the langkawi trip - set point: kuala perlis

I had always wanted to visit places around the world. I am quite a traveller myself. But, due to many constraints, I have not been able to do much of that.

In conjunction of the public holiday on Tuesday (11 April), I had decided to take a day off, and set foot to visit this little Island up North.

I went to the Pudu Raya Bus Terminal around 11+pm, a very last minute approach to catch bus. In a way, I was fortunate that the bus had not arrived yet. In fact, the bus platform was switched from 7 to 13. On top of that, the bus arrived around 12am, and left about 15 minutes later. Malaysians. Sigh.

Well, I was quick to fall asleep as it was quite a tiring day for me. I left office around 6:30pm despite my working hours finishes at 4.45pm for Fridays. I couldn't sleep well, it was on and off sleep. It's never comfortable for me to sleep in bus. Body felt stiff soon after.

Hours passed by quick enough. Before I realised, I was already seeing unfamiliar sign boards, e.g. Juru, Sebrang Prai (sounds familiar, but wasn't sure if it was of Penang or Kedah.) and so on and so forth. One thing for sure when I saw those boards. I am already at the Northern states. Quick check on the time, it had already been 5 hours since I left KL.

I was wide awake thereafter. 5am onwards, I wasn't really sleepy anymore. I just watched and observed things around me.. in dark that is. And finally, I started seeing Kuala Perlis and Kangar signboards. There, I knew that I will reach soon. As instructed, I bought bus ticket to Kuala Perlis, and take an hour's ferry-ride to Langkawi.

Rushed to Jetty.. Bought ticket.. Jump on board.. and Waited.

I got too restless, and wanted to walk around the deck, but to my disappointment, passengers weren't allowed to leave the cabin. Sad.



Viewing the scenery from the inside of the cabin. Dawn in Kuala Perlis. It was about 7.00am.



Punctuality among Malaysians are truly big issues. Ferry service by other companies have already started their engines, and rolling. Yet, I was still stuck in that pathetic cabin.


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"One ferry, two ferries, three ferries... n ferries.." I was about to doze off, yet, the ferry I was in, was yet to move still.



Finally, the ferry started moving after 15-20 minutes of delay.



Look how the color changed in the sky. Morning sights are always amazing. I just love to capture the color of the sky. Very nice.


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The ferry suffered at least twice engine malfunction after it set off to the sea. So, we were actually stuck in the middle of the sea for at least two occasions.

So, that contributes the most to the fact of us being late to arrive the Langkawi island.

Arriving Langkawi Island.



After much of those delays, we could finally see the island around us. Scheduled to arrive around 8am. I eventually arrived the island approximately 15-20 minutes later. Sigh.



Selamat Datang ke Langkawi - Pulau Bebas Cukai. That's what it says on the signboard there. Translation: Welcome to Langkawi - Duty Free Island.



I thought I saw something familiar from this view. Let's just have a closer look.



Focus on the highlighted area - Kuching! Not bad eh? I get to see Kuching in Langkawi! Haha. Now, that just made me more homesick. *Sigh*


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Marine Star II - The ferry I took from Kuala Perlis.
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The tunnel in towards the arrival's hall.



After the doors, we've reached! Here we are folks! We're in Langkawi! officially! Yeah!

a night of the oscars - part III

Finale for the Oscar trilogy.

I have not been able to update the blog lately thanks to the inconsistent broadband connectivity I am having here. I would categorize it as a consumer-end-user-error. I don't wanna talk about it. *sigh*

I was not around the City over the weekend, went for a getaway trip in Langkawi. Watch out for the entry after this trilogy.

Anyway, back to the roundup for this Oscar saga.



One of the biggest stars of the night, Malaysia's funnyman Harith Iskandar (I hope I got the name right.) Harith has been around the entertainment industry long enough. He had had numerous TV shows, movies and performances under his belt. Among the movies in his filmography, I would say these two would be among the outstanding production to date - Hollywood production Anna and the King (starring Chow Yun-Fatt, and Jodie Foster) and Sepet (A local production with inter-racial love as the movie theme - A chinese boy, a malay girl, a love story). Sepet will have its sequel releasing some time soon this month (April), if not mistaken.



It would be difficult to sum out a stand-out comedy here, as it involves body language and partial acting to bring the jokes alive.

Basically, his jokes for that night circulated around Movies (thanks to the theme), Malaysian-Singaporean relationship, and just Malaysian... Malaysian Life style.

Okay. I'll just attempt to bring out one of his plays for that night. The jokes are altered to fit in the different type of presentation, however, the context will be kept as original as possible.

#1 Malaysian-Singaporean comparison
We must be proud of Malaysians.

Why?

Because, we Malaysians have choices. Singaporeans don't.

How?

In Singapore Airport, we only need to walk to the desginated luggage hall to collect our luggage. Everything has been arranged nicely for us.

But in Malaysia, you get to choose all sort of luggage platform.. K, L, M or N.. to collect your luggage. Because the TV monitor, which is suppose to show which flight the luggages belong to, are spoilt. We wouldn't know which is which. We have to choose. Sometimes, we don't even get to get our baggage. We arrived in KL, but our luggage were sent to Bangkok! Choices!

In Singapore, all the drivers are restricted to speed limit 80km/h, even Ferrari, Porsche.

But in Malaysia, we get to have 3 different speed limit in just one highway - 60, 80, 110. Choices! We even get to have choices to IGNORE the speedlimits and go beyond 110km/h! Choices!

I tried to write another joke he told that night. But, I realized that it was not easy to bring the joke back to life through here. It's difficult. But I can assure you that Harith was really good that night! He sure was!



Next, we had this Best-Dresse Award. Whoever dressed to the theme for the night, stand chances to walkaway with lucrative prizes. The above photos showed the 6 winners for the Best Dress Award. Click on pic to enlarge.

For the men's category, the 1st runner-up was on the far left (indian custome), 2nd runner-up in the middle (chinese-dude), and the winner (tux with scarf).

For the ladies' category, the far-right was the 2nd runner-up, the middle one was the 1st runner-up, and followed by the winner.

Here's the slightly-better view on the lady best-dressed winner. (TV-view again)



Elagant, isn't she?



Last but not least, the biggest name for the night, our Malaysian diva - Ning Baizura! She sure is a diva in Malaysia. Combination of her powerful vocal, and good-look, are just too good to resist. As soon as she came down from the stage, she was soon to mobbed by the fans among the staffs.


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Getting up close and personal with Ning Baizura.



She brought a delightful performance that night, with several great songs. Among them were Sway, Superstar (I forgot the name of the original singer.. Something like Jamie something?? Please help again), and most impressively Teresa Tang's (Deng LiJun 邓丽君) famous title - 月亮代表我的心 yueliang daibiao wo de xin (The moon represents my heart). Perfect pronunciation on the Mandarin Lyrics, nice pitching, good vocal. Just nice!

She rounded up her performance for the night with one of her famous song.. Awan Pilu (I forgot on the name again..) It was a memorable night. We were all given door-gift. It was a traveller's bag by Alliance Banking Group. I didn't get to snap a shot on that. So.. No photos.

Ladies and Gentlemen, A Night of the Oscars 2006 is officially over. And so is the recap here. Let's just look forward for a better and more special night a year from now. Cheers!

a night of the oscars - part II

.. continued

And I was talking about the harpist, and her harp of course. She made two appearances that night. She had two sessions. And, I could guess that not many people paid attention to her. Sigh. That must be depressing, being under appreciated. Few in the crowd tried to initiated a grand applause, a standout oviation for the harpist. Eventually, that did not work, even after several attempts. It sort of worsened the atmosphere, made it looked so lame.

What is it with Malaysians? At times, being ignorant.



Speaking of the food, there is no photos on the food served. This is because the food was not served in a whole. We all had a pre-defined, pre-set portions of dishes served in to our face. So, it wouldn't be nice to include in the photo.

After the harpist, comes one of the attraction of the night. Well, I would label this as an unexpected package itself.

The company's Group Chief Financial Officer (GCFO), Mr.Phillip Goh, staged an outstanding performance. He performed two numbers - both being classic oldies. He showed everyone on the floor that he meant no monkey business even it's off work.



Mr.Goh performed two of the famous numbers around - L-O-V-E and You Raised Me Up. He captured the floor not only with his vocal, but also his sikly dancing move. He was really like a star. Handing out such a performance in a tux surely isn't an easy task. But he did it. Adibah Noor (Thanks to Mira, I now know the name) paid him a tribute after his awesome performance!



I wonder what Simon Cowell, or Malaysian Idol judges have to say on his performance. If there was any Idol show back then. I could bet my wager on him being the finalist! No kiddin'!

Mr. Goh's performance was followed by a series of Alliance All-Stars' performances. There were live band performing. Umm.. I think all performers were Malay, and Indian. I couldn't recall any Chinese staff there.

They had Malay songs, Hindu (or Tamil) songs and English (Got or not?) songs, and also Cantonese song! (YES! Make no mistake!)



I swear I could remember it well, as they attempted to sing Beyond's famous song. (Info: Beyond is one of HK's famous rock band. Their original lead singer died in a stage accident bout a decade ago.. or longer.) They sang 光辉岁月 guanghui suiyue. Frankly, I couldn't really make out what they sang for the lyrics, and, I have heard better performance during my varsity days. Yes, performed by Malay band as well. Regardless, I guess they deserved some respect for their courage and effort. It was a great effort anyways. It isn't an easy song to perform to start with.



By the way, there were 'Spice Girls' performing some dance. Too bad I couldn't take any shot at them. This cam is draining power too fast. Not power efficient. I miss my old camera. Sigh. I'll be hunting a more power efficient camera now.

After the All-Star performance, the DJ came out to entertain the crowd whilst preparation were made for the upcoming segment. This time round, he wasn't alone. He brought along four babes. They were four of many Switch Dancers (It's Switch, confirmed in office.) Four leggy dancers.

The crowd was involved. DJ asked us to dance along, and he will have the dancers to demo how it is to be done. It was a funny dance. Jokingly, he announced whichever table made the best moves, stood a chance to win one of the four girls there. How I wish it were true. Hehe. They were real babes up there.

Here, are some sequence (not quite of sequence-shot) of the cute dance.

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The dancers were obviously shy initially, probably due to the awkward moves. But, eventually, they quickly settled themselves. Their moves became swift and smooth. They were really good, very sporting. I really enjoyed watching them dancing. Really enjoyable.

Since LOTR (Lord of the Rings) made big names with its trilogy, and Matrix has its own trilogy, I think I should make my night of the oscars a trilogy too. *Grin*

Too tired to continue actually. I am not feeling too well, need plenty of rest. So, I guess I'll round the whole event up with my third episode.

Stay tuned and Goodnight!


to be continued...

a night of the oscars - part I

I was there when it happened. The red carpet, the glittering stars. Limousines arriving one after another, and babes stepping out from the vehicles one after another. Drum rolls, and the winners were announced.

Okay, I lied. That was the real Oscar, in which Ang Lee won the best director award through The Brokeback Mountain (I haven't watched it, and my back is not broken, ok?) and I was not there. I was in another Oscar though, my company's very own night of Oscar. We had our annual dinner on the 1st of April, and it was themed 'A Night of the Oscars'.




The dinner was held in Hall 3 and 4 (I think, the two halls of ground floor) of KL Convention Center. There was no Red Carpet rolled out to my disappointment. Oscar statue was 're-painted' to silver instead of its original gold. And, it was holding our company's logo. Yeah, you can tell what company I am working for right now. Secret revealed.







The stage design was pretty cool eh? Not bad.





After registeration at the counter, we were eligible to enroll ourselves for best-dress award. I join in the crowd, as well, but merely just for the fun of it. Everyone was given one of this wrist tag, just like the one they gave you in Genting Highland's one-day-unlimited-access-wrist-tag. I was given '0603', a number that represents one of my friend's birthday. Hehe. Not bad. I like 6 myself. But, too bad, that did not get me any lucky draw prizes.



The function started around 7pm. Before the official kick-off, our GCEO (Group CEO), Ms Bridget Lai gave her speech, and revealed the strategies and such. I gave my attention to the speech, but only to understand probably half of it. Hehe. She was talking on bank strategies, commercial, consumer and corporate. *yada yada yada...*

I'm new to this banking industry. (FYI, I am in its I.S. department. I am no banker) Well, at least I get to learn new stuff.











The interior.



The DJ... I didn't get his name though. He started the performances for the night.

First, we had in line for the night was dancing performance by Switch (or Swiss) Production Dance Team. Pretty amazing display I would say.















Pretty elagant dance performance. These are only pre-show performance though. Plenty more to come.



Then the dance team welcomed the host for the night - *drum rolls* I forgot her name. Well, she appeared in the movie Sepet as the maid.



She has got a great voice, powerful vocal. She performed numbers great numbers of Bee Gee's, and.. Stand by me, and etc. Great host.





It was the company's 5th Birthday (5th under current brand name). For your info, the bank has been around for about half a decade.



More dance. And someone caught my attention.



I personally think this girl looks cute and sweet. Don't you think so?



Special performance by the senior management team.



And, guest starring Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible... NOT. And, of course, this is not a shot of cetak rompak (illegal dubbing from cinema). This is one of the scenes which the event organizing team compiled for our banks' video. We had sales rally earlier on, and I am not too sure what that was about. I was not involved. Pretty nice effort by the production team. Impressive.



Pierce Brosnan, a.k.a the previous James Bond, making special apperance in the cetak rompak yet again.



Harpist with the harp. Nice music. However, little people showed appreciation to her effort. Everyone was busy eating, and no one applauded her. So sad. She had to play several numbers in a row before retreating to the backstage, to have her meal (I assume so).

Gosh, I think this entry has gotten a little bit too long. I'll divide it into two chunk, with me calling this point the first part.

I will continue the next part of it as soon as possible.

to be continued...