Happy New Year! 2008~~

Bond's wedding reception

I attended by first Chinese wedding reception last night..

Got the invitation from Bond a couple of months back, enough time for me to do some research., i.e. What to wear? How much money to give? What are the events planned for the night, etc.

Bond smsed me a few days ago, 'Please be at the Royal Lake Club at 7.30pm SHARP on 28/12/07." I panicked. I only finish work at 5plus, need at least one hour to drive back to Shah Alam. By the time I get ready, pick up Shobs from her aunt's place and drive to KL, the earliest I can get there would be 8pm. Later I discovered that Chinese weddings usually don't start on time..True enough, when I reach the place at 8pm, guests were still walking in and it only started at 8.30..

I would say that a Chinese wedding appears to be less formal than a Malay wedding. Some of the guests wore quite simple clothes, like just slacks and collared t-shirt. The MC was more spontaneous and bride and groom were very relaxed. After exchanging their vows, they also gave a speech, to thank their parents, family and friends in helping them with the wedding preparation. Another tradition that i noticed is that the wedding couple will go from table to table to take pictures with the guests. I think it's a good practice, as it'll ensure that they have pictures of all their guest as a keepsake.

The best thing that i witnessed at the wedding was a professional video show that they arranged for. It showed the whole wedding ceremony which started from 7.45am yesterday. From the groom and bride getting ready for the big day, right up to the groom going to bride's house...then we witnessed the groom getting 'ragged' by the girl's family..he had to wear a cardboard around his neck saying that he's getting married today and had to collect 15 signatures from the nearby mamak shop. Then he had to drink this green looking thing, which they blended from god knows what..it looked really horrible..i'm sure it tasted awful too..

Then he had a perform a dance for the girls family..After going to the girl's room to take his wife, they had to perform the tea ceremony...Later they showed both the wedding couple in the car, on the way to the club...

I was amazed with the video show as it showed the typical Chinese tradition of a wedding and the video was also well done..it managed to catch the expressions of the wedding couple and their family members..they both looked so happy..I noticed that the bride shed some tears after watching the video...I could just imagine being in her shoes, and I'll be touched as well myself..

Overall, I had a great time last night. It was fun meeting up with my old friends and catching up with them..

IMU Bunch

Good to c u again, Shobs..

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all..

Ketani Night

We had our annual family event at KSAS, Shah Alam last night. It is usually held on the 2nd or 3rd day of Hari Raya Puasa at KB but this year, we had it on Hari Raya Haji instead. Despite planning it the last minute, the event was a success.

We were lucky to get the room at the club, on Christmas Eve, as Dad knew the GM, who was his junior at Uni. I never knew that the room existed. It was initially a meeting room which was later converted to a function room. The space was just nice for us, after we made some rearrangements with the furniture..

Everybody had a great time, both the adults and kids. The opening act was a dance performance by the cousins, to the song 'Sway' by PussyCat Dolls. Then, we had a couple of karaoke sessions, by our uncles. In between, we played several games, organized by different cousins for each, which were participated by the uncles and aunties as well. The cousins also came up with several other performances like the Magic Show by Kujah, and dance by the cousins in primary school. The last dance that we had was poco-poco, which was improvised by us a couple of days ago. Our feet was already hurting by the end of the night.

The event ended at 1am. We were all reluctant to leave as we were having a good time. I could see that the staff from the club was anxious to clear the food as the night was getting late. After the adults left, we thought of having some karaoke session for ourselves. However, we could not find the remote control for the karaoke machine and the staff was also giving signals for us to leave the place. Hence, we decided to hang out and have supper at sect 7 instead. Later I discovered that the manager was having the remote all the while. Probably he did that on purpose.

The video camera was my best friend for the night.

Our theme 'Black, White and Gold'

Richard Clayderman at Arena Stars

My family and I took a drive up to Genting last night. You won't believe it when I tell you this, the last time I went to Genting was 16 years ago..It was also the first time Iwent on the cable car. I still remember, at that time my second youngest sibling was still a baby as he is now 17 years old!

Anyway, we originally planned to stay there for the night, but the hotels there were fully booked. However, we did bring extra clothes anyway, just in case people made last minute cancellations..

We arrived there just in time. Parked our car and took the cable car, as dad thought I'd be dangerous to drive up and especially down as it was raining. Bought the tickets and had dinner at the White Coffee Kopitiam. While having dinner, dad was busy surfing the net using his phone. Apparently they have free wifi at that coffee shop.

The performance was overall good. Richard played a mixture of oldies, chinese songs, soundtracks from Titanic and Harry Potter, as well as his famous songs like Ballade Pour Adeline and A Comme Amour. He gave out his music notes after each song and the audience in the VIP seats were waiting eagerly each time..

I managed to record parts of the songs that he played using my phone. I know it's illegal but heh, what the heck.

Check it out.

A Comme Amour-one of my favourite songs~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EucC4JlFu8A

P/S: We did not spend the night there in the end. The show ended at 9.45pm, so we decided it was still rather early to drive back home.

IMU Alumni

This post is actually long overdue..

I went for the first IMU alumni on the 9th of December recently..which was held at our Bukit Jalil campus.

I was initially reluctant to attend the event as I was not sure about the turn-out, but after putting a lot of thought into it, I decided to attend anyway, to show my support to the alumni.

My main goal was to get as many IMU graduates as possible from HTAR to attend gathering, but most of them were either on-call or had other plans that day. The only person that i managed to get was my good old friend Jason, so we went to the alumni together.

The entrance fee was RM 20 was I guess it was worth it as the food was awesome and we got a couple of door gifts i.e. an IMU keychain, pin and mug. Altogether there was only 4 people from our batch who came, including myself and Jason. Nevertheless, we had a good time chatting with them and the rest of the IMU Staff and super seniors.

The simple event ended at about 7 o'clock and i brought home a couple of helium filled balloons for my sister..Hope that I could attend the next alumni gathering next year..

World Marching Band Competition

I have not watched a live marching band performance for years..So I decided witness the world band competition last night with my dad, sister and brother.

I got to know about the event when I saw the booth at One Utama about 2 weeks back, but did not have the chance to surf the net to get to know more about it. It was only 2 days back when I realise that the finals was only a day away..

I initially asked my brother to get the tickets before hand, but my dad insisted that we get the tickets at the stadium that night..Thanks to my dad, we saved RM 1000 on tickets..here's how.

That night, we walked towards the entrance when the a crew of the event approached my dad and said "You're the VIP right? Let me show you the entrance." All of us were stunned but we played along. He brought us to the grand stand and ushered us to our seats. How lucky were we? :)

We thoroughly enjoyed the performance. We could see that the effort that they put in was tremendous..I recorded the impressive marching bands, planned to put it on Youtube but the file is just too large..

The show ended with a performance by Flop Poppy, the ambassador of the competition. Funny to see them wearing band uniforms..which was the same outfit as the cute mascots, i.e. Do Re and Mi.

Watching the whole performance made me think back the good old days that I had when we were performing for our school band. The team spirit was so strong and the friendships that we made was priceless. I don't think I'll ever have the same feeling again.

This is not the end, it's a new beginning

Today will be a memorable day for me, the day that finally stepped out from HTAR, for good, I hope.

The day started off pretty well, but i felt rather lonely in the afternoon as I spent my so called last lunch hour in Klang, alone. I took a drive to Tesco, and bought a tray of brownies from Secret Recipe for the ward, as a parting gift. My original plan was to buy 3 trays in total, but they only had 1 at that particular shop. I got the only tray that they had and Melanie bought another tray of brownies for me from the Shah Alam brach. Gave the brownies to the two wards that I've worked in before.

Saying goodbye, bidding farewell is just something that I dislike. Well, there is a probabily that I might be transferred back to this place, but leaving a familiar environment and the people whom you are comfortable with can be a emotionally painful. There were so many people who I wanted to meet before I left but I guess it's just not feasible to meet all of them. I said goodbye to the collegues that I bumped into, and took an extra effort to walk to the outpatient clinic to say thanks to my HOD before I left.

It's interesting to hear the things that people tell you when you are about the leave a place for God knows until when. The things that they advice you, the stories that they want to share, last minute questions that they want to ask, etc. You will speak to people that you tend to take for granted everyday, shook hands with a particular person for the first time and getting apologies from people who you never expect.

Just to share a few interesting events that happened today. I got a pat on the back from a specialist who was never close to me, my HOD telling me that I had a lot of potential and a phone operator who I never spoke to in person, wishing me luck just before I left the hospital. I have no idea how she knew that today was my last at HTAR..

Things will definitely change and again I have adjust myself to a new working environment. One thing that I'm going to miss about this place is the friendships that I've made. There are so valuable to me and I've met many wonderful people throughout my journey in my career.

All the best to me this Monday...A new beginning.

The Golen Compass

Thought that I'll be interesting to review a movie in my blog instead of just writing about myself..

Saw this movie on Sunday with a good friend of mine at Sunway Pyramid. I never read the book and I'm not a fan of fantasy stories anyway..Thought that it would be a good idea to watch the movie since it's such a big hype in the papers and internet.

The movie is adapted from the best selling novel with the same name (released in North America) as known as Northern Lights in other countries, written in 1995 by an English writer Philip Pullman as the first part of “His Dark Materials” trilogy - another two titles in the trilogy are The Subtle Knife (published in 1997) and The Amber Spyglass (published in 2000)

In my opinion the best part about the movie was Nicole Kidman. She potrayed the character of Ms Coulter magnificiently, being able to charm the main character Lyra in the initial part of the movie, and later became evil towards the middle. Despite being the villain in the story, she still maintained her elegance. I just love watching the dresses that she wore in the movie.

I was expecting more of Daniel Craig in the movie but he was only in a few short scenes...Probably there'll be more of him the in sequel..