Life Journey Part 1

Reading one of Nicolekiss's September blog entry made me reflected on myself, how I walked the path of life since I was born. Childhood remains pretty vague to me at the point of time as I can't remember much. All I remembered was that my dad used to take me and my siblings to the playground near my house during the evenings for swings, slides, and monkey climbs. I can't even remember if I ever played masak-masak. But those do not matter to me anymore.

I attended kindy at USM, which was all thought in English. I finished reading the collection of Peter & Jane books and pretty much liked recess time when we get to go out to the field to play. :)

Moving from kindy to primary school was a nightmare as I went from a fully English spoken background to a fully Mandarin speaking Chinese medium primary school! Both my parents are English educated and although they have minimal command of Mandarin, I wasn't really exposed to it before I entered primary years. Imagine poor me not understanding a single word of Mandarin and the rest weren't that good in English. Communication was a big issue to me. I felt left out and didn't like to go to school. I even begged my mum not to send me there. It ended up my grandma had to accompany me to school. I really felt bad that she had to go through this together with me. Grandma I love you! During night time, my mum will sit down together with me to complete the massive tons of homework. This was also how she managed to pick up basic Mandarin. Nevertheless, I was a problematic child during primary school days right up to Primary 6, results were pretty bad. I was more inclined towards outdoors and fell in love with badminton and started running. I remembered during Primary 6, I took part in the 100m event during sports day and came in 3rd. I was on cloud nine that time. That was the start of my Athletics career.

As my results weren't too impressive in the UPSR exam, I had to do an extra year in Remove. I remembered the first two weeks, I attended the afternoon school session. One day, I was called upon and offered to attend classes in the morning session instead. This is a special morning session class in Remove, Form 1, and Form 2 for athletes in all fields. My parents didn't really object of me taking up this offer as long as my results are up to the mark. We attended classes in the morning, twice weekly morning trainings and trainings were also carried out in the afternoon. This was also the year where I experienced a lot of hurtful back stabbing from one of my classmate. It was really a bitter pill to swallow. I take it that the person was jealous because I wasn't a school representative during primary school and just based on a 3rd place win, I was being offered a place in Sports Class.

to be continued...

Happy Birthday Bro!

Today's my brother's birthday! Happy Birthday Daniel! So you gonna make a b'day speach later tonight? :)

心酸

好久没提起这件事情了。但今天不知不觉与一位同事谈话，提起这件事，控制不了自己，眼泪下流。目前只能默默然，勇敢地向前走。我哭了。。。

GeorgeTown a UNESCO World Heritage Site Celebration

Had the opportunity to walk around inner George Town together with my dad on Saturday night for the celebration. There were a number of very nice Chinese Temples in inner George Town which I have never step foot in the vacinity before (how shameful). The temples were well restored and the paint work, vividly colored. Nice pictorial signboards were placed up at the temple grounds, explaining the historical origins of the temple and each architectural building or different parts of the building grounds.

Khoo Kongsi was beautifully lit up during the night time. Adding to the superb celebration atmosphere were cultural performances like chinese orchestras from secondary school students, operas, chinese puppets performances etc.

When we walked pass the old clock tower, the roundabout junction where the income tax office is, we saw a LOT of people waiting there. I was wondering what was going on. All of them were standing there waiting with their camera setup on tripod. Only them I recall that there will be fireworks display once the Penang Governor officially declares George Town as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This reminds me of our April Japan trip where a lot of the professional photographers were waiting patiently for the right time to snap nice shots of Sakura at Mt Minobu.

Of course I brought along my camera for photo taking session on this eventful day. Currently have yet to process them. Once done, they will be uploaded to smugmug. So stay tuned.

Goodbye MyPhotoAlbum, Hello SmugMug

As the title says it all, my link at MyPhotoAlbum has been moved to the attic. Nevertheless, I have moved over to SmugMug. WooHoo..

I'm in the process of sorting out certain pictures to be uploaded. Do drop by to view my pictures and leave some comments! Thanks ya...

Munner's new site @ http://munwai.smugmug.com. Enjoy!

Chiba, Japan

Yokoso Japan! This is my 2nd trip to Japan this year. Did a brief 2 day stopover in Chiba city on the way back from US. A friend from OSD joined me to Japan as she was on her way back from CR. There's basically nothing much to see in Chiba city unless you travel way out to the outskirts. Nevertheless, it was a great to be back in Japan again.

Our plane touched down at Narita slightly earlier than scheduled. We were practically alternating between running with our backpacks and doing speed walking from the gate to the immigration counters to catch a train out to Chiba St in 1 hours time. We made it onto the train with 10 mins to spare!

We were greeted by rain upon arrival at Chiba St. It was drizzling. I had quite a time walking down 3 flights of stairs carrying 2 big luggages. It was hard work. It was good that the hotel was near the train station and had no problem finding it after asking around on directions.

the 3 flights of stairs

Weather was around 22-24 degrees celcius with cloudy skies and slight wind blowing. Very nice weather indeed. The 1st day was spent exploring Chiba St, finding out if there're any escalator or elevator so that we do not need to climb those 3 flight of stairs again when we leave for Narita! I noticed that there's a small food shop that sells rice and ramen for as low as 300 Yen! Very good deal. And Filet-o-Fish is only 100 Yen! Savouring Japanese food is such arousing to our tastebuds. More so in Japan itself!

Our time in Japan was spent visiting temples, shrines, parks, walking around the city, looking at beutiful Japanese ladies, and also experiencing the Chiba Urban Monorail, where the tracks are actually at the top instead of bottom. Hence, the monorail cabin is hanging on the tracks. Not forgetting numerous visits to hyakuyen shops for our shopping spree! Hahaha...

Will there be a 3rd visit to Japan this year? I shall procastinate.....

Chicago Part 2

I actually found Chicago to be a much nicer place than Vegas. The weather was nice and cooling, on top of that it's windy. I met up with a high school friend of my sis who is now based in Chicago. Met her at her neighbourhood and she bought me around her very nice hood which coincidently hosted the Art festival that particualr week. Basically they have stalls selling artistic items ranging from paintings, sculptures, to photography, not forgetting all the food and beer! I am not the artistic type of person but personally admired all the photography on display for sale, particularly the x-ray photography which I find it very interesting.

Attended training for a week over in Oak Brooks. A small city with nothing much of attraction which is about 20 mins drive away from Chicago City. However, McDonalds HQ is actually located in Oak Brooks. The building isn't impressive at all and it's called McDonald Plaza. They have a McDonald shuttle van plying the nearby offices, picking up customers and dropping them to the McDonalds outlet nearby!

Traffic is particularly bad from 5pm onwards when everyone tries to get onto the tollway/freeway. So it's stop and go traffic during that time. Each tollway which you pass thru will cost you USD 80 cents. There are small toll booths which are not man-ed, and you just throw in the 80 cents into the big 'bowl'. Right after the 'toll booth', you'll see a signboard, asking you to visit this particular website to pay your toll if you haven't done so. Wonder how many Americans actually do that in this materialistic and moral degrading society??

From my earlier posting, you may have known that my luggages did not arrive with me in Chicago on Saturday evening. I was bag-less for more than 48 hours! Damn it man. It was so unconvenient without all my necessities. It was such a relieve seeing my luggage at the front desk on the 3rd day. However, my relieve was cut short upon opening my luggage and seeing all the items was not in the order which I packed my bag in Vegas. There was a notice in my luggage, stating that TSA has opened my bags for inspection. It got worse whereby I found out that there were missing items in my luggage and they took/confiscated my M&M chocolates! Damn it. Of all things M&Ms?!?!?! Apparently my luggage strap went missing too. Heck.