Have you got your free flights yet?

AirAsia is giving out RM0.00 fare again. 1 million tickets to give away for traveling period between Apr 1, 2009 and Jul 31, 2009. Booking period starts today, August 26, 2008 at 12.00am till August 31, 2008.

I've booked mine for Gold Coast next year with a bunch of bros from da hood. Woo hoo!!!

p/s: This is not an advert, just couldn't contain my joy.

My Invasion on The Land of Labuan

I've just return from Pulau Labuan. A lot of people still don't know that Labuan is part of Federal Territory (Wilayah Persekutuan) together with Putrajaya and KL. Labuan is home to my sweetie and this is the first time I'm there. It's nearest to Brunei and Kota Kinabalu.Labuan is a duty-free island exactly like Langkawi. Dr M tried to encourage offshore finance in this island in the 90s hence it became a duty-free island and home to almost all the banks that exist in Malaysia today. You would ask, why such a small island and so many banks, that's because all the international banks have to have an office or something like that in Labuan before they were allowed to step into any other part of Malaysia to open a branch. But most of these banks opened a proxy office in Labuan since it has such a small population.

I've had some tight schedule during my first trip to my sweetie's beloved home. First two days were about buying offering stuff for Qing-Ming (tomb sweeping). My sweetie's dad left them a couple of years back, so it's about buying some paper made slippers, crocodile brand polo-t, cigarette and millions of hell-money. Hehehe... It's really fun.

A few culture-shock that I have includes:

1. The thick mee-hoon (they called it the China, "Gui Ling" mee-hoon)
2. The mandarin word "ba" that is used at the end of every sentence, juz like our "ma"
3. The side parking that I always see the car enter the parking spot head first instead of butt first
4. Related to item #3, since you enter side parking with the head first, 95% of cars in Labuan park their butt outside the line
5. About 50% of the people there are Phillipinos and Indonesians
6. Majority of the Malays in Labuan speaks in Bahasa Indonesia, even though they are Malaysia citizen
7. The road signs, traffic lights, lamp posts and even the trees in Labuan are shorter than usual

Then sweetie brought me around the whole island on the remaining 2.5 days in Labuan. Love that place. If you think of buying a bottle of plain water at RM2, you might as well buy a bottle of Heineken at RM2.60.

Took quite some pictures of sunsets and beaches. Will post them up once I finish processing and sort them out.

Rojak Entries

Colleague
The colleague whom I wrote about in the previous entry is fine. She gave me a scare, but anyhow she's coping it fairly well. And now she's ready to move on to the next big thing in her life.


eBay and PayPal
I've finally registered for eBay and PayPal. It's a long procedure with the credit card verification and stuff, but seeing all the good price they have online, am drooling now. Yah, even if it includes the shipping cost, some stuff are like 50% cheaper than I can get in Malaysia.


Safari 3.1
It's a new browser developed by Apple. I downloaded it yesterday and got the chance to try it today. I've read some review about it. Overall, the speed and design is really attractive. Some review wrote that it's even better than FireFox. Of coz there's 1 or 2 flaws. So far, a few flaw that I discover is:

1. The font looks damn fat. But the review that I saw warn about it already.
2. Since Steve Job doesn't think Adobe Flash is all good enuff yet, the Safari doesn't come with a Flash plug-in. As almost 90% of the website now contain some sort of Flash (Slideshow from photo hosting website, nuffnang advertisements), I keep having messages popping-up and say I need to get the plug-in and it's getting irritating for every page that I load, I get the same pop-up message. (refer to the screenshot attached below)
3. Normally when I'm writing entry in blogspot, I will use Ctrl+U because there isn't any button for me to underline. Safari doesn't allow it.

Hiatus
I am going to Labuan for vacation from Friday onwards. Won't be back until Monday. Yup, it's sweetie's hometown and it's my first time going there. :P Don't know how it looks like, but hopefully can catch a few nice pix there. So, all being said I might not blog while I'm there.

Streamyx
Seems like Streamyx has caught "The Great Malaysia Traffic Jam" virus as well. The connection has been so slow since Tuesday. I called up their call centre on Tuesday to hear if there's any announcement about some problem over at their side. The funny thing was, when I called up and select "English" as the language, there wasn't any announcement. Then when I accidentally pressed "Bahasa Malaysia" as the language I got an announcement for traffic problems in somewhere in Pahang and also Setapak (which they wrongly announced it as Setapak, Selangor).

www.batupahat.org

Stumble upon www.batupahat.org while I was searching online aimlessly. A website about my hometown, what would be better than I promote about it.

I must take my hats off for this guy who has take up the effort to pay tribute to the place where he comes from. Kudos!!! Put a link on the side to this website.

Wanna what to eat and places to go when you visit your friend in Batu Pahat the next time? Here's the place.

It's been a while

Haven't been updating my blog for quite a while. Since the last blog, a lot has been happening. I've got my PSP, that explains my laziness in updating my blog while I am at home... Hehehe... Then it's the work. Been really busy with work in the office and what am I working on was to get Su Chin back and Mei into the department. Yup, my lovely colleague that went to Shanghai is back. After all the dramatic endless farewell dinner, she's back in Malaysia and back as (probably) my boss. Hehehe... glad to have her back today into the office.

Another busy stuff that was occupying my working life is the move. I'm no longer a Cyberjayan. I've officially moved to KL today. Yup, office has moved, not the whole office, juz my department. It's great to finally being able to work in the town. As usual, there's always pros and cons. Pay extra for the fuel and car park, but save an hour everyday from travelling. And I finally got a desk where there's windows nearby, actually it's everywhere.

Now, my department is a team of 5. And few more to come. It's going to be different from it used to be, but there are always pros and cons to everything. So, I am eager to see what's installed for the future.

Then it was my Hong Kong vacation on Aug 8-12. Was really nice, except it's a group of friends which stands at 11 people includes me and sweetie. It was a bit chaotic. Nonetheless, everyone went shopping crazy. The sales and stuff is irresistable.

Anyhow, that's the quick update... Had watched a lot of movies, almost complete my 8+1 movies to watch this summer. Will update on that in a bit. Now, back to my PSP. Hehehe...

Free Trip to Hong Kong

Well... actually it's not totally free. It's Air Asia's yearly 1 million free tickets promotion again.

Kudos to low-cost carrier!!!

If u can see the lowest part of the ad above, only members are alerted to get the free seats 24 hours ahead of others. I'm one of them. Actually got tip off by a Adrian and AhGer. Cost we have been planning to go to Hong Kong this year. Yah yah, I've been there for a few times alredy, but that was all about training and staying in the hotel. This trip, gonna save a lot of $$ to go shopping.

So, 12 of us got ourselves 12 tickets to/fro Macau which cost RM250 only (fuel charges and airport tax). And I helped my mum and her friends to get them tickets to Bali for RM175 each only. Hahahaha!!!

Btw, you are wondering how come Macau got to do with Hong Kong rite? We will take a ferry from Macau to Hong Kong. Cost direct flight from KL-HK cost at least RM2.4k. See the difference? Yeahh!!! Go book your flights now!!!

The Bandits of Pantai Klebang

DBKL Rubbish Truck aka Tai

SebadohPop aka Neoh and Graham CORKson aka Andrew

Great-Wife-To-Be aka AhGer

The Stoner aka WY and Pikachu aka Choo

The Banker aka Aaron

The Pornographer aka @ptimistic

Lawyer Buruk aka Lawyer Lim

1-2-5 Posing Competition

Group Category

Single Category

and...

THE CHAMPION

Food Photos from the Historical Land

Arrival Dinner - Rojak Style Lok Lok

Hot and Spicy Lok Lok

Look at the variation of Lok Lok and the longkang-look-alike rojak kuah

Boon Heng, Chiat Lin and Sweetie @ The infamous Hainanese Chicken Rice of Malacca

Yup, this is the Hainanese Chicken with its famous rice ball.

With such delicious food, we finish it in no time.

We call him DBKL aka Rubbish Collector

Now you see what I mean?

All full and ready to go.

Back from the Pearl of the Oriental

I'm back to the office. It was a very busy training indeed. Although I spent 10 nights in Hong Kong, I could only find about 2 hours to go shopping. But I kinda like that place.

Hong Kong is very crowded. All buildings are built tall and side by side like dominos. One thing I like bout that place? The ultra-convenient train system. You can get anywhere by train (MTR).

Another thing that attract me a lot, is the bar, pubs and restaurant. The trainers brought us to the "Peak" one of the day. Although it sounds like a place up high in the mountain, it also got a lot of shopping complex up there. We went to Cafe Decco. Trust me, if you are at Hong Kong, visit the Cafe Decco at the Peak. You will see the best Hong Kong scenery of all. But of course, sometimes it depends on your luck whether the sky is clear enough to see the skyline.

Pubs. We went to our company's headquarters in Queens Road one of the night after class. We need our trainers to tag us in and reached at the infamous "Level 28". Why is it infamous? Because it's a bar made specially for the employees of the building only. Still we have to pay for the drink ourselves, the ambience and the after-work people drinking there, it's phenomenon.

Then it's the also infamous, "Lan Kwai Fong". Who stretch of pubs and restaurants filled with "kwai lou" (foreigners). It's like Jln P. Ramlee (Live Centre) in KL. Except that Lan Kwai Fong close the street for the pedestrian to walk on. It's very happening.

Another interesting destination for drinking and eating, "Knutsford Terrace". It's just 5 minutes walk away from my hotel. It's fabulous. There isn't too much of "kwai lou" there, but it definitely has the ambience of quiet relaxing drinks.

So, this is my update of my Hong Kong trip. Nothing much to talk about.

In Hong Kong

I'm still in Hong Kong for training. There will be no updates.

FREE Wi-Fi Hotspots in Hong Kong unfound

I will soon embark on my training journey to Hong Kong. As someone who can't live without internet, I google for FREE Wi-Fi hotspots in Hong Kong. To my surprise, there is none. There are a lot of hotspots around in Hong Kong. But FREE ones, is zero.

Now I feel fortunate to be in Malaysia. Coz Starbucks with approximately 70 outlets in Malaysia have FREE wi-fi in all the outlets. This still exclude those other restaurants, cafes and food court that provide wireless connection everywhere you are. You will never be disconnected from the cyber world.

Disappointed...

3 Trips to Hong Kong

It's confirmed. I will be traveling to Hong Kong for my Six Sigma Black Belt training in 3 different weeks beginning August and ends by end of this year.

Yeah!!!!


p/s: Thanks Su Chin, for bringing this issue to the attention of my boss and sacrificing her training allowance.

Life's little detour

Here's some of the pictures I took during my trip to Kolkata. Most of it are pictures of my hotel room, it's because it is the only beautiful thing that you can see in Kolkata. Hahaha...

My bed in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Kolkata. The blue little sofa by the bed had made me a couch potato for 2 weeks. With Discovery Channel, Nat Geo and History Channel, I basically spent my dinner and supper in this room. With the companion of an ashtray and a cup of coffee, there goes my nightly activity.

My small little home office. Fully equipped with wired-broadband and speaker phone.

Bathtub of which I spend a lot of time dipping in while watching the tv and reading my book.

Allright... alright... I know it's all about my room. Here's something else.

Look closely at the poverty of this country. By the sides of this, stood the building of my company and others. This makes one wonder, what enables a country to grow so fast but the gap between the rich and the poor is still so huge.

As some of my colleague who was there would say, these scenes stir up their sense of fortunate to be living in Malaysia, which is quite true. But to me, these people might not have to be homeless if their goverment would be able to plan better for them as well, looking at the economic growth in India.

I truely believe Malaysia was once the same as well, but it is what it is today partly due to some of the visionaries and leaders of our country that were almost forgotten.

Friends of the foreign soil

In another 30 minutes, I will be leaving this centre. It’s happy that will be able to see my sweetie again after 2 weeks. But still it’s kind of sad in another sense, for having to leave the new friends I have made here.

Samir – The strict boss (not to me), that is forever helpful to me. There’s nothing that I can’t go to him to ask a favour or talk to.

Shreel – The man who taught me what “turgi” means. As mischief as I am. Great to hang around with and talk to too.

Manish – Plump guy, with great sense of humour. Obviously shown me how Dosa (Thosai) can represented in a humourous sign language. And his help to get the tiny little Coke that is so hard to get.

Chumki – The gentle and thoughtful gal that is always asking, “Do you have anything for your lunch?”, “Do you want to have some tea?”, “Did you have a this”, “Did you have that”.

Aushdeep – Great drinking and smoking buddy. Always the one that would keep me company for a quick puff.

Disha – The sweetest lady I meet over here. She’s funny and cheerful with a smiley face all the time. No wonder she was previously working in a hotel.

Ratna – The boldest lady I’ve met in a conservative country like this. Although I don’t have the chance to hang out with her, but I know she’s a great person to go hang out with.

Thank you everyone, for your kind hospitality. Will forever be thankful. Hope will be able to see you guys in Malaysia one day.

Not to forget, these are also the people who introduced me the local food like puchka, bidi, mistisukh and buttermilk (yewwww…). I can’t remember which is which now.

1 week into Kolkata

Curry Finally
After a week stay in Kolkata, I finally have my first taste of the all famous “Curry” yesterday. It’s wonderful. The restaurant has such good ambience. The colleagues over here were so helpful and hospitable to bring me around for food even when they does not have a car. Hahaha… Thanks Shreel and Aushdeep (though they know nothing about this blog).


A day with all computers goes wrong
Yesterday I try to logged in my internet banking in Malaysia through the internet here in Kolkata. I was shocked when I was showed with a invalid password error message. I was panicked and tried another few more times, knowing that I remember my password absolutely 100%. But to no avail. Hence, I have little choice but to call back the bank in Malaysia to get my account reactivated. But when I called, I’m required to have my internet banking pin. (Oh my God!!! How many password and pin do I have to remember???) Too bad I forgot my Internet Banking pin and my account is not allowed to be reactivated until I visit my local branch, that is in KL, a few thousand miles from here.

Then it is my Lotus Notes email that I use in the office. It just went dead a few hours before I leave the office. Without that email, I’m basically disconnected from all communications. After the IT staff dropped by and did some reinstallation, they conclude that it is something beyond their reach and have to report it back to the people in Hong Kong and will only have answer for me the next day. Once again, there’s nothing I can do.


Miracle
Today when I came into the office, I saw the IT guy in the lift, that helped me on my Lotus Notes. He explained that the e-mail was down because of a major service downtime in Hong Kong and it is fine already this morning.

For my Internet Banking problem, I thought I might as well give it another try since I will have to fly back a few thousand miles back before I can sort it out. Miraculously, I logged in. Phew!!! Now, at least I still have the banking ability even when I’m in India.

Uniquely Kolkata

I have come across so many things that are unique to Kolkata during my stay here. One of the things that I discovered was that for every 500m of road, there will be a roundabout. This means all housing areas are planned as if it is a tic-tac-toe with every crossing of two straight roads is a roundabout. The housing areas in this century old city is so well structured, and yes I do feel ashamed of Malaysia’s township planning which is so unorganized and you call that first world infrastructure.

Still, Malaysia have some of the state-of-the-art (although vandalized) transportation systems that India is lacked of. At least cab in Malaysia is air-conditioned.

Another culture that is unique to this country is, the practice of honking while driving. Honking as you drive is just like juggling while uni-cycling. If you don’t honk while you drive, it’s just like you don’t hold your steering wheel while you drive. Yes, that is how serious it is. For my 15 mins trip from hotel to the office, the driver will at least honk 20 times during the drive. I just can’t stand laughing in my heart at it. Hahaha…

There you go, uniquely Kolkata…

Shopping at Kolkata

Did some shopping around Kolkata during the weekend. It does not really have as much cheap stuff as it is described before I come here. It just have special or unique stuff that only India can find.

No matter what, there still some really cheap stuff in India. Up till now, I found the cheapest of all is Sony Memory Stick. For a 512mb short memory stick, it cost less than RM100. Hence, I bought 1 for my sweetie’s Sony Ericsson mobile phone.

Other than that, I have bought some really nice shawls for RM20 each for my sweetie and my colleagues as well. I think this are the only things that I found cheap in Kolkata.

Although I was being informed just before I came, that the leather stuff here are cheap. Still I found them not cheap as these are none branded stuff and still cost between RM30-RM60 for a small handbag. Anyway, I’m just being realistic here. The one leather stuff that’s cheap, is the made-to-order leather jacket that cost around RM150. Too bad I’m not a leather fanatic guy.

Although India is a country with a lot of poor people and cheap labour, still the living cost is the same as in Malaysia. 1 room apartment cost as much as RM700 and more.

Taxi price, damn it is just as expensive as it is in KL. Petrol cost RM5+. More expensive than RM1.90 which is in Malaysia. So, stop complaining.

Third Day in Calcutta

This is my third day here in Calcutta. Just have my access to my company email. But still, internet access is very limited. I can't really open up a webpage showing my blog when hundreds of people sitting behind me can see what I type (especially with 21 inch LCD monitor). Hence I have to write this blog through email then paste it into blogspot with real fast screen switching, like illusion.

The flights to Calcutta is a painstaking one. Got off from KLIA to Bangkok was still "ok". But the one from Bangkok to Calcutta is horrendous. First it was the boarding part. Flight was delay, hence everyone that queue up at the gate are advised to have a seat first. Since it's kind of hard to find a seat, I decided to stand on the queue and read my book while doing that. Initially back at about 20th people on the queue, I became at the 2nd spot. I stood and read my book for almost 30 mins and the gate was opened. Little would I know, some of the Indian people's manners are still same as if it's still the year human live on top of the tree. More than 2 of the guys who went looking for seats after the delay announcement, jump back into the queue and actually have the f**king face to tell me that they stood at the front of the queue initially.

That's part one of the bizarre experience. Now part two.
After the horrendous queuing up experience at the gate, I finally got on board the plane and had a sit by the window (I don't know why, but I kept having a sit by the window and it always on top of the wing span). Then there comes a gentleman who wanted to exchange sit with me since his friend is sitting on the only sit beside me. Of course I wouldn't mind since I'm traveling alone and would understand how nice it would be to have someone to chat with on the flight. Hence, I agreed and exchange seat with the guy, who told that is seat is by the aisle (that's wonderful, I have been hoping for a seat by the aisle). But then, when the airstewardess was showing me the seat, it's actually a sandwich seat with 1 seat away from the aisle. I thought to myself then, it's fine since I'm traveling alone and it only takes less than 3 hours.
Little did I know, I was sandwiched in between my worst nightmare. On my left, a centre-bold guy fell asleep snoring so loudly. On my right, a wildly-bearded rugged fella sleep in a position with his left-hand holding up on the back of his head (like women would position when they check themselves for breast cancer) and use his right hand to scratch his armpit. At that moment, I think to myself, what could be worst than hell than this.

Anywhere, that's the pain part. The good part of all is the hotel. I brought the camera, but forgot my cable, so cant's upload the pictures. Anyway, got in the office at 10am this morning with merely 4 hours of sleep. The people here are nice (not like the one in the airport boarding gate, more educated). Some facilities here are extremely better than my office in Malaysia. But still, other than that, not everything is as good as it seems.

Alright for now. Will continue if I have the time.

32.5 hours before Calcutta

In approximately another 32 hours 30 minutes, I will reach the Kolkata Airport. Yah, finally my flights are confirmed. I will leave KLIA at 8.15pm (Malaysia time) tomorrow and reach Kolkata at 12.40am (India time).

It is my first ever business trip out of the country. Kind of getting wobbly right now.

Still it is a new adventure for me. Hopefully I will have access to the internet when I'm in Kolkata to curb my boredom after work.