Born in 1988, I consider myself and my generation exceptionally lucky to have our childhood coincide precisely with the Disney Renaissance era, in which many of the most successful and most celebrated Disney animations were produced.

In addition to the two that I’ve mentioned, Aladdin, Tarzan, Mulan, The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas are also among the classics produced by Disney in the late 1980s to the late 1990s!

I wasn’t too aware of the creative industry all this while. As I grew up, I watched all these animation blockbusters without being conscious of the immense talent, effort and difficulty in producing these movies.

I just somehow assumed that these cartoons were made in pretty much the same way as how Hollywood action movies were made. You point your camera at Cinderella or Pinocchio, they act according to script, and you sell the film. (Oh wait where did Cinderella and Pinocchio come from?) o.0

This month a group of friends and I worked part-time at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre for a 3-day event called Kre8tif! 2010.

It’s a conference organized by MSC Malaysia to kinda promote and support the creative industry in Malaysia. They’ve got a super awesome line-up of speakers made up of the most prestigious people in the industry globally.

A ticket to the conference costs over 300 bucks but all we have to do it to handle the receptionist counter during registration, handle inquiries, help participants scan their tags during entry, and gain access to the conference for FREE!

Our friend, Pauline, works in the company that handles the registration and reception service of the event, and so for that simple job we get paid a hundred bucks per day, free meals and t-shirts and freebies, and we could literally attend any of the talks that we wanted – free!

… Of course, as long as we finish our job first! Registration starts at 8AM everyday and so usually by 9AM everything is done. And our routine job would be to be at the conference halls before a session starts and scan the RFID tags of whoever enters the hall, for attendance recording purposes. And then after that, we’re done!

During the registration, a number of speakers that we dealt with were actually super famous people in the industry and had specially flew in from the US that morning to give talks. But we, ignorant fools from an entirely different industry, could have just talked to the next great Hollywood producer but not even know it!

We treated everybody like commoners and nobodys! LOL!

One of the first talks that I attended was given by Shawn Kelly, who was lead animator and worked directly with Michael Bay on the Transformers series. He was also involved in animating other many blockbusters like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow!

Kelly was exceptionally audience-friendly and humble, and he even posed for photos with his ‘fans’ in the audience when requested! Not many speakers were willing to do that!

Next I slipped into a presentation by star screenwriter David Freeman, who has written scripts for Sony, Paramount, Columbia Pictures, MGM and more. Freeman’s talk was an extremely interesting tour on “The Secret Behind Pixar’s Magic”, where he analytically and technically points out the secrets behind what makes movies like Wall-E, Toy Story, and Finding Nemo stick to the back of your head for years.

Other speakers throughout the three days include Jason Manley, who artists and designers will immediately recognize as the founder of ConceptArt.org; Stephen Davis, President of Hasbro Studios, Silas Hickey, creative director of Cartoon Network; Patch Khan, director of digital media at Hewlett Packard, and many many more.

If I write any longer this would look more like a marketing brochure than a blog post, therefore I’ll stop.

One last speaker mention, here’s me with Din Altit, who was creative executive at Sony Columbia Pictures where he worked on films such as Ghost Rider, Casino Royale, and The Fog.

Our chat began with his little confusion over the local ‘nine-layers kuih’ served during tea time… I learned that now he owns his own production studio in LA and is producing an upcoming movie about Thai kickboxing! Haha since I am in kickboxing for over a year now, this is a movie that I would never miss!

Besides, I know the film producer FTW!

It was such a new experience being at an event such as this. After attending three days’ worth of talks, at least now I know a jargon or two in this industry! And not to mention the yummy free buffet meals~~~

On the final night there was an awards ceremony called the Kre8tif! 2010 Awards, which was organized and given out by MSC Malaysia to local talents in the creative industry. Now I’ve learnt more about the companies in Malaysia doing this kind of stuff and the importance of supporting them blah blah…

… and… OK but in the end the free dinner is still what mattered the most!

Honestly speaking, the standards of our local creative companies are nothing compared to what they’re doing in Los Angeles. But hey, we’re still new in this and I think we should all give them our full support. Who knows? Maybe one day our local studios will produce something more than just Cicakman!

Cheers to our very own Malaysian Creative Industry!

As the Organizing Chair, the preparation works for this event consumed much of my time in April, which was also the month leading up to my final exams early this month!

Fortunately, I was able to juggle my time, albeit precariously, to make sure that both events received sufficient attention.

The event turned out to be a blast!

The Ice-Breaking Speech Marathon is an event where our club encourages six selected new members and special guests to take their glorious first step into the public speaking world of Toastmasters.

The participants had been given a month to prepare their speeches, which were basically stories that revolve around their respective own lives and experiences (hence the name ‘ice-breaking speech’).

To make this experience worthy of life-long memory for the first-time speakers, we managed to invite a very impressive panel of external speech evaluators:

From left to right: Francis Ng, DTM, District Lieutenant Governor of Marketing; Robert Ram, ACS, CL, President of IEM Toastmasters; JON TAN, ATM-G, Creative communicator and advertising consultant; Geoff Andrew, DTM, President of MIM Toastmasters; Sharifah Raudhah, CC, Founder and Managing Director of Face2Face Tech.; S.K. Walia, DTM, HRDC Certified International Corporate Trainer; Hoo Sze Ling, CC, Senior Student Exchange Advisor at Taylor’s University College.

These very experienced Toastmasters and professional speakers were really kind and encouraging to the first-timers!

How I wish my first speech was given in an occasion like this!

As a supremely biased organizer and shamelessly egoistic boyfriend, I shall now do a special mention of only one of the six participants of the marathon.

Participant #2 was none other than Teh Shu-Yi with her speech title “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”. =D

Haha… It was her very first time giving a speech in Toastmasters. Although she kept telling me how terrified she was days before the event, but she turned out doing fantastic!

I daresay I totally understood her fears because after my first ever speech in public three years ago, I wrote this.

Her best friend Felicia from Ipoh was also present to support her, hand in hand!

After the participants made their speeches, the evaluation session kicked in and the evaluators did their job. One-by-one, the evaluators commented encouragingly on the participants speeches, focusing on excellent parts and those that can be improved.

In the end, participants were given a certificate for completing their first ever speech in a Toastmasters environment!

Here’s our President Megat Zahid presenting the certificate to one of the participants. =P Yup, a random one.

As per Toastmasters’ tradition, ballots slips were passed to the evaluators and audience after the speeches to vote for the winners of the Best Speaker of the Day and Best Evaluator of the Day awards.

Participant #2 Shobana won the Best Speaker of the Day Award!

And Robert Ram, ACS, CL won the Best Evaluator of the Day Award.

This is my final event in the 2009/2010 EXCO term. After this an election will be held during the next AGM and we will all have very different roles by then!

Cheers to MMU Toastmasters!

You see, for the past three months I’ve not been posting anything, but now I’m gonna shamelessly repost an entry for each of the empty three months, highlighting the major events to ganti balik! Here we go!

Two major events, both Toastmasters related, happened in March.

First, the Area Level speech competition, which was held in SHELL IT International Sdn. Bhd., home to the Cyberjaya Toastmasters Club. This club is the OLDEST Toastmasters club in Cyberjaya, hence claiming the official name.

Remember back in February when I very miraculously won the club level competition? Now this is the next level, to represent the club and compete with the champions of the other Toastmasters Club in the area!

Another representative of our club is Taufeeq, a very respectable and experienced English Teacher.

As I have mentioned in my last post, the type of speech that we were participating in is called the Table Topic Speech, which is a kind of impromptu speech where you are given your speech topic only when you are standing on stage.

Perhaps due to the fact that most Toastmasters members are working adults, I was given a speech topic that I was most UNqualified to speak of.

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“What is the one advice that you would give to a newly married couple?”

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Since I was only allowed to offer ONE advice only, I would have blurted out “Mr. Bridegroom juz try not to embarrass us men tonite LOL”, if I had not (in time) looked down at the very serious faces of the Chief Judge, Area Governor and a number of important-looking VIPs and Club Presidents all peering up at me grimly expecting a very knowledgeable and enlightening speech something like that.

I shall not disclose the content of my speech that day but suffice to say I blabbered some utter nonsense (to me), as best as I could, and tried to be funny. The audience very accommodatingly laughed! LOL!

In the end, it appeared that I managed to impress the judges and I, very unbelievably, won FIRST RUNNER-UP!

To add to the pride of our MMU Toastmasters Club, Mr. English Teacher TAUFEEQ got first place and will represent the area to compete in the Division Level!

It was a truly a glorious day for our club as our dear Vice-President of Education, Alia, had also won in another speech competition and our club being a relatively new and the only student club in Cyberjaya, sapu-ing three trophies in an area competition is something that had never happened before!

Haha who said students are noob speakers?

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The second major event of the month was the EMCEE WORKSHOP!

After months of negotiations and arrangements, we managed to have prominent creative communicator and advertising consultant ATM-G JON TAN, with more than 25 years of experience as an EMCEE and public speaker, to grace our event as the principal speaker!

Now how great this guy is, is plainly beyond words. The few of us who had worked with him could simply feel the incredible professionalism radiating from his words and actions!

Ariff (Left-3rd above) was the Organizing Chair of this event. Being the Deputy Organizing Chair, I was already nearly suffocated under the intense pressure of Jon’s professional expectations, imagine poor Ariff. That’s just how crazy our speaker is!

In addition, the seminar was attended by delegates from huge corporations across four states in the peninsula like Sime Darby, Shell, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Bank Negara Malaysia, Petronas, and even the Prime Minister’s Department in Putrajaya! Imagine the stress!

A small delegation also came from the Corporate Comms. Department of MMU, showing support from our own university!

Apart from the ‘official’ goals of educating the public and elevating the public speaking standard of blah blah blah, the REAL reason behind this event is to raise funds for our club. Since Toastmasters is a non-profit organization, by-annually dues paid to our club are all eventually paid to Toastmasters International, therefore our club desperately needs MONEY!!

As the official club Treasurer, I was also charged of handling all the financial ins-and-outs of the event. Collecting workshop fees alone made my wallet fat fat happy happy that day… but unfortunately none of the stacks of money are mine. >.<

The event was a huge success and I think I’ve grown a few years older after going through it. =P

As to cause, 250 years later, a poor guy names James to stop studying in the middle of a night, in the last few days of his crucial study week, to go out and have… beer!!

It was Arthur’s Day yesterday! And it’s gonna be my final exams the day after tomorrow! RAWR!

I had been anticipating September 25th for quite a long time ever since the ads of this incredible ‘worldwide celebration’ were flooding cinemas and TVs and websites everywhere…

Friends had been inviting me to join partying with them on Arthur’s day and everything was all hot and going… And then only to realize a month ago that it would be only a mere couple of days before my final exams!

3 days before exams… That’s so great, Arthur. 

But then suddenly, it was announced that the Black Eyed Peas were coming to Malaysia as KL was to be one of the five cities in the world to host this celebration!

And the greatest and most unbelievable surprise of all, our dearest government, who attempted to ban alcohol sales in certain parts of the country, who fined and caned a model and mother simply for drinking beer, and who had initially banned all Muslims from attending the concert, had suddenly gotten to their senses in the last minute and allowed anyone above 18, Muslim or non-Muslim, to see the concert!

(Although it was approved on the grounds of encouraging tourism LOL, but that’s beside the point…)

See that’s the power of the Black Eyed Peas and Arthur Guinness’ black beer combined!

So if a huge miracle like the government compromising and allowing beer concerts and not arresting Fergie for not wrapping herself up all the way from the neck to knee should happen, who the hell cares about exams??

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For two-hundred-and-fifty remarkable years… TO ARTHUURRR!!!

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*Drinks…*

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*knock*

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P.S. Whoever named Arthur should be very happy on Arthur’s Day. When do we get a James Bond 250th anniversary?

And this time it’s not some boring cultural or academic event. It’s an event with a magnitude that has never been seen before in this country.

The dream event of all gamers.

Ladies and gentlemen, but gamers in particular, behold – Cyberfusion 2009!

The event is set to break the Guiness World Record for the single longest LAN Party in the world!

The previous record was held by Nvision, a 2008 LAN Party held in San Jose, California, sponsored by graphics cards industrial giant Nvidia.

This year, the record-breaking attempt is, unsurprisingly, sponsored by none other than AMD, parent company of ATI Technologies, and generally seen as a vicious counter-attack by Nvidia’s ‘most-hated’ nemesis in the GPU industry!

With almost 500 computers in a gaming event set to run for 38 hours non-stop, this is an event that’s totally against the disciplinary and academic culture of a university, but who cares!

This is an event that pwns evry n00b hard lol gg.

It’s a friggin’ cyber cafe of monstrous proportions!

Sadly, I did not participate in it, because I didn’t think I would be able to take out the time for it…

You have no idea, participating in an event such as this drains every single ounce of energy from you after it’s over!

You would need, at least, an extra 12 hours just for sleeping – and still feel utterly exhausted after that!

Alvin had gone to the event on the first day, and told me that it was really exciting!

On the second day, to make it a bit more special, we visited the event at 12 midnight on the second day, exactly 24 hours into the event, to see what was really going on after all the initial hype died down!

(For a brief coverage of the first day’s excitement, Alvin has got an entry on it here.)

After gaming non-stop for 24 hours, some gamers simply couldn’t tahan anymore and were taking quick, stealthy naps.

Some were taking refreshing naps openly:

And some curi-curi tidur:

Anyway, besides their own computers, there were also many gadgets and stuff that the gamers brought themselves!

Steering wheels for racing games:

‘Instruments’ for music games :

And control pads… played on a very nice sarung too! I guess at LAN Parties its all about comfort!

And speaking of comfort, since we were there at midnight, we had the entire viewing gallery to ourselves, comfortably watching and taking photos from above!

Haha!

Cyberfusion will officially end tomorrow at 2PM, breaking the world record by two hours. I know two hours ain’t a lot, but hey, it’s still a world record!

Yes, I know what I’ve said before about setting stupid world records but this is simply such an awesome event that I have nothing bad to say about!

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Bali Trip part 2 coming up in the next entry!

P.S. Got new poll on the left sidebar! Go vote! =)

It was a sooo marvelous trip and I’m gonna blog about it in one of the next few posts after I’ve got the other photos from the other friends!

P.S. Unfortunately, there was no bombing in Bali.

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Meanwhile, check this out – I went to the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta 2009 in Putrajaya!

It was an ‘international’ event, kinda like the International Fireworks Competition held near Merdeka Day every year in Putrajaya.

What’s the big deal about ‘international’ events anyway?

Gigantic balloons from countries like France, Germany etc. were lying dead on the floor at 5PM, and under the scorching late afternoon sun it was not entertaining at all…

… not until the large round thing in front of us started inflating and revealed its green nipple-like thing…

… did we realize that it was an orange!

It was one of the first to be fully inflated and became so big that it looked really menacing to the poor inflating blue balloon beside it.

I think it could crush the blue balloon with a long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sound (like a high-pitched, long fart) if it decided to fall on it.

One by one, as the other balloons were starting to be pumped, everybody was getting pumped too!

There was also the super cute pink elephant balloon! I think it was the balloon that caught the most attention in the entire event…

… because it was really cute and charming!

… and also because the trunk was inflated last. Everyone stared at the long, dangling ‘thing’ and, as the (crowd) ‘excitement’ grew, it slowly became bigger, longer and harder in front of the cute, smiling elephant face.

Somehow it reminds me of the, er… election happening next week.

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Check out the happy and sad balloons!

Sad balloon being set free into the air…

… becomes happy!

Cute, isn’t it?

Look! A huge Nescafe mug floating in the air!

Seems like a blissful illusion sight of a coffee adict!

Sadly, the Nescafe mug never really lifted off, due to some technical problems. We waited for quite a long time in hopes of seeing the Nescafe mug float up to the sky, but we were disappointed in the end.

Perhaps this could have done better.

Last but not least, there was the grand peacock. Which was the single most enormous balloon of all.

I bet standing under its uh, butt, would feel like an alien mothership descending on you.

Although it lost to the pink ‘errecting’ elephant balloon in terms of cuteness, but this is surely the grandest of all balloons!

It also has the most un-balloon-ish shape ever for a hot air balloon!

Watch the bird fly!

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On that day we also went on the Putrajaya Tasik Cruise, which I had had my eye on the first day I came to Cyberjaya, but had yet to have a chance to be on.

Now I finally got the chance to be on it… really happy! Because  I’m entering my final year in Cyberjaya soon, not many chances already!

The cruise basically makes a tour around the man-made Putrajaya lake with a guy introducing to us the buildings and landmarks that we could see along the ride.

For the boat, there was a choice between the cheaper ‘perahu’s…

… and the slightly more expensive cruise ship.

We chose the latter because the ship had decks at the front and rear for sight-seeing anyway, and it seemed to have less risk of throwing its passengers into the lake.

During the cruise we had the opportunity to see and capture sights that were rarely seen along the river bank or anyway else on land in Putrajaya.

Like the Seri Wawasan Bridge in the close up angle:

and the bottom of it:

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It’s April Fool’s day tomorrow! Watch out!

Haha!

This dinner was made specially for the Hi-Comms and Excos of the club who had worked so hard for the club in the previous academic year.

Shogun is one of the rather famous Japanese buffet restaurants in the PJ area, and, Japanese food + all you can eat = a very tempting combination indeed!

We arrived at around 6.50PM and started gathering our food at 7.15PM, once everybody had arrived.

It is no secret that I always lose out in buffets because of my average appetite size… People always say that I can’t even ‘eat back the price‘ in buffets…

Shogun might be slightly expensive, but with the club paying for it, nobody’s going to care!

Our group occupied three long tables and was probably the noisiest and most attention-grabbing group in the restaurant.

There was another group of people beside us celebrating a birthday – and our side sang with them too!

Everyone ate for only around the first hour, and spent the next two hours or so taking pictures, and like… simply moving around…

For some of us, this dinner marks the end of our active involvement in this club as we are ‘retiring’ from the Committee. Many are entering their final year next year, and are going to be less active…

Of course, we will be glad to help out and participate in trips, and I’m very sure the new batch of Hi-Comms are going to do an even better job in this coming academic year!

It is difficult to find such a dedicated and energetic (and noisy) group!

It’s kinda sad that some senior members are leaving as well….

A picture of the current (old) Exco:

Jon, Me, Suzanne, Shuh Yin, Rebecca and Wee TIng.

… and the upcoming (new) Exco:

Kean Kong, Jansen, Nicole and Shirly.

To make sure that Shogun blacklists Kean Kong’s name, our handsome upcoming President, for making noisy reservations, here’s our extravagant Tourism Club yum seng!

Haha, just kidding!

Finally, came the scary RM1.6K bill…

… which our pretty Treasurer smartly paid with a card…

… err, what card?

Haha, no lah… In the end it was Kean Kong who paid it!

The dinner was truly wonderful, and to cap it all, the club treated us all to a movie before leaving!

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For photos please click here!

Last Friday, we went to Redbox – The Curve to have an early celebration for his license to no longer need to stand and wait outside the casinos in Genting – This guy is now officially 21!

Of all places, I think karaoke sessions will make the best place for Khai’s birthday celebration because he really likes singing… and he really does sing very well!

Whenever he holds the microphone, anyone else that sings together will probably be spoiling his voice. Everybody even agrees that his voice sounds remarkably like the Taiwanese singer – Lee Sheng Jie’s (李圣杰)!

Also being a subject of the celebration – was my housemate, Alvin!

Alvin’s birthday is still a couple of days away – on Tuesday. But I guess we were just stingy and wanted to cramp two names into one cake.

There were seven of us. The room booking was at 11pm, but our car had to stop by Sunway to reclaim my Redbox membership card, which I left there for servicing a month ago; plus a super, incredible Friday night traffic jam – we arrived at The Curve only at around midnight!

Fortunately, another friend, Jeff, arrived on time; so he was able to get the room before we were forfeited for being late!

It was like a talent show, everyone’s singing was so good! Usually, in karaoke with a group of people, only one or two people would be recognizable ‘good singers’; but that night, it was really a coincidence that so many people who can sing so well are together!

Jeff was snapping great photos with his huge and impressive DSLR; with him taking pictures all around us and powerful flashes lighting up the room continuously – it really looked like we were all professional singers surrounded by aggressive reporters!

Later, at around 2.30am, one of the Redbox staff came in with the birthday cake, and the birthday song interrupted our 3-page song list.

The Secret Recipe cake was really nice! Too bad it only had one candle on it…

Hmm… It may not look so nice in the photo but, trust me, it was way, way more delicious than it looks! Almost one of the best birthday cakes I’ve tasted! (Typical ones are usually too creamy or too ‘thick’, if you ask me…)

The staff didn’t stay to at least sing the birthday song with us… But here’s a picture of us singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Khai and Alvin!

After that, we continued singing until 4am.

Alvin’s car had broken down when we wanted to leave, the car battery had been uncooperative with the day’s good mood and gone dry. So Alvin had to leave the car there and return to get it the next day. Richard, very kindly, escorted Vivien home and sent the rest of us back!

Before going back, we had Dim Sum at PJ SS2, near Alvin’s sister’s house.

Everyone was so sleepy already! It was past 5am in the morning.

We reached Cyberjaya at almost 7am. Tired but happy. We’re planning something else for Alvin’s birthday this coming week, we’ll see what comes up!

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Just wanted to mention this before I end this entry..

Earlier that day, I went to UPM with Melvin, Sook Ching and Frederick to conduct a survey for one of our course subjects in university.

The UPM campus was really, really huge! Students had to either drive or take shuttle buses provided by the university just to navigate among faculties!

Another thing was this – there was a huge number of foreign students in UPM! I had used to think that public universities would have the least amount of foreign students, but I had been wrong!

We spent hours driving and walking around the campus – Melvin was driving – and completed our 150 survey papers at around 4pm…

We caught most of our poor survey ‘victims’ near the library area! Hehe!

I bet that most people had thought that we were selling insurance or something when we first approached them, so we had to stress on the words ‘for our assignment‘, ‘we are students from Multimedia University‘ and stuff like that…

Very tiring and hot… But great experience nonetheless!

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.

The few people who came to this fair with me are committee members of an upcoming trip to Hong Kong. As the appointed advisor to this project, I skipped a Friday class to come with them, but not at all unwillingly, of course, since Friday classes are insanely boring~!

The main purpose of this visit is to obtain information and quotations for a trip to Hong Kong, and with the information we could organize the trip on our own, without requiring the actual services of travel agents.

Being sufficiently familiar with Hong Kong myself, and with the full dedication of the committee members, I believe that we can organize a more interesting and cost-efficient trip than, in my opinion, the travel agents!

Once we were there, we scoured almost every corner of the fair for promotional fliers, price sheets, trip packages, and also talked and collected a lot of information from different travel agents.

It’s still very funny, thinking back how we continuously sat down at random travel agents’ booths, demanded tonnes of information and material from them; and just when the agents thought we were genuinely interested, we’d shamelessly stand up, thank them for the information, and walk away! Haha!

But that’s our right as consumers, isn’t it?

Apart from informational stuff, we also got a lot of other things, such as balloons!

Representatives from Taiwan and Korea tourism industries were giving out free balloons, and our group took so many that it was very easy to tell precisely where we were at, as there were so many balloons bobbling above our heads!

In fact, we took so many balloons that some passerby parents thought we were distributing balloons and asked if we could give some to their children! LOL! But, of course, how could we refuse!

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After we left PWTC and headed for dinner, Eric’s car, which I was in, refused to cooperate with that day’s good mood and broke down.

We had known that something was wrong with the car during the journey TO the fair, because the engine temperature had been rising at an extreme speed, reaching boiling point in every thirty minutes.

So, Eric parked the car beside the road while we waited for the engine to cool down. As we were waiting, an Indian guy on a motorcycle stopped and asked if we needed any help.

This guy claimed that he’s a mechanic of BMW, and showed us a BMW logo on his jacket, which, suspiciously, looked like the kind of jacket that you can buy at any Pasar Malam‘s for fifteen Ringgit.

Well, he could be a real BMW mechanic, of course! I’m merely remarking upon the possibility of him being a fake one~~

The BMW guy checked the car and told us that the ventilator a.k.a. ‘fan‘ has stopped, and that he could help us get a new one if we agreed to pay him forty bucks for the trouble, and another hundred and thirty Ringgit for the ‘fan’.

You know, it sounded suspicious, and we knew instinctively that it was an obvious overcharge. But since the guy said that we could pay him after he’s bought and replaced the fan, and none of us were really good in repairing cars, we accepted his offer.

It turned out that the guy really knew what he was doing! He came back with the ventilator, replaced it with the broken one, and started the engine. Everything was fine!

We were grateful, of course, but we still thought that we could have done with a cheaper price. So we bargained with him and ended up paying him a hundred and fifty bucks for everything, which he accepted anyway.

Come on, there’s no need to feel sorry for him! I’m sure that he’s still profited from our transaction!

I’m so tired~! For the past 4 days I slept no more than 4 hours per night… Yawwwn…

~~~

Today, I went to the PIKOM PC Fair held in KLCC.

For those who don’t know, PIKOM stands for Persatuan Industri Komputer dan Multimedia Malaysia, translated as the Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry, Malaysia. Its biannual, 3-day PC Fairs are the biggest and most famous in the country.

The fair is held from this Friday till Sunday. Coincidentally, earlier this week I decided that I needed to get a new digital camera, quite urgently!

Although the PIKOM PC Fair is, after all, a ‘Personal Computer‘ Fair, you can find great varieties of almost all types of electronic devices at unbeatable bargains! Hah! What a particularly excellent time for such an event to be held, ^.^ I can actually get my camera here!

The fair was really crowded, but absolutely not as crowded as it would be on the last day. My friend told me that if I was here on Sunday, which is the last day, there’d be almost three times the number of people here today!

On the last day, everyone would be moving only forward by the flowing force of the people, there’d be no turning back, and even stopping to look at a counter would cause grumbles and pushes from the people at the back! @_@ Awww! Luckily, today’s the only the first day!

However, at the price of shopping in a less-crowded environment, being here on the first day does compromise the bargain potential.

Retailers typically plunge their goods’ prices to the lowest on the last day in a final attempt to sell off their stocks while having direct competitors around them trying to do exactly the same. Best time for customers to bargain!.

But then I won’t be in KL until Sunday night, guess I’ve no choice! First day it is!

We walked around for 4 hours. Stopping by regularly to look at different stuff and compare prices. We noticed quite a lot of students from my university are working as part-time promoters in this fair! Not surprising though, I’ve heard that the pay for working in events like these is quite high!

Of course, not as high as the showgirls from big companies, looking SO damn hot dressed in sexy outfits, trying to lure you to walk over to check out their body, no, I mean electronic products. >.<

After walking through the entire length of the fair (which spanned over five gigantic halls), I realized how different prices offered by competing stalls could be. For exactly the same product, the price offered by one stall can be as much as RM100 cheaper than another!

Anyway, after much inquiries and comparisons, I ended up with this:

I spent more than an hour deciding on which colour I should take – White, silver, black, or pink. As a matter of fact, I found the pink-coloured Sony rather attractive! I really liked silver, it has the metallic look that I like on a camera; but finally I was convinced by my friends, and the salesgirl, that black would look nicest with me.

I bought it for RM1,150, slightly cheaper than the normal retail price, along with some freebies and memory upgrade. Although most of my friends who are experienced in photography recommended Canon over Sony, but I just like the design too much, hehe… ^^

We reached home pretty late just now, and I (again!) don’t think I can get much sleep tonight because tomorrow I’ll be going to Kukup Island and I haven’t started packing yet, plus I gotta wake up at 6AM! Huhu…

Hope I won’t oversleep and forget to pack my pants!

Yesterday, We had the pleasure of having the Group CEO of Telekom Malaysia Bhd. (TM Bhd.), YBhg Dato’ Abdul Wahid Omar, to have a talk on leadership and success in our university.

Studying in a TM-owned university, students of MMU naturally think that the CEO of TM group is a huge icon and many turned up excitedly for the talk, hoping to learn some important stuff from the famous CEO himself.

Furthermore, the Student Affairs and Sports Division (STAD) of MMU has announced that each club was to bring at least 10 members to attend the talk; so for our club, we went in a group of 10 people, including David, who was asked to come with us during the last minute!

The talk was scheduled to start at 8PM, but since a VIP was coming, we arrived a bit early, at 7.45PM.

We got a nice seat at the upper level of the hall; in fact, I think we got the best place in the entire grand hall! It was high up, so we could see everything happening in the hall, and it is not too front, where it would be almost impossible if we ever wanted to, you know, sleep or leave early.

After more than 1 hour of chatting and taking pointless photos with Winston’s Camera – at 9PM, the CEO arrived! Yay! Finally!

Through some video clips, we got to know a brief history of Telekom Malaysia Bhd. and it’s advancement in the Telecommunications industry in Asia.

We also got to know Mr. Abdul Wahid Omar as the CEO who guided the company through tough, tumultuous times to revolutions and outstanding achievements.

After the introductions, Mr. Omar started his speech on leadership, in which he outlined qualities of leaders and shared his own experience as the leader of one of the country’s biggest companies.

Everyone was intently listening to every word the CEO was saying.

Oh yes we were really listening… I was taking notes, for once!

(From my notes)

Qualities of a leader:

1. High level of language proficiency, both oral and written.
2. High self confidence.
3. Sense of urgency.
4. Willing to learn and improve continuously.
5. Has the strong desire to succeed.
6. Capable of working hard and working smart.

Quite interesting…

An hour later, I looked at my watch, it was getting late, and slightly boring. It was like a lecture session by an extremely qualified and experienced lecturer… but a lecture nonetheless. And lectures are typically boring!

And it was getting cold, very cold… One of the air-conditioning vents was directly above us…

But Mr. Omar just went on and on…

In the end, some just couldn’t help it… It was really understandable… Zzz…

The whole thing ended at 11 something… With us leaving the hall frozen solid, it was really soooo cold!

Anyway, it was really inspiring to meet someone like Mr. Omar, who started off his career with pure effort and no advantages at all, patiently climbed the corporate ladder with hard work and determination, and finally ended up being one of the greatest corporate leaders in the country.

Will any of us be as successful as him? Hmm..

It appeared that many people who visited out booth were attracted by the sight of the 2 marvelous paper coconut trees designed by Shobita!

We had two, towering coconut trees made mostly of paper standing on either sides of the booth’s table. They may look weird and unstable, and had twice crashed on our neighboring booth’s table, but it really took a lot of people’s hard work to create it!

Being a year younger than most people of my batch, it’s quite delightful to meet new students who are actually of the same age as me! I even met a few people who were in the same secondary school as me and they also recognised me!

Most students who join the Tourism Club join in groups. And that’s not too enjoyable because we’d be very free at one moment and extremely busy the next moment promoting, writing receipts, and laminating member cards for a large group of friends, making them standing around and waiting…

I must say, Wei Shean, the Director of this event, has done a respectable job with the preparation and execution of this programme. Many committee members turned up to help out as well, and we’re really grateful!

I’m not being racist, but I somehow realised that a great majority of members, and almost all of the committee members in our club, are Chinese!

There are a handful of Malays, Indians, and International Students, but then again if you look at our previous Redang Island Trip, out of the 80 participants, 78 are Chinese! Why is that?

Maybe it’s due to group influence, friends will ask their own friends to go on a trip with them, and people typically have more friends of the same race than others. I guess that’s why…

Some other clubs and societies have performances in the middle of the hall. Although I was not there to watch all the other performances, I particularly enjoyed the Teakwondo demonstration, which was so great and powerful that it caused me to suspect more strongly that the wooden planks that they so easily break apart actually have tiny slits on them.

Hmm… Is it true? Or maybe they’re just really skilled. Who knows? I never really asked a Taekwondo member, but I guess I’ll ask one of my friends who’s a Taekwondo club member, next week.

Lots of other clubs were having great exhibitions as well, and as always, we really have a lot to learn from others.

Japanese culture lovers, you’re gonna love this! The Japanese Cultural Society (JCS) of MMU has organized a Carnival of Japan in MMU! This is truly not an event that you can see everyday!

In my opinion, the Japanese culture influence in Malaysia, especially among youths, is mainly caused by… anime! That’s right! Japanese animated cartoons, anime! I don’t know if referring anime as cartoons is correct, but I daresay if there were no anime in Malaysia at all, the Japanese cultural effect here would be a lot less, which will also take away a lot of colours in many of today’s youths’ life.

But OF COURSE no one should ever stop anime from coming to Malaysia! As their distinct character illustrations and story plots are just so lovable, that it is almost certain that most youths will embrace anime as part of their lives for certain periods of their age. I did, last year! =)

Anyway, back to the carnival…

Right at the entrance of the canopies, you’ll find what they call ‘Love’s Board‘

It’s very nice ’cause all the love and flower shaped papers have love messages written on them… How meaningful! I think it’s there because it was Valentine’s Day yesterday.

All over the sheltered outer compound of the carnival were stalls selling different sorts of goodies. There were Japanese foods, souvenirs, chocolates for V day, and even a stall where you can fish all you want in 30 seconds from a tray… Using a totally torn net!

Glen bought an egg that if you crack the tip and water it as though it were a plant, a small single-leaf plant will grow out of it with the words I Love You printed on the leaf! Amazing huh? I wonder who he wants to give it to… Hehe…

To add to the Japanese atmosphere, most of the JCS working staff and members were dressed up in Japanese outfit!

Inside the exhibition area, you’ll see what all the fuss is all about. There’s a huge collection of Japanese stuff on display and if I’m not mistaken, they were sponsored for display by an authority in Japan! Forgot which authority though…=)

Here’s the main exhibition area:

There were Japanese cuisines, costumes, paintings, figurines, pot plants, traditional games, and miniature traditional houses on display.

I liked the miniature houses the most ’cause they are sooo nice and real! And there were like around a dozen of them, if you liked miniature art, I think you might just want to rob them from the carnival!

I think most of you will recognize the toys in the image below as they sometimes appear in anime or Japanese TV series.

They are called Kendama, basically each of them is made of a ball attached to a two-sided hammer by a string. You’ll have to swing the ball from the top to land once on each side of the hammer, and then swing it again to return to the top. I tried it and I can tell you it’s DAMN difficult!

Overall the carnival was fine although it was extremely hot to be directly under the sun with canopies as shelters only, but everything else was very exciting and nice!

Well, that is to be expected since CLS is known to organize very impressive and sometimes over-exaggerated events that involve hordes of members and tons of publicity work, usually forcing many other clubs into rescheduling their own activities when they’re unfortunately held at the same day and time as CLS’s. What a monster club!

And speaking of monsters, we encountered a real monster in campus today!

ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!

This is umm… Possibly the mascot for the CLS’s Chinese New Year events for the year? As far as I can tell, it is made out of painted dry leaves, and I have to admit that it looks kinda scary when looked at from some angles… Imagine waking up in the night and seeing this thing’s head hovering outside your window… OMG….

But scary things later, today is CLS’s Chinese New Year Food Feast, it is said to be a food exhibition and sampling session, but I think anyone also can tell there’s some hidden intentions… You’ll know why later =).

CLS members were walking all around the campus all day getting people to go to the hall as there are, what they called, ‘free food’ there. FREE FOOD! That’s something not to be missed!

Entering the hall, you’ll arrive in this red-lighted ‘food tunnel‘ where different kinds of Chinese food samples are displayed along with their descriptions:

Stepping out of the tunnel, we arrived at the main area, where the ‘feast’ is held. Immediately, you will be surrounded by groups of salesmen, NO, I mean committee members, greeting you and inviting you to try their food!

You’ll be shown all around at all the different stalls err… displaying different Chinese foods.

I must say, the stalls are pretty well-designed and decorated, just like this so-called ‘Dragon Door Restaurant‘. As expected from CLS, big performance all the time!

Then, you’re shown to other stalls and offered free samples to be tested, you start to wonder, “why are they sooooo good and eager to show you around and offer you food, all for free?”

But who cares? They’re the Chinese Language Society, that’s their job, I guess.=)

But then after you started testing the foods and gave complimentary remarks about them, you’re told that you’re supposed to buy and take some home, since you liked them so much! And you’ll be persuaded with great insistence and skill to buy from them! I must say, sometimes I do think that CLS members make GREAT salespeople, and that’s a sincere compliment!

Anyway, I knew it, it’s not that much of an innocent food exhibition with free food as we were told!

I guess any food exhibition and sampling session always comes with sales, anywhere; but it’s pretty normal, since they can’t be doing this for nothing and lose money right?

I think it’s more like a Chinese New Year food promotion fair, but very great effort and performance from the Society! I guess they spent mountains of time and work on this event, and that’s really remarkable considering the fact that they are not getting paid to do it!