Genting Highland 2008

I went to Genting Highland twice last year and surprisingly this year again on last weekend. Since it is a project celebration I never hesitate to step my feet on the hilly resort because it is supposed to be a paid trip. I brought a partner, so I had to pay extra. Not fair.

I took the bus just like last year but did not participate in the treasure hunt organized by the celebration committee. It was a very very long journey because the bus driver happened to love to eat, rest, and stop for toilet breaks. He even stopped for toilet break on the way back at a very dirty gas station. There were 4 toilets and all smelled like unwashed toilets for 365 days. The pungent odor was whoa.. stung the nose and made one can't breath for at least 30 seconds after coming out from the small little room.


This is the view from my hotel room and it was the first time I stayed in a room facing the theme park. I used to always get a room with the window facing another room which I think if both of our windows are opened, I can overhear the couple there doing mushy talks, and maybe more.



On the way up to the peak, after passing Gohtong Jaya, I saw the Gohtong memorial. It was not not there during my previous visits.

All the games and rides in the theme park are still the same, the colours of the structures faded and no one seems to want to take any effort to repaint or refurbish the old rides especially the Super Toboggan which made my butt aching for hours after a ride on it.

I aimed for a relaxing trip meaning no waking up at 7am for breakfast and rushing for the rides and coming back to hotel room to clean up and pack luggage in 10 minutes to check out.

So I did not take the additional package on theme park. I strolled all the pathway in the First World complex and took some photos. Then went back to prepare for the buffet dinner in the evening. Surprisingly when I walked in, durian smell was all over the dining place. Don't hotels always prohibit people from bringing in durians as the odor is more to stink for foreigner to take it?

The indoor ferris wheel..

There is a show called Dreamz which starring white lion, and white tiger. I wanted to watch it in the first place, but considering I need to attend the dinner and it will be pretty late when it ended, I dropped the idea.

The next morning after breakfast, we walked around and came back for hotel for packing and shower.
I remember I didn't enjoy the ride on this because it scared me half to death. It made my heart stopped for many times everytime it swings everywhere and my heart came back thumping after I pleaded it to. That is why I don't enjoy rides. I am not sure what could change it.. I want to learn to love rides, I need lessons.

I will miss this place because it is always chilly up there. I like the temperature which won't burn my brain like on land, now, outside.

The same trip like last year

Rolled to the right and left, left and right.

Again and again.

Exchanged positions from head at the bed end to the other end.

Mind swinging and floating.

It is another dawn.

Sandwiches made.

Cellphone alarm rang at 5.45am.

Gonna go soon, same trip like last year.

Two proud things I did on Sunday

Two things that I did last Sunday and I am proud of them.

FIRST:

The weather was hot during long weekend but thanks to it, I was able to dry up my two pair shoes after washing them using my old toothbrush and some detergent powders. Now my pair of flats don't stink anymore and my tennis shoes are shinning like the first day I wore them. I wanted to wash them for very long but I was lazy to do so until last weekend.

SECOND:

When I was walking in Jusco shopping for groceries in the past weekends, I saw this 3 packets of herbal soup with a packet of chrysantemum for making herbal tea. The name sounds strange to me, Song Kee. But after some persuadation by the forty plus years old promoter, I agreed to try on the product. So last weekend I boiled one packet with a whole chicken bones with extra 2 chicken drumsticks. I added about ten red dates in the pot too and let it boil for 5 minutes then simmered for one and half hour, salt to taste and served with white rice. It is one of the best soup because it doesn't taste bitter and unlike the usual dark black herbal soup which scared me whenever my mom cooked them. Now I have additional soup to make other than the usual "bah kut teh", lotus root with dried squid, corns with chicken and carrots, and a few more... :D

My new member of the kitchen family

This is a new member in the kicthen. I can now make porridge using rice cooker! (I tried out this afternoon and it was good). I used it to cook rice for the first time for today's dinner. Now, I am going to be happy for a short time :)

Beautiful dusk

Yesterday about 7.30pm, I witnessed one of the most beautiful dusk I ever seen before. The scenery was in front of my house, coloured the sky with juices squeezed from oranges and mangoes. It also looks like the world is going to end... I guess this is how it looks like when the time comes.

Sad and despair.

Lunch at windy place on hot Saturday

It is usual hot in the afternoon. Lunch at windy, shaded under big trees. It is cheap and cooling despite the hot sun. The place is selling pan mee.

I overheard a conversation between a teenage boy with his mom. This is a translated version.

Mom: What do you want to eat? thin, thick, big, small, soup or dry?

Son: I want the one with "hot plate" (My expression is like this -__-''' when I heard he said "thiek pan")

Mom: (Pretend doesn't hear anything)

Son: i want "yee fook mee" ? (He he. Is he alright? Has he ever eaten there before? He looks like someone who stays in the flat nearby)




Before going back, I bought this "mua chi" from an uncle selling the food on motorbike. I only know about the existing of this "mua chi" few years ago.

Volunteery, Beaching & Hiking

On last Monday my colleagues at work place had this teambuilding at Pantai Kerachut. I remember the last teambuilding was paintball and I did not played. Now this time round I am eager to show my complete strength to hike up the hill and pick up most of the rubbish at the beach. OK. This time, we are going to do some volunteery service on behalf of Intel. We will clean the beach and up the hiking trail when we supposed to hike all the way up the hill and down to the clean beach where "some" turtles will come to give birth at the right season, Pantai Kerachut.

Everybody arrived at the national park at about 9.30 in the morning car-pooling in a cars. We registered ourselves (wrote our name and signed. that's all which took more than half an hour because the number of people are too many) and the committee distributed the lunch pack. Mine was spicy deluxe chicken from McD.



After a little briefing from the organizing committee, we proceeded to our own team and started shouting some weird slogan. Luckily we have the baba Leonard in the team, that's how we got the ole ole a a slogan so quickly.


Group photo as usual without the photographer and everyone started walking picking up rubbish whenever we saw one.



Some people spotted a huge jellyfish and were making fuss about it. Hehe. I walked over and joined, happily managed to get Chor Chen to capture a good picture with the jellyfish. It was so big and transparent, still alive, buried halfly in the sand.



I was so eager to clean up the beach and saw this Milo 3 in 1 packet floating on the water. I slowly moved a step front and stepped my right leg near to the water. It sank! My leg went in and stucked there. I was struggling to pull it out but failed. I was panic for a moment and shouted "hey, I can't get my leg out". Some people came and helped out. So do the photographers who thought this will make a great picture. -_-'''.


My leg actually went in deeper by time. So I got to do something. I released my foot from my beloved sandal and took it out. Voila! My leg was safe. But I need to save my sandal too, so I shove my hand into the hole that my leg made and pulled my sandal with all my mighty strength. I was worried I might break it and felt so excited when I retrieved my sandal out of the sand. Now I have 1 muddy leg, 1 muddy sandal and 2 dirty hands.




I went to a stable hard surface near the water and washed a little accompanied by Leonard and Xiao Wei (very loving couple. hehe). I continued hiking with the rest of the people, most of them already ran up the hill. I really mean ran. I was almost the tail of the team and we walked very slowly stopped every a while to rest. I grasped for breath and was getting hard time to breath also the heavy backpack did not help. I had 1 lunch and 2 bottles of water in my backpack causing my back a little ache.


When some people decided to give up hiking up, I asked Soek Junn if we should follow them. We thought it for 5 seconds and made up our mind to go down because we were more than happy when heard that we could go to the other side of the hill to Pantai Kerachut by boat. But going down the hill took us some time too.

I washed my sandals and legs when I got down at the stream, with Chor Chen the photographer following me hoping to get another great photo when I fell into the water.

After some negotiation by the boss, 8 of us went onto a boat. We were thinking that we will be the first group to reach Pantai Kerachut and can show off by hiding the fact that we actually took the boat. =)


But I was surprised when all of them already at the beach when we reached. Hehe.

They were jealous of us. See their grumpy and unwelcoming face? =P


We all ate our food and rested a while. Then had the usual teambuilding activities ; games. We did kite making and creating a "project" using materials provided to safe keep an egg from broken in a "very" high free fall.

So happy that our kite was the first one to fly up the sky. It was over our expectation. Our kite was different from the rest because we used the colour paper on the wrong side. It turned out to be white instead of the right side which is green.

I did not help much in flying the kite because I have no experience. Haha.

After that, we walked to a nearby place to see some tiny turtles and went home in boats. I was exhausted (from the hike), dehydrated (very hot sun), wet (from the heavy rain while we were going back in boat), and tired (talked too much).

On the way to happiness?

I am desperate to know how the path in front of me should lie. I see branches at every junction and all leads to different destinations. There is a sea of happiness in front of me but I am not sure which path should I take to reach there.

I like the weekend at home, do nothing except watching series for 18 hours a day. If I can withstand all the 18 hours, I can finish the whole 20 episodes series. Always in a few episodes, there will be an evil guy who will spoil my mood and kills my overall happiness while watching. Also the good people inside the drama 100% can't see the real colour of the bad guy until the climax of the series. I will start swearing inside my heart that this bad guy should hit the wall and die. In real life, this bad guy really exists depends on if you can pick him out from the masked crowd. I watched Ah Long Limited on last Saturday and I felt I had wasted my few hours sitting in front of laptop because this movie is so lousy. There is no pretty girl or interesting scene except for the silly and unacceptable jokes.

I like the weekend at home where I can experiment many different cooking recipes. The best is I am presented with chic kitchen appliances and a full set of Corningware bowls and plates. I don't mind if God drops me an ice cream maker too so I can savour myself with home made ice cream in burning hot 40 degree sunny afternoon. I want white kitchen cabinets but I worry it will turn yellowish by time. So let's change it to non-white, probably, if approved.

I know this sound crazy, but I like to own a sewing machine. I want to make my own curtains, lacy baby dress for my niece and many others which I saw in a book in Borders two weeks ago. It comes handy too when I need to mend any broken stitches or torn clothes and make a little alteration to my wardrobe pieces.

I like the feeling of going home after work to my own home sweet home. Turn on the air conditioner when the day is hot. Use water heater when I need to bathe and it is icy cold in the morning. I like to have beautiful nest where I can rest after the hard day outside.

So you see these are some of my happiness I am thinking to have. Wish me to achieve them as soon as possible. I already took my first step by redeeming a rice cooker.

Hot

It is hot, VERY hot and EXTREME hot. I feel itchy, itchy and itchy. I am having headache. It caused pain at my right ear, just like needle piercing me. It is so hot that can kill. I have to rush out to Queensball Mall to save my life. I think I am going to faint if stay in the house. I don't think I feel like this last year. I never feel this hot when I was in primary school, secondary school and at home. These two years the weather is getting really bad. The condition is turning chronic this year (TODAY). I feel like shouting out everytime my ear giving me the pain sign, so I am checking my symptoms with my younger sister who is doing her medical degree in The Down Under and I think it is hard to diagnose my problem because I can't even remember which side of the ear I always feel pain. It is so nice now is winter there. Hate the weather in Malaysia. I hope we have four seasons in a year, so I can play the snow and on the heater. I never switch on the heater in Folsom before. Hahaha.. Even when outside was so cold, I switched on the AC instead of heater. :P I think I didn't experience the real coldness at the time I spent in US because it was almost end of winter. okay. It begins raining now. I wish the rain will continue until tomorrow morning. I guess all the kaki bola will watch Euro 2008 final today and tomorrow come in to work late with eyes like panda bear. :D

Chef, food and the fair

Today after lunch in Japin I suddenly thought of the properties fair that I read somewhere few weeks ago. So I decided to go to Pisa to have a look. But soon after I reached the junction near Pisa, I wonder if the fair is real there because I don't see many cars there. Once I walked into the arena I am surprise that there is a cooking competition being held.

Although it was not as exciting as Iron Chef show, but at least this is the first time I watch a real time competition. The place where all the chefs were stationed in was not spacious enough. I feel it is more comfortable if it was held in somewhere bigger like the place where the PC fair is annually.

I know nobody that is competiting but I stood there watching for a short time and took some random photos. So I might as well share it here since they already in my cellphone.

This is the table where the sauces and ingredients were placed. The contestants can get what they need from this table. This guy in the photo was picking some stuff I don't know what.

This table has all the cutlery, plates, bowls and glasses.

This table is where they put the vegetables. I think some are not so fresh anymore.

First hour is up. Every team need to hand up their appetizer. All the chefs look very young, I think I only saw one uncle.

Busy chefs. The nearest guy is one of the judges who walked around to oberve the contestants at the same time writting something on his paper.


I spent some generous time walking through all the food booths ( I think it is a food fair) and took all the food and drink samples that were offered. There was too many types of food there, even bak kua. I bought two cans of button mushroom, RM2 each.

Then there is this bee's man at the honey booth. He just sat there and let all the bees stick to his body. I personally think he is too young for the job. Normally I see uncle in this kind of glass box. This is the first time I see a young boy doing the bee performance. Those bees don't seem to bite him and another lady who scooped the bees and put them on the guy's body. I see this many times before but I still find it interesting.

At last I saw where the properties fair is. Nothing much to see, so little booths. I went back feeling hot and sweaty so tired. By the way, I saw Jess at the Bukit Tambun houses booth.

wedding (1)

This year is a hot year for marriage. Aihui said three in a year is enough because we all are too tired in becoming jimui. So anybody that wants to get married, please register with her and this year is all booked. Please postpone your intention to next year's slot. :)

Last weekend was Yen Ping's big day. Her wedding is not the first one I attended among our classmates. She is very pretty on that day. OK every other day too. Everyone of us wore white. White dress, skirt, pants or tops. Earlier we were told to wear yellow but due to the market has lost all it's yellow dresses and skirts demand and they don't want to sell it anymore, Yen Ping changed the colour to white. I still have the dress I put on my sister's wedding, so that will be my attire on the special day. Now this is the second time I am wearing the dress!

We arrived at 8.30am at the bride house to make some preparation for the bridegroom and his heng tai(s). Some arrived slightly later about 9 to 9.30am. I only took the photos of girls so I miss out taking photos of other things :P

Me with the bride and little William. This boy talks a lot.

After the praying and tea serving at the bride house, everybody rushed to the bridegroom new house. The house has one pink room and one blue room. Even the decoration and displays are in matching colours.

Of course we won't miss taking photo in the room. Pink !

Blue for boy!

and the master bed room :)


In the evening, I attended the wedding dinner :D.






Photos again

The couple looks like just stepped out from Tien Hou Kong registering for marriage. haha.

A group photos with the ladies. My classmates :D

Seriously I don't know why are these guys hijacking our photo session. Weird people. See the tomato head?

Volleyball craze

For the past week, I have been stuffing myself with volleyball matches after work. Not that I play, I watched. Some of the days, my head suffered from headache or dizziness after cheering and shouting for my team. But at last on the final match, me and Huey Fen were chosen as a few of the best supporters for volleyball. Although they chose us, we could not get any prize for it because we did not win anything. We were given 3 attempts to win a voucher but the challenge that was assigned to us is almost impossible. Nevertheless, I had good times.


Seeing these guys played brought up one of the sweet memories in my childhood days. My mom used to on the television for me every weekdays at 4.30-5pm and weekends on 8.30am and Saturday 7.30 Doraemon. In one of the days in the week, I think the 4.30pm show, I liked this Japanese series very much. It is a drama series of a bunch of Japanese girls playing volleyball with special and powerfull skill like the Somerset attack and so on. hahhaa.. You can see the girl jumping with a few spins and spike the ball like in comic. I did not remember the tittle of the drama so I googled it. At last I found the name. It is called Moero Attack.



It was aired in our television about my early primary school days. I was about seven of eight then. But when I read about Moero attack, it is said to be famous in Japan at the end of 1970's but only came to Malaysia in late 80's. We are so outdated!

Up Up Up

The sudden hike of petrol price in Malaysia resulted massive jam everywhere at roads heading toward petrol stations. So I had to take a reroute through another road to get to my house to avoid the long queue. Now it is RM2.70 per litre where by right is still at lower rate compared to our neighbouring countries' rate. But how about the few tenth K-s or even hundreds K-s extra of our car price compared to them? We can roughly use the overpaid money of our car to pay for our own petrol usage for about 10 years. Why not they just take away the dirty trick to cheat the people's money where we can use the money to buy petrol for 10 years. Today everyone is calculating will they still manage to cover the expenses and not overburden themselves when the price of petrol becomes RM2.70. It is still manageable if goverment rebate us RM625 every year. But what I have heard is the price will go up to RM4 per litre this August and a friend told me that the petrol expenses in a year will take up his one month salary. This is ridiculous. Whatever I can think of is no matter how much the company gave us SMA for the past two years, I think it is now being offset to zero. We are all back to our living standard at three years ago. We gained nothing from working in these period. Lucky to HH for buying her dream house in time before the petrol price hike is announced. Looks if everything is to increase by forty percent, I think the houses now will shoot right up to the level of where if only one engineer working, he can't be able to buy a house unless supported by extra income. So people, pair up with an engineer so you can buy a decent house to stay in.

I had really bad headache today. Almost everyday. Today is the worst. I can't stand the hot weather which wakes me up many times at night. I sat up and rub my hand on my greasy body and felt uncomfortable. Rolled around or dragged myself into the bathroom for another round of shower then crawled back into bed. It happened for like three weeks now. Other than the stupid work, the weather doesn't help. I hope so much to sleep in air conditioned room. But right now that brainless said to increase the electricity rate. Means we have to save in using the electricity too. I wonder why that no one in the house is using aircon, we use fans and with small fridge. The electric bill is RM100+.

This country is really not worth to stay in. We work so much for nothing. No wonder many people flocking the tiny land below us. They have better security, cleaner environment and no corruption! Probably we should all pack our bag and escape this place. 100% OK ? :)

Weddings!

I am so happy that the design at last linked after working on it for 2 days. I started to hate my job. I had sleepless nights to reach this stage and it really took almost all of my time. I hate the hack and patch and repair work. I am feeling so weak and tired since I came back to Malaysia. Nothing seems to motivate me.

But still I made some time to attend my dear friend's marriage registration yesterday afternoon. Both the married couple are my university coursemates. It was a short session and we spent almost two hours in Hardwicked chit-chatting and tea afterwards. Many friends from secondary school and university are tying knot this year. There were already a few last year but the number flocks this year because many of us has passed the age 25. I talked to a friend last week and she told me she married her husband because she knew he is the one she wants to marry when she first met him. So sweet.. That is how they hooked up so quickly.

Getting married is something really big in one's life. How can you make sure that you meet the right one? I am not into divorcing and I am sure everybody isn't too. So what is there to measure the compatibilty of you two.. ? Just like what the lady in the registration place was saying, both of you came from family of different background. It is true that the way you live, the way you were brought up are all different. It is the matter of how you compromise with each other and being considerate in everyday life to make two people staying under one roof. Also how the two can plan their future together, like where to settle down or when to have first kid. Anyway, all these came into my mind since so many people getting married this year. So I have to give a lot angpao this year :D

There are two weddings to attend this month but I can only choose one as they are both on the same date. I have a light yellow dress to shop for the wedding ceremony, I have not start seaching yet though.

oh weddings... Must be a big hassle. In some weddings, I think neither the bride not the bridegroom know some people that attended their wedding dinner. They are maybe their parents' friends or business friends. I think I would like a private wedding , maybe just attended by family and close friends. Probably a travel wedding will be nice, relaxing and can be very romantic. :) Time to work and stop dreaming..

Nothing much happened

I have nothing to much to tell lately except that I made some cookings throughout the week to satisfy my need. It sounds weird when I said satisfy my need by cooking. I like cooking a lot and I wish to have a big nice kitchen. It would be great to share this with someone special or to cook for someone special. I did not take much photos but there is one that I took on the first weekend I came home. I sms my two friends to bring their partner but too bad they were too occupied and already had their plan. I cooked my favourite "mee hun ge" and it tasted exactly like always, far better than the one sold in stalls in Penang, is the sweetest and tastiest soup with the softest and smoothest pieces of the dough. Yummy..

So the week filled with a few big feasts which are the project tapeout celebration, teambuilding and a simple farewell for my dearest friend.

The farewell dinner was held in nando's. I was the odd one who is not in their usual gang who joined this dinner. I had to as I missed her previous farewell dinner with my lunch gang. My face is actually smaller then hers but she always pushes me to the front whenever we take photo so mine look a little bit broader in this photo. Don't get cheated!!

A group photo with the rest.. Han Beng was there too :) Shiang lan baked lemon cheese cake but hehe.. I do not want upload the photo because I look ugly in it.

The teambuilding was a walkhunt in Queensbay and followed by a buffet dinner at TGIF. We walked so much that I think the walk is equivalent to four times of walk in shopping. I felt so tired of walking after my last hike in Muirwoods. :P

Who knows that my team actually won the third prize in the hunt out of eighteen teams. Not bad huh? :P

Yeah! Going to office tomorrow and get the hamper distributed. I want this this this and that that that. :D

Old photos

I was back at home during Wesak Day last weekend. I browsed through my old photo album and saw some old photos which were taken back in secondary school. They make me think that I am not a kid anymore. I kept short hair during school days for easier maintainance. The weather in Malaysia is so hot that I did not want to have wet sweaty hair every day in classroom because I took public transport to school. Back in those days, it wasn't as hot as now. I think the world weather changed so much that now it gives me headache everytime I walk under the glaring hot sun.

This is the photo of the Interact Club committees taken for the school annual magazine. I think this is in year 1998 (Form 4) or 1997 (Form 3).


Class photo of 5Sc1 year 1998!!! Spot me!!!



This photo was taken in year 1999 (Form 5) if I remember correctly. It was one of the pendidikan jasmani class where many girls did not bring proper clothes for game. We just walked around the campus and snapped some photos together. I was wearing the blue house t-shirt :P. So lame. We had blue, yellow, red and green houses. So blue house was always in the 3rd place out of 4 houses .

This was taken in Form 5 too, final year in school. As seen in the photo, the prefects were not wearing any tie anymore because we had already "retired" from our post getting ready for SPM exams.

Seems so far away from school now, but I can still remember my seat in class. I know who sat beside me and everyone else in class.

Post US Syndrome

I don't feel like blogging at all since I came back. I have to write this or else no one will want to drop by here again because I never update anything to my blog. I am lazy to attach any photos today :). But the main reason is I can't find the "add picture" button to click on this template. Weird.

When I first came back, my first impression was Penang looks wear-off. I know it sounds strange but I really think that way. Everything looks old and not mantained properly. There are holes on the roads and the rails and poles are rusty. I need to slowly adapt to the "scenery" here.

The big difference between US and Malaysia is the sky. The sky is very high up and blue there but it is lower and gray here. Also it is sooooooooooooo hot and humid in Malaysia. I need to bathe 2 times at night before I can sleep because it is very hot and my skin feels so itchy. My skin is having a terrible change to adapt from dry to sweaty air. It cried to be pampered. So I did 2 face masks in 4 days.

Not forgetting that we going to have long weekend this week, hooray!!! If not because of Xwei, I would not know next Monday is Wesak Day.

Somehow the overall mood this week is averagely fine. I feel slow, strange and moody all the times, drowsy in day time and sleepy at 8pm every night. Hope it gets better next week after home trip.

Heading back home

In another 2 hours I will be boarding the domestic plane to LAX. Then another 6 hours wait till the next flight to SIngapore. The whole trip will take roughly 24 hours. So meet you guys soon!

Good Bye My Friend

A post dedicated to a very demanding girl that I ever know; and she is someone special who came into my life about 2 years ago. She says hi to me everytime because she wants to make sure that I remember to bring home her baggus but I know she just want to find something to talk to me. It has been long since we chatted for hours in IM and spending time in the park. Actually in real case, we weren't spending any time in the park together most of the time. We just informed each other that we will go down to jog and happened to meet each other in the half field. One terrifying thing about her is ermmm.. not her.. is her dog. Elmo is a cute little baby boy but I am still can't get used to touch furry creature yet. Give me some time, woman! When I am ready to touch him, I will. I won't be seeing your handsome black myVi in the carpark anymore when you left. I think I will miss your car but I guess the emotional feeling that can be replaced by looking at tze yee's car. I know this post is kind of messy but I am writting down what comes into my mind now. There seems too many things that I knew about her since we know each other. She cooks, and I cook, but we cook different dishes and hers are absolutely tastier and better. If J has the money, ask him to sponsor you a bakery :) I would love to have free cakes, buns and cookies when I drop by KL next time. I have not meet the naked guy in your friendster yet, so if it happens to have the chance, show me ok? The real naked guy... I really wish you to have happy life ahead and that you will love your new job. In the future, you do not have to do the 5 hours travelling back home to meet J every weekends. I need you sometimes but I don't know how to get you in the middle of the night. (I sounded so lesbian :S) Wait for me to come back, and we will go for a meal before you leave the horrible place but with lovely people like me.