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We were involved in a car accident yesterday. No one, except the cars, was hurt.

Jon was driving. We went to PJ to have dinner, then to Kepong and when we got back to Cyberjaya, we met this ‘great’ driver – best driver we’ve seen in our lives!

The road was on a curve, and it was one of those typical two-way roads, with one lane on each direction, and a double-white-line in the middle. Let me say that again – double white line in the middle!

The driver was driving smoothly on our lane – across the white line; and there was no car on his lane, so he wasn’t overtaking anybody!

Common sense, and sufficient marks in the undang driving test, told Jon to always turn the steering wheel and evade to the left in an emergency situation. But this driver, being exceptionally brilliant, turned right - his right, which was our left.

We collided head-on.

Fortunately, both cars were on emergency brakes, so the impact was minimal. Jon got off the car, went over, and screamed at the driver. It was understandable, this was more than just crashing a car – it was Agnes’ car, and the responsibility to protect it was his.

The rest of us exited the car too, and checked the damage. Jon’s car was in better shape – only the lights, bumper, number plate and hood was damaged. We checked the internal stuff such as the engine and everything, and nothing was visibly damaged.

The other car was less fortunate. Apart from similar damages as ours – but in a worse state; it’s also got its windshield slightly cracked, and smoke was rising from inside the hood, it smelled bad.

The driver was a foreign student – a Black guy. Probably a student from MMU or Lim Kok Wing. He was apologizing profusely, explaining that, in his country, the steering wheel was on the left, and he wasn’t familiar with our roads yet.

Great reason – I bet he didn’t even have a driving license!

Minutes later, came a guy with another car – another foreigner, probably an Arab. Apparently, the Black guy’s car was a rental car, and this other guy was the person who ran the rental business.

The scene was ludicrous – we had thought that this guy would, like, totally defend the Black guy – after all , he was his client, and that was his car; but we were wrong.

He yelled at the Black guy in tones much scarier than Jon, the rest of us, and Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu combined, and ordered him to get into the car while he settled the matter with us.

The Black guy had said that it was his fault, and had wanted to deal with us himself; but the other guy was all like: “You just get in the car! Go now! I’ll settle this and you follow me afterwards!”

At one point, the Black guy got impatient with the other guy’s rude attitude, I thought we were going to witness a fighting scene – but the Black guy sort of gave in.

The other guy was also polite to us. He said he would take full responsibility for the damages and that he would compensate. He said that there would be no need to make a police report. All he wanted was we settle this fast, before the police arrived.

The intention was obvious, if you ask me – his car rental business was illegal!

He said that he had a workshop, and he could send it there for us and he’ll repair everything at no cost to us. We said no, obviously. Jon said that he would send the car for repair ourselves, and the guy said: “OK OK, no problem, you just send it for repair and give me the receipt.”

We didn’t trust him, so Jon demanded that they pay at least RM300 first, and we would settle any remaining costs later. The black guy said that he only had RM200, and the other guy was constantly rushing us to settle this so that they could leave before the police came.

I had a bad feeling about this; I’ve never trusted people in situations like this – but I guess we had no choice.

Jon took the RM200, got the contact numbers of both the guys, and we left. He said that he will get the money from them in the next two days.

We’ll have to see.

Last Friday, we went for a Tourism Club committee group dinner at Shabu Shabu Japanese steamboat restaurant, Puchong; there were 23 of us!

It was a really memorable dinner. This dinner was originally scheduled on next week, but since the mid-term tests are near, we made it on last Saturday!

We totally occupied an entire quarter of the upper floor of the restaurant!

Some pictures: Jon being fed – special privilege of the club President.

- Jon with Eric and Kean Kong - the Directors of the two upcoming trips this semester.

- Me and my great, incredible Hong Kong Trip committee!

There was one particular octopus dish that Jon grabbed and ate ALL - whenever they come out on the roller belt.

The other customers couldn’t have any! In the end, the waitress had to bring them out – pass our seats – and put on the roller belt in the middle of the room!

The yellow-colored trays are the octopus dishes that Jon greedily grabbed!

There are still hundreds of photos, taken at ridiculously random frequencies, I’ll try to upload them to my photo album – but first I need to gather all the photos from the other cameras too, so if you’re one of us and seeing this, please be patient! Thanks!

Later that night, we went to watch the movie Vantage Point at TGV Sunway. It was the first time that we bought so many tickets together!

Even the lady at the ticketing counter said that this was her biggest sale yet!

23 tickets!

The movie was to start at 11.45pm, but we were there at 10.30pm. So everyone was just hanging around taking photos…

I know, and I tried to stop myself, but I just can’t resist posting this up:

Most incredible picture taken all night. LOL!

Later, when we couldn’t take more photos, someone suggested that we go for a game of bowling while waiting for the movie to start; we agreed.

Jon was not around when we went to the bowling alley, so we mercilessly started without him!

Everyone was pretty good in the game!

When Jon came over, he grumbled about not being included in the game, and started teaching one of our members at the side of the lane – how to hold the ball, body position, how to roll it properly etc.

The last time I had played bowling with Jon, he had been quite good!

Jon then requested that I borrow him my shoes and another member let him play one round for him. Of course, why not? We all wanted to learn from the President!

Don’t even blink! This is the one and only round Jon has played that night!:

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The next day, we went to the Malaysia Airlines Travel Fair 2008 in KLCC.

The objective of the trip was to get tickets for the first batch of participants for our club’s Hong Kong Trip this coming June. The ticket prices offered in this fair are promotional prices, so we didn’t want to miss out the opportunity!

We were there for almost six hours – surveying and comparing prices, inquiring, sitting down at a cafe and discussing matters, calculating costs, making decisions, solving problems etc.

We later decided to buy the tickets at Reliance – one of the largest travel agencies in the country.

Despite buying from a well-known company, we didn’t know of the big trouble that we were heading up to.

The girl at the counter was friendly when we first inquired at her counter, so we returned to the same counter to buy the tickets.

We got back to the counter four hours after we first surveyed the price there. Everyone was tired, and we thought that purchasing tickets wouldn’t take too much time, after all.

We were wrong – The system accidentally messed up the time of our flight and booked the wrong flight for us! We found that out only after we had made the payment, filled up forms, and got our receipts!

And the most heart-stopping part was: the seats on the flight that we wanted were fully booked on that day, so we couldn’t change!

The girl apologized sincerely, but said that if we couldn’t change the time, we would have no choice but to pay an extra RM180 per person to compensate for the fare difference between the two departure times! It was outrageous – we had other participants’ money to consider!

It was a really scary moment. Some of us actually considered, briefly, that the club would lose thousands in cash because of this mistake.

In the end, we made a bold move – we shifted the entire trip one day forward, and got the tickets for the flight next day, which was, thankfully, not fully booked yet.

We didn’t blame the girl. We should’ve checked the itinerary ourselves before making the payment, it was our fault, too. In fact, she had to skip her dinner time because of us, patiently dealing with our problems. We couldn’t help feeling sorry for causing her trouble, too.

We all lingered around the counter for hours before we left with with the correct tickets at around 9pm – exhausted and hungry, but relieved and happy that we had finished what we had come here for!

After the incident, we decided that we just had to take a photo with the kind girl!

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This is the first time I’m going to Hong Kong without my family; It’d be a new experience and I’m quite looking forward to it.

Al-Qaeda’s terrorist member’s car! Someone call CIA! Maybe Osama is having lunch in a nearby Japanese steamboat restaurant!

Yup, I know it is unprofessional of me to capture my own reflection on the side window, but I only had one chance to take the photo, right? If I stood there for too long, who knows what would happen? The car might turn out to be a car bomb and explode!

Right, Al-Qaeda’s official car is a Perodua Kancil. So much for being one of the most famous international terrorist organizations…

Well, maybe it’s because Kancil’s are cheap! Then the cost for each car bombing would be less! Very cost-efficient!

Haha, spotted the car in Puchong, yesterday. Funny dude to label his car like that!

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*Ahem*… Now for an official James-Chow.com announcement!

Two months ago, I was contacted by MYNIC, the official company in-charged of all the website names that end with “.my“, such as ‘www.tm.net.my’ or ‘www.thestar.com.my’.

They told me that being the owner of a “.com.my” domain (in my case www.james.com.my), I was eligible to an early ‘priority’ registration for their new “.my” domains. Previously, there was no such thing as ‘www.abc.my‘ or ‘www.james.my‘, as there was only www.abc.org.my or www.james.com.my.

Don’t ask me why is was like that, it’s the government’s policy.

But now, the government has changed the policy and are opening ‘.my’ domain names to the public in March! So I was given the opportunity to register for my own ‘.my’ domain name three months before its official launching in March!

For those of you who are asking why don’t I just register after the official launch… The answer is this: When officially launched, the ‘.my’ domain name is going to be an “unrestricted” domain name – meaning any person or entity in Malaysia, and later – the world, could register for it; very unlike the ‘.com.my’ case, which is restricted to business and organizational entities only.

In the simplest terms – A common name such as “james” would be registered by someone else on the very day or even minutes after its official launch. Just like what happened to the “.com” names!

Yes, there are people or ‘investors’ who register hundreds of common names such as “alvin”, “money” or “happy” just to resell them to people who want them for more than 10 – 100 times the original price in the future! Believe it!

…

OKOK, I know you’re totally bored reading all this. So here’s the announcement!

Starting today, you can access my website using “www.james.my“! A much shorter name! YAY!

Of course, you can still access it with any of the following:

“www.james-chow.com”

“www.james.com.my”

and… “www.james.my”

I still dunno what to do with the last two domains so they all go to a welcome page that links to my main site, hehe…

HARAP MAKLUM! Thank you!

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A bit about myself…

Huhu… I’m very insanely busy with the new trimester this week... Loads of stuff to do including my change-of-major process… Yes, it’s still not done yet… Haha…

There’s really a lot of other great things that has happened and I really wish to write about them one by one. But, for now I really don’t have the time, just for these few days… After this week I think I’ll be much more settled-down for the new trimester.

I’ll have more updates soon, you have my word!

P.S. Actually it’s not really a ‘new’ trimester, it’s already week 4. But thanks to our Chinese New Year sticking in week 2, so week 1 and 3 don’t really count!