AirAsia & Us

Just to update that I posted my blogpost on the AirAsia blog on my London trip. Oh, and they've uploaded a video of both of us chanting the "Have you flown AirAsia lately?" clip, right after the professional clip done by The Saturdays. Click on Media at the bottom right and then click on the 4th video.

The Perth winner managed to escape with only him doing the talking in the next video. Cheh.

Speaking of that, U2 telecasted their concert last Sunday night on YouTube. Awesome!

My 1st Blood Donation!

At the start of this year, I told myself I’d find an opportunity to overcome my fear of giving blood. Some opportunities came by but somehow the timing wasn’t right. So when I saw some nurses setting up deck chairs at the Masjid Jamek LRT on the way to work last week, I went ahead and just did it.

Expecting to feel faint, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was fine, just with tingly fingers after a few hours, nothing serious. So how was it? It felt great! To be able to contribute, to experience a great nurse who left hardly a scar and really, that it wasn’t as painful as feared! Just don’t look at the needle, it’s larger than the normal jabs you get.


Yay! Maybe a yearly affair?

Waikato Weeks - Uni Mate Meets

It’s been a fantastic 2 weeks with 2 uni mates who visited from Sydney and Auckland. It gave us locals the excuse to round everyone up and meet for food. One strange thing to note is that we hardly meet unless someone from outstation/overseas comes back then only we catch up. So it’s a good thing we have friends living overseas so we locals can meet when they visit.

Heck, for some locals, we meet them less often than we do the “foreigners”. Spotted here is a rarely seen creature, my ex-housemate, who’s been hiding in some cave hence his pale skin.

Anyway, for the span of the last fortnight, we have had 4 eating sessions. It’s exciting when someone has done well and it’s astounding when they remain humble exactly like how they were back in uni. So many of them are shaping up to be the movers and shakers of their chosen field. Meeting them is like being given an extra boost of adrenalin, you leave feeling energized.

Some have gone off to do out-of-this-world stuff. Kelabit Language Preservationist? Okay, he’s my uni mate’s brother, so not counted. Or wait, didn’t he do some studies in flying planes in Hamilton or Auckland? Ah, I believe every Malaysian who has a Kelabit friend is truly blessed, believe me, they’re amazingly interesting folk. Or maybe it’s just this family.

Sorry, I always seem to digress when it comes to Kelabits. Anyway, I truly appreciate these friends because from what I hear, not many uni mates still keep in touch or worse, some still hiss and scratch when they bump into each other.

So here’s a cheers to my uni mates who, after a decade, are still the same bunch of supportive, interesting and humble folks. Now go study in New Zealand while I plan when to visit the kampung of the Kelabits - Bario.

Hunting

Besides travelling every weekend, we've also been busy looking for a house since we returned from our London/Paris trip. Currently, we have a lovely place in Bandar Botanic, really strategic to amenities, great jogging track along a lake, beautiful landscaping. Unfortunately, we work in KL and it takes us 1.5 hours excluding increasing tolls along the way. We tried that for the first 2 years of our marriage but found we were absolutely exhausted by the time we reached home at 10pm onwards.

So we've been looking for a house around Paramount, Sea Park, SS2, Chow Yang... somewhere near my parents, church, accessible roads to work, amongst other requirements. We've had a lot of comments from huge restoration cost to is there a real need not to be a nomad but we've really thought through about this and are quite firm on our decision.

It has been rather interesting to walk into other people's house and try to imagine what they were thinking when they built a particularly weird structure. It's also been stressful because some houses were going for really cheap that area but still beyond our budget or we would like to have some time to consider. And people were making offers within the afternoon itself!

My parents have been a tremendous help, combing through the classifieds, calling and sieving through potentials, setting appointments on weekends for promising ones. We're excited about looking for our next home but also concerned about financials.

Oh well, we just need to commit this in prayer. And if you know any houses for sale around this area, do give me a buzz.

Management Jargon

Been uninspired to blog. I usually try to keep this blog to remember happy things and it's been quite trying to look at the silver lining. Anyway, here's a Dilbert cartoon that made me laugh because I was in a meeting once where this guy kept saying exactly this:

Rompin Raya

During the Raya holidays, we contributed to the crawl along the Seremban highway to get to the Summerset Resort near Kuala Rompin. To be honest, I thought Rompin was located to the east of Johor, but found out later that it is in Pahang, south of Kuantan. It took us 7 hours to reach there, couple with the Raya jam towards Seremban.

Fantastic billboard. Certainly caught MY attention!

Bleaarrghh...

It was a weekend away with the Youth Leaders of my church. Summerset Resort, unfortunately was a little run down. Furniture looked old and some rooms were not even cleaned, dusty floors and cobwebs. Our room had everything functioning and had a splendid sea view and could hear the sound of the waves from our room.

Loved the huge bathroom!

Room view

While the agenda was rest and relax, we had fun nights playing Cranium. Well, fun because my team won for both nights while KS had to endure two nights of defeat! Nyah nyah nyah!… his team kept getting lousy throws at the dice and crawled along the board.

Local resident

It took me a while to figure out what this sign meant until I saw the matching pair below...

And on the last day, we played paintball. Now, the first and last time I played paintball was in 1997 in New Zealand. I remembered the fear that drove me to crawl on my elbows in the mud so naturally, I was not really excited about this time around. Bah, none of my shots hit anyone. Instead, I had two major bruises on my thighs which turned purplish a few days later. Give me Time Crisis any day. Sorry, Kelvin, I know this is one of your favourite sports.

Our battle scars

It was fun getting to know some of the Youth Leaders better, many of whom I know by name and face. And of course, a good holiday getaway even though it’s so far away.