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.

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• Bali Was Bombed 2009… Not! (P.1)
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• My Crab’s Departure

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