice and why very few don’t. There appears to be no exact rhyme nor reason.

The worst thing about eating crab is how much effort it takes. It’s all good once you get there, but man, is getting there tough.

I like how we’re not even trying to converse with our cousins in Mandarin anymore. Too hard? Or maybe we’re just lazy.

Previous years we would have tried hard to talk with our cousins in Mandarin. This time they talk to us in Mandarin, we respond in English.

Just looked through the viewfinder of a DSLR. It was like looking through a pinhole camera, after using my rangefinder.

Confession time: I still use Pastebot. The lack of big-screen support is the most vexing thing about it, everything else is awesome.

ASGDSGAFA. Next door neighbours let off maybe a few thousand ringgit worth of fireworks in about ten minutes. Video soon!

It’d be great if @tweetbot let me reorganise my drafts. Most recently edited order is fine 90% of the time, but it’d be nice.

And while they’re at it, how about adding a tap and hold gesture to view the full tweet in draft list view, hey @tweetbot? (Like in Music.)

Seems like Apple removed the “tap and hold to view long song title“ in iOS 7. Shame, as that was kinda useful for longer items in a list.

We bought a tub of ice cream from Baskin Robbins, and it came with some dry ice. It was very cool, pun fully intended.

Uh. Karoke. And that’s all that needs to be said about that.

And it’s like Asian Karoke too, not that I’m saying I’ve ever experienced the western equivalent before.

Westlife? They haven’t been cool since the 90s. If we’re doing 90s, might as well pull out all the stops and go straight to Backstreet Boys.

Of course, we finished the night of Asian Karoke on Call Me Maybe. There are worse songs to finish on, I guess.

Are crepes supposed to be crispy? The ones I had at PAX weren’t, the ones I’m having in Malaysia are. Much crispy, such flat, etc, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if I should actually be checking emails/social media on open Wi-Fi networks while abroad.

Hi-5 has changed a lot since I was a kid. Like, what happened to all the old crew? Even the Wiggles haven’t changed that much.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Phineas and Ferb, it’s this: you can do whatever the hell you want, just as long as you don’t get caught.

No one says “ta” here, it’s always “thank you”. Even “thanks” is rarely used.

I honestly have no idea how I’m going to get these 70+ unposted tweets out of Tweetbot and into some blog post or something.

No idea what to make of this. Do Malaysians suffer from the same coffee addiction Westerners do? (Judging from the number of Starbucks stores I saw, I’d say yes.)

Currencies/economics are so weird. MYR 100 lets you buy as much stuff as AUD 100 does, if you’re buying in the same currency.

But then you do the currency conversion and suddenly your MYR 100 is only about AUD 35, and your AUD 100 is now MYR 280. Like, whoa.

My gran’s place is a black hole for mobile reception. Edge-only downstairs, and then patchy HSDPA upstairs. With most carriers, too =/

Cousins actually thought Australians had school holidays in summer because it was too hot to go to school, haha

I can’t be the only one that feels digital communication, while convenient, feels so impersonal. Need to find, like, a pen pal or something.

Pretty crazy to think that by the end of the week we’ll be the only cousins in Sitiawan again, with the exception of the one that lives here

Somehow coughed my way into a blood nose, which is a first even for me. Also, ew. Would not recommend.

Of the however many episodes of CSI Miami that don’t feature Amber Lancaster and the two that do, the one episode I watch here features her.

Managed to copy-paste almost 100 unposted Tweets from Tweetbot into Pastebot. Lost a few along the way though 🙁

I get some sort of prize now, right?

Could just be me but security seems kind of lax at KLIA. Only one checkpoint with no-one manning the x-ray machines, hmm.

She made the announcement in two languages, so what kind of person do you have to be to not understand the boarding order?

Oh good, just when I thought I was going to miss out on screaming children on medium length international flights.